Closed Circuit

First Hit:  An interesting education of the English court system.

Terrorism, spying, closed circuit cameras, and English law are featured in this film. Martin Rose (Eric Bana) is a hard nosed independent English Barrister. He’s divorced, his former wife despises and controls when he can see his son and for how long – we guess for good reason.

This part of the film sets up the type of guy he is. Above all he’s independent. He’s had an affair with Claudia Simmons-Howe (Rebecca Hall) another Barrister who has a long tradition of strong independence. They must both lie to be assigned to defend a perceived terrorist from prosecution by the government.

Briefly, in cases such as this, there is a public defender (Rose) and a private advocate (Simmons-Howe). When assigned, neither person can have contact with each other nor can they have had a past conflicted relationship with each other.

Because they were lovers, this means they couldn’t legally take these roles. However they both want to try this case, they lie to the judge and say there is no reason why they cannot work on this case. The interesting part of this film is that the evidence that each Barrister collects cannot be shared with the other. The worst part is that is that all secret evidence obtained by Simmons-Howe cannot be made public.

As the respective Barristers learn more about what really happened, they discover that it was the government’s own MI5 that was pulling the strings and that they don’t want to be embarrassed.

Bana is very effective as the smart, bull-headed, independent Barrister that wants the truth and really has a heart. Hall is wonderful as the Advocate and some of her interactions with a particular MI5 agent are priceless. Jim Broadbent, in a very limited role as the Attorney General, is sublime and cements the way the government deals with issues like this. Steven Knight wrote a good script in that it was also educational besides entertaining. John Crowley made effective use of portraying how spying and government control gets in the way of the truth.

Overall:  Not a great film but certainly worth a look some Sunday evening.

Hanna

First Hit: Saoirse Ronan was beautifully believable as Hanna, which made this film work.

The opening scene has Hanna, in deep snow and obviously in the far northern reaches of the planet, stalking a deer; her piercing grownup eyes watching the cautious deer foraging.

She releases an arrow which finds the deer in its chest. The deer runs and Hanna runs after it in the deep snow, by now the audience is aware that she has some extraordinary skills. The deer is dying, she apologies for not hitting the deer in the heart, pulls a gun and shoots the deer.

She guts the dear, collecting rib bones when a man appears behind her and says, “You’d be dead.” It is her dad Erik (played by Eric Bana) and they begin to fight. He is teaching her how to survive. They live in a minimal cabin in the middle of nowhere.

Hanna tells her dad that she is ready to leave. He digs up a box that has a switch on the top and tells her that her enemy will come after her the moment she flips this switch. She flips it; Erik packs a small bag, puts on a suit and heads out into the snow.

A US covert unit led by Marissa (played by Cate Blanchett), comes after Hanna. Capturing her they place her an a round observations cell. The agency sends in a woman pretending to be Marissa and Hanna kills her and then escapes the inescapable building.

The race now is on to capture Hanna and Erik. There are shots of Hanna that are amazingly haunting. Her look, lack of fear and her capability to learn quickly is amazing and all this from a young teenage girl.

Although there are some faults with the film, including the way Blanchett played Marissa, I enjoyed the whole film and the music by The Chemical Brothers fit the way it was shot and directed.

Ronan was amazingly cool, complex, and interesting to watch as Hanna. I could not think of another young teenage actress that could have pulled it off the way she did. Just some of her facial looks were powerful and haunting. Bana was very good as Hanna’s father. Blanchett or the way she was asked to play this role was the weak link in this film. Seth Lochhead and David Farr wrote an interesting script. Joe Wright didn’t quite have a handle on Blanchett’s role but all else was wonderful. I really liked the pacing, the use of different types of sets and buildings, and most of all how he made Ronan this perfectly normal/abnormal girl who also killed people.

Overall: This wasn’t a great film but it was good and very interesting to watch. I think it could have been a great film, but I’m not sure how.

The Time Traveler's Wife

First Hit: This was an OK film with some touching moments but it also consisted of inadequate directing and poor makeup choices for the main character when he was to represent different ages.

The immediate attraction to this film is two beautiful characters being in love.

The chemistry between Eric Bana as Henry DeTamble and Rachel McAdams as Clare Abshire is obvious and made me a believer that they could carry the love between them through time.

The stuff that didn’t make this film work was mostly around the representation of Bana’s age sequencing. It was done sloppily. The oldest Henry, with the most gray hair, was at his wedding although we actually move to scenes years later where he looks younger than he did the moment he got married (not the moment of the first dance because he was age correct in that scene).

Films which have a lot of age dependent scenes as part of the plot (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” for one) require lots of makeup, extraordinary acting and thoughtful / mindful direction to make them believable.

This film lacked all three. I loved the scenes of Henry when he would see his mother (played by Michelle Nolden) and I enjoyed watching his father (played by Arliss Howard) teaching his granddaughter the violin. These were very touching and heartfelt.

The film doesn’t try to make perfect sense as to why Henry can travel time or how this gene suddenly becomes active at the moment of an accident, but I really didn’t expect it to do so.

Bana was good as Henry as both the guy who is a loving husband and the guy who is lost and doesn't have an ordered and sequenced life. McAdams is solid and holds the character true to her feelings and actions. I especially loved her having an affair with her husband in a different time period, I thought that well played out and her sharing this to the current Henry was well played and expressed. I was very impressed with both Tatum McCann and Hailey McCann who played Albam, Clare and Henry's daughter, at ages 4 and 9 respectively.

Overall: A predictable love story which was adequately acted and directed while acknowledging it is a complicated story to tell.

Star Trek

First Hit: A wonderfully satisfying film which fires on all cylinders and gives depth to the original television characters.

I’ll start by saying I was never a real trekkie or a Star Trek fan. I did like it enough to watch it from time to time. I did enjoy Star Trek Next Generation a lot more as the special effects and story lines were a bit more advanced. However, how did this story begin?

The previous Star Trek films tried to take off from the original TV series. This film, however, puts context to all of it. In the opening sequences, there was a lot of noise, visual effects, and destruction and I was caught a little off balance, but this was a set up from the past to give context to the time slice in which most of the film takes place.

Kirk (Played by Chris Pine) was born out of this destruction and it shapes his young childhood. The story then shifts to the story of Spock (Played by Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy) and his struggles as a half human and half Vulcan.

This film is about how the original crew, their skills and peculiarities come together to make up the “crew of the starship Enterprise” which could fulfill the mission of boldly going where no man has gone before. The enemy used to bring the past, the film’s present, and the future is Nero (Played by Eric Bana) who is a renegade Romulan who uses red matter to induce black holes to shift space and time for his benefit.

I won’t go any further into the plot but it is enough to say that the way Dr. “Bones” McCoy (Played by Karl Urban), Uhura (Played by Zoe Saldana), Scotty (Played by Simon Pegg), Sulu (Played by John Cho), and Chekov (Played by Anton Yelchin) are introduced and brought together was nothing less than wonderfully fantastic.

Each distinctly gets to demonstrate why they were the best person to be an integral piece to the Starship Enterprise.

The main writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman nailed the dialogue and scenes. Director J. J. Abrams eloquently put them together in a story that brings out each of the characters. Pine, Quinto, Urban, Saldana, Pegg, Cho, and Yelchin are perfect to their roles and as the dialog flowed from their mouths I laughed and cried with them. They made Star Trek come alive. Bana is great as the enemy and, although not as dynamic as a previous film’s Khan, he sets the right tone, mood, and power to let the Star Trek team come alive. Then there is Nemoy, I don’t know how they did it, but he fits within this film really well, and when the ending comes, his voice stating the mission of the Starship Enterprise will make me see the next installment.

Overall: This film was great fun. This film put context to the entire Star Trek TV series. This was one of the most satisfying prequels I’ve ever seen. It was a “sit back, let go and enjoy it” kind of film.

The Other Boleyn Girl

First Hit: Although speculative in its view of history, there was some very fine acting.

The film wants to give the audience a different and possibly interesting view of these true life sisters, their family and King Henry.

Scarlett Johansson plays Mary Boleyn, Natalie Portman plays Anne Boleyn, and Eric Bana plays Henry Tudor, the King.

This film is about a time where families dared to use and degrade their daughters to upgrade their social status and cash flow. Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, played wonderfully by Kristin Scott Thomas, attempts to protect and protest the fate of her daughters by her scheming brother and weak-willed husband. But unfortunately, in those days, what the man said seemed to be what ruled the roost.

The girls’ father offered up Anne to the King when he stopped by for a hunting party visit. Anne, the ever aggressive and petulant one, rode with the King during the hunt and ruined her chances of becoming the King’s girlfriend and love interest by out riding him.

However, the King also admired the younger sister Mary. The King’s interest in Mary brought the Boleyn family to his court and there the shenanigans begin.

The King sleeps with Mary, Mary bears a child, Anne returns to the court from being exiled to France, courts the King at the expense of her sister, has the King’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon annulled thereby separating England from the Roman Catholic Church, Anne turns out to be a pain in the ass to the King, Anne loses her baby, King exiles the whole family, and finally beheads Anne and her brother. The King eventually dies and his daughter Elizabeth, whose mother is Mary, ends up ruling the whole show.

Overall: The opportunity to watch two of today’s finest young women actors’ work together in a film is one that should not be missed. Both are good, however Natalie Portman really stands out.