The Meg is just not bad enough to be a classic

I’ve said on here before that I like my genre films to know their way round the genre they are operating in. They need to give the audience what it expects, and then come up with a way of making it unexpected. The Meg succeeds in this but only up to a point.

This creature feature is possibly the giantest of giant shark movies – the monster here is a megalodon, a prehistoric shark which grew to around 70 feet long. Thought to have been extinct for two million years it’s been disturbed by a research team trying to prove that the ocean has a false bottom – really! – and has now made its way into the open ocean.

Before that it will be snacking on a smorgasbord of genre movie stereotypes. There’s the burned-out case seeking redemption (Jason Statham), the hard-nosed scientist whose work comes before her emotions (Li Bingbing), the ruthless billionaire funder (Rainn Wilson), the no-nonsense team leader (Cliff Curtis) and the obligatory shark bait (you can work them out for yourself). There’s also a cute child (Sophia Cai) and a dog – I’m giving nothing away by revealing they both survive.

This is a film almost twenty years in the making. Directors such as Guillermo del Toro, Jan de Bont, and most recently Eli Roth have been attached. Finally, it was entrusted to Jon Turteltaub, the very embodiment of a safe pair of hands. The result is a film that does exactly what you expect it to but not a lot more.

It hits all the marks and the underwater scenes are quite impressive, but it doesn’t go that little bit further. It’s curiously lacking in humour; even Jaws (1975) managed a laugh or two along the way.

Jaws is also, I would suggest, a big part of this film's problem. The spectre of Spielberg’s classic, and to a lesser extent Deep Blue Sea (1999) hang heavy on The Meg. There are scenes which are so obviously inspired/stolen that there isn’t much Turteltaub can do to freshen them up. The film’s self-awareness hits the wall in a couple of key moments and instead of any fresh twist we get ‘will this do’.

His take on the crowded beach sequence, for example, is shot more or less exactly as Spielberg’s – there’s even a whiny kid who wants to go into the water – but because he’s already told us what’s going to happen next the scene lacks tension.

Statham is good and gritty and, given his aquatic background, it’s surprising it’s taken movie makers so long to get him into the water. But even he can’t handle dialogue like: ‘Man versus Meg isn’t a fight. Its slaughter.’

Actually a few more lines like that and a few more tongues wedged into cheeks wouldn’t have been a bad thing. As it is The Meg is just sufficiently good to be entertaining, but not bad enough to be a classic.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout continues to set a high bar for action movies

It’s an indication of the maturity of this franchise; six movies spanning more than twenty years that with this latest episode Tom Cruise and his team allow themselves the luxury of a sequel. There’s enough depth of storytelling, character and generic tropes in Mission: Impossible – Fallout to create a spectacularly satisfying stand-alone film which also fits neatly into the existing M: I canon.

In Fallout we have the return of the villainous Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) from the fifth film and his Syndicate goes even further back to the original TV show. The enigmatic Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) features again from the fifth movie, Mrs Hunt (Michelle Monaghan) is back from the third one and a cameo in the fourth, and of course the ever reliable Luther (Ving Rhames) is on his sixth outing. There’s new blood as well. Not least the shamefully underused Vanessa Kirby as The White Witch, and Henry Cavill in perhaps his best role as the menacing Walker.

At the heart of it all of course is Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, along with Rhames the series’ only ever-present. There’s a body of material to be drawn on here especially in Hunt’s characterisation. The end of the film, for example, relies on a skillset you may have forgotten from the second movie. He’s been doing this for more than 20 years so what keeps him going? The wording of the trademark mission message ‘should you choose to accept it’, makes an interesting subtext. Why does he continue to make that choice?

Although no less dynamic, Cruise manages to make Hunt a little more thoughtful here. As a colleague pointed out Cruise, now 56, approaches each of Hunt’s action stunts with a slight reluctance as if he knows his knees and ankles are going to pay for it in the morning.

The one thing that remains impossible however is the plot. Mission: Unfathomable might be a better title. This time the IMF are looking for three missing plutonium cores which can create three nuclear bombs capable of massive devastation. It doesn’t really matter who has them at any given time or why anyone wants them; the cores are a plot device and they do their job superbly. The quest for the cores keeps the plot moving along at breakneck speed.

Everyone has a motive, sometimes more than one, and everyone is out to double-cross everyone else or so it seems. Don’t worry, every 20 minutes or so screenwriter Chris McQuarrie stop for quite an elegant re-cap exercise. Although I completely understood why Henry Cavill asks at one point ‘Why do you have to make this so bleeping complicated?’ Or words to that effect.

In these days when big budget movies, no matter how honourable their intentions at the start, all tend to end up as a soupy morass of CGI, I’m thinking about Wonder Woman for example, it is refreshing to see the Mission: Impossible franchise continue to rely on good old-fashioned film making skills.

The cinematography (Rob Hardy) and editing (Eddie Hamilton) are absolutely superb and the locations are expertly chosen. I’ve said before in reference to this franchise that it relies on Ian Fleming’s concept of ‘thrilling cities’; exotic background locales which make the foreground action so much more interesting. Locations have seldom been so well used as they are here. And all of it happens under the inestimable supervision of Tommy Gormley, the first assistant director, who makes the cinematic train run on time and here is also, deservedly, credited as co-producer.

The combination of all of this is a film which feels real even though you know it can’t possibly be. The action sequences are jaw-dropping; writer-director McQuarrie gets that car chases depend on what you miss not what you hit for excitement, and the helicopter finale is simply the best I’ve seen. Throughout all of this McQuarrie, for me a much underrated talent, relentlessly maintains the film’s forward momentum.

At a whisker under two and a half hours we are entitled to the occasional lull but it never feels slow. McQuarrie the screenwriter has written a perfectly structured screenplay for McQuarrie the director to take advantage of it.

At the core though is Cruise; the real stellar force of this franchise. The vanity of the Impossible Missions Force is that team members can be swapped out at will, as they were in the first two films. But we all know there is no franchise without Cruise. After six movies he brings gravitas to Hunt and provides a surprisingly emotional foundation for an action movie.

Why does he choose these missions? I don’t know. Will he choose another one? I’d bet on it.

The Rock is in a hard place...and the audience will love it

One of my favourite genre movies is Tremors (1990) in which a small Texas town finds itself under threat from a swarm of giant sandworms. It’s a creature feature but what makes it so good is that director Ron Underwood knows it’s a creature feature and knows what the audience expects. So he uses all the genre clichés – or tropes if you’re getting fancy about it – but does so in such a way that they inform the story rather than inhibit it. The makers of the early Final Destination films did exactly the same thing.

Which brings us to Skyscraper, the second movie of the summer to star The Rock. Two Dwayne Johnson movies in one summer – what a time to be alive. Like Tremors, Skyscraper knows its foundation myths and while this is film fairly and squarely aimed at modern audiences, it has its roots in the past. There are traces of Seventies disaster movies, there is an obvious nod to Die Hard (1988) and there is even a passing glance in the direction of Orson Welles epic finale to The Lady from Shanghai (1947). But all of these improve rather than restrict the storytelling.

Johnson is Will Sawyer a former hostage negotiator turned security consultant who gets the chance to bid for the job of his life, the contract for The Pearl. This is the world’s largest building and is as hi-tech as all get out. Sawyer and his wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) are having the time of their lives in Hong Kong but, as you would expect, there is a catch.

His erstwhile boss has something that the bad guys need. It’s a computer drive but, if I’m honest, I’m not sure what it does or why they need it. Anyway this is our McGuffin and everyone wants to get it. The bad guys decide the best way to do this is to set fire to the building.

The problem is that his wife and kids are in The Pearl and while everyone thinks it’s empty Johnson has to get inside the burning building, ideally around the 100^th floor, above the fire line, and save the day.

That’s it in plot terms. David Mamet says drama hinges on two things; what does a character want and why does it have to be now? In screenwriting terms these are known as ‘stakes’ and Johnson’s stakes are impeccably established. He wants to save his family and he needs to do it now before they are burned alive.

Skyscraper pretty much hits the ground running. Johnson’s character is established in a pre-credit scene in which a situation goes a bit pear-shaped and he ends up losing a leg. The consequent prosthetic plays a huge part in the rest of the story – Sawyer’s artificial limb is like Thor’s hammer, Captain America’s shield, and Indiana Jones’s whip rolled into one.

It’s this level of invention that makes Skyscraper such fun. The plot runs on train tracks, calamity after calamity is heaped upon our hero and armed only with his wits, enormous quantities of duct tape, and his trusty prosthetic, Sawyer has to save the day.

One of the joys of the film is, in these days of over-reliance on CGI and animation, it relies almost entirely on physical effects. Those are real stunts with real stunt people and while there is a lot of green screen for background, there is real physical effort going into this. In addition, the cinematography by Robert Elswit is superb. Elswit is well known in indie circles for his work with Paul Thomas Anderson but, as his work on the Mission: Impossible franchise shows he is something of an action specialist. You can almost feel the heat and smell the smoke here.

Johnson does what Johnson does, and he does it very well; he is the right man in the wrong place at the right time. His physicality is incorporated into the characterisation but even so, the requirements of the role push him to the limit. And, in keeping with most of his movies, he does not hog the action. The female characters in his films tend to have a good deal of agency in the outcome of the story and Neve Campbell is no exception here.

Skyscraper isn’t perfect, the breadcrumbs in the script are a bit obvious, but it is tremendous fun and harks back to a simpler cinematic time while at the same time making the audience gasp with novelty and excitement.

Sicario 2 is a very solid sequel

With the loss of four of the key principals from the first outing – the star, the director, the cinematographer, and the composer – this sequel may appear to be hampered coming out of the gate. However, although it lacks a lot of the nuance and political subtext of Sicario (2015). Sicario 2: Soldado is still a very solid piece of filmmaking which is well worth the price of a ticket.

Although Emily Blunt, Dennis Villeneuve, Roger Deakins, and – tragically – Johan Johannsson are gone, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro are back and in fine form. The most important thing about this second film however is the screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. He is being described in some quarters as the master of the modern Western. Certainly with both Sicario movies, Hell and High Water (2016) Wind River (2017), and the current Kevin Costner series Yellowstone to his credit that seems a fair description.

Having written the 2015 movie, Sheridan had originally conceived the story as a trilogy so this is properly a second instalment rather than a sequel as such. The first film dealt with the war on drugs but now the Mexican cartels have moved on to people smuggling and, we are told, they control most of the illegal cross border trade between Mexico and the United States.

As federal agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) points out people trafficking is a no-brainer for the cartel; they don’t have to grow or process the crop and, if it fails, they will come back for another attempt usually at a higher price.

When a terrorist atrocity in the United States is linked to bombers who were smuggled across the Border, the US government intends to make people trafficking a terrorist offence. Graver is thus given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to stop the cartel so he turns to prosecutor turned hit man Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) to take on the job.

Brolin and Del Toro plan to kidnap the daughter of the cartel boss – the man responsible for the deaths of Del Toro’s family – and make it look like the raid was planned by another cartel. With the gangs then at war the US government should be able to step in and clean up.

If you are familiar with Sicario you will appreciate that such an apparently straightforward plan is destined to become mired in betrayal, bad luck, and political cowardice. The upshot is, without giving too much away, is that Del Toro and the girl are stranded on the Mexican side of the border deep in cartel territory.

Given America’s current immigration scenario the release of this film could hardly come at a more appropriate time. The difficulties of the Trump administration are referred to only obliquely but they provide an interesting backdrop for the story to play out.

Sheridan’s script does a great job of world-building, especially at the start, as we become aware of the tangled web and full extent of the people trafficking operation. The action moves along crisply carrying several story strands at once and managing to tie them together fairly effectively. There was one, for me, unnecessarily sentimental episode at the end of act two which was tonally awkward but otherwise it is highly efficient storytelling.

The action scenes are similarly well-handled, director Stefano Sollima is best known for his Italian crime series Gomorrah (2014) which covers similar territory. However, and this may seem a small quibble, although the violence is brutal at times there is very little moral dimension to it.

In the first film we had Emily Blunt as the audience’s eyes and ears to take us through this moral maze. Without her Sicario 2 deals in absolutes; it’s them and us and the implicit rightness of the US cause means Brolin – good as he is in the role – doesn’t have to have a single moral qualm about his actions.

Despite this lack of layering Sicario 2 delivers on every other level and sets things up nicely for an eagerly-anticipated final instalment of the trilogy.

Ocean's 8 hits most of its marks...so why don't people like it?

There was a fairly high profile article on the BBC’s entertainment website which asked whether Ocean’s 8 was a waste of talent. Leaving aside the obvious and inherent click-bait I still couldn’t help but wonder about the question.

Not about whether it was true but mostly why no one had asked the same of Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Ocean’s Twelve (2004), or indeed Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)? The latter two qualify as a waste of celluloid never mind talent, but there is a whole load of cinematic snobbery in the enquiry.

Ocean’s 8 has no grander ambition than to entertain which, for the most part, it does. Its USP comes from being a gender-flipped version of the Ocean’s Eleven series. Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett take the George Clooney and Brad Pitt roles, Clooney’s Danny Ocean having died sometime in the past 11 years. The cause of death isn’t mentioned but I’m going for a combination of shame and embarrassment after Ocean’s Thirteen.

However by the BBC’s lights we’re invited to see something inherently unworthy in a predominantly female cast. It’s okay for Clooney and Pitt and Matt Damon to exercise their ludic tendencies but Bullock, Blanchett, Anne Hathaway are presumably only allowed out for serious stuff. They are evidently condemned to a career full of Lysistrata and assorted anguished maternal roles.

Like I said, click bait and I’ve spent more time on it than it deserves.

Moving on. Ocean’s 8 is far from perfect but it is good fun and, to its credit, not once does it make a big deal out of its largely female cast. There are no nods or winks and, to a certain extent, the plot unwinds on a gender neutral basis.

Where Danny Ocean wanted to rob casinos, sister Debbie (Bullock) has her eye on robbing the annual Met Gala, specifically a rare necklace worth $150 million which will be on show there. She has been planning the robbery while she was in prison and now she is out she is ready to execute.

The film follows the standard tropes of a classic heist movie; first you put the gang together, then you outline the inevitably fiendishly complicated plot, then you carry out the robbery and, finally, you reveal what they were really up to.

It’s tried and tested and in the best of the genre – The Thomas Crown Affair (1968 or 1999), The Anderson Tapes (1971), or The Hot Rock (1972) – it works to create a soufflé-light confection.  Ocean’s 8 is no soufflé, it’s more of a fondant - mostly light but with a gooey bit in the middle – but it’s still satisfying.

That seems to be the fault of the director Gary Ross and the editor Juliette Welfling. The pacing of the film is fine for the first act but goes seriously awry during the heist itself and there are parts which should be crisp but turn out quite leaden. The gang’s big moment of triumph – to the tune of These Boots Are Made for Walking – should be the money shot. Instead it’s thrown away and a talented cast are sold short.

As is often the case in ensembles the balance of performance is uneven.  Sarah Paulson and Mindy Kaling, for example, don’t get enough to do and Awkwafina is pretty much just a plot point. However Sandra Bullock, for my money the most underrated female lead in the business, is marvellous and there is a nice chemistry between her and Cate Blanchett. Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham-Carter, and Rihanna, also get their chance to shine.

At the end of the day the star power, the sheer scale of the crime and the brio and invention with which it is carried out should be enough to keep the audience happy. Inevitably I suspect a sequel may be in the works and that’s fine by me, I mean it can’t be worse than Ocean’s Thirteen.