WARRIOR

        I was lucky enough to see this movie at an early screening courtesy of the Orange County Film Society. 

Let me start off by saying I was not that excited about seeing this film, I was asked to go to fill a seat, make it look good to the studio people. After spending 25 plus years in the martial arts I am super critical of martial arts movies and hyper sensitive to the cheese factor typically associated with "Karate type" movies, thankfully this movie contains non of that. Previous to the screening one of the Lionsgate marketing people told me in confidence that she loved this film. . . . . I thought she was trying to fluff up a looser of a film. Well, she nailed it, I enjoyed this film immensely.  My buddy sitting next to me "claims" he was brought to tears on four separate occasions, no he wasn't wearing a Skirt.   The director did an excellent job , felt like I was riding a roller coaster. The acting was top notched, the two top stars are Foriegners playing American fighters, it works.  Nick Nolte held his own too. This movie is destined to be a great one , great enough for Oscar?? We will see. . . . .but I'm guessing yes.  I have to admit I was apprehensive about seeing this due to the MMA component, thought it was Rocky redone with MMA instead of boxing, couldn't have been more wrong! There was a wide cross section of the Orange County scene,in the audience, they were all buzzing about this film at the curtain.

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR SEE THIS FILM!

Review By:
Our man on an island David Schniepp

MARK'S TAKE:

Warrior: The Fight Movie that wants to be an Art Film

This review is spoiler heavy. Be warned…

The Orange County Film Society was kind enough to invite me to a preview screening of Warrior, a mixed martial arts fight movie that the studio is prepping for an Oscar campaign. I offer the following insider scoop.

The performances are phenomenal, although I keep confusing talented Aussie Joel Edgerton with the guy from Avatar. Hollywood is simply overrun currently with leading men following in Russell Crowe’s footsteps. The plot is pure pulp as the hero is not only forced to fight not only a soulless Russian Leviathan, wait for it, but also his own estranged brother. This being Great Recession America, if the poor guy doesn’t beat everyone in his gene pool to a pulp, he will lose his house and Jennifer Morrison from House. His recovering alcoholic father is helping his bitter war hero/ deserter brother who wants to give the prize money to his dead marine best friend’s wife and massacre his sibling. Of course the tournament is winner take all so the losing brother will get nothing, except perhaps a sequel.

This makes the film sound horrible, it is not. The whole thing is so effectively shot, the fight scenes so riveting, everything so professional and well done that this Kane and Abel story induced a testerone high from which I am yet to recover. Even Nick Nolte’s performance as a recovering drunk is nicely understated. I half expected Gary Busey to walk in and play a warm and humorous shrink to be followed by a restrained Randy Quaid as a tough love Catholic priest.

All of this is simply a cinematic delivery mechanism for the fight scenes which are great and brutal. Much like the last few Star Wars films have been fluff interspaced by cool light saber duels this is the true reason for the film. The fight scenes in Warrior rock and rock hard. I saw it with some martial artists who are the real deal and they gave the film’s fights sparse, quiet and meaningful praise. These are men who could snap me like a twig. The nice thing is that Warrior has proved being snapped like a twig is great therapy.

While I doubt it will be my Oscar choice, I still want to punch a close relative due to this film’s influence. Thankfully the holidays approach…

Our man the Balcony Mark Tygart

The Debt - Best Feet in the Stirrups scene Ever!

The Debt:  Some Israeli Spies played by the Royal Shakespearean Company come in from the Cold

I saw the Debt in a preview screening last night and found the chill winds of Oscar season blowing through my carefree August. You know a film is serious in American cinema when killing Nazis becomes a morally ambiguously process.

This is a movie that overall harkens back in style to the great paranoid 70s spy thrillers, which always included a love affair among righteous heroes in a compromised world.

As a thriller it is superb movie, a crackling tale of a Mossad team of three operatives plans to kidnap a Nazi war criminal in 1960s East Berlin.

As a drama the excellent acting keeps us from questioning the existence of a somewhat contrived romantic triangle among our heroes. This screenwriting desire for soap opera explains why only three agents are sent and the justification for the bizarre dispatching of the wonderful “young Helen Mirren” character on this very difficult assignment as her very first field mission.  Somehow I tend to think the Mossad was more discriminating when kidnapping Nazis; certainly Eichmann never complained about such hanky panky before his show trial and hanging.

As a moral parable I find the film questionable. Since it has a Holocaust theme and great BBC actors I think of possible Oscar statutes, but I find the piece oddly naïve for a movie about espionage. This is a movie about spies who need to learn that honesty is the best policy. I kept thinking many of these characters had to be more pragmatic to simply be creditable, but the film profoundly disagreed with me.  In fact, this movie firmly believes in the CIA motto.

The CIA motto is simply bizarre. The motto is John 8:32: "...Ye shall know the truth and it shall set you free." Am I the only person who finds this deeply ironic? The Debt doesn’t.

After Operation Paper Clip, Klaus Barbie and von Braun’s NASA recruitment you would think an Israeli inspired project would be little more skeptical of Langley Bible quotes.

I guess looking at the brutal cost that Israel has had to be pay for its survival was beyond the easier moral certitudes of good thriller about hunting a Nazi. In the end I do think Helen Mirren’s character represents a moral justification for both that brutality and the national mythology that cloaks it. That justification is the Holocaust. A lot of your feelings about the film may hinge on whether you agree.

Otherwise it is excellent and fucking depressing film.

Go see it and make up your own mind.

P.S. The unofficial “Company” slogan is the far better: "In God we trust, in all others we monitor."

Review by our man in the balcony - Mark Tygart