Movie Review: Pacific Rim

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Movie Review: Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim
Directed by: Guillermo del Toro.
Written by: Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro.
Starring: Charlie Hunnam (Raleigh Becket), Idris Elba (Stacker Pentecost), Rinko Kikuchi (Mako Mori), Charlie Day (Dr. Newton Geiszler), Burn Gorman (Gottlieb), Max Martini (Herc Hansen), Robert Kazinsky (Chuck Hansen), Clifton Collins Jr. (Ops Tendo Choi), Ron Perlman (Hannibal Chau), Diego Klattenhoff (Yancy Becket).

On the surface, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim seems like any other summer blockbuster – full of explosions, special effects and pointless 3-D. And if that’s all you want from Pacific Rim it delivers the goods. The film was marketed almost as Transformers vs. Godzilla – and no one who walks into the theater expecting that will go away disappointed. The fight sequences between the giant robots – known as Jaegers and the reptilian or fish like monsters – known as Kaijis – are great. Unlike Michael Bay, del Toro doesn’t get lost in rapid fire editing, and movement for movement sake – you can always tell where everything is in relation to each other, as del Toro is a master of special relations in this film – something that seemingly few directors today are. But del Toro’s film is a little bit more than a typical blockbuster – at least this summer’s blockbusters. There is a human story that he never loses site of. And there are moments that truly tap into the audiences fear. While the film is effective at being a big, dumb action movie, it’s a little deeper than it first appears. It’s still not a great film – but in a summer that has largely left me wanting more from the blockbusters, it’s as good as we’re likely to get.

The plot is really quite simple. It’s 2020 and 7 years ago (or in 2013 – watch out!) a transport between dimensions was discovered deep in the Pacific ocean. Nothing humans have can enter this “rip”, and they cannot destroy it. But the Kaiji can get through – and they do, laying waste to coastal cities along the Pacific ocean. With humanity on the brink of collapse, countries put aside their differences and started the Jaeger program – essentially huge robots, that are piloted by two men, who are mentally connected with each other – and the robot. This was successful for years – but the Kaiji keep getting bigger, and the Jaeger’s are no longer enough to stop them. So politicians, as they always do, decide to abandon the Jaeger program and instead build huge walls (not coincidentally, del Toro is originally from Mexico – although surprisingly, he doesn’t really use these huge walls as a political point). The head of the Jaeger program, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) doesn’t like being shut down – and he has a plan to once and for all end the war. But most of the Jaeger pilots have been killed, and he only has a few robots left. So he calls on Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), who was once a Jaeger pilot, but was connected to his brother as he was killed by a Kaiji, and left the program, for one last go. He needs a new co-pilot however – and wouldn’t the adorable and brilliant Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), haunted by her own traumatic memories, be perfect. There are only three other teams left – one from China, one from Russia, and one from Australia, and together, they are going to shut down the portal. How? Two bickering geniuses Geiszler (Charlie Day) and Gottlieb (Burn Gorman) seem to have the answer.

I’m not going to try and argue that the movie is at all original – my anime obsessed wife was so incensed by the preview she texted me that they were just ripping off the old series Evangelion (she has a point), and of course del Toro borrows liberally from old monster movies – mainly out of Japan like Godzilla and his ilk. Giant monsters have been a staple of science fiction movies for decades now – although you don’t see them much anymore. But del Toro, a movie geek at heart, wanted to bring them back – bigger and better than ever before. And he does that.

Pacific Rim is large scale Hollywood filmmaking at its finest. The movie has all the action anyone could ever want – and it’s handled with skill – and the special effects are probably the best I have seen in a movie so far this year. I’m on record as not being a fan of 3-D (I avoid it when I can, which I couldn’t this time) – but I will say that while I didn’t see much of a point to the 3-D here – it didn’t really enhance anything, except in a few, quiet moments – it doesn’t really detract from the movie either. And with 3-D, that’s pretty much the best we can expect.

The movie snuck up on me though, to the point where I didn’t really realized how involved I was – how much I cared about the characters – until fairly late in the movie. True, Hunnam’s Becket is a kind of one-dimensional hero with a tortured past – but he plays it well. Day provides quite a bit of comic relief in his role – especially when paired with Ron Perelman who has a great moment that will remind some of Deep Blue Sea. Most of the rest of the cast does what is required of them, and little more. The two standouts however and Kikuchi and Elba. Kikuchi, who was marvelous in her Oscar nominated performance in Babel, and the best thing about The Brothers Bloom, creates a real character out of Mako – who could have easily just been the token cute girl they throw into the movie. Here backstory – told in the film’s best sequence, which is probably the best sequence in any blockbuster this year – truly is terrifying, even if you can see it coming before it gets there. More surprising however is Elba – who for much of the movie seems like a square jawed, one dimensional military man who screams a lot. But there is a real person underneath that, which Elba nails.

I’m not going to try and say that Pacific Rim is some sort of masterpiece – it isn’t. Like many blockbusters, it is hampered by studio demands, who get a large say in what goes into the movie they are spending a few hundred million making. But del Toro plays the game better than most – delivering a movie that the studio wants, while also making something that fits into his filmography. Del Toro is at his best in smaller scale movies – like The Devil’s Backbone or Pan’s Labyrinth – but when he steps in and makes a big budget, Hollywood film – like Blade II or the original Hellboy – he makes something wholly his own. Pacific Rim comes close to that as well. The film is fun and entertaining – big budget filmmaking on a grand scale – both in terms of its action and special effects, and the emotions of the movie. Out of all the big blockbusters so far this year, Pacific Rim may just be the best.

Movie Review: The Hunt

Movie Review: The Hunt

The Hunt
Directed by: Thomas Vinterberg.
Written by: Tobias Lindholm & Thomas Vinterberg.
Starring: Mads Mikkelsen (Lucas), Thomas Bo Larsen (Theo), Annika Wedderkopp (Klara), Lasse Fogelstrøm (Marcus), Susse Wold (Grethe), Anne Louise Hassing (Agnes), Lars Ranthe (Bruun), Alexandra Rapaport (Nadja), Ole Dupont (Godsejer / Advokat).

I highly doubt when Thomas Vinterberg made his breakthrough film, The Celebration (1998) that he realized what an impact the film would have. The Celebration is undeniably one of the most important films of the 1990s – if for no other reason, it pretty much started the digital age. Pretty soon, American indie filmmakers were copying what this Danish director had done, loving the freedom that digital cameras afforded them, even if the look was grimier than they wanted. And then George Lucas got involved, and everything changed. If it hadn’t have been Vinterberg, it would have been someone else, but back in 1998, The Celebration felt like the introduction to one of the future greats of European Art House filmmaking. But Vinterberg was never really able to follow it up with another film that felt so fresh and original as The Celebration.

While his latest film, The Hunt, is still not as good as The Celebration was, it is his best film since then. The film even shares some similarities with The Celebration – as both are about child abuse, and corruption in Danish society (although both, it seems to me, are fairly universal). The Hunt isn’t as daringly original as The Celebration. But it is Vinterberg’s most accomplished, confident film since he made his breakthrough.

The Hunt stars Mads Mikkelsen as Lucas, who was once a high school teacher in his small town, until that school closed. With nowhere else to go, he becomes one of the people working in a kindergarten class. He loves the kids – and the kids love him. One girl in particular, Klara (Annika Wedderkopp), the daughter of his friend Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen) takes a shine to him. Klara is a shy girl, with an active imagination, who often wanders away from home and becomes lost – she is so transfixed making sure she doesn’t step on any of the lines on the sidewalk, that she doesn’t watch where she’s going. Lucas often comes across her, and walks her home – and sometimes, when her parents are fighting, walks her to school. But Klara reads something more into her friendship with Lucas – and when she gives him a heart she makes in art, he tells her that she should give it to one of the boys in class. And when she kisses him on the lips, he tells her that’s only for mommy’s and daddy’s. In short, Lucas does nothing wrong – and lets Klara down gently. But for Klara, this stings. Using language she has learned from her teenage brother, she tells the kindergarten teacher about Lucas’ “stiff rod”. And from there, as you can imagine, things spiral out of control. Pretty soon the police are called, and many other kids are telling the same story Klara is. And Lucas becomes a social pariah. Even when Klara tries to tell people she just said some “silly” things, no one cares to listen.

The Hunt is not a perfect film. For one thing, I would have preferred a little more complexity to it – like, for instance, not knowing if Lucas was innocent right from the start. It’s too easy to make Lucas a martyr when we all know he has done nothing wrong. For another, Vinterberg piles on the wrongs done to Lucas a little too heavily – a physical confrontation in a grocery store for instance just rings false. And Vinterberg would have been better served by ending his movie a few scenes earlier than he does – the looks on the faces of those around Lucas would have been a better ending point than the overt action that eventually does bring the movie to a close.

But even when The Hunt takes things a little too far, it is constantly grounded by the great performance by Mikkselsen. Mikkelsen, still best known in North America as the Bond villain who cries blood in Casino Royale, has been an excellent actor for years – and here he gets one of his best roles. He plays a man who knows he is innocent – and tries to maintain his dignity, even as he is being dragged through the mud. But gradually, he starts to unravel , to come unglued and start breaking down. He is an innocent man wrongly accused – Hitchcock’s favorite story – except this time, it doesn’t matter if he proves his innocence or not. Everyone will always think him guilty. He grounds the movie in a believable reality, even when Vinterberg lays things on too thick.

The Hunt shows that Vinterberg is comfortable with a more conventional narrative than The Celebration – or really with many of his subsequent films. It shows him as a confident filmmaker working in a classically structured narrative. Now it’s time for Vinterberg to push himself farther. It’s not too late for him to live up to the promise of The Celebration.

Movie Review: The East

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Movie Review: The East

The East
Directed by: Zal Batmanglij.
Written by: Zal Batmanglij & Brit Marling.
Starring: Brit Marling (Sarah), Alexander Skarsgård (Benji), Ellen Page (Izzy), Toby Kebbell (Doc), Shiloh Fernandez (Luca), Aldis Hodge (Thumbs), Danielle Macdonald (Tess), Hillary Baack (Eve), Patricia Clarkson (Sharon), Jason Ritter (Tim), Julia Ormond (Paige Williams), Billy Magnussen (Porty McCabe), Wilbur Fitzgerald (Robert McCabe), John Neisler (Rory Huston), Jamey Sheridan (Richard Cannon), Pamela Roylance (Diane Wisecarver).

Zal Batmanhlij and Brit Marling teamed up just last year to make the solid indie cult-drama Sound of My Voice – and the reteam again this year for The East. You could argue that both films are about cults, but the word doesn’t quite fit in The East – which is about an eco-terrorist group – although it certainly has some cult-like tendencies. Sound of My Voice showed its lack of budget – it was rough around the edges, and didn’t quite figure a satisfying way to end its story. The East obviously has a bigger budget – there are more recognizable actors in it, and it has a slicker look and feel to it. It also not quite as good as Sound of My Voice – and shares one of the former film’s key problems – the lack of a satisfying ending.

The movie stars Marling as Sarah – a former FBI agent who has left to work in the much more lucrative private sector. Her job entails being an undercover investigator working for a big firm on behalf of other big firms, to protect them from corporate espionage and other threats. One of the biggest threats right now is an eco-terrorist cell known as The East. It’s Sarah’s job to infiltrate the secretive group – which has done such a good job of being secretive, no one knows whether they actually exist or not. It doesn’t take Sarah all that long to track them down (because, I guess otherwise, you wouldn’t really have a movie). At first, she thinks they’re all just hippie lunatics – and strongly disagrees with their sometimes violent methods – but slowly, she comes to see their point of view. It doesn’t hurt that their leader is Benji, and is played by Alexander Skasgard.

The East is anchored on good performances by Marling – who is quietly building up an impressive resume in little seen films and Ellen Page, who plays Izzy, one of The East’s most enthusiastic believers – who at first, of course, hates Sarah. Also excellent in Patricia Clarkson as Sarah’s cut throat boss – who may be your stereotypical corporate monster, but Clarkson plays it well. I’m still not sure if Skarsgard was good or not in the movie – that may sound strange, but it’s true. He has an oddly vacant look about him in the movie – and he starts out looking like a stereotypical Charles Manson clone with the long hair and beard, but quickly changes into something more presentable. I cannot tell if he’s supposed to be some sort of soft spoken genius, or someone with mental problems. All that makes it an odd performance – but perhaps that was the effect they were shooting for.

The East is interesting without ever really becoming involving. The story proceeds down the path you think it will, and never really deviates from it. I did like the ambiguous way the movie sees the group at its core however – it clearly sympathizes with them (and the evil the corporations do in the film is all too plausible), but that doesn’t really make what they do any better. I wish that the movie had seen the corporations themselves with the same sort of ambiguity, instead of painting them as evil monsters. And I wish the filmmakers had a gutsier ending – the way they end The East makes it seems like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too.

In short, I admired the intent of The East more than I admired the actual execution of the film. It is by no means a bad film – it’s good in many ways, and at least keeps Batmanglij and his ongoing collaboration with Marling one to watch. But after Sound of My Voice, I expected a step forward for te duo – and I don’t really think The East is.

Movie Review: Dead Man's Burden

Movie Review: Dead Man's Burden

Dead Man`s Burden
Directed by: Jared Moshe.
Written by: Jared Moshe.
Starring: Barlow Jacobs (Wade McCurry), Clare Bowen (Martha Kirkland), David Call (Heck Kirkland), Joseph Lyle Taylor (E.J. Lane), Richard Riehle (Three Penny Hank), Jerry Clarke (Sheriff Deacon), Adam O'Byrne (Archie Ainsworth), Travis Hammer (Ben Ainsworth), Luce Rains (Joe McCurry), William Sterchi (WC Claymore).

Jared Moshe’s Western Dead Man’s Burden has a killer opening and an even better ending. Those are often the two areas where movies screw up the most – either by lulling you to sleep with too much exposition at the beginning, or tacking on an unsatisfying conclusion at the end. But Moshe nails both. The problem with Dead Man’s Burden in the middle hour of this 90 minute movie – that’s a dead zone that pretty much sinks the entire movie.

The movie stars Wade McCurry as Barlow Jacobs, who left his Southern home years before during the Civil War, and was disowned by his father (the movie thinks the reason behind this disowning is some sort of big secret – but you’ll probably guess it, like I did, inside of a minute). He fought in the War, became a Deputy after it, but has received a letter from his dying father telling him to come home. His father is dead by the time he gets there – as are his two brothers – killed during the war. The only surviving family member is Martha (Clare Bowen), who along with her conniving husband Heck (David Call) wants to sell the land to a mining company – representing by E.J. Lane (Joseph Lyle Taylor). The old man would never sell, but Martha and Heck want to make a new life for themselves in San Francisco – and if Wade doesn’t screw it up, they just may do that.

Dead Man’s Burden is a low budget movie – a very low budget movie actually, and you can see that in certain respects. I don’t think I can recall seeing any of the actors – except Richard Riehle – in a movie before (although I probably have). Jacobs in particular isn’t quite up to the task of playing Wade. Wade is the strong, silent type – a staple in the Western genre – but Jacobs doesn’t have much screen presence here. Bowen has plenty of spunk as Martha – but never really hits any shades of grey – and she’s laying the accent on a little too thick. In short, the actors, at times, seem more like kids playing dress-up than delivering realistic performances.

And that is a shame, because much of the movie is quite good. The low budget production design works very well – they film feels authentic, at least in the setting. And then there is the beginning and the end of the movie, which are both great. Of course, both involving gun fights – but not the typical ballet of bullets, galloping horses, etc. you remember from many Westerns. They gunfights are short, sweet, brutal and bloody – and they pack a wallop. After the opening scenes, I couldn’t wait to find out where the movie was going – and then I sat there fairly bored until the closing 15 minutes or so – which is also great.

The problem is the middle. It drags – on and on – without much to hang onto. I’ve already complained about the performances, but even they may not have killed the movie had the story been better. But it isn’t – Moshe, who also wrote the screenplay, doesn’t try to do anything new with the genre. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, except here, it does make for a deadly dull sit – especially since the “dark secrets” the movie promises are easy to guess from the outset. We spend most of the movie waiting for the characters to catch up to us.

It’s a shame that people don’t make more Westerns these days. The genre is still solid and dependable – even if we get more fun entertainments like 3:10 to Yuma or Appaloosa and fewer masterworks like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. So I admire Moshe for trying to make a traditional Western – I just wish he made a better one.

Movie Review: The Call

Movie Review: The Call

The Call
Directed by: Brad Anderson.
Written by: Richard D'Ovidio.
Starring: Halle Berry (Jordan Turner), Abigail Breslin (Casey Welson), Morris Chestnut (Officer Paul Phillips), Michael Eklund (Michael Foster), David Otunga (Officer Jake Devans), Michael Imperioli (Alan Denado), Justina Machado (Rachel), José Zúñiga (Marco), Roma Maffia (Maddy), Evie Thompson (Leah Templeton).

I’ve had my eye on Brad Anderson since his 2001 film Session 9. What looked like it may be a lame Blair Witch knock-off actually turned out to be one of the scariest movies I saw last decade. Since then, he’s made one good films – The Machinist in 2004 with a remarkable performance by Christian Bale, one mediocre film – the train murder mystery Transiberian in 2008 and one bad film – Vanishing on 7^thStreet in 2010 – and a lot of TV work. He has never quite fulfilled the promise he showed on Session 9 – and never really had a film that broke through in any way with mainstream audiences. With The Call from earlier this year, he at least did the later.

The Call is actually quite a good movie little thriller for about an hour. It stars Halle Berry as a 911 operator who screwed up and got a young girl killed as a result. Six months later, she now just the trainer for new operators than one herself – she doesn’t trust herself not to screw up. But then something happens, and she’s forced onto the call with Casey (Abigail Breslin) – a teenage girl who has been kidnapped and put in the trunk of a car. But this couldn’t possibly be the same killer, right?

For the first hour of the movie, The Call works remarkably well – better than it really has any right to. It has not one but two confined spaces – the 911 operators’ room with Berry, and the trunk of the car with Breslin. Anderson does his best to generate tension in what amounts to little more than an hour of talking to each other – and does a very good job of it. The first hour of The Call may not be overly original – but it is creepily effective.

And then the movie goes and blows it all in the final 30 minutes – becoming yet another silly serial killer movie full of chases, improbable twists, and a killer who loses all mystery and basically becomes a pathetic loser right before our eyes. This sort of thing is done much better on TV each week in Criminal Minds or Hannibal or any number of other shows. The shows, at least, take their killers somewhat more seriously than The Call does.

None of that is really the fault of Anderson – he does an excellent job in the first hour making the movie far more tense than I thought it would be. And he gets two very good performances from Berry and especially Breslin. He does what he can with the final half hour, but he’s basically going through the motions much like the screenplay.

The Call isn’t a horrible movie, but it is one that likely won’t stay with you after the credits role. It’s a passable, but hardly memorable, little thriller.

Movie Review: White House Down

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Movie Review: White House Down

White House Down
Directed by: Roland Emmerich.
Written by: James Vanderbilt.
Starring: Channing Tatum (Cale), Jamie Foxx (President Sawyer), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Finnerty), Jason Clarke (Stenz), Richard Jenkins (Raphelson), Joey King (Emily), James Woods (Walker), Nicolas Wright (Donnie the Guide), Jimmi Simpson (Tyler), Michael Murphy (Vice President Hammond), Rachelle Lefevre (Melanie), Lance Reddick (General Caulfield), Matt Craven (Agent Kellerman), Jake Weber (Agent Hope), Peter Jacobson (Wallace), Barbara Williams (Muriel Walker), Kevin Rankin (Killick), Garcelle Beauvais (Alison Sawyer), Falk Hentschel (Motts), Romano Orzari (Mulcahy), Jackie Geary (Jenna), Andrew Simms (Roger Skinner).

There is a difference between an ordinary stupid movie and a gloriously stupid movie, and I cannot think of a better example to highlight the difference than comparing two 2013 films – Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. Olympus Has Fallen is an ordinary stupid movie – a group of terrorist take over the White House for their own nefarious purposes, and a lone Secret Service agent takes them out one at a time on route to rescuing the President. White House Down is a gloriously stupid movie with the same basic premise – the only difference being that the lone man is not a Secret Service agent yet, and he actually teams up with the President to take down the terrorists. Both movies essentially want to be Die Hard in the White House. But Olympus Has Fallen is just a regular stupid movie – a mildly diverting action movie that is okay while you’re watching it, and then completely forgotten. White House Down on the other hand is a gloriously stupid one. Director Roland Emmerich throws everything imaginable at the audience through the over two hours the movie runs, and while it’s impossible to take a moment of the movie seriously, I also found it impossible to resist. If you want to call White House Down a stupid movie, I won’t argue with you. But it’s gloriously stupid because it goes for broke at every moment. I left the theater grinning from ear to ear.

The basic setup is simple. John Cale (Channing Tatum) works on the security detail for the Speaker of the House (Richard Jenkins) – but his dream job is to be a Secret Service agent on the President’s protection detail. He is divorced, and has an 11 year old daughter Emily (Joey King), who is obsessed with politics, and idolizes President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx). So Cale pulls some string, gets an interview with the head of the President’s details – Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and brings Emily along so she can see the White House. The interview doesn’t go well, but the two of them join a tour, and things seems to be going well – that is until a group of terrorists coolly, calmly and efficiently take over the White House. They need the President – what for, you’ll have to wait to find out – and somehow Cale ends up saving the President, and the two of them hide in the White House while trying to find a way out – and taking out the terrorist’s one at a time. Oh, and Emily – who was separated from Cale, of course – gets herself into a lot of trouble with the terrorists, by not being the dumb kid they think she is.

As a director, Emmerich has no subtlety in him – he deals strictly in this type of huge, bombastic action movie. Even when he tried a more serious movie – with the Shakespeare was a fraud drama Anonymous – the result was a bloated mess of a movie. He has his share of those on his resume – Stargate, Godzilla and 10,000 BC chief among them. But when he hits it just right – like Independence Day and parts of The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 – the result can be a ridiculously good time at the movies. White House Down certainly fits the bill on that level.

The movie works so well for a few reasons. The first being Emmerich can direct action, and thankfully, he has not gone with the trendy hand held camera and rapid fire editing approach to the action sequences. The action sequences are clear and well shot – you’re never confused about what’s going on, unlike so many other action movies.

Perhaps the bigger reason why the film works though is the performances. Tatum and Foxx have a nice chemistry together – they are essentially doing buddy action movie shtick, but it works well. Both have effortless charm and humor, and that keeps the movie afloat no matter how ridiculous things get. I also appreciated that they didn’t make Foxx some anonymous, no politics President like they did with Aaron Eckhart in Olympus Has Fallen – he’s clearly modeled after Barack Obama, and he’s clearly a Democrat (even if the word is never uttered). It may have been even more interesting to make him a Republican, but I’m not going to nitpick too much. The supporting cast – from Gyllenhaal to King to Jenkins to  James Woods and Jason Clarke as two of the bad guys to Michael Murphy as the Vice President to Nicolas Wright, as a tour guide, all have nice moments as well.

I’m not trying to argue that White House Down is a great movie – it isn’t. But it is a great guilty pleasure experience. So many of the blockbusters this summer – both good and bad – have taken themselves very seriously. It’s somewhat refreshing to see such glorious, ridiculous stupidity on full display in White House Down.

Movie Review: My Brother the Devil

Movie Review: My Brother the Devil

My Brother the Devil
Directed by: Sally El Hosaini.
Written  by: Sally El Hosaini.
Starring: James Floyd (Rashid), Fady Elsayed (Mo), Saïd Taghmaoui (Sayyid), Aymen Hamdouchi (Repo), Ashley Thomas (Lenny), Anthony Welsh (Izzi), Arnold Oceng (Aj), Letitia Wright (Aisha), Amira Ghazalla (Hanan), Elarica Gallacher (Vanessa), Nasser Memarzia (Abdul-Aziz).

You’d be forgiven for assuming that Sally El Hosaini’s debut film My Brother the Devil is yet another story of warring brothers growing up in the slums. The basic plot outline – that younger brother Mo (Fady Elsayed) is smart, and has a bright future ahead of him, if only he can avoid the traps his brother Rashid (James Floyd), who has joined a gang and started dealing has fallen into – seems like it. You can guess, for example, that Mo idolizes his brother, and wants to be just like him, while Rashid wants an entirely different life for his brother than the one he leads – the life he thought he wanted, but after a brush with tragedy, realizes how meaningless this is. Other than the fact that this film is about English born songs of Egyptian immigrants, and set in Hackley, a housing project in England, this film could easily take place in L.A., with African American leads, right? After all, how many films have essentially copied the formulas set out by John Singleton’s Boyz in the Hood and the Hughes Brothers Menace II Society in the two decades since those groundbreaking films were released?

Yet My Brother the Devil isn’t quite what we expect it to be. Right from the start, we notice the beautiful cinematography on display – this isn’t a movie interested in gritty, street level realism, but one that finds beauty in even the most unlikely of places. And as the movie moves along, My Brother the Devil starts tackling far more interesting questions than poverty, gangs and drugs – which we’ve seen before. Instead, My Brother the Devil starts addressing things like religion, sexuality and masculinity. The movie at times, runs the risk of turning into a sermon, but El Hosaini’s screenplay is too strong and too subtle for that. This film marks a very promising debut for a rising talent.

James Floyd is great as Rashid – who seems perfectly content being a little thug, running with his not-very-inventively named gang DMG (Drugs, Money, Guns) until two things happen. The first is that his best friend is killed in one of those stupid gang fights that where it seems more important to save face than to protect yourself – until something bad happens. And the second is that he meets Sayyid (Said Taghmaoui), a photographer of Algerian descent, who sees promise in Rashid, and offers him a job. Sayyid opens up a world of possibilities that Rashid didn’t know existed – in more ways than one. Mo, of course, reacts with confusion and anger at what he sees as Rashid’s betrayal – all Mo has ever wanted was to be part of DMG, and now his brother is turning his back on it – and by extension him.

There are other nice performances in the movie – Elsayed is good as Mo, but it’s a more simplistic role. I was really impressed with Letitia Wright as Aisha, a stricter Muslim than Rashid and Mo’s family, who nonetheless catches Mo’s eye. If he’s smart, and stick with her, he may find his own way out.

Yes, you can say that My Brother the Devil trades in more than its share of clichés. The whole idea of brothers fighting each other is one of the oldest in storytelling. And when the question of sexuality comes up – although they are interestingly handled – the conversion seems a little too quick and convenient to be fully believed. And yet My Brother the Devil remains an intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful film. Sometimes clichés are clichés because they work. And while El Hosiani uses those clichés, she is not a slave to them. This marks a promising debut film from a filmmaker to watch.