Sean Penn is one of those legendary Hollywood actors that even if you’ve somehow managed to never see anything that they’ve been in, you most certainly know the name at least in passing. As someone whose knowledge of cinema mostly consists of what came after the year 2000, it should come as no surprise that I’m not as familiar with Penn’s work as I should be. Outside of some surface knowledge about his relationship with Madonna and how badly that ended up, I’ve only seen him in one other film to my knowledge: 2013’s Gangster Squad, where he was exceptionally awesome as the enemy gangster Mickey Cohen. In fact, that performance was just that good that I’m actively excited about this based on that alone. So, how does Penn turn out in what looks like an attempt to Takenise him, what with this being directed by the same guy who made Neeson a modern day action fixture?
The plot: Eight years after carrying out an assassination in the Congo, Jim (Sean Penn) finds himself targeted by his former employers. With the help of his mentor Stanley (Ray Winstone) and his old girlfriend Annie (Jasmine Trinca), he has to track down his liaison Felix (Javier Bardem) to get some answers, provided that the hitmen sent after him and his on-going head trauma don’t get to him first.
This is a damn good cast, plain and simple. Sean Penn is
stone-cold brilliant in this thing, working with his mentally-damaged in
several respects protagonist and making it fit great with the bad-ass
mercenary; if the rumoured Kane & Lynch film ever gets off the ground, Penn
would be my draft for Lynch based on well he does here. Javier Bardem has built
a pretty healthy pedigree for playing bad guys (yeah, *spoilers* I guess) in
films like No Country For Old Men and Skyfall, but here he portrays more of a
pathetic-drunkard class of antagonist and still carries it with the same
conviction he did with Anton and Raoul, even if his accent occasionally fails
him. Ray Winstone, who has a definite knack for British gruffness, does his
man-of-few-words thing here to great effect and makes for some really good
interactions with Penn. Probably the only weak point in the cast,
unfortunately, is Idris Elba as Interpol agent J Barnes. Not to say that he’s
bad here by any stretch, as Elba is and will always be awesome; it’s just that
he isn’t the film nearly enough, which is weird considering he gets second
billing in the opening credits next to Sean Penn. It’s definitely misleading,
but Elba manages to get the most out of the one-and-a-half scenes he’s given
here so I’m at least glad with what we got.
A quick look at the plot synopsis, and I’m not sure about
anyone else but one thing immediately came to my mind: 80’s action movie.
Seriously, ‘mercenary who gets betrayed by his employers’ is one of the all-time
biggest clichés of the genre, right up there with one-liners and never needing
to reload your weapons. It hits some of the same beats from an awful lot of
straight-to-DVD action fodder, like the numerous betrayals that occur, and yeah
I’d be lying that if I said this didn’t feel derivative. Actually, even beyond
the plot similarities, this film also carries some of that genre-weirdness that
I associate with the action scene from back then. Some of it shows up in Elba’s
initial scene with Penn which is filled with that hackneyed metaphor-laden mock
dialogue that got eye-rolls back then and, despite how well he performs it,
gets eye-rolls now. The rest of the odd moments come out of the finale, which
takes place at a Barcelonan bull-fight (yeah, they don’t do those anymore, but
the film admits that itself to be fair): Between the juxtaposition of Jim with
the bull, to the way that the big bad guy is dispatched at the end, it can get
more than a little goofy at times.
However, despite the admittedly samey plot and dopey
moments, what ultimately makes this film work is the writing of Jim’s character
and Penn’s excellent performance as him. One of my bigger issues with last
year’s American Sniper was the rather weak portrayal of the titular character’s
PTSD, and this movie further proves that point by doing it so damn well.
Between the editing, sound mixing and Penn’s acting chops, the way Jim’s head
trauma is shown to be affecting him throughout the film is headache-inducing in
all the right ways. The reason why Penn’s performance is as good as it is is
that he is able to balance this rather debilitating aspect of his character
with the side of him that can hold his own in a fight without it coming across
as disjointed in any way. Penn may be getting on in years (I commented as soon
as I left the theatre that Penn looked great for his age, until I found out
that he was actually younger than I thought he was) but he’s still in great
shape and he looks like the kind of guy who can kick mass amounts of ass (and does,
amazingly well); more so than Liam Neeson can in any of the films I’ve seen him
in, at any rate. Actually, while I’m on a mild tangent about Taken, director
Pierre Morel seems to have pulled off the same trick he did with Neeson and
unlocked some dormant action hero in our lead actor; if this ends up being the
start of a similar career revival for Penn, this certainly shows a lot more
promise than Taken ever did.
All in all, this marks my first proper diversion from the
critical consensus: I really enjoyed this film. The acting is top-notch, even
if Idris Elba is kind of ridiculously underutilised, the action beats are
brutal and visceral fun and the depiction of Jim’s head trauma worked
exceptionally well to add to the overall work. It may have a pretty clichéd
plot and more than a few out-of-place moments, but the production handles both
of these lesser points remarkably well; this isn’t about having a deep and
involved plot, it’s about seeing an action protagonist mow down his enemies
while clearing his own name, while fighting his own mental ailments. I may be in the minority for this one, but I am recommending checking
this one out regardless, especially for those who have a taste for action but
are getting tired of Neeson’s output.
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