Reviews of "Seven Psychopaths" and "Safety Not Guaranteed"
Seven Psychopaths (2012)
Martin McDonagh's debut film was "In Bruges" which has to be one of my favourite comedies of all time. Dark, beautiful and hilarious and the first film to reveal to me that Colin Farrell actually has talent after all. The first thing to say about "Seven Psychopaths" is that it isn't as good as "In Bruges". You cannot expect every film from a director to be the best film of all time. That being said, I did enjoy this very much. I will note however, that this is not the same situation as with" The Guard" (directed by Martin's brother John) where one of the main criticisms was also that "it's not as good as In Bruges". "Seven Psychopaths" is generally of a lower standard than either of those films. Still, at the time I noted that "The Guard" was arguably funnier than "In Bruges" yet lacking the same artistry, so perhaps it's not surprising that "Seven Psychopaths" falls slightly further short of excellence than those two now that Martin is trying to focus more on the comedy side of things.
"Seven Psychopaths" has been compared to Chalie Kaufman's work because it follows a similar trick to "Adaptation" by placing the writer essentially inside their own screenplay. However, in many ways this is closer to a Coen Brothers film. Certainly I was reminded of my experience in the cinema watching "A Serious Man" with the rest of the audience (and in the case of "Seven Psychopaths" the audience was especially small) laughing a great deal less often than I did. That being said, while "A Serious Man" had me laughing fairly consistently from beginning to end, "Seven Psychopaths" had noticeable points where the comedy lagged. As with "In Bruges" there's a clear attempt to bring out somewhat meaningful moments in the craziness, but in both films McDonagh generally aims for such 'meaningful moments' to fall flat intentionally for comic effect.
The plot is that Marty (Colin Farrell) is trying to write a movie about "Seven Psyhopaths". He's facing writer's block and his attempts to try something different are falling a bit flat. Meanwhile his friend (Sam Rockwell), who is running a dog stealing-and-returning scam with another friend (Christopher Walken), is keen to give him some ideas. In the background one mafia guy who's a bit on the psychopathic side (Woody Harrelson) is angry about his missing dog...
Sam Rockwell is brilliant as ever, Christopher Walken gives a very impressive performance and I've found his performances rather varied in the past, but Colin Farrell is essentially playing the straight man here and I'm not sure that's playing to his strengths. Still, there's no doubting the comic timing between them is brilliant. I don't think Woody Harrelson is at his best here, though he plays his part well enough. Harrelson doesn't really seem as imposing as he ought to (though this is a little petty as his lack of threat by comparison to the other characters may be somewhat intentional).
This kind of film is right up my alley. Black comedies like "A Serious Man", "Submarine", "In Bruges" and this year's "The Revenant" really hit the right note for me. There's a mixture between realistic sections and more off-the-wall craziness. In both cases, there are strengths and weaknesses, but a major strength is the chemistry between the main characters. The biggest weakness is the unreal setting. The sense of location seemed rather lacking. "In Bruges" gave a very strong sense of the setting (Bruges, of course) and that helped it a great deal. There was also a clear understanding on the world the central characters had come from and the kinds of lives they lead. In "Seven Psychopaths" the characters almost seemed to exist in a vacuum. There was no real weight to the setting in which the action takes place. When later parts of the film take place in the desert, it's less to make use of the desert as a setting and more to isolate the characters from any potential distractions. Admittedly the ability to twist reality and confound expectations is part of the intention of the film, but I still think that more could have been done to make the scenario feel real to us.
McDonagh is a great director and writer and this is a great second film from him. There's some great moments, some wonderful comedy, and I've known highly praised comedies to be less consistent. One thing's for sure though, you need to enjoy black humour (which I think the title makes clear). The incomprehensible trailer for "Seven Psychopaths" with its horrific editing will give you very little idea of what this is like as a film (not least because it seems to be trying to portray the film as something Adam Sandler might make). Perhaps the best comparison is Shane Black's "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" starring Robert Downey Jnr. Things go a bit crazy, there's a lot of self-referential jokes and there's some funny characters with good chemistry. In that sense they have a very similar feel. I'd still say "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" was the better of the two films due to its more impressive payoff, but "Seven Psychopaths" is certainly good enough to deserve the comparison.
"Seven Psychopaths" does not disappoint... unless you compare it to the director's previous offering and then you kind of wish he'd done a bit better.
A-
Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)
In a recent post I was announcing how excited I was about the movie "Safety Not Guaranteed" (whose creators are about to work on a remake of my childhood favourite "Flight Of The Navigator"). Apparently the central advertisement around which the movie is based was really posted in a newspaper. Sure the person who posted it was lying. They did not have a time travel and so they were not really seeking companions for a trip back or forward in time. Still, the advert produced some really interesting responses, sometimes from ex-cons who wished they could tell themselves how not to get caught or to take other options in life, sometimes from those who'd lost loved ones and wanted to get another chance to talk to them or possibly save them, and in other cases the respondents were selling specific skills which they believed would be helpful during a trip through time. It seemed like there was no end to the scope for this film.
Far from considering this a spoiler, I think it is my duty as a reviewer to let you know that there is not much actual time travel in this film. In that sense it's rather like "Another Earth" where the second Earth is mostly just in the background and there's not really any interaction with this doppelganger of our planet until the very end of the movie. The difference is that "Safety Not Guaranteed" has very little to say that is even related to time travel. This isn't really a film about time travel at all.
In fact "Safety Not Guaranteed" is an indie rom-com. It has a central couple, some quirky characters getting in touch with their feelings, and a scene towards the end where a character plays a song that they wrote themselves (and which we, in the audience, are supposed to take seriously). Within the movie the only people we see responding to the ad around which the film is based are a journalist and his two interns who are seeking to write a quirky story for their magazine about the guy who posted it. These include the established journalist who mainly sees the trip to pursue the story as a holiday and an opportunity to sleep with an old sweetheart from high school while he's there. One of the interns is a fairly generic 'nerd' character who looks like he might have something more interesting about him when he's explaining the stickers of flames on the sides of his laptop. "It's gaming laptop. It's fast. Whoosh." is his explanation. But for the rest of the film he's mainly just there to look awkward, not to be a character in his own right. And finally the second intern and main protagonist is played by Aubrey Plaza.
Aubrey Plaza is the only face I recognised here. She played an acquaintance of Scott Pilgrim who always looks infuriated by Scott and at one point says instantly-censored abuse at him. Here she is playing a introspective character who has decided that life is pointless and worthless ever since her mother died. It eventually becomes her task to get some information about the figure of "Kenneth" who posted the ad (played by Mark Duplass, who I know nothing about). Possibly the best scene in the movie is where the two of them meet for the first time, Kenneth asks Aubrey Plaza's character a set of questions to check whether he can trust her and she gives some clever responses. It's about the nearest the two come to having any onscreen chemistry yet, as it turns out, we are actually supposed to think of these two as having a budding relationship. Still, in a scene where a phone number written on a tin of tomatoes makes a real impact on me in the audience, I have to give the film credit for that. (Anyone whose seen the film is going "hey I remember that!" and anyone who hasn't it going "er... wut?" right?) But sadly none of these two central characters exchanges really have much of an impact from that point on, which is sad since their exchanges are focal point for the film.
To be quite frank, Kenneth need not have been claiming to have a time machine. He could just as easily have believed in aliens, ghosts or some random cult. He's an odd figure who is pilfering random bits of gadgetry to construct something in his shed and meanwhile is convinced that the government are on to his plans. He is constantly training to deal with some unknown threat. Yet somehow Kenneth is never quite bonkers enough to be an interesting character. What's more, the song he eventually sings to Aubrey has absolutely nothing to do with the fillm, yet we have to sit through the entire thing because "it's so beautiful" (no, it isn't).
So what we have here is a time travel movie with no time travel. A rom-com with little romantic chemistry and very little in the way of jokes. A side-plot about a misogynist jerk who never quite understands that he's a misogynist jerk and a sort of coming-of-age tale about a young nerd where we never get to see whether he actually comes-of-age. We also have a central premise which was overflowing with potential and little effort is made to take advantage of that. I'll admit, a few bits made me chuckle, but not enough to justify a full feature film.
I was expecting a fun sci-fi comedy. What I got was a by-the-numbers indie rom-com. This looks like it's getting added to me list of horrendous "dramadies" where you are supposed to ignore that there was very little in the way of either comedy or drama, because the film is supposed to be some kind of ultra-bland melding of the two. (Other films in this genre include "Win Win" and "World's Greatest Dad".) I was all set to love this movie and I could find nothing to justify it. My score for this review has just sunk lower and lower the more I think about it. The film is inoffensive, but overall it's just boring.
D-