Past Programs
Defence Forces - 2008
Vantage Point
13/03/2008
A gimmicky film where the assassination of the US president (William Hurt) is replayed through the vantage points of several characters, with the clues as to who's behind the plot coming together in the final reel. Actors include Matthew Fox and Dennis Quaid as secret service agents, Forrest Whitaker as a tourist who gets a glimpse of a gunman on his handicam and the swarthy French star Said Taghmaoui as, well, a mysterious looking Arab guy who doesn't seem right. Set in Salamanca, Spain at what's supposed to be an international conference on terrorism, the pictures are lovely, but the layers of intrigue are pretty thin and seeing the same event over and over again becomes tedious.
Rendition
14/02/2008
A bomb explodes in a crowded square in Cairo, killing many people. In Brazil, a businessman receives an unexpected call. In America we meet a very pregnant wife (Reese Witherspoon) playing football with her young son, and on the phone to her Egyptian-American husband who's about to board a plane to bring him home.
But he doesn't come through the arrivals gate at the airport. Instead, he's been taken aside, handcuffed and spirited out of the country again to a grim prison where he will be interrogated, using brutal waterboarding techniques, by an operator in Egyptian security. Watching is a young CIA man, (Jake Gyllenhaal), an analyst thrown into the field agent job when his boss is killed in the bombing.
'This is my first torture,' he explains.
This film means well. There is some drama as Witherspoon haunts congressional corridors to get someone to admit what has happened to her husband, while in Cairo the daughter of the Egyptian interrogator defies her father (Ygal Naor), to see a young Islamist student. But despite some fine performances the film is a fairy story. A fable. It pulls its punches -- and not because it fails to show us torture -- the waterboarding scenes are harrowing and detailed but the resolution is unconvincing. It's an earnest script which gives Witherspoon and Gyllenhaal little to do, and a disappointing second film from Gavin Hood, who directed Tsotsi. With such a critically important subject, I wish it had been better.
Lust, Caution
17/01/2008
Lust, Caution is the latest film from Ang Lee, a spy thriller set in Shanghai and Hong Kong during and after world war two, at a time of the Japanese occupation of China. A group of patriotic students decides to assassinate one of the main Chinese collaborators with the Japanese, a secret police boss called Mister Yee. They assign a young drama student to get close to him and his wife. Seduce him, in fact.
She succeeds too well. In her second attempt they become lovers and she has to decide whom she will betray.
This is a superb film, beautifully shot and directed. Tony Leung is eloquent as Mister Yee, and a young actress called Tang Wei holds the entire film with a spellbinding, intelligent performance. She is a real discovery. She makes Gong Li look like Barbie.
Its a slow-burning, multi-layered film of sexual frankness and emotional intensity. It's not always comfortable viewing. But you'll come away knowing you've seen a movie.
