The Screen Critic: Wartime tension, killer comedy and controversy

The Screen Critic with Jim Schembri

Jim Schembri reviews a gripping D-Day drama, a darkly funny tale of CIA assassins, a disturbing media thriller and the return of one of Britain’s most controversial films.

Wild Horse Nine

A film that will definitely attract plenty of Oscar love is Wild Horse Nine, a superb black comedy in which veteran John Malkovich delivers one of his best performances as Chris, a retired CIA assassin with a headful of official secrets and a terminal condition.

It’s 1973, and he and his colleague Lee (Sam Rockwell) take a scenic holiday on Easter Island, where they banter and take in the sights.

All the while, their CIA boss (Steve Buscemi) is concerned about Chris, worried his faltering memory will prompt him to spill the beans to the world about some very sensitive matters.

Moving from eccentric to deeply touching, black comedies don’t come much better than what’s served up here by writer-director Martin McDonagh, who gave us The Banshees of Inisherin, Seven Psychopaths and In Bruges.

Pressure

Jest as we may about the reliability of weather forecasts, the excellent, fact-based wartime drama Pressure builds a tense story around the crucial role a weather report played in the success of the D-Day landings on the beaches of France in 1944.

Set three days before the invasion in the busy Allied headquarters, the film is essentially a prolonged, splendidly performed argument between brash, overconfident American meteorologist Colonel Irving Krick (Chris Messina) and his far more reserved Scottish counterpart, Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott).

With the massive Allied forces awaiting the order to go, Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) becomes ever more frustrated as Stagg demands the launch date be delayed, insisting Krick’s calculations are wrong.

Based on the 2014 play by David Haig, who co-wrote the screenplay with Australian director Anthony Maras (Hotel Mumbai), the film is a ripping true tale, imparting an important history lesson through a showcase of great acting.

Don’t be surprised if the film makes the Oscars shortlist.

Primetime

In the topical, tumultuous media thriller Primetime, Robert Pattinson plays the savvy host of the top-rating tabloid TV show To Catch a Predator, in which he and his ethically flexible team set traps for online groomers.

The ‘gotcha’ format works so well that NBC puts the show up against the ratings giant Lost. But the pressure to produce ever more sensational reality television leads to a set of brutal consequences.

Loosely based on real events and featuring a top performance from Pattinson (his role in the Twilight saga now a distant memory), this is a gripping and disturbing tale of where the hunger for media success can lead.

The Devils

Heating up the refined environs of the arthouse circuit is the restoration of The Devils, the blistering, controversial 1971 film by British maverick Ken Russell about religious fanaticism, demonic possession and nuns gone wild.

Though set in 17th-century France, this special director’s cut speaks directly to the climate of hysteria that presides over so much of today’s public discourse.

Featuring stunning set design, cinematography and a solid central performance from Oliver Reed as Urbain Grandier, a promiscuous Catholic priest persecuted for witchcraft, the film caused widespread uproar in its day.

It was widely banned and censored for depicting extreme emotions, wholesale debauchery and graphic torture.

Now reinstating scenes excised against Ken Russell’s strong objections, the film’s shock value remains undiminished some 55 years after it first caused moral panic.

Nobody today can match Ken Russell’s forceful style or love of artistic transgression.

Talk about a filmmaker who loved setting the cat among the pigeons.

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