Sex, Leins & Videotape #162. Tom Leins reviews Mud, Olympus Has Fallen and Rebellion.
Southern-fried drama, hostages in the Pacific and the White House under attack -this week’s DVDs under review.
Set on the banks of the Mississippi, Mud (eOne) tells the story of youngsters Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) who spend their idle summer days exploring the murky secrets of the river, when they find a boat improbably nestled in a tree. Before they can make plans to drag the boat down and use it for themselves, they realise that someone is actually living in it, namely the enigmatic Mud (Matthew McConaughey, The Lincoln Lawyer), a charismatic petty criminal. An unlikely friendship develops between the trio, and Mud promises to let the boys have the boys have his gun if they help him fix up the vessel and help him to reunite with his old flame Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). However, by offering their help, the boys find themselves embroiled in a violent dispute between their new friend and a posse of shotgun-toting bounty hunters out to enact vengeance on Mud
Director Jeff Nichols has carved an impressive reputation for himself with southern-fried dramas Shotgun Stories (2007) and Take Shelter (2011), and Mud is arguably his crowning achievement to date. Buoyed by the latest in a series of impressive performance from rom-com mainstay turned Hollywood heavyweight McConaughey (Killer Joe, The Paperboy), Mud is enthralling throughout, and the sticky, unsettling mood is palpable. What starts off like a contemporary riff on Stand By Me quickly develops into something far more sinister, and Nichols draws stellar performances from the newcomers and veterans -including Sam Shepard and Michael Shannon -alike. It may be starrier than the director’s grubbier earlier work, but Mud proves that Nichols has lost none of his charm as he edges towards the mainstream.
Hullo...
Thank you for reading. We could do with your help to keep going. All our content is free... But if you can, you can support us to continue bringing you this coverage, these articles, interviews and reviews. This connection with real indie filmmakers.
It's here we encourage you to get out, watch indie films, support crowdfunders, go to your local venue.
And if you can, Pay What You Can to keep all this going. From £1 a week - £4 a month - a fiver, or whatever you can spare. Much appreciated.
Olympus Has Fallen (Lionsgate) tells the story of special forces hard-man turned Secret Service bodyguard Mike Banning (Gerard Butler, 300), who is bumped back down to a desk-job after the President’s wife is involved in a tragic accident. However, the shell-shocked Banning is presented with the perfect opportunity to redeem himself when a group of bloodthirsty North Korean terrorists stage a devastating attack on the White House, wiping out the entire Secret Service detail in the process and taking President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart, The Dark Knight) hostage. Aided by acting President Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman, Se7en) on the outside, Banning infiltrates the White House and sets about wiping out the terrorists one by one and saving the President’s life.
Director Antoine Fuqua is arguably best known for 2001’s electric Training Day, but his career has subsequently been defined by more formulaic fare such as Shooter and Brooklyn’s Finest. Olympus Has Fallen sees him explore the similarly tried-and-tested Die Hard-esque lone wolf action movie, to surprisingly enjoyable effect. With a solid no-nonsense turn from Gerard Butler, and a suitably dead-eyed villain in the form of Rick Yune (Die Another Day), Olympus Has Fallen is a solid, explosive thriller that seemingly cherry-picks scenes from the last 25 years of action filmmaking and blends them into a violently entertaining cocktail.
The fact that the movie’s theatrical release coincided with North Korea’s real-life nuclear threats gave the movie an uncomfortable prescience, but in truth the movie treads a thin line between unhinged carnage and knowing ludicrousness. If nothing else, it keeps Butler away from making listless rom-coms. After all, wouldn’t you rather see him snapping terrorists’ necks than flirting meaninglessly with Jennifer Aniston?!
Written by, directed by and starring Mathieu Kassovitz (La Haine), Rebellion (Lionsgate) traces the events surrounding the real-life abduction of 30 gendarmes by local Kanak separatist rebels in France’s South Pacific territory of New Caledonia in 1988. Sent to accelerate the release of the hostages, negotiator Captain Philippe Legorjus (Kassovitz) soon finds himself torn between the demands of eloquent Kanak leader Alphonse Dianou (Iabe Lapacas) and the behind-the-scenes machinations of his paymasters back in France. With an election looming, the government officials are eager to show their decisiveness by resorting to military action, but Legorjus maintains that a peaceful outcome is still plausible.
After back-to-back Hollywood flops in the shape of Gothika (2003) and Babylon AD (2008) Mathieu Kassovitz returns to French-language territory with this compelling but seriously uneven recreation of a notorious episode in France’s territorial history. Blending indignant conversational exchanges with violent outbursts and disarmingly dreamy interludes, Kassovitz seems unsure of the best way of hooking viewers into a story that he is undoubtedly passionate about telling. The end-result is a movie that is overlong and occasionally overblown, and at times wearyingly repetitive. It may lack the incendiary immediacy of La Haine, but Rebellion is a visually striking film that just about reaffirms Kassovitz’s at-times shaky reputation. Awkward stuff.
- Interview: Billy O’Brien and William Todd-Jones - March 2, 2017
- The Childhood of a Leader: the birth of a terrifying ego - February 10, 2017
- Hold your breath: Don’t Breathe, and more reviews - January 26, 2017
Discover more from D&CFilm
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
