Tag: mother

Bird Box

  By

★★★
“A not-so quiet place”

Malorie Hayes (Bullock) is nervously heading towards the birth of a child, supported by her sister (Hayes), when a mysterious epidemic of suicidal psychosis breaks out worldwide. In the ensuing carnage, Malorie finds shelter in the home belonging to the acidic Douglas (Malkovich), whose wife dies trying to help Malorie, and a small number of other survivors. They figure out the epidemic is triggered by entities of some kind who are now prowling the planet – if you see them, you are overwhelmed by your worst fears and kill yourself. The obvious defense is not to make eye contact. Yet how do you survive in a world you cannot see? Especially when it turns out that those who were previously psychopathically inclined are immune to the effects, and are free to roam that world, with their sight intact.

The structure here is a bit problematic, bouncing back and forth between the early days of the apocalypse, and five years later when Malorie and two children are making their way down a river towards a supposed sanctuary. This both robs the early scenes of some tension, since we know who will and won’t survive, and eventually leads to a troublesome and unexplained leap: how, exactly, did they get from stuck in the city, to farming in the middle of a forest? However, it manages to get by, largely on the strength of Bullock’s intensity. This is apparent from the very first scene, where she’s instructing the five-year-olds on their imminent journey, in a thoroughly unmotherly manner.

If you’re looking for an explanation, you’ll need to look elsewhere, as the film never provides any. I’m not sure whether the book in which this was based was any more forthcoming [one thing I do know is, in the novel and not the movie, the sanctuary was populated by people who had deliberately blinded themselves] This isn’t necessarily a problem: indeed, it has been a genre staple going back at least to Night of the Living Dead, to present an apocalypse and its consequences without rationale. Yet, the specifics of the event here seem particularly contrived e.g. simultaneous parturition, and if you’re overly concerned with story logic, this may prove troublesome.

Fortunately, the performances help overcome this – not limited to, but certainly highlighted by, Bullock’s. Her gradual evolution from someone who isn’t certain she wants to be pregnant, into a fiercely protective mother (even to someone else’s kid) is nicely handled, and convincing. She gets particularly good support from Malkovich, playing the jackass character who appears almost de rigeur in any apocalyptic scenario. As many have noted (and the review tagline suggests), there is more than a little similarity to A Quiet Place; though I found that rather underwhelming, and the brutally internalized nature of the threat here seemed considerably more effective. The prospect of having to lose your sight is certainly scarier to me, and if far from perfect, I found enough cheap thrills here to make the time worthwhile.

Dir: Susanne Bier
Star: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson

Kidnap

  By

★★
“Car troubled.”

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. And considering Halle Berry’s last appearance on this site was for Catwoman, that’s saying something. This is so dumb, I genuinely felt I could feel my IQ slowly sliding away as I watched the movie. Even now, simply remembering it has me feeling more stupider by the sentence. If this review ends up sounding like Beavis & Butthead by the end, that will be why. Its plot is beyond simplistic. Karla Dixon (Berry) has her child abducted from a New Orleans park while she’s on the phone, by husband and wife kidnappers Margo (McGinn) and Terry (Temple). Losing her cell in the process, she takes off after them in hot pursuit, and nothing will get in her way for the next 80-odd minutes.

Which is 75 minutes longer than it would have lasted, had anyone behaved smartly. The six-year-old kid is likely the smartest person in the whole movie, and he spends most of it whimpering in the back of a car. Fortunately for him, the only thing dumber than the box of rocks which is his mother, are the two boxes of rocks which are Margo and Terry. Or possibly the entire pallet of rocks scriptwriter Knate Lee must have in his head, for thinking this procession of poor decisions and eye-rolling developments could possibly pass muster. At least, with any audience not consisting of fellow six-year-olds.

These begin with the cloying opening montage of baby pictures, proceed through a lengthy sequence of Karla at her day job – yes, you get to watch nothing except a harried waitress serving customers – and finish with the phone-call informing her of an upcoming custody battle with her ex-husband. The movie has just wasted its first 15 minutes on entirely inconsequential irrelevancies, since none of the preceding have the slightest significance during the rest of the film. Then there’s the chase itself, which relies far too much on happenstance, with Karla repeatedly losing contact with the kidnappers, only fortuitously to bump into them again: I guess Louisiana must be about the size of Hyde Park. It’s full of other ludicrous moments, like Karla trying to run Terry over, only to stop for no apparent reason, or her trading down from a shotgun to a knife.

The sole saving grace is Berry, and it’s a significant one, since she is on-screen in virtually every shot. She puts over a raw passion and drive which goes some way – albeit, not far enough – toward salvaging the woeful material. You can see how she was an Oscar-winning actress, even when spitting out cringe-inducing, sub-Taken lines such as, “Let me tell you something, as long as my son is in that car, I will not stop. Wherever you go I will be right behind you.” You do get the sense Karla is an utterly irresistible force of nature, prepared to do absolutely whatever is necessary, including wrestling with Margo while the car careers through a (suspiciously-empty) tunnel. Enjoy and appreciate this intensity: forget absolutely everything else.

Dir: Luis Prieto
Star: Halle Berry, Chris McGinn, Lew Temple, Sage Correa

Never Let Go

  By

★★★
“Takenette.”

Based on the title and synopsis, I was expecting something like a Lifetime TV Movie. A mother frantically searching for her abducted child in a foreign location, before they can be sold off to some rich Arab, would seem right up their alley. [Though of course, this kind of thing has long been a popular subject for exploitation, to the point where the Hays Code of the thirties had explicitly to ban movies about “white slavery”] It’s a good deal grittier and harder hitting than that, though could have done with much better explanation of why this momma bear is so ferocious – among a number of other aspects.

The heroine is Lisa Brennan (Dixon), who is enjoying a vacation in Morocco with her child, the product of her affair with an up-and-coming politician, Clark Anderson (Whitney). A moment’s inattention sees the child snatched, and Brennan begins her hunt. She has to do it almost entirely on her own, and indeed, in the face of significant interference; because, after her involvement in the death of one of the kidnappers, Lisa is the target of a woman-hunt by the local authorities. Fortunately, what she does have are a very particular set of skills. Skills she has acquired over a very long career. Skills that make her a nightmare for people like the kidnappers. Skills that that poster tag-line references in a shameless way, which I can only applaud. Well played, marketers. Well played….

These would have probably come as less of a surprise had there been some content establishing Lisa’s credentials as a bad-ass. It’s only well after she has gone full Liam Neeson, that it’s even suggested the heroine is an FBI agent, rather than some random Mom on a beach. You just have to take her hand-t0-hand skills on trust. We also discover that the inhabitants of Marrakech leave their doors conveniently open, greet home invaders with little more than moderate confusion, and can be convinced to assist foreign fugitives on the run from the police, with little more than forcefully-spoken English and enthusiastic hand gestures. Meanwhile, the local armed cops will let said fugitive beat them all up, without so much as firing a single shot.

Fortunately, Ford is a much better director than a script-writer, keeping the pace brisk as he gallops towards a “surprise” ending that will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody (an additional black mark on Ford the author). Dixon is also very good in her role, projecting the right degree of focus and intensity, and the pounding, percussive driven score as she’s rushing around the narrow streets and across the rooftops, enhances proceedings significantly, in a way that echoes Run Lola Run. The problems are more whenever the film slows down from that frenetic and breathless pace. For it’s during these quieter moments, where the flaws in the story become most apparent, and you’ll probably find yourself going, “Hang on…”, to a degree that considerably weakens the overall impact.

Dir: Howard J. Ford
Star: Angela Dixon, Nigel Whitmey. Heather Peace, Velibor Topic

Mother

  By

★★★½
“The truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

motherBong is best known in the West for recent SF film, Snowpiercer, and also for monster movie The Host, but this, which came between those two, is somewhat less of a genre piece. A woman, known only as “Mother” (Kim), lives with her… intellectually-challenged, shall we say, shy son Do-joon (Won) in a small Korean town, making her living as a seller of medicinal herbs and grey-market acupuncturist. When a local schoolgirl is found dead, with one of Do-joon’s golf-balls next to her, he’s immediately the prime suspect, and the police investigation doesn’t bother looking much further. His lawyer is no help, and when the easily-fooled Do-Joon is browbeaten into signing a confession, it appears the case is closed. The only one still convinced of his incident is his Mom, who begins a quest, along with her son’s semi-delinquent friend, Jin-Tae (Jin), to find the truth behind the murder.

Be careful what you wish for, could be the moral of the story here, for the results of Mother’s investigation might not necessarily be what she wants to find. The film deliberately keeps the question of Do-Joon’s guilt or otherwise unresolved, almost until the very end. I suspect any Hollywood version of the same story would not have the guts to walk that tight-rope for as long, and it’s that tension between the audience’s uncertainty and Mother’s absolute, unwavering commitment to, and belief in, her son’s innocence, which largely keeps this interesting as things move forward. You desperately want her faith to be justified; I’ve been in a similar situation, someone I know having been arrested and charged with multiple murders, and denial is an entirely natural reaction. I can only imagine what it’s like for a mother, but in this case, her relentless and fearless pursuit of the real killer is what moves the film into our territory.

It’s not perfect, with neither the opening nor the end being as strong as the middle section deserves, and the resonance of Kim’s history as an actress is largely lost – I wasn’t aware she had spent much of her career in Korea playing the motherly type. There are also moments of strange irrelevance, such as when the cops taking Do-Joon away, are involved in a car crash, for absolutely no reason; it’s not referred to at any other point in the film, and seems a pointless diversion in a film that’s probably overlong, at 129 minutes. However, there’s enough meat here, and a very good central performance, to overcome the weaknesses, and make for an interesting and uniquely independent twist on the female detective sub-genre.

Dir: Bong Joon-ho
Star: Kim Hye-ja, Won Bin, Jin Goo, Yoon Je-moon