Red Sparrow

Tonight we go see Red Sparrow, a spy thriller which has attracted a lot criticism. This allegedly perverse ‘15’ certificate film has been accused of being both violently and sexually perverse with woman beaten and raped seemingly at will by powerful men.

I must admit that I have been a little surprised by this reaction but then I think I was possibly too busy being annoyed at how they'd made a complete hash out of a decent book which was written by former CIA operative Jason Matthews.

Perhaps I need to re-watch it to see what I missed but I do remember they’d left out the hair brush scene (thankfully). That would have caused even more of a stir.

The story goes like this. Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) was a ballerina at the Bolshoi whose promising dancing career was ended by injury. Sadly her dancing also funded the care for her ailing mother.

Not to worry, her uncle Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts), who works in Russian intelligence, offers her work to help her get by. It is just a small favour he requires, for her to be the honey in a trap that is to be sprung on a Russian politician. She does the favour and does a rather good job, although it probably goes a little bit further than she would have hoped. Then just as the politician is having his way with her, he is murdered.

Unfortunately she’s now in a bit of a pickle because she’s seen too much. She is told she can either die or start working for Russian intelligence herself. Tough choice that.

So her uncle sends her off to Sparrow School where Matron (Charlotte Rampling) teaches the recruits to use the skills of sexual seduction to get what they want from the enemy.

Once graduated, Dominika is sent to Budapest to meet her target, Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), who works for the CIA and knows the identity of a Russian mole known as Marble. However, Nash quickly sees through her and the long and short of it is that he persuades her to become a double agent.

I was a fan of the book even though it was at times convoluted and hard to follow, so a simplification was required for it to work as a film and that doesn't happen. In fact what we have here is an even more convoluted plot.

The other problem is where is the seduction? There’s a total lack of chemistry between the two agents. For someone supposedly trained in seduction, Dominika doesn’t pull any tricks out of the locker for him. In the book they have a conflicted relationship due to the nature of their jobs but a relationship nonetheless, here they eventually have a quick bonk. It's not quite the same and where was the swimming race? That was one of my favourite bits.

Instead the script seems to demand that all the Russians must be portrayed as ice men and ice maidens. So Lawrence goes through the entire film wearing only one expression, one of indifference, while Edgerton goes about attempting to be the all American hero.

In fact Lawrence seems hugely miscast in this but then so too are the likes of Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons, Joely Richardson and Ciaran Hinds. Were there no genuine Russian actors available the weekend that they did the casting?

There is also no back story to the Russian mole which was pivotal to the original story, instead the film just seems overloaded with violence. It’s all deeply disappointing.

This would have made a wonderful independent flick or even a mini series but Hollywood completely wrecked this one.

High-Rise

Ben Wheatley's High-Rise is based on the 1975 novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard and it is set when Ballard wrote it, in the mid-70s.

Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) is a young doctor attracted to the lifestyle in a new 'modern' high-rise. The tower block is a self-sustaining society created by esteemed architect Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons) and has everything you could possibly need within its walls. The building has its own shopping market, school, gym, swimming pool etc etc. There is so much included that you would never need to leave and people don't. The only thing missing is perhaps its own police force which, with hindsight, turns out to be a rather large oversight.

The problem is that the building mirrors the wider class system with the upper class at the top, the middle class in the middle and the lower class at the bottom. As ever this builds resentment.

Laing lives on the upper-middle 25th floor where he soon starts to meet some of the other residents. While sunning himself naked on his balcony (as you do), his upstairs neighbour Charlotte (Sienna Miller), who is also Royal's aide, is very keen to introduce herself.

Meanwhile there are a few teething problems with the building. Lifts get stuck, rubbish chutes clog up and there are power outages which only affect the bottom of the building which further upsets the already uneasy peace.

Laing meets Richard Wilder (Luke Evans) and his wife Helen (Elisabeth Moss), Wilder takes it upon himself to make a film exposing the class injustices in the building. Wilder turns out to be a violent man who starts out killing dogs before moving on to people as life in the high-rise quickly begins to degenerate.

 

A patient of Laing’s called Munrow (Augustus Prew), who is told by Laing that he has found ‘something’ in his brain, falls off the high rise in a seemingly drunken escapade. Royal meanwhile seems uninterested as his creation crumbles around him.

Of course you could ask why the residents don’t simply leave instead of sinking into a life of theft, murder, eating dog, 24 hour orgies\rapes and one of the most gruesome pool parties ever seen. Indeed. I suppose a decently priced flat in London was hard to get even in the 70s.

For Laing I suppose his popularity with the ladies helps. He gets with Charlotte first before working his way through many of the female residents until finally gets with Wilder’s Helen who abandons her own children for a tryst with him which does nothing for his already haphazard decorating.

When we are occasionally shown outside the building, the desolate 70s vision that is painted makes the high-rise seem like a haven or is it just a microcosm of society in the 70's that is probably still relevant today. The residents feel trapped not only in the building but also trapped to their individual floors, as their class situation won't allow them to ascend. The only solution, as they see it, is to bring civilisation down and with it the social class structure.

High-Rise is either a brilliant satire on the social classes or incoherent nonsense. You choose. I rather liked it.

Margin Call

'Margin Call' is all about the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the collapse of the Mortgage Backed Security market around 2007/2008.

At some unnamed Wall Street firm they are letting go a massive 80% of the trading floor, security staff watch employees clearing their desks before they escort them from the building. One of these is Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), a middle manager in the Risk Management department, who is laid off after 19 years of service. As he is lead from the building he hands a flash drive to one of his young analysts Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto). He tells him to take a look and ‘be careful’.

A few hours later, the remaining staff head out to the bars to celebrate avoiding the axe but Sullivan stays behind to take a look at what Dale has left him. He quickly realises the reason for Dale's warning. So many of the firm’s assets are now toxic that, according to Dale’s projections, they will soon owe a lot more than the company is worth. He calls his boss Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) back from the bar.

The film ‘simplifies’ the crisis in to a single overnight session as the situation is escalated up the corporate ladder and we are introduced, one rung at a time, to the hierarchy. First, sort of nice guy, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), then top risk officer Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore) and the unlikable Jared Cohen (Simon Baker). Dale meanwhile has gone AWOL, which is entirely their own fault for letting him go of course.

It all culminates when the CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) arrives by helicopter. Tuld, like his managers below him, doesn't understand the figures presented to him and needs someone to explain them to him, as he puts it, as if he were a Golden Retriever but they didn't really. I think I could have done a better job and I do later, to my partner in the bar over a beer that she didn't previously think she needed.

Tuld’s only focus is keeping the firm alive, at any cost. Although for others it poses a moral dilemma of sorts but still self-preservation comes first. It’s nothing personal, just business. Rogers, for one, seems a genuine guy, but cries more tears for his dying dog and even forgets to call his son who’s also in finance.

You can't feel sorry for anyone, as they'll all get well paid anyway. When Dale is tracked down, he and Robertson, whose head has been selected to roll for the mistakes, are required to sit in a room all day, doing nothing and getting paid to do so, because they both know too much. Meanwhile their traders attempt to land $1M+ bonuses for offloading the near worthless assets onto their unsuspecting clients before picking up the US equivalent of their P45s.

It’s all done very well, it’s engrossing and at times the tension is immense. The acting is excellent helped by some very good characterisation. We are given time to get to know everybody and understand the golden handcuffs that tie them to their trade. Everyone gets used to spending whatever they earn, however large.

At times the film seems to suggest that some bankers might be human after all... Nah, don’t think so.