Primal Fear - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"I don't have to believe you. I don't care if you are innocent. I'm your mother, your father, your priest."

Enduring Genres and an Awkward Confession:
The courtroom drama is one of the oldest film genres in Hollywood, and if done well, it has the potential to force its audience onto the edge of their seats using only snappy dialogue and passionate acting. Safe for westerns and courtroom dramas, I personally have a hard time enjoying old movies that are generally considered all time master pieces, such as the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles. I do realise how technically groundbreaking films like Citizen Kane and Rear Window were and how atmospheric and gripping Vertigo and The Third Man must have been back then, but being an 18-year-old kid from the instant-living social media age who grew up with nothing but cartoons and reality TV, most of these older classics just don't appeal to me from an entertainment standpoint. However, there are some old films that do manage to reel me in, especially courtroom dramas such as 12 Angry men and To Kill a Mockingbird, and having just realized this a few months ago, I decided to embark on a one-genre-marathon, and last night that lead me down the road of Primal Fear, a 1996 thriller starring Richard Gere, Edward Norton, Laura Linney and Frances McDormand. 

A Shady City Inhabited by Even Shadier People:

Primal Fear is a bleak and chilly movie that takes place in a murky Chicago littered with crime and corruption; a place where radical hot shot defence attorneys like Martin Vail (Richard Gere) are generally considered to be the dirtiest criminals of them all. Vail is a very smooth and very handsome lawyer with a big talent for making powerful friends and an even bigger talent for getting criminals off the hook, and as such, he is one hell an arrogant and immoral bastard. Vail is always on the border of breaking the confines of the law himself, and the only set of rules he seems to respect is one that he has came of with himself; one that allows him to live with the things he has done in the past as well as the present. Vail is so fond of public attention that he decides to defend a dimwitted 19-year-old boy with a stammer by the name of Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton) in a case about the murder of a beloved archbishop pro bono, simply because the case is as high profile and media influenced as it happens to be. What our arrogant main character fails to realize is that the upcoming trial might not be as simple and straight forward as he initially though it was, and when the disturbing truth slowly starts to show its ugly face, Vail is caught in a sticky web of lies, deceit, money and murder that he can't seem to wrestle himself out of.

The Impressive Ensemble:

This film succeeds in most of the things that it set out to do in my opinion, but it also has a fair amount of minor flaws and obvious conveniences as well. The thing that I liked the most about it also just happens to be the films strongest asset by far, and that is the well rounded and brilliantly acted characters portrayed by Gere, Linney, McDormand and Edward Norton especially. Richard Gere plays the main character in the film, and his turn as Martin Vail is one of the best performances I've ever seen him deliver, mainly because of how many different mindsets he has to master over the course of this movie. This man goes through a wide variety of ups and downs both professionally, personally and morally, and the fact that I was so invested in him as a character, in spite of all his arrogance and pretentiousness, is a testimony not only to Gere's brilliance but to Steve Shagan and Ann Bidermann's fine characterwriting as well. Watching this sleazy lawyer twist his way in and out of Chicago's social layers both figuratively and literally was a real joy to watch, and when he has his big moments of revelation and personal realization, Gere underplays his character's emotions in such way that I found myself feeling both sorry and resentful towards him at the same time. However, as much as the film benefits from Gere's subtle slimeball performance, it is Edward Norton who ends up completely stealing the show in the end. 

His role as Aaron Stampler in Primal Fear is Edward Norton's feature film debut, and it landed him a golden globe statuette and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. He was 27 back then. Norton has always been one of my personal favourites, but no matter how many great things I had heard prior to witnessing it myself, I had no idea just how incredible this man already was at such a young age. The character that he portrays in this film is a very disturbed and emotionally scarred young individual who appears to have been caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, and even though the character does suffer from a few script related issues, Norton does an awe-inspiring job with the material that he has been given. I mentioned that Gere’s performance was great because of his ability to display a wide variety of different emotions, but when compared to Norton’s incredible range of facial expressions, voices, body postures and characteristics, Gere looks like a stoned cartoon cardboard cut-out. Aaron Stampler has a condition that forces Norton to play several different roles in the same movie, pretty much identical to the way he went on to do it in Leaves of Grass in 2009, and it is almost surreal how good he is at flipping his character 180 degrees in a matter of seconds in this film. Gere, McDormand and Linney all play vital and well portrayed characters that helped mold this movie into what it is, but none of them come even close to matching the sheer amount of raw talent and range displayed by Edward Norton in his debut role as Aaron Stampler.

Six Star Characters in a Three Star Movie:

In terms of the actual world that Norton, Gere and the rest of cast find themselves in, there sadly is not that much to write home about. In spite of its very well realized characters and some very snappy and occasionally hilarious dialogue, Primal Fear ends up becoming a picture perfect example of how the sum of a lot of great individual things sometimes turn out to be worth a whole lot less than first anticipated. We have all seen the basic premise of the plot done a thousand times before: A shady lawyer/cop/journalist/private investigator takes a job that doesn’t seem that interesting or difficult in the beginning, only to find out that there is a much more sinister reality lurking just beneath the surface, which ends up making him question his own morals and integrity. The way in which Gere’s character shows these inner demons is also rather wooden and uninspired to put it mildly, because instead of coming up with a smart or innovative way of displaying Vail’s declining trust in himself and his methods, someone decided to go the cheap route and add a sub plot about this journalist who is in the middle of writing an article about defence attorneys. The way I see it, this is a blatant excuse to have Vail specifically say the things that the director and the writers wants the audience to think, without having to come up with something that will display it instead. The journalist doesn’t even have more than four or three lines in the entire 130-minute movie, and the sole purpose of his character was to pop up whenever Gere’s character needed a wall to talk to, so that the audience could get to know how he is feeling at specific point in time. This is extremely lazy writing in my opinion, and these specific scenes ended up reducing my over all impression of the movie quite a lot.

Another thing that turned me off about this movie, is the way in which it handles the whole mystery aspect of the thriller genre. I do not mind it when courtroom have a twist or a revelation near the end of the plot in order to throw the audience for a loop, but I do not always think that it is the right way to go either. The shocker in this film actually worked quite effectively and initially had me grinning like a 12-year-old who had just found his first playboy magazine, but the credits had not even started rolling before I was beginning to find several things about it that did not make sense. We are not talking about major things that ruined the entire film or anything of that magnitude, but if I was to watch the movie again, I am pretty sure that I would be able to find several “Well, that just doesn’t make any sense at all!”-moments, especially concerning the character of Aaron Stampler. Some of those do not even require repeat viewings, and there is at least two other rather iffy details about some other characters that I can think of right now, one of them being the alcoholic judge played by Alfre Woodard. The film spends a lot of time specifically showing us how she always has a drink in her hand, both during and in between trials, but it never has any effect on the plot whatsoever. She does not seem the least bit drunk in her behaviour or in her decision making even once throughout the film, and I was left quite puzzled as to why this completely irrelevant detail was added to her character.

The One-man Jury's Final Verdict: 

Even though its story is somewhat campy and unremarkable, Primal Fear is an extremely well acted film that benefits from a whole bunch of trustworthy main characters and a virtual heap of clever and sometimes funny dialogue. It is a great film in terms of pure entertainment value, and even though it hits a few glaring misses and fails to revolutionize its genre in even the slightest way possible, I would recommend anyone who likes a good courtroom drama with great characters and an easily digestible plot to check it out. Norton’s performance alone makes it completely worth it, and as a whole, Primal Fear has earned my seal of approval. (4/6)

Primal Fear IMDb page here

Primal Fear trailer here

Gravity - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"I hate space.."

In Gravity, Dr. Ryan Stone and Matt Kowalski have to work together in order to survive in the wast nothingness of space, after a heap of satellite debris has destroyed their shuttle. Dr. Stone (played by Sandra Bullock) has only been an astronaut for a couple of weeks, so its up to Matt (played by George Clooney), a much more seasoned space veteran, to calm her down and guide her through the chaotic situation that they find themselves in. The movie is written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, the man that brought us films like Children of Men and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but Gravity is likely going to be the film that he'll be remembered for in the decades to come. It took him more than four years and 120 million dollars to create this piece of cinema, and if you were to trust the critics, the result of his tireless work is one of the greatest and most visually groundbreaking space film ever made. 

The Visuals:

Alfonso Cuarón's and Terrence Malick's go to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki shot this film, and as of November 2013, his camera work in Gravity marks the absolute pinnacle of cinematic photography, and the film's editor and visual effects specialists deserve the same kind of praise. This film consists of nothing but long, uninterrupted shots of the most marvelous scenery I've seen in my short life, and the fact that 95 % of it is created on a computer is mind boggling to say the least. I've never been a huge fan of 3D and extravagant CGI special effects, but the way in which this film pushes the boundaries of visual cinema is unheard of and incomparable to anything ever created before it, and I'd be shocked if the academy doesn't reward this film with every single technical honor available to them. With Gravity, Cuarón and Lubezki does to 3D what Paul Greengrass  and his cinematographer did to shaky-cam back in the Bourne days, which is to take an irritating, redundant and overused camera technique and turn it into a respectable art form that serves as a way to enhance the stuff that's already there, rather than as a vehicle that everything else relies upon.   

Because of its beauty and astounding impact, I'm having a hard time putting into words what these visuals actually look like. I'm just now realizing that this is exactly what the man who discovered fire must have felt like when he first tried to explain to his friends what it actually was he'd seen, and in the same way that fire ended up revolutionizing the way in which humans lived back then, I wouldn't be surprised if Gravity ends up doing something similarly unexpected to the world of visual cinema. The first scene in the film lasts for 17 almighty minutes, in which the characters just flow around in space doing their astronaut thing as usual. The camera slowly floats in and around the astronauts as they work on the outside of the Hubble telescope in this tour de force of an opening sequence, and it manages to capture the essence of space and the cold, desolate vastness of it in a way that makes it look and feel utterly beautiful and nail-bitingly scary at the same time. The devastating silence of outer space is depicted to perfection in this film as well, and watching space stations and satellites get absolutely ripped to shreds without making a sound is nothing short of terrifying. 

The Story:

Gravity's aesthetic values is its strongest asset by far, and even though they go a very long way, visual appeal alone isn't enough to make a movie truly fantastic. A fully fleshed survival thriller like Gravity has to have an actual story and some actual characters in order build up some real emotional weight, and unfortunately, this is where Gravity looses a bit of its huge initial impact. To put it frankly, Cuarón's latest movie isn't anything more than a meat and potatoes survival thriller with a couple of familiar characters with cut and dry character traits, that just happens to benefit from the most astounding visuals ever put on a movie screen. Some of the more emotional character development moments just don't carry the emotional weight behind them that they were intended to, and I never truly felt as if I connected to any of the characters and cared about what happened to them. The overall story did serve as an effective survival thriller that reminded me of films like 127 Hours and Rescue Dawn, and I've got nothing down right negative to say about the plot and the way it developed, but it just doesn't reach the same level of spectacularness as the visuals.

The Characters:

In terms of characters, Dr. Stone and Matt Kowalski are the only ones in the entire film. Ed Harris does make an appearance in the beginning of the film as a voice being heard over a radio, but other than that, the entire weight of the narrative rests on the shoulders of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and as far as I'm able to tell, both of them do a good job with what they have available to them. Clooney plays an experienced veteran astronaut who's on his last mission before retiring, and as such, there really aren't that many directions for his character to go in. It wasn't that hard to predict where his character was going in terms of plot progression for me, and even though he's funny and well portrayed by Clooney, Matt Kowalski ended up feeling like a wooden character without any real tricks up his sleeve. Bullock's character suffered from the same problem in my opinion,  because even though her performance as Dr. Stone is the better of the two, the character itself feels like a cardboard cutout of the same "rookie that finds herself in a tight spot and has to find a way out there with the help of a veteran colleague"-character that we've all seen a million times before. 

The Verdict:

When it's all said and done, Gravity is one of the most overwhelming visual experiences I've had in my entire life. Grasping the magnitude of the achievement that the guys who created this world have achieved without actually watching the movie is next to impossible, and that's why I think that anyone with a set of functioning eyes should go ahead and watch Gravity  for themselves. Its story and its characters might not be more than just above average, but the sheer amount of goosebumps and heart attacks that Alfonso Cuarón's latest picture will inflict upon you anyway, almost manages to make up for that in my opinion. In the and, I think that any movie that is as certain to win every single technical Academy Award as Gravity is, deserves to be bough and enjoyed on BluRay. This is also the absolute only way you should go about watching it if you didn't get a chance to catch it in you local cinema, because without proper sound, picture quality and screen size, Gravity isn't more than a regular survival thriller, that just happens to take place in space. (5/6)

Gravity IMDb page here

Gravity trailer here

Unforgiven - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"Yeah, well, Uncle Pete says you was the meanest goddamn son-of-a-bitch alive, and if I ever wanted a partner for a killin', you were the worst one. Meaning the best, on account as your's as cold as the snow and you don't have no weak nerve nor fear."

Unforgiven is written by David Webb Peoples and directed by Clint Eastwood, and it stars Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris, Jaimz Woolvett and Eastwood himself in the leading roles. It won four Academy Awards back in 1992 including best picture and best director, and it's generally considered to be one Eastwood's best films to date, and one of the greatest westerns ever made as well. 

I'm pretty inexperienced in terms of westerns, but just like anyone else with ears and eyes, I've come to know for a fact that Clint Eastwood is the biggest star from this particular genre to have ever walked the face of the earth. I've enjoyed a lot of this talented film maker's directorial work from the 90's and the 00's, but for some odd reason, the fact that his unofficial masterpiece is a western has always made me shy away from watching it when I had the chance. I haven't really seen enough westerns to decide whether or not I like the genre in general, but because of man kind's age old fear of the unknown, I've never given this chapter of film legacy an honest attempt to win me over. I finally decided to break that bad habit last night though, and I'm happy to admit that this proved to be the best choice I've made in months. 

Unforgiven takes place near the end of the industrial revolution in the late 19th century, where a former renowned thief and murderer turned hog farmer by the name of William Munny (Eastwood), lives a humble and assimilated life with his two children. Munny used to be the baddest, meanest, coldest and drunkest bastard in all of the old Wild West, until Claudia, the woman of his life and eventual wife, came around and straightened him out. William hasn't killed a man or had a drink in over 11 years when our story picks up, but since his wife passed away a few years earlier, he's been struggling to support his two children financially by just farming hogs. Because of his wish to secure a better future for his kids, William reluctantly takes on one last job along with his old partner Ned (Freeman) and a spirited young man called The Schofield Kid; A job that accidentally puts him on a collision course with Little Bill Dagget (Hackman), a tough-as-nails sherif who isn't afraid to stare death right in the eyes.

Alright, so I want to talk about the main thing that I love about this film right off the bat, and that's the way in which the different characters in it are written and constructed. I know that changing up the recipe is hard to when your'e working with a genre that is as old as cinema itself, but I genuinely believe that that's exactly what David Peoples did with the screenplay for Unforgiven, and all the characters in the film become thrillingly alive as a direct result of it. It's as if Peoples completely ignored all the different rules of stereotypical character creation when he came up with William Munny's, Ned's and Little Bill Dagget's personal traits and ways of thinking; a fact that makes the film much more rewarding, engaging and original in the end, because of the way it keeps you guessing and wondering what they'll do next. The most noticeable example of this is the character of William Munny, and Eastwood's legacy as a western actor made him nothing short of perfect for the role. 

When it comes to Clint Eastwood, most people think of him as one of the biggest badasses in film history, and rightfully so. He spent his entire youth playing the same tough, unflinching, mythical antihero who never missed a single shot and who always ends up killing all the bad guys within a matter of seconds, but in this movie, his character is the exact opposite of that. William Munny used to be feared and undefeatable, but as he's grown older, he's become slower, more fragile, prone to sickness and very remorseful of what he did in his youth. Watching Clint Eastwood struggle to mount his horse and miss several easy shots up close is very uncommon indeed, but to witness him have an emotional breakdown after having had his ass handed to him in a fistfight is straight up mind blowing. He's nothing like the Clint Eastwood stereotype we're so used to seeing in westerns, and as it turn out, his performance in Unforgiven is the best one he's ever given in my opinion. The fact that he The Man With no Name turned into The Man With an Actual Story kind of says it all to me, and I'm pretty sure that Eastwood chose to direct and star in this film because of the real life similarities he shares with the character of William Munny, albeit in a slightly different way of cause.

Apart from these character elements, some of the main themes in Unforgiven is reputation, legacy and honor. Saul Rubinek plays a small but crucial role as an aspiring writer in the movie, who's in the process of writing a biography about English Bob, another ageing gunslinger, who unlike Munny hasn't shelfed the cocky attitude of his youth just yet. Bob lies and cheats his way to fame, riches, woman and respect, but as soon as his fraud is revealed and Mr Beauchamp (Rubinek) realizes that he isn't worth writing a biography about any longer, he jumps ship and decides to write about Little Bill Dagget instead. He doesn't care about truth or lies, fact or fiction; All he wants is a good story that sells. My theory is that this character symbolizes the way in which the old stories of the Wild West came about back in the day, and based on what we hear Mr. Beauchamp read out loud, the stories that he's writing don't sound too unfamiliar from the westerns that Sergio Leone and Don Siegel made back in the 60's. Eastwood probably didn't mean to mock the westerns of old by including this little piece of meta bait in his film, and it doesn't come off as ironic or preachy or anything like at all. It symbolizes that things, people, traditions and the perception of history has changed over the decades, and the way that Mr. Eastwood pulled it off is very impressive if you ask me. 

All these metaphorical themes and selfaware directorial realisations aside though, Unforgiven is blessed to have what every great western has to have; A solid, superbly written and engaging plot. The story about the rusty oldtimer who has to get get back into the swing of things in order to obtain some sort of redemption might be just as old and worn out as Eastwood himself, but in the same way that the characters in the film avoid being boring and clichéd, the story manages to mean ten different things in ten different ways at the same time, without getting even the slightest bit complicated, pretentious or predictable. Richard Harris and Gene hackman might serve as supporting actors in this picture, but I've rarely witnessed a secondary storyline as engaging, important and well utilized as the one these two phenomenal actors share, which is a testimony to how well rounded the script for this film is. Hackman won an oscar for his performance as Little Bill Dagget, but Harris would have been just as worthy of the honor if you ask me. Both of them symbolize one of the many stereotypical western characters that have existed over the years, but they also manage to depict and emphasize the meanings and importance of these characters in a very impressive and strangely poetic way, and they serve as a shining example of just how important great supporting characters are to the over all success of a movie. 

When I watched Unforgiven for the very first time, the 131 minute runtime whizzed by in what felt like 85 minutes. There's not a single bad thing to say about the direction, the writing, the acting, the phasing, the editing, the cinematography or the symbolism in this masterpiece of a film, and I find it hard to believe that the world will ever see a movie change everything we thought we knew about a genre and turn it on its head in the same way that this one did. Unforgiven isn't just Clint Eastwood's masterpiece in my opinion, it's his legacy as a film maker, and his contribution to the world of cinema and the generation of movies he grew up with. There's no two ways about it; Unforgiven is movie magic at its very finest. (6/6)

Unforgiven IMDb page here

Unforgiven trailer link here