Journeyman fails to land a knock-out punch

Before we start, I have an issue with the title of this film. A journeyman in boxing terms is generally regarded as someone who has knocked about a bit, made a bit of money, but never really been taken seriously. In this film our hero, played by Paddy Considine, is a world champion with a very nice house which, if this were The Daily Mail, I might describe as a million pound luxury pad’. So, not my idea of a journeyman.

Nor for that matter is Considine, who wrote, directed, and stars in this worthwhile drama which is a bit less than the sum of its parts. Considine’s directing debut Tyrannosaur (2011) was a visceral portrait of rage and toxic masculinity; almost unwatchable in places it remains one of the best British films of the 21^st century.

By those standards Journeyman doesn’t measure up but then very few films would. There’s no doubting Considine’s integrity however. A lot of actors with a good deal less talent than him have taken the Hollywood dollar to appear in pretty indifferent material and made loads of money.

With the exception of Cinderella Man (2005) Considine hasn’t, and I’m certain it’s not for lack of offers. Instead he has stayed here, supported local talent, and come up with a UK version of a Hollywood staple, the boxing comeback movie.

Considine is Matty Burton who, when we meet him, is about to defend his WBO title against an up and coming fighter. Burton is a family man and he lives for his wife Emma and his baby daughter. This will be his last fight so everyone is a little anxious.

He comes out of the ring unscathed, or so it appears, until he returns home and a devastating brain injury sustained in the fight leaves him catastrophically impaired. With the love of a good woman however he will turn it around and win the biggest fight of his life.

Well, not exactly. Whittaker, in my opinion, is shamefully underwritten and kicked to the kerb far too early. This is a major weakness in a film which, intentionally or not, ends up celebrating a particular type of masculinity. It’s not his family who save him; it’s the brotherhood of the ring who were suspiciously absent when he really needed them.

The inner machinations of boxing are at the heart of Journeyman. Happily it avoids the kind of Hollywood fight scenes where any one of the blows would kill a man if it made contact. This is a much scrappier, insider kind of film, it gets into the clinches and savours the smells and sounds of combat.

Credit here has to go to Considine as a director and his cinematographer Laurie Rose. The framing and the shot selection here are impeccable, livening up the standard tropes with flashes of guilt and self-doubt seen in occasional glances which illuminate Considine’s character.

As an actor Considine has few peers and he puts his heart and soul into this film. Whittaker is also very good but, as I said earlier, she is shamefully underused. No one else in the film really has much to do.

My guess is the story of Journeyman draws in part on the real-life story of Michael Watson but there’s too much unearned sentiment on display here for my tastes. In the end it doesn’t land the knockout punch, but it just about comes out ahead on points.

Annihilation is a classic in the making

There are times when the short-sightedness of studio executives turns out to be a blessing in disguise. So let’s hear it for the Paramount executive who, allegedly on the basis of one dodgy test screening, decided that Annihilation was too smart for the audience. He wanted changes and he wanted the lead character, played by Natalie Portman, to be made more sympathetic and audience-friendly.

Generally the studio’s will is done but in this case it came up against the producer of the movie, Scott Rudin, the closest thing the industry has to an immovable object. Rudin had final cut and he defended his director, Alex Garland, and said there would be no changes. The final outcome was that Paramount snuck the film out in the US and retains rights to China, whereas Rudin sold the rights for the rest of the world to Netflix.

The result is that one of the most interesting and fascinating studio films of recent years can find an audience much larger, and potentially more receptive, than it would have done even with a major cinema release. This film will divide audiences – I like it very much but I know others who don’t care for it – but I honestly believe this is a cult classic in the making.

Garland, who did the utterly compelling Ex Machina (2014), has drawn influences from as far afield as Russian cinema and American comic books for a film which demands your attention from first to last.

To some extent he returns to the themes of Ex Machina in a film which basically asks serious questions about the nature of existence and what it takes to be human. The questions are asked in the shape of Lena (Natalie Portman), a doctor whose soldier husband (Oscar Isaac) has been missing for a year on a secret mission. One night he turns up with no explanation for his disappearance except that he is taken suddenly and dangerously ill.

As he is rushed to hospital his ambulance is hijacked by a mysterious military convoy. They are both taken to an isolated research facility in Florida called Southern Reach, near the site of a meteor strike three years previously which has created a slowly-expanding zone around its epicentre. Visually this looks like the rainbow-slicked surface of a soap bubble, hence the nickname The Shimmer.

Lots of things have gone into The Shimmer but nothing, with the exception of Isaac, has come out. Dr Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is about to lead another team beyond the barrier and invites Lena, a former soldier herself, to join them. This five-woman squad ventures into the unknown and finds everything irrevocably changed. The rules of nature don’t apply inside The Shimmer, some things bloom, others are corrupted and strange things happen to animals, plants, and, especially, people.  

At this point the film starts to resemble Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort (1981) crossed with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972). This lost patrol consider themselves, as we’re told by one of their number, ‘damaged goods’ and the story unfolds in an increasingly pervasive air of paranoia. The altered reality inside The Shimmer means that they, and we, have no frame of reference. We don’t know what’s good and what’s bad we only suspect it will not end well.

Apart from his Ex Machina star Isaac, Garland is also reunited with cinematographer Rob Hardy and production designer, Mark Rigby. Hardy sets the mood with a colour palette which looks fetid and borderline toxic, the purples and pinks of The Shimmer stand out in sharp contrast to the swamp tones of the rest of the film. His use of framing to separate the characters in the shot means that even when they are together they appear isolated; the sinuous, elegant camera movements keeps the audience permanently unsettled.

Rigby’s production design is a tour de force. Large parts of it appear to be inspired by John Totleben’s artwork for Alan Moore’s version of Swamp Thing from DC Comics in the early 80s. Everything seems organic, the set seems to grow like a persistent mould as the film unfolds.

If I’m honest, despite its ambition, Annihilation doesn’t always work. The narrative is a little clunky in places and the flashback on flashback structure can be unnecessarily complex. Some of the CGI beats look a little ropey at times too, but the malignant mood of the movie is spot on.

I liked it a lot but I am happy to concede there will be as many opinions as there are people who see it. Annihilation bears repeat viewing and the beauty of Netflix is that you can easily do that. I am confident this is a film with a long tail which is destined for cult status.

One thing puzzles me though. Even if the film is a dud, which I don’t think it is, Paramount’s decision is utterly baffling. In the current climate in Hollywood they should surely have celebrated the fact that they had a sci-fi action thriller with a mostly all-female cast. They might have taken a hit at the box office but they would surely have been the beneficiaries of some serious virtue signalling.