Movies in 2010!

2010 is very nearly upon us, and while there is a load of good stuff to see this year, the first three months of next year look much better. First we have the Awards season contenders, and series of fun, but hopefully not too dumb studio fare...

January
8
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
Ian Dury biopic. Andy Serkis is the lead Blockhead.

The Road
Post-apoc drama with Viggo Mortenson doing his thing. Possible awards contender.

Micmacs
The new Jeunet, fresh from starring at the LFF.

15
Up In The Air
Clooney's LFF hit!

The Book Of Eli
More post-apoc drama, this time with Denzel Washington. Directed by the Hughes Brothers.

22
Brothers
Award-worthy perfs from Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman in this Jim Sheridan-directed post-Afghan drama. Maguire is presumed dead, so his brother gets involved with the widowed Portman, only for Maguire to return…

A Prophet
LFF Best Film winner. Prison drama. Nuff said.

The Boys Are Back
Awards-worthy perf by Clive Owen is at the centre of this drama as a fresh widower comes to terms with bringing up his son without the boy’s mother.

29
The Lovely Bones
Not well-received adaptation by Peter Jackson.

The Edge of Darkness
Martin Campbell remakes his 80s BBC classic, with Mel Gibson taking the lead, and Ray Winstone as Darius Jedburgh. Bizarrely still set in UK…

February
5
Solomon Kane
Adaptation of the Robert E Howard character.

Invictus
Morgan Freeman is Nelson Mandela. Clint Eastwood directs. Oscar awaits?

12
Ponyo
The new Miyzaki.

The Wolfman
Benecio del Toro is etc.

Valentine’s Day
I’m not suggesting this is worth seeing, but the cast is worth noting for its looks: for the boys – Jessicas Biel and Alba, Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner; for the girls – Taylor Lautner, Bradley Cooper, Ashton Kutcher, Jaime Foxx, and Topher Grace. WTF??? How much eye candy can you squeeze into 1 film?

19
Shutter Island
The new Scorsese.

March
5
Alice In Wonderland
Tim Burton. Johnny Depp. 3D. Nuff said.

12
Green Zone
The new Paul Greengrass is a war drama with Matt Damon.

26
The Clash of the Titans
The first of Liam Neeson’s iconic roles this year as Zeus. But Sam Worthington who lifted Terminator 4 higher than it deserved is Perseus. Big, very dumb fun!

April
2
Psycho
Re-release to mark the 50th anniversary.

9
Lebanon
The tank movie from the LFF. Recommended by me.

The Losers
Ahead of Iron Man is an adaptation of Andy Diggle’s comic about a CIA black ops team trying to find out who betrayed them. Good cast.

Also this month:
Kick-Ass
Matthew Vaughn directs Mark Millar’s ace, super violent comic. Quite possibly the super hero movie to end all super hero movies.

May
1st or 2nd weekend
Iron Man II
I simply can't wait!

14
Robin Hood
Ridley Scott directs Russell Crowe. La Blanchett is Marian.

28
Prince Of Persia
Jake Gyllenhaal is the buffed up prince and Gemma Arterton the somewhat under-dressed heroine in what might be the next Pirates.

July
23
Toy Story 3D
COME. ON.

30
The A-Team
Liam Neeson’s second iconic role: this time, he’s Hannibal, who loves it when a plan comes together.

August
13
Inception
The new Chris Nolan.

20
Salt
Phillip Noyce directs Angelina in this CIA thriller.

September
1
American: The Bill Hicks Story
This great documentary about the American comedian who might have saved the world is very highly recommended.
Premiered at the LFF.

Release date to be confirmed...
Air Doll
LFF starrer.

Balibo
LFF starrer about East Timor and the Australian journalists who died there in the 70s.

Centurion
Roman Britain epic directed by Neil Marshall.

The Conspirator
Robert Redford directs the story of Anna Surratt, played by Evan Rachel Wood; Surratt was part of the Lincoln assassination trial.

The Disappearace of Alice Creed
Cracking British thriller that debuted at the LFF. See it!

The Double Hour
Brilliant thriller/romance/horror/whodunit from the LFF.

The Eagle of the Ninth
After State Of Play and The Last King of Scotland, Kevin Macdonald directs this Roman epic.

Leaves Of Grass
Tim Blake Nelson directs Ed Norton playing identical twins. Black comedy.

Women In Trouble
A US indie that looks very Almodovar-esque as the poster (right) suggests...

Best of the fest part 2

Some more reviews of the films I saw during the London Film Festival fortnight...

The Men Who Stare At Goats is a distinctly Coens-esque offbeat, leftfield comedy that suffers from one essential problem: the casting of Ewan McGregor. Quite simply he can’t carry off a believable American accent; one might even speculate that he can’t carry off any role – he’s so unconvincing!
However, setting that to one side first-time director Grant Heslov (one of George Clooney’s gang – he co-produced the brilliant Good Night And Good Luck) has delivered an eclectic movie that mixes genres with abandon. Clooney, Jeff Bridges (clearly channelling the ghost of The Dude) and Kevin Spacey make the most of their almost cartoon characters, mugging and fooling around as if their lives are at stake. Their roles as the US military’s warrior monks (trained to stare at goats until their hearts stop and to run through walls) are uncovered by McGregor’s useless journalist, who then finds himself in an adventure with Clooney that he terms ‘the silence of the goats’.
Enjoyable, but it could have been better. It’s simply not satirical enough.
Score: 7/10

Unjustifiably ignored, The Soloist is top-notch adult entertainment from Joe Wright. The fundamental emotional detachment that killed Atonement for me actually helps The Soloist hit the heights, Wright’s English reserve creating more emotional impact than the more obviously heart-tugging approach the average US director would take with this Oscar bait script.
Robert Downey Jnr is a newspaper columnist who stumbles upon a mad homeless musical genius, Jamie Fox. Both broken in their own ways, the film charts the peaks and troughs of the pair’s relationship, and the impact that relationship has on them.
Neither are cured by the end, but have they made progress.
Downey and Fox both underplay their roles, just as Wright underplays the potential histrionics of the script, allowing the real emotions to gradually shine through, aided by a beautiful score.
Score: 8.5/10

Cold Souls is not ‘The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Soul’. While it shares some essential plot points with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Cold Souls does not share the former’s beautiful love story.
Paul Giamatti plays a well-known US actor called, er, Paul Giamatti, who’s struggling with the preparation for the role of Uncle Vanya. He spots an ad for a soul storage facility – effectively your soul is removed and securely stored until you want to have it back.
Finding that the lack of a soul doesn’t improve his performance, he elects to try someone else’s soul… Inevitably he decides he wants his soul back – but it’s been sold on as there’s a burgeoning trade in soul trafficking…
This is a gentle, existential, downbeat comedy/drama – and will not be to everybody’s tastes. While ably supported by Emily Watson and David Strathairn, Giamatti is the brilliant hangdog lynchpin of the movie. If you like Giamatti, then you must see this.
Score: 7.5/10

Balibo is a village in East Timor; in October 1975 five Australian journalists were killed by the invading Indonesian forces. Respected Aussie hack Roger East investigates their deaths as the Australian government shows no interest, making the trip to East Timor even as the invasion is continuing.
From the first frame this screams ‘this is an IMPORTANT movie’ and the emphasis is on its message. Not that the message is unworthy: society needs reminding of the crucial role a free press can play – and how better informed we are by the work of brave, ethical journalists.
Anthony La Paglia is suitably stirring as East, delivering a memorable performance – although the manner of his exit from the movie just screams ‘Oscar’…
The supporting cast flesh out the Balibo five well, so we care about them and are shocked by the deaths.
Nevertheless, writer/director Robert Connolly hits the audience over the head repeatedly – I found myself curiously detached. A less politically pointed approach would have served the film better.
Score: 7/10

American: The Bill Hicks Story charts the laughs, life and times and eventual death of America’s greatest stand-up at the age of 32.
This documentary uses the photo animation technique first used in The Kid Stays In The Picture to illustrate hours of interviews with Hicks’ family and friends.
If you don’t know his work, you should: go to his website.
What you need to know is that he was a crusading comic who saw it as his job to hold Church and state to account – his years as a professional comedian were, after all, governed by Reagan and Bush Snr, and the Moral Majority. Indeed, it’s fair to say that his late-career renaissance in the UK saw him moving swiftly away from ‘pure’ stand-up, taking an overtly ‘political’, campaigning approach, attempting and mostly succeeding in converting his huge audiences to his cause.
He dared to ask the questions the media wouldn’t, he was an optimist, he was as committed a stage performer as there has ever been – and he simply was bloody funny.
Given the state of the world, this film’s extolling of his dream of world peace could not be more timely.
Score: 8.5/10

More reviews are below - and more will follow!

London Film Festival 2009: the best - and the worst

Between 15 and 27 October, I saw 29 films, of which 24 were screened as part of the London Film Festival.
Undoubted highlights of the Festival were (in order in which I saw them): Up In The Air, Micmacs, The Double Hour, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, Air Doll, The Informant!, and Lebanon.

Up In The Air will doubtless receive some bad reviews because of its central conceit: this hero’s journey concerns the soul of frequent flyer Ryan Bingham, a man whose business is firing people – and with the economy in the shit, his business is good. George Clooney revels in the role of his Satan in a suit, mercilessly dolling out redundancy packages and platitudes to the soon-to-be-jobless. Bingham’s professional and personal lives are put in a spin by two women: fellow frequent flyer Vera Farmiga (it’s fair to say Clooney hasn’t generated this much chemistry with an actress since Jennifer Lopez in Out Of Sight) and new redundancy hotshot Anna Kendrick.
Directed and co-scripted by Jason Reitman (Juno and Thank You For Smoking), this is genuinely funny throughout, and not always blackly so, takes a few expected and unexpected turns, and has a pleasing 70s feel that leads to an appropriate conclusion. Plus it has the funniest emotional breakdown by an actress ever committed to celluloid.
Score: 9/10

Micmacs is the latest effort from Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, Alien 4, Amelie, A Very Long Engagement) and for my money is his best yet. It focuses on Danny Boon, a gunshot victim who last his father in WWII, who along with his eccentric band of brothers decides to cut the two local arms manufacturers down to size. Effectively this is a heist movie, but shot through with Jeunet’s inventive visuals, mad production design, crazy characters, love of life, and lightness of touch. Consistently funny, Micmacs should prove to be endlessly watchable.
Score: 8.5/10

The Double Hour is an Italian thriller/chiller/noir that constantly plays with the audience’s expectations of the genres. Briefly ex-cop (Filippo Timi, who has a Javier Bardem-esque brooding screen presence) meets a hotel maid while speed-dating, and then pretty much all hell ensues. The film’s subterfuge is almost immediately apparent, ensuring that you never know who you can trust (although this doesn’t prevent the audience establishing empathy with the two excellent leads). Brilliantly directed by first-timer Giuseppe Capotondi, The Double Hour comes highly recommended.
Score: 8.5/10

The Disappearance of Alice Creed will undoubtedly be marketed as the new Shallow Grave – and it stands fair comparison, unleashing a new British writer/director upon the world in the shape of J Blakeson just as Shallow Grave gave us Danny Boyle. Indeed, like Boyle, Blakeson may have to go some to ever better this tight, riveting kidnap thriller. The opening sequence is brilliantly edited, describing the logistics needed to pull off the successful kidnap of Alice Creed by two cons. As we learn more about the three characters, so the seat of power shifts between them. There are so many twists and turns taken by the script that this is all I can say without revealing spoilers! But do not think this is simply high quality schlock – it isn’t. It is gripping, scary, will have you on the edge of your seat for its entire running time, and is finely acted by its three players (particularly Gemma Arterton, who I really didn’t think could act until now). And frankly a British film hasn’t looked this good since Layer Cake.
Score: 9/10

On the face of it, Air Doll might have the maddest script of the Festival and yet its emotions and its own peculiar world are as real anything I saw this year. It concerns an inflatable sex-doll who one day gains a heart; we follow her on a journey through life and the world’s wonders. Possessed of a young child’s lack of knowledge and the ensuing curiosity, the doll interacts with half a dozen other characters, acquiring a job, friends and a boyfriend. She finds joy in the smallest things, and wants nothing more than to help everyone she meets (after all that is her purpose, to provide pleasure…), although that help is not always wanted or well-conceived. Korean star Bae Doo-Na is charming as the doll, and is surrounded by an excellent supporting cast. The film is a tad too long, but if you want an offbeat gem, you probably won’t find better this year. It is also possessed of an erotic edge simply missing from many other efforts at this year’s Festival that purported to be erotic.
Score: 8.5/10

The Informant! Sees Steven Soderbergh mixing his more arthouse leanings with the high class production sheen of Ocean’s 11. Matt Damon plays an ‘apparent’ corporate whistleblower, caught up in a web of lies, some of his own making. Not properly supported by two not-entirely capable FBI agents, Damon’s Marc Whitacre suffers as the pressure of the investigation and subsequent court case take their toll on his fragile grip on reality. Played largely for laughs (backed by a humorous score), though not at the expense of tension, The Informant! is offbeat, leftfield, etc – and for some audiences may not succeed. However, I clearly enjoyed it and was left frequently slack-jawed at the ever-increasing lies. That the script is in part true makes watching the movie an even more incredulous experience.
Score: 8/10

Media shorthand dictates that Lebanon will be labelled ‘Das Boot in a tank’ – and that’s an entirely fair comparison. But even more than the acclaimed U-boat drama, this is truly experiential cinema.
All we ever see is the interior of the tank and the four Israeli soldiers manning it – and what they can see out of it and hear on the radio – as they do their bit for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Writer/director Samuel Maoz has created this unsettling masterpiece from his own recollections of serving as a tank gunner in that war. The authenticity of the production is stunning, both the look and the sound (you really must see this in a good cinema), but not at the expense of characterisation. These are not four men, but four squabbling boys, ill-fitting with each other, ill-fit for war – but old enough to die for their country.
The stress they are put under is immense, and the audience shares in it: we feel both the nerves of the gunner, unable to shoot at a living target, and the tank commander’s anger at the gunner’s inaction.
Quite brilliant, but Lebanon is such a disturbing experience, I’m not sure I want to see it again!
Score: 9/10

However, almost certainly the best film I saw out of those 29 was Up. I thought Wall*E was going to be Pixar’s high, but this trumps it. The first seven minutes will be held up as long as film exists and is celebrated as one of the high points of cinematic achievement: a brilliant combination of near-silent storytelling, aided by great characterisation, a moving score and judicious editing. That’s not to say the film falls into a trough as Up surfs a relative tsunami of emotions in the ensuing 80 minutes, delivering great gags and raw emotional scenes, often on top of each other. To hell with the Best Animated Film Oscar, Up should be in the running for the Best Film Oscar, full stop. Its message that you should chase your dreams – and if given the chance you must grab it in honour of all those who never did – and that life is there to be lived is as important a lesson as has ever been imparted by film.
Score: 9.5/10

The Cone of Shame
This award, named after the cone that the dogs in Up fear the most, recognises the year’s most shockingly bad film. The inaugural recipient is a film so bad, so hellbent in its own madness that you can’t even laugh at it; indeed, in hindsight I would far rather have been deprived of every sense for 90 minutes! The film is Valhalla Rising. I’m not even going to attempt to explain the film’s virtually non-existent plot, nor waste time on discussing the dehumanising effect of its drone-core soundtrack, I’m just going to tell you that you need never see it, no matter how interested in Vikings or Mads Mikaelsen you are.
Valhalla Rising: you wear this year’s Cone of Shame. Wear it with dishonour!

Review: Let The Right One In

This is an outstanding contribution to cinema's long fascination with the vampyr, and brings some new spin to the subject matter. In short, boy meets girl, boy and girl fall for each other, but girl is a vampyr...

Set in a Stockholm suburb in the early 80s during a typically snowbound winter, the film focuses on Oskar, as 12-year-old boy, verging on being an albino, the only son of divorced parents, and very definitely an outcast by any measure. In between being bullied at school and being ignored by his mother, by night he befriends Eli, the new girl on the block who lives next door. Apparently unaffected by the freezing cold during their night-time meets, Eli gradually lets her hefty guard slip and slowly the two outcasts become an item of sorts.

The film glories not in gore (although as a vampyr movie inevitably there must be some blood-letting), but in the realistic mundanities of how to survive as a 12-year-old vampire. In a declaration of love and friendship, Oskar takes her to the sweetshop of buys her mixed candy: she tries it and suffers an allergic reaction (for want of a better word). Hakan, the old man she lives with, clearly both loves and fears her, while she treats him with a mixture of respect and disdain; he has the task of providing her with fresh blood - which can of course only be achieved through murder...

There's a pleasing lack of special effects or displays of vampyr powers: she says she can fly, but we only hear off-screen fluttering; and we only see the results of her final attack.

There's also a pleasing lack of info about Eli's past: while made a vampyr at the age of 12, we don't know how long she's been the undead; and we don't find out much about her relationship with Hakan,

The sense of unease, the feeling that nothing good can come of this prevails, aided by the downbeat setting, precise direction, a score that swirls from comforting to unsettling with ease, and deeply troubling sound design (ever wanted to know what a vampyr's stomach sounds like when it grumbles, now's your chance).

The principal cast are excellent, especially the two child leads, although internet scuttlebutt suggests Eli's voice is provided by another actor. Particularly fine is the scene where Oskar decides they should become blood brothers, ill-advisedly slitting his palm and offering Eli the opportunity to do the same: Eli's desire for the blood is offset by her own self-loathing and fear of revealing her true nature to him - it's exquisite.

In the end though, this is a romance (in both the original and more modern, accepted definition of the word) and love, even between the living and the undead, must triumph. This is very much the darker alternative to Twilight. See it.
Score: 8.5/10

Review: The Damned United

The Damned United is a rip-roaring Boys’ Own dream-turned-nightmare with a peach of a turn by Michael Sheen at its centre.
This is the story of Brian Clough’s 44 days in charge of Leeds United, of his overwhelming desire to beat Don Revie, the super-successful manager in whose footsteps he chose to follow.

While fully fleshing Cloughie out, he is nevertheless very much the hero of the piece (you’ll be cheering him on through every outburst, you’ll feel his hurt when scorned by Revie, by the Leeds players and most painfully by his assistant manager Timothy Spall’s Peter Taylor) – and Colm Meaney’s Revie very much the villain of the piece (the coda makes a wry and vengeful comparison between Cloughie’s subsequent success and Revie’s ensuing failure).

Slighted by Revie upon his first visit to Derby County, Clough becomes consumed by the need to beat him and his mighty Leeds. Half of Cloughie’s outbursts are on the money – he’s the only sane man in the room – and the other half are at best almost wilfully misjudged.

The feel and the look of the 60s and 70s is effortlessly created, but not slavishly so such that the production design becomes a performer in its own right (step forward Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes). That footballing era is also wonderfully conjured, in some ways casting Cloughie as man well before his time.

The film takes a sideways glance at what was to come for football - hooliganism on and off the pitch, a sport both elevated and corrupted by growing mountains of money – without ever fully addressing them.

The film begs the question (and not unreasonably leaves it unanswered): did Clough set out to fail at Leeds? Was his hatred of Revie and his boys so great, all he wanted to do was tear the team down and erase the memory of its triumphs? Better they should be remembered for losing under him than winning – because if they won, everyone would say he had just inherited a great team from Revie…

Sheen is at his crowd-pleasing height, playing Clough with all the pomp the viewer could possibly expect. He also reveals the emotional cripple, the failed player behind all that front and mouth. If there’s a criticism of the film’s take on Clough, it’s that we learn little of the qualities that made him a great manager and gave him the title of best manager never to manage England.
By comparison with Sheen, Spall is hardly stretched, and yet no other British actor could so comfortably play Taylor happily stuck in Clough’s shadow.

Of course, die-hard, life-long Leeds fans need not see this: they didn’t warm to Cloughie then and they won’t now.

Set aside concerns about factual accuracies, or indeed changes from the book (god knows it has got its own doubters) or the Clough family’s disavowal, and just enjoy a great British film with the greatest British actor of his generation. It's a spry 97 minutes long and makes fantastic use of Fleetwood Mac's Man of the World (one of my all time faves) in a key scene that ultimately suggests those 97 minutes are about that most curious of things: male friendships.
Score: 8/10

Review: Watchmen

Watchmen is by far the most faithful adaptation of an Alan Moore comic yet to hit cinema screens – but does it trump The Dark Knight? Read on! Visually, this is the comic brought vividly and realistically to life, aided by fully realised sets and props rather than 90% blue screen and CGI.

It retains the essential structure of Moore’s work, telling the story in the order he set – meaning cross-cutting past, present and future narratives. The history of the Minutemen (the super hero team that predates the Watchmen) is superbly explained in the opening credit sequence after the death of The Comedian.

There are some nice additions by Snyder and the script adapters: a certain photograph in The Comedian’s apartment, the nods to Strangelove and Apocalypse Now, and some unexpected musical choices.

Rightly or wrongly, Rorschach (played with conviction by Jackie Earle Haley) is very much the crowd favourite of the piece – but much more so than in the comic. In choosing to excise some of his less charming traits and beliefs, Rorschach becomes a pint-sized Dirty Harry – with all the best lines.

Doc Manhattan is well-realised, cock and all, with Billy Crudup successfully conveying what little humanity is left within Big Blue.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan hints at the cynicism within The Comedian, but in so much that the character is seen only ever as someone else’s memory, there is little room for him to make an impact.

Matthew Goode brings an appropriately emotionless arrogance to Ozymandias, the most intelligent man in the world who also happens to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl’s impotence, sense of failure and lack of confidence is almost caught perfectly by Patrick Wilson – but I sensed something lacking in his performance, as if he didn’t believe in the material at all times.

Indeed, there’s a sense that everyone’s trying so hard to be faithful to the source that they bring none of themselves to the project and so it lacks the spark of life. This is not helped by the best actors being in the most unfeeling/darkest roles; while Rorschach is the work’s black heart, Laurie/Silk Spectre – and her relationships with Doc Manhattan and Dan – should be the emotional core of the work (often her reactions lead the audience in the comic) and I’m afraid while Malin Ackerman carries off the look (boy does she!), she fails to give weight to the character’s emotions (notwithstanding that the decision seems to have been taken to make Laurie less hysterical than in the comic).

The decision to re-work some elements of the original story are right, and the streamlining of the story to an acceptable run-time is hard to fault, but the question remains: would the story have more relevance, re-positioned in time to more or less the current day (like, say, The Dark Knight)?

The heavy weight of expectation on this movie was such that the end result could never live up to it. Ultimately the greatest adaptation of Watchmen is the one each and every reader, comic in hand, envisions in their own mind.

Nevertheless, Snyder and his team have tried – and if they have fallen short of glory, it’s not for lack of trying.

There are so many great scenes from the comic that are realised so well, I was compelled to punch the air at least once – which is more than can be said for the likes of From Hell or LXG.

Like Dark Knight, this is muscular, tough stuff (the comic’s gorier elements transferred intact), but Watchmen doesn’t quite scale the same heights.
Score: 7.5/10

Review: Gran Torino

Gran Torino is quite a different beast to Clint Eastwood’s riveting Oscar-bait Changeling, but is as enjoyable, challenging and relevant – and marks the Man With No Name out as simply the best US director currently working, his ability to move between genres unmatched.

Critical shorthand dictates that GT is Dirty Harry redeemed – and breaking the story down to its pure basics, that’s true, but it’s so much more than that. That summary doesn’t reveal the humour, the love of life, the tragedy that Clint allows the film to revel in.

Briefly, Clint is Walt Kowalski, a recently widowed Korean war vet, having to come to terms, Victor Meldrew-style, with a world changing so fast around him that he simply can’t comprehend, can’t make the imaginative leap that good prevails over change; his first and last resort is bitter retrenchment.

And from that, again Victor Meldrew-style, comes the comedy, which no doubt has helped the film’s word of mouth in the US. Every time you think Clint’s verging on ham, the script turns and forces him to default to his game face: he may be 78, but when he’s aiming an M1 rifle at you, you know he knows how to use it.

You see, Walt is old school – he is as racist as that relation you don’t like talking to at family gatherings because of their outdated views. Making things worse for him are his neighbours: Hmongs, the Koreans who helped the US in the war it should be noted, but to Walt they are just the old enemy.

Of course, the inevitable culture clash is bridged by the common enemy – the local gang. Which is not to say that the film demonises gang culture – it’s comedic unravelling of older male relationships clearly draws parallels between the bravado of the gangs (whatever their colour or creed) and the unspoken bond between vets and their own coded language.

The tragedy of the collected bravado sets in relatively late in the piece – and if it strikes a discordant note, I’m tempted to say that Clint’s just being realistic. And the hints are there that the key change, the shift in tone is coming.

Much of the symbolism is hard to discuss without giving away the story, but suffice to say it’s not overplayed.

The supporting cast are uniformly excellent – and the Gran Torino itself is gorgeous.

Tom Stern, who performed such a beautiful job lensing Changeling, does another knock-out job here, while Kyle Eastwood reveals a talent for haunting scores very much in his father’s style.

Ultimately what sets GT apart is simply how enjoyable and spry it is – one suspects its lightness of touch will render it endlessly watchable. It was Stanley Kubrick who mused that the most effective easy to get a serious message across to an audience is through comedy – when you’re laughing, you’re guard is down and, QED, your mind is more receptive.

If this does turn out to be Clint’s final hurrah in front of the camera, then a more fitting epitaph I can’t imagine. Hey, it even includes him singing…
Score: 9/10