Bovie Movie

Daniel Craig effortlessly makes James Bond his own, and the 21st movie in the series goes back to basics for this resoundingly entertaining spy adventure. GoldenEye director Martin Campbell has obviously been watching the Bourne franchise, and here he gives the superspy a gritty makeover, upping the violence content (the opening sequence, shot in grainy black and white, is particularly brutal). He also strips Bond of much of the slightly camp humour — thus no appearance from gadget-man Q. The plot is essentially an origins story, as a rough-around-the-edges Bond gains his two zeros (the two authorised kills he needs for his infamous licence) before tackling villain Le Chiffre (a splendidly thin-lipped Mads Mikkelsen) in a game of high-stakes poker. Craig’s humanised, more flawed interpretation of the role balances Campbell’s physical direction and co-writer Paul Haggis’s sparing wit, while Eva Green provides an alluring love interest. Apart from a chaotic and overlong last act, this is a triumphant new beginning. 

Inspired by a bedtime story that director M Night Shyamalan created for his children, this muddled fantasy mystery shows every sign of having been made up as it goes along. Paul Giamatti plays the superintendent of an apartment block who discovers a sea nymph of Asian legend (Bryce Dallas Howard) who has become stranded in the communal swimming pool. He aids her return to the Blue World, encountering a daft array of “mythological” creatures — including scrunts (grass-haired werewolves) and the tartutic (twig monkeys) — along the way. This self-indulgent nonsense includes a film critic tenant (Bob Balaban) who comments on fantasy clichés; an appearance from Shyamalan himself as a philosopher of future importance; and a kid who deciphers ancient codes from cereal packets. Giamatti does his best to hold things together and fans of the director’s previous work may find some entertainment in this deeply silly, artificial and hopelessly naive tale. 

When his army unit was ambushed during the first Gulf War, Sergeant Raymond Shaw saved his fellow soldiers just as his commanding officer, then-Captain Ben Marco, was knocked unconscious. Brokering the incident for political capital, Shaw eventually becomes a vice-presidential nominee, while Marco is haunted by dreams of what happened — or didn’t happen — in Kuwait. As Marco (now a Major) investigates, the story begins to unravel, to the point where he questions if it happened at all. Is it possible the entire unit was kidnapped and brainwashed to believe Shaw is a war hero as part of a plot to seize the White House? Some very powerful people at Manchurian Global corporation appear desperate to stop him from finding out.

Using the same multi-stranded technique as he did for his Oscar-winning screenplay of the drugs drama Traffic, writer/director Stephen Gaghan here weaves the threads of small, apparently barely linked narratives into a giant tapestry, revealing the global oil industry in all its hideous, venal and corrupt glory. The story is so labyrinthine that an adequate description is impossible (and indeed its deliberate complexity will be an irritant to some), but individual plot elements include George Clooney as a worn-out CIA agent involved in arms dealing and assassinations, Matt Damon as a grief-stricken energy analyst and Christopher Plummer as the head of a powerful Washington law firm. These seemingly disparate tales move at a relentless pace and, as a result, the whole picture is sometimes difficult to grasp — again deliberately so. Gaghan’s technique is not to convince you that you’re following a single set of characters involved in a coherent story, but rather to give you the jittery, exhilarating feeling that you’re eavesdropping on conversations you were never meant to hear. It’s an approach that makes this a compelling, richly detailed and, in the end, terrifying experience. 

Twelve years after he last wore the white vest in Die Hard with a Vengeance, Bruce Willis returns as John McClane in this unabashedly retro blockbuster. As cyber-terrorists led by Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood) threaten to hack America to a complete standstill, McClane is once again the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Willis returns to the role that made him an action star with unexpected ease, striking up a witty, odd-couple partnership with Justin Long’s cowardly hacker. Meanwhile, a rollicking selection of over-the-top set pieces — including the jaw-dropping sight of a fighter jet playing chicken with an 18-wheel tanker truck — put the $100-million budget to explosive use. Aware of its own ridiculousness but unwilling to slip into outright parody, it instead channels the laughs into some immaculately polished quips for its ever-lugubrious hero. Loud, relentless and thoroughly entertaining, it’s an enjoyable throwback to the 1980s. 

Samuel L Jackson, very cool in a wardrobe designed by Armani, has the necessary presence to carry off this slick homage to the icon of 1970s blaxploitation from director John Singleton. This Shaft is the nephew of the original (Richard Roundtree, who returns to the screen here with a beauty on each arm), and he’s one mad, mean mother, especially when wealthy creep Christian Bale gets away with a brutal, racially motivated murder. Vanessa Williams is pure window-dressing as Shaft’s partner, but Jeffrey Wright is brilliant as his drugs lord nemesis, while Isaac Hayes’s Oscar-winning theme song once again gets the pulse pumping for some maliciously funny twists and heavy violence, as Shaft outwits informers, sadists and bent cops to get to his killer with ruthless style. Still the man! 

Will Smith gives a remarkable impersonation of Muhammad Ali in director Michael Mann’s impressively mounted biopic. It begins with the then Cassius Clay winning the heavyweight title in 1964, then follows his conversion to Islam, his relationship with Malcolm X, his refusal to fight in Vietnam and concludes with his monumental 1974 comeback against George Foreman — the “Rumble in the Jungle”. Smith’s performance — with his punchy vocal mannerisms and muscular physical appearance — earned him his first Oscar nomination, but the movie is less convincing when it tries to provide some insight into the enigmatic fighter. Familiar events are lavishly re-created (Jon Voight’s uncanny transformation into renowned American sportscaster Howard Cosell is one of the highlights) but are not re-examined or explored in any depth. While Mann’s bruising approach to the heavyweight contests demands attention, elsewhere the sluggish pace and lightweight psychological profiling lessen the overall impact of a very lengthy movie. The result is a rather ordinary film about an extraordinary man.