I Pity The Fool !

What a record ! I don't know how it happened but in three days, I managed to see two films by Tony Scott, talk about overkill.... Got a recommendation for SPY GAME (2001) and I decided it would be my no-brainer action film for the weekend. A spy film with testosterone starring an aging Robert Redford and a usual Brad Pitt centered around Redford trying to get Pitt out of a prison on his last day at work at the C.I.A. before retirement, doing his best to pass by all the paperwork since, in 24 hours, Pitt's gonna be dead (figures...). So basically, you get Redford running around desks, playing against the clock and his superiors while at the same time, they're interviewing him which gives us flashbacks to Pitt's training as an agent under Redford's supervision.

While all this is allright and dandy, it over-complicates the plot with many useless subplots which are basically there to decoy the audience and keep them riveted without knowing why, which for a movie longer than 2 hours is kind of overkill. Anyway, still one great spy film without any boring moments and acts just fine as a time waster.

Next up is DOMINO (2005), Scott's most recent effort which comes out today on DVD actually.... Well, this one's a worthless one. Seems Scott invented overkill as is demonstrated in the style of this film. The camera is always moving, the editing never stops, the music is loud as hell, nothing makes much sense, everything a good teenager suffering from ADD would like. It's about bounty hunters and as the credits at the beginning of the movie indicate, it is based on a true story.... sort of. The Domino Harvey character exists and she is a bounty hunter in real life (although she died last summer) but everything else except some of her partners' names is fictitious.

All hell breaks loose in this film and I do like a film with much chaos in it, where everything goes to hell and seems insane but this one is really not worth it. It has some nice moments, most of them I probably appreciated more since the film has a gritty look, very grainy and dirty with vivid colors making every spot on an acotr's face visible, a look coming from the seventies which I adore and which THE DEVIL'S REJECTS made a perfection of (if it wouldn't have been for some of the actors in the film, you could surely mistake it for a 70's film, easily. I guess I'll talk about this gem later on). Other than that, there's Keira Knightley which is nice eye candy in all the chaos and, of course, Mister Badass himself, Mickey Rourke which is always fun to watch in these roles. Basically, watch the trailer, catch the drift and pick something else.

Two Tony Scott films in three days, urgh ! At least, they're not Roberta Findlay films and I did watch some other stuff to lighten up the mood. One of these is Laurent Tirard's MENSONGES ET TRAHISONS (2004), a decent french comedy starring Edouard Baer and our very own Marie-Josée Croze. This one starts off really promising, much to my surprise, but of course it has its pitfalls. Baer plays an author who writes anonymously "auto"-biographies of celebrities since he lost confidence in his talent after his first novel was, according to him, a piece of shit. A charming little film nonetheless with some very funny moments involving Baer interviewing his newest celeb, a football jockey that wants him to write his book like Baudelaire would.... Croze, finding work overseas since her big break in you-know-what (I still haven't seen that one, ain't in a hurry either), is quite amusing in this one. All in all, a light and clever comedy with maybe a touch or two of too-much melodrama.

More to come......