FILM REVIEW: THE RAID 2

A scene from The Raid 2. 

Spray cans of whoop ass

By John Esther

Three years after the 2011 film, The Raid: Redemption, writer-director Gareth Evans returns with the highly anticipated, vehemently violent sequel, The Raid 2. 

Essentially commencing where The Raid: Redemption finished, the sequel finds the protagonist, Rama (Iko Uwais) going undercover to infiltrate a crime syndicate and bring everybody down, especially the crooked cops at the top. 

As Rama falls deeper and deeper into his undercover role, he begins to lose his senses of what is right and wrong, incrementally becoming more punitive toward his aggressors. Of course, in a society where cops and government officials are as crooked as the gangsters, who can tell what is right and wrong? The only thing to know for sure is how to survive and fight another day.

As gratuitously violent as any insane person would want it to be, The Raid 2 makes the balletic violence in 300: Rise of an Empire and the ejaculatory explosions in Need for Speed look like bloody adolescent-minded masturbation (even more so than before). Here in The Raid 2, faces are bludgeoned, legs are snapped, heads are smashed, arms are amputated, etc., via baseball bats to the head, hammers to the throat, knives to the chest, etc. There is also a lot of death-by-furniture. Only the insecure need a gun to fight here in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

For a while the martial arts choreography make the violence somewhat entertaining, or thrilling at least. Perhaps it is psychologically appealing? There is something deeply existential about seeing Rama trapped in a situation, facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles and then watch him think, or respond, using his mental and physical skills, his way out of the situation. Who does not wish he or she could master the environment like Rama?

However, after a while, the violence becomes a means unto itself in this 150-minute film. Each fight becomes prolonged and belligerent, thrusting the earlier thrills of the film into plotting mechanics as Rama must work his way through a game of death until all evildoers are vanquished. Ultimately, the martial artistic choreography becomes bloodthirsty pornography. 

DVD REVIEW: BEDWAYS

 Hans (Matthias Faust) and Marie (Lana Cooper) in Bedways.

Here we come

By Don Simpson

In a dilapidated and sparsely furnished Berlin apartment, an aspiring director named Nina (Miriam Mayet) and her two thespians -- Marie (Lana Cooper) and Hans (Matthias Faust) -- screen test for a yet-to-be-scripted film. The video project is is based upon a simple premise: Nina intends to capture authentic feelings, authentic love and authentic sex.

Nina attempts to maintain full directorial control by maniacally manipulating her actors as if they are puppets and she is pulling their strings. The borders between fiction and reality are promptly blurred as Marie and Hans try to decipher what their director really wants from them. According to Nina, Marie and Hans should not play themselves or anyone else -- but what does that mean?

The sexual histories between Nina and both of her subjects further complicates the on- and off-camera scenario. The project quickly evolves into a warped seduction in which Nina pushes everyone’s emotions, including her own, to the limit. Nina, Marie and Hans experience a titillating tilt-a-whirl of emotions and desires, a disorienting ride that thrives off of jealousy, grief and anger.

Can cinematic authenticity be faked? Do Marie and Hans really need to fall in love with each other in order for Nina’s film to succeed? Can two people fall in love in front of the unblinking kino eye and an authoritative voyeur?

Nina is not the only voyeur in the equation as German filmmaker RP Kahl often positions the camera statically at distance in order to form a voyeuristic perspective for the audience. The camera does occasionally venture in for a closer view of the sexual encounters as if to verify for the audience that the penetration is authentic -- like Nina, his onscreen avatar, Kahl is incredibly fascinated by cinematic realism.

By utilizing the film-within-a-film narrative format, Kahl creates a world in which it is practically impossible to decipher when the actors are acting for Nina and when we are witnessing the actors’ reality. In doing so, Kahl discusses how cinema blurs the identities of its actors and contemplates the relationship between their on- and off-screen persona.

Bedways is an experimental chamber piece that concentrates on three actors encased for the most part in one location. This incredibly intimate narrative technique is cleverly juxtaposed with the mental and spacial distancing of intimacy and sex. One of the more telling scenes -- that purposefully bookends Bedways -- is when we witness Hans and Nina masturbating in separate rooms while observing each other via monitors; eventually they reach their limits of torture, the separation becomes too much, and Nina commands for Hans to come to her.

A worthy attempt to merge the worlds of art house and erotic cinema (a la Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience; Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs; Atom Egoyan’s Exotica and Chloe; the films of Joe Swanberg; etc.), Bedways aptly blurs the definition of erotic cinema by giving us a well-crafted and incredibly dramatic film with some penetrating sex thrown in.

FILM REVIEW: ELEKTRA LUXX

 Holly (Adrianne Palicki) in Elektra Luxx.

Pornetic license

By Don Simpson

Porn blogger extraordinaire Burt Rodriguez (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets us all up to date the au naturale blond bombshell, Elektra Luxx (Carla Gugino channeling Brigitte Bardot), and her recent retirement from a legendary career as an A-list porn star. Elektra is pregnant with her now-deceased rock star boyfriend’s child triggering an existential crisis: What does a retired porn star do? What kind of mother will she be? What will her child think of her?

Cora (Marley Shelton), a flight attendant, confesses to Elektra that Nick died while riding the friendly skies (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?) in an airplane restroom with her. As a condolence, Cora provides Elektra with a stolen stash of Nick's newest songs -- all of which are about Elektra -- with the caveat that Elektra utilize her voluptuously feminine wiles to seduce Cora's husband, whom Cora feels incredibly guilty about cheating on. (It is the age old theory that if her hubby cheats on her, then they will be on an even playing field forever more.)

Elektra reluctantly agrees (for one, she is a porn star not a prostitute), but in a case of mistaken identity she seduces Dellwood (Timothy Olyphant), a hunky private investigator  instead. Oopsies! And that one itsy bistsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini of a mistake snowballs into an out of control avalanche. These are the mad cap forays that daytime soap operas are made!

There are multiple subplots and sidebars, including one about up-and-coming porn star, Holly Rocket (Adrianne Palicki). Poor Holly is not the “sharpest tool in the shed” and her feeble little brain is wrestling with the question of whether or not she should reveal that she has sexy dreams about her best friend, Bambi (Emmanuelle Chriqui), with whom she is on vacation in Mexico. Neither Holly nor Bambi are lesbians -- they both enjoy the occasional nip of a Dickens' cider -- but Holly definitely craves more intimacy from her best friend.

One of the many moralistic morsels to be found within Gutierrez’s complex narrative is, to quote Burt Rodriguez: “Porn stars are people, too.” Another is that human sexuality involves a whole lot more gray areas than black and white; the line between hetero and homo is as blurred as the definition of love itself.

The structure of Gutierrez’s story closely resembles that of soap operas, with a constant bouncing back and forth between seemingly unrelated tales and a few dream sequences tossed in for good measure. With Elektra Luxx, Gutierrez chooses to focus mostly on Elektra and Burt, but allows plenty of precious screen time for presumably concurrent subplots involving Holly, Cora, Dellwood, Elektra’s neighbor, Jimmy (Vincent Kartheiser), as well as Burt’s sister, Olive (Amy Rosof), and love interest, Trixie (Malin Ackerman). Some critics have criticized Gutierrez’s ADHD approach to filmmaking, but it does allow him to flash his true cojones: his keen knack for crafting intriguing, beguiling and profound female characters. (Julianne Moore’s all too brief cameo is truly inspired by genius.) To quote one of my favorite Robyn Hitchcock songs -- one that also happens to be cleverly showcased in an Elektra Luxx dream sequence: “All I wanna do is fall in love” with each and every one of Gutierrez’s ladies. Gutierrez apparently loves and respects his female characters, avoiding any gratuitous nudity (he shows more male nudity than female) -- a strategy that plays in brilliant opposition to the porn industry.

The icing on the proverbially verbose cake is Gutierrez’s playful use of witty and humorous dialogue. There is no pretension of realism here, as each sentence is precisely manicured and coiffed (just like the characters) for the utmost comedic effect. Sure the scenes seem overtly staged but that is precisely the point. Have you ever listened to the dialogue of a porn flick or a soap opera?

Elektra Luxx is the second installment in director Sebastian Gutierrez’s trilogy, picking up one month after the first film, Women in Trouble, ended. You do not need to see Women in Trouble in order to follow Elektra Luxx yet I strongly recommend watching Women in Trouble nonetheless.

TRUE/FALSE FILM FEST 2011: ARMADILLO

A scene from Armadillo.

A rotten state of war

By Don Simpson

Armadillo begins in January 2009 as a group of young Danish soldiers make their final preparations -- including doing what young soldiers do best: get drunk and party with strippers -- for a six-month stint in Afghanistan. The troops say their goodbyes to their families and head to the Armadillo military base -- where approximately 270 Danish and British soldiers are stationed under NATO and ISAF command -- in the Helmand province of Afghanistan.

Once we -- and I really do mean we, since Lars Skee’s cinematography throws us right into the middle of the action -- arrive at Armadillo, we tag along with the Danes through the thick and thin, exciting and mundane, violent and peaceful. We spend a decent amount of leisure time with the soldiers, gaining a very important perspective of how they wind down after their patrols. They maintain their weapons, exercise, phone home, drink beer, play video games and watch porn. A majority of their patrols even seem uneventful, if not incredibly tedious, but the soldiers must always remain prepared for when the shit really hits the fan -- such as when a Danish commander becomes a victim of a roadside bomb (he recovers and soon rejoins his cohorts at Armadillo).

A group of soldiers who have opted to volunteer (yes, volunteer) for a risky night patrol find themselves -- and the cameras -- pinned down by Taliban gunfire. One of the Danes tosses a hand grenade into a ditch infested with Taliban fighters. Two soldiers follow-up to ensure that the Taliban fighters are finished off by peppering the severely injured enemy with a deadly barrage of automatic gunfire.

The patrol returns to Armadillo, congratulating each other on the victorious battle. After a debriefing, during which time the soldiers are visibly still quite high on the adrenaline of war, it is explained that an unidentified soldier called home to discuss the episode with his parents, expressing concern that the soldiers laughed about the liquidation of the Taliban. The parents immediately contacted the Danish Command and Armadillo now faces the possibility of being reprimanded severely. (The release of Armadillo in Denmark has further inflamed this debate.) Nevertheless, two of the soldiers from the patrol are awarded medals of honor. The next thing we know, their six months are up and the soldiers return to Denmark.

Armadillo is a truly amazing and stunning film. Danish documentary filmmaker Janus Metz and his team became fully immersed in Afghanistan's Green Zone in order to follow this platoon of young Danes. The resulting film is not only proof that Metz and his production team risked their lives in order to bring these images to multiplexes around the world, but Armadillo is also a staggering technological achievement -- albeit a questionable one -- in the world of documentary filmmaking.

I can only go so long without addressing the elephant in the war room: the legitimacy of the images. (Need I remind you that this is True/False.) Do not get me wrong, I have absolutely no doubts that the battle scenes are one hundred percent authentic and I cannot stress enough that Skee’s capturing of the war footage is breathtaking. The characters are real and I suspect that most, if not all, of the dialogue is natural and unscripted as well.

I just have a sneaky suspicion that most of the non-battle scenes are constructed and orchestrated by Metz -- mainly because the scenes seem too perfectly staged. One of the more gratuitous examples: the closing shower scene. Armadillo is structured, photographed and directed much more like a fiction film (think: The Battle of Algiers meets Apocalypse Now) than a documentary. It is a gritty neo-realist war drama, except no one (as far as we know) is acting.

Reality is not the only thing that is blurred in Armadillo, politics are too. In fact, the political message of Armadillo is left quite ambiguous. Metz teeters a very fine line, intertwining footage showing the senseless atrocities of war while never disrespecting the Danish soldiers or the legitimacy of the war itself. Armadillo is by no means a critique. Instead it is Metz’s attempt to humanise the combatants on both sides of the nontraditional battlefield.