The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil

The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is not an imaginative film title, but at least we have a pretty good idea what the film is about. Detective Jung Tae-seok is a tough, cynical cop who has a personal vendetta again powerful gangster Jang Dong-soo. He puts 2 and 2 together when investigating a random killing of guy found stabbed to death in the back of his car. He decides this murder has a similar M.O. to a couple of older crimes in other towns and decides there is a serial murderer to be caught. His wild theory is not taken seriously, even when Jang Dong-soo is attacked when driving home one night. The gangster fights back and survives the attack, thinking he'd been attacked by a hitman sent by a rival starts a gang war and also sends his men out to look for the assassin. The cop notices that both cars had been hit from behind by a white car and realises that Jang Dong-soo is the only person to have seen the serial murderer's face. Eventually, the erstwhile enemies join forces to hunt down the killer who has become more reckless, killing more frequently and not changing location like he used to.

The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is a stylish South Korean action crime thriller. The cops are unkept, the police station dingy and crowded, while the gangsters are stylish, impeccably dressed and vicious. While the presentation is stylish, the scenario and plot are as original as the title. It is best to go along for the ride rather than look for novelty or a deeper message. But this is no different from many Hollywood films that do well at the box office. The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil stands up well alongside those films.

I think that the downfall in The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is the serial killer - "the Devil". Surely the idea of the uber-villain should be confined to cinematic and TV history. The idea that a single man (and it is almost always a man) who can out-think and outmanoeuvre the cops, often depicted as planning things years in advance, setting up elaborate one-off schemes and having limitless resources as his disposal yet having a secret room where he pins pictures of his victims and future victims to the wall along with newspaper clippings and decorated with his primitive art that lays bare his inner thoughts and as a shrine to his evil crimes is completely ridiculous. The serial killer in The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil is a ruthless, knife obsessed loner, whose main defence is his anonymity and that his kills have been in different police districts, with long gaps in time between them. Once he starts to kill more frequently and staying in the same area, he should have ceased to be the formidable opponent he was built up to be.

The best scene is a throwaway scene where we are shown a potential female victim only to have our expectations amusingly upended in a unique insight into the idea that one of the protagonists may have a life outside work.

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Ian rating 3/5

Fly By Night

Do you like your gangland boss to chuckle and gloat over his victims? Do you like your detective to be cool and suave? Do you like to see your protagonists trapped in an impossible situation? Fly By Night ticks all these boxes and more. While there is nothing new in the plot, it more than makes up for that in style and tension. The protagonists are a small family taxi company in Kuala Lumpur which supplements its income with slick an extortion racket that operates below the radar of both the local gangsters and the police ... until a mark unexpectedly escalates things and one of the boys is a sore loser at the neighbourhood casino bring the family to the attention of the owner (played by Frederick Lee channelling Jack Nicholson in a scenery-chewing performance). Meanwhile, Inspector Kamal is lazily circling the family like an inquisitive shark.

Who is who?

It took a few minutes to work out the relationships between the characters at the start of the film and the ending is ambiguous. But otherwise, this is an enjoyable, often funny ride where, like a traditional noir, no-one is good - even the wronged girlfriend. The action scenes are sharp. There is no shortage of violence. And New Zealand gets mentioned a couple of times.

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Ian's rating 3.5/5

The Nile Hilton Incident

Set in Cairo but mostly shot in Casablanca, The Nile Hilton Incident is a noir police procedural written and directed by Egyptian born Tarik Saleh.

Q: How does a corrupt police force investigate crime?

A: They chase the money.

Police detective Major Noredin is assigned by his boss (and uncle) to investigate the murder of a very beautiful young woman in a room at the Nile Hilton. The investigation quickly leads to the top of Egyptian society and Noredin soon gets told that the case is closed. But, whether it is curiosity or the scent of opportunity, he keeps investigating. Meanwhile the only witness (a Sudanese hotel maid) is trying to keep one step ahead of the bad guys (police included). It is 2011 and on TV screens there are protests elsewhere in Cairo.

The almost chain smoking Noredin is an anti-hero, with only residual professionalism as a policeman, he pockets a wad of cash from the victim's handbag but also follows up on a photo processing slip he pockets at the same time. The Nile Hilton Incident includes most of the noir elements usually associate with America: corruption, the baddest guys usually win, a night club, a femme fatale, smoking, fatalistic behaviour, the veiled threats, and sudden reversals. The missing element is the dark rain swept streets.

You need an invitation 

You don't want to see my invitation

Made with Swedish, Danish and German money and only partly filmed in Cairo. It is vaguely based on the murder of Suzanne Tamim. I don't think that The Nile Hilton Incident will get shown in Egypt because of the negative depiction of the Egyptian police and government and the sex scene.

Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 2/5

Black Coal, Thin Ice

Black Coal, Thin Ice is a detective story about a recurring crime in the industrial north of China and Zhang, the unorthodox detective, investigating it. In 1999 body parts turn up in coal at a number of factories in different towns. The police track the coal to a mine and decide that the body parts were most likely put on trucks at the weigh station. This is backed up by the disappearance of one of the weigh station staff. The arrest is bungled and an attractive young widow buries her husband's ashes. The film jumps to 2004 and we catch up with Zhang now working as a heavy drinking security guard at risk of losing this job. One day he bumps into his old boss on a stake out of same widow and Zhang decides to start investigating (stalking?) her in his free time. More body parts start turn up.

Zhang belongs to the serendipity school of detective work. One where you work on hunches, go to places previously associated with the suspect on the off chance and follow tangential leads etc. He also works alone which makes this a difficult story to follow. The standard approach to detective stories (used most notably by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) is to have either an offsider or have a pair of detectives. This device allows the main detective to explain his train of thought to the other character (and to us). Even though the pace of this movie is not fast, there are a lot of clues and I feel I need to re-see it to try and get facts straight in my head.

Neither Zhang nor Wu Zhizhen (the widow) are sympathetic characters, and the grimy, winter industrial setting and the dominance of night scenes gives this a film noir feel. In fact the director seems more interested in noir style than plain story telling, and viewers are likely to come to different conclusions about the events. This is not a picture post card China, nor a slick wire fu China. This is a China of factories, mum-and-pop dry cleaners, over crowded buses and tired dance halls. A China of robberies, murder and infidelity. A China of snow and coal.

Black Coal, Thin Ice is a surprise from China. A noir film populated by ordinary people.

Ian's rating 3/5 Anne's rating 2.5/5

Killer Joe

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Killer Joe might not quite merit stylish (unless you find Texas trailer trash stylish), but it certainly qualifies on both cynical attitude and sexual motivations. Killer Joe also qualifies in terms of its plot about people forced into desperate situations, making decisions that put them onto the wrong side of the law and trying to find their own way out of the predicament.

Chis Smith is the sort of guy who is in debt to a drug dealer, has had his stash stolen and wakes everyone in the middle of the night to tell them about his plan to hire a hit man to kill his mother for the insurance money. Things go down hill from there as Chris enlists Ansel, his reluctant but equally dim witted father to help him. You would think a cop that is smart enough to moonlight as a hit man would run a mile once he caught a sniff of this penniless, incompetent duo; but Joe Cooper catches sight of Chris's apparently naive sister Dotty and his lust for the cute teenager sucks him into the Smith family intrigues. In complete contrast to Dotty's sexual innocence is Sharla, Chris and Dotty's stepmother, who is the voice of reason in this dysfunctional family but has her own secrets and schemes.

Juno Temple as Dotty

I seem to be watching a lot of films featuring bad cops lately, last week's Rampart, last year's Coup de torchon, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, Point Blank and 2010's The Killer Inside Me. Joe Cooper tops the list as the most blatantly and melodramatically evil cop. His immaculate clothes and patronising smarter-than-thou attitude belies the fact that he is as venal and feral as the trailer trash he is caught up with. Any misplaced admiration you may have had for him is undercut by the climatic fried chicken dinner scene, which includes violence and humiliation that polarised the critics. It is not the most violent scene in the film but it has a visceral shock value that is enhanced because it doesn't particularly seem necessary to the plot.

Despite its low rent locations Killer Joe is stylishly filmed, especially the night scenes. Matthew McConaughey (who also played the district attorney in last week's Bernie) plays Joe Cooper with oily charm and Juno Temple is disturbing as the enigmatic woman-child Dotty.

Ian's rating 4/5

Killer Joe was preceded by New Zealand short film Hitch Hike, about a young man hitch hiking the roads around Huntly looking for his birth mother - where there only seems to be one car.

Predicament

The Film Festival's Wellington season kicked off tonight with the New Zealand Premiere of Predicament which is the film of a novel by the same name. This black and comic tale is set in 1930's Taranaki,and it's teenager hero is named Cedric. He is a slightly anorexic-looking version of Harry Potter and he and the movie have a kind of story-book yesteryear charm - think Boys' own annual, or possibly the Famous Five, and then try to imagine how either of those might try to handle a tale involving murder and sex.

It's school holidays and Cedric becomes acquainted with an unemployed petty criminal named Mervyn and his creepy but hilarious side-kick, Spook. They hatch a plan to blackmail some unfortunate locals, particularly the property developer who ripped off Cedric's Grandmother. As the plan is executed Cedric wrestles elaborately with his conscience about his level of participation and anything that can go wrong does go wrong. You'll have to go and see the movie to find out what happens but I can promise you a wholesomely happy, if somewhat cunning, ending to an unwholesome tale.

Predicament doesn't take itself very seriously. It makes fun of all sorts of things, and all kinds of movie genres but especially thrillers and detective stories. There is gloriously deadpan humour, some slapstick physical comedy and some "lets zoom-right-in-your-face" camera work.It is very atmospheric and the dialogue is witty. Spook (played by Jemaine Clement) is a joy to watch and listen to - he materialises from nowhere and almost steals the show.

I could happily watch this movie again tomorrow - I feel there's plenty more to appreciate than I took in in one viewing.

Anne's rating 4/5
Ian's rating 3/4

The Sky Crawlers

The Sky Crawlers is set in an alternate reality when war has been privatized, countries hire corporations to fight their wars. Our hero is a genetically modified teenage ace fighter pilot for the Rostok Iron Works, who has been posted to a new airbase where people are reluctant to answer questions especially about his predecessor. Eventually he hears a rumour that the base commander shot him. He is also troubled by a sense of deja vu. His attempts to uncover the mysteries about himself, his unit and the war don't uncover much until 2 hours later when a female colleague tells him the secrets about his predecessor and why none of them get any older.

The Sky Crawlers feels vaguely like a reworked Catch-22 without the humour.

Ian's rating 1/5

Zift

If you have seen as many Bulgarian films as I have you'll understand my trepidation at taking a couple of hours out of my life and $12 out of my wallet to see Zift.

Zift turns out to be a black and white morality tale. Our hero is coming to the end of his sentence for a murder he says he didn't commit. The back story gradually unfolds as it becomes important to understanding the details of his release and the unusual welcoming committee, or as our hero decides to let us in to his confidence. The story jumps back and forth between his youth in the 1940s and the present (1960s) and is populated by larger-than-life characters: a one-eyed philosophising cell mate, a beautiful seductive school girl who can make him cum by whispering in his ear, a mysterious army officer in a black car, a randy female doctor, a sadistic torturer, a nightclub singer and fart-lighting grave diggers.

There is double and tripple crossing, a mass prison shower scene, a chase through the women's section of the public baths, a hidden gem stone -- all-in-all an absorbing way to spend 90 minutes watching a Bulgarian shaggy dog story told with lots of prison philosophy thrown in.

If Zift is indicative of Bulgarian filmmaking then I'm keen to see more

Ian's rating 4/5

Married Life

Married Life is loosely based on John Bingham's novel "Five Roundabouts to Heaven". The premise is that Harry (Chris Cooper), a middle-aged businessman looked upon as staid and boring, falls in love with Kay, a sexy young widow, and wants to leave Pat (his wife) without hurting her. The film is narrated by womaniser and Harry's best friend, Richard (Pierce Brosnan -- who else?). Chris Cooper plays Harry more diffidently than he played the extremely confident Robert Hanssen in Breach, but otherwise the slightly old-fashioned, serious, slow-speaking middle-aged man is the same, and Harry, like Hanssen comes up with a plan to do the unthinkable (in this case to kill his wife to save her from the pain of leaving her). Things are complicated by Richard's lust for Kay.

This film walks a fine line between thriller and comedy in a meticulous and lush late 1940s setting. The two male leads really run away with this film as the screen play puts the women into unfortunately passive roles. This is not the fault of the actresses as the film is told entirely from the male perspective. The main theme running through the film is that appearances matter even between husband and wife. This theme covers everything from Kay's always meticulous make-up and hairdo to those uncomfortable moments while everyone is pretending something didn't just happen. The final scene feels like a slightly drawn punch that only half worked for me as Richard's conversion is unconvincing (otherwise this would be a 4/5).

In the director's Q&A after the film I learnt that the original novel was written by John le Carré's mentor at MI5, who was also the inspiration for George Smiley.

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Pickup on South Street

The camera flicks from face to face in a crowded subway car. It doesn't take long to decide which two out of the four faces belong to the stars of this film, namely Richard Widmark and Jean Peters. This 1953 noir thriller has more holes in its plot than a James Bond movie and like a good Bond movie, its panache carries it through. Only a noir hero can pick a girl's handbag when they first meet, punch her out and ransack her handbag on their next encounter, relieve her of $500 on their third and then walk into the credits with her on his arm.

The Feds know Joey is passing secrets to the Commies but want to catch the guy he is passing it to. Joey uses ex-girlfriend Candy (looking like a movie star on the way to the Oscars rather than a unobtrusive courier on the Subway, but hey this is the movies). The Feds are watching Candy when the film is lifted from her handbag by pickpocket, Skip McCoy (looking every inch the filmstar). Skip, who's profession relies on being unobtrusive, is now centre of attention. Everyone wants the film. Offers from Joey (via Candy) go up from $50 to $25,000. The police offer a clean rap-sheet. And Candy offers herself. Skip plays them off against each other and its the women, Candy and Moe (the police informer), who get shot.

This film was made at a time when people were looking for reds under every bed, and Communists were as unquestionably the enemy as 'Terrorists' are today. So director Samuel Fuller contrasts the treachery of passing US secrets to the Communists with the treachery of a police informer, and the trust governments expect from their citizens to the lack of trust when the citizen is a habitual criminal and the government is represented by the police. Watching this film in the George W Bush era adds an extra layer of irony that Sam Fuller couldn't have anticipated.

Ian's rating: 3/5

I Wake Up Screaming

I Wake Up Screaming was last night's Film Society film. Apparently this is an early example (made in 1941) of film noir. A newly discovered model is found dead in her apartment by her flatmate / sister. In true noir style suspicion falls on an innocent man (her promoter). While being pursued by the police, it is up to him to prove his innocence by finding the real murderer. In another cliché, he is helped by a plucky woman (the sister -- played by Betty Grable).

What made this old film worth mentioning is the menacing detective played superbly by Laird Cregar and made more sinister by some great camera work and clever sound effects (squeaky floorboards follow him). I notice on the web that it has been released on DVD and I'll look out for it, as there were some good one-liners in the dialog. Someone who probably watched the DVD has posted some nice pictures that give you an idea of the ambiance.

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Brick

An American high school film noir murder mystery. A girl makes a mysterious phone call to her loner ex-boyfriend who finds her dead 2 days later. He sets out to find out why ahead of the bulls (cops). Everyone is an extreme stereotype: "Brains" with his thick glasses who eats lunch alone to avoid being baited, a jock with his adoring fan club, two manipulative femmes fatales to act as the school's puppet masters and a hierarchy of drug pushers, the bullying assistant VP, the oblivious parents -- refreshingly there are no cheerleaders. More than most high school films the need to attend class never gets in the way of the protagonists and their out-of-class lives make them busy people.

The plot has as many twists and turns as you would expect for a film noir and ultimately exists as much to give atmosphere as it does to drive the story. A lot of violence gets handed out but our hero Brendan has more ‘come back’ in him than a country singer and he staggers on to the end. There are some great funny scenes especially when the film maker reminds us from time to time that these people are just school kids. The other vital ingredient that puts this film into the must see category is the dialog. Trying to understand the jargon and slang is as much part of the fun as trying to second guess the plot turns.

It is worth going out of your way to see this.

Ian’s Rating 5/5