Okay, so this will have to be concise. We are talking here about four films, two of which are among my very favourite of all time and all of which warrant considered and detailed analysis. Having said that, no-one is going to read a 3,000-word treatise on the man with the hat, so let's get straight to it:-
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
We meet Indiana Jones, college professor, archaeologist, finder of rare antiquities and peerless fedora-wearer. He is in Latin America, negotiating perilous booby traps, hunting a gold statuette and trying to avoid poison-dart shooting natives. He makes it out alive, but only just. Back in the US, he is approached with a mission to the middle east to find the Well of Souls, rumoured to be a possible resting place for the Lost Ark, the Ark of the Covenant in which Moses laid the original 10 Commandments, etched in stone by the finger of God himself.
What follows is a film of breath-taking pace, action and adventure. It is easy to forget that Steven Spielberg was still very much in his early years here and all that Harrison Ford really had under his belt was Star Wars. The two combined effortlessly, Ford playing weary, grumpy, heroic and fearless, Spielberg driving the action forward at a searing, but entirely comprehensible pace. We have feisty females, duplicitous servants, Nazis, truck chases and one of the most iconic closing shots since Rosebud was thrown into a furnace.
It is genuinely difficult to fault this film in any way. The cast, including Karen Allen, Denholm Elliot, John Rhys-Davies and a very young Alfred Molina are all spot on, the script is crackling, the special effects, stunts and booby traps are thrilling and on top of all of that, it is the sort of film you could watch every day for a month and not grow tired of. Watch it (again) now.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
This is, so to speak, "the dark one". Scenes of child slavery and sacrifice, along with removing one man's heart while he is still alive pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable within the certificating system at that time, leading to the PG-13 category being created in the US (it would take five more years for the UK to launch its own "12" certificate).
As for the film itself, it is in fact a prequel, set a year before the events of the first film. If the first film seemed fast-paced, this set down a new marker. We initially find Jones at Club Obi-Wan (hoho) in Shanghai, trying to obtain some sort of Maguffin from the Chinese. He winds up being poisoned, fights to get the antidote, escapes with a dancer to the airport, gets on a plane from which they then have to eject and finds himself in a remote village in India. There he agrees to help the villagers try to retrieve their children from a nearby temple, where they have been taken by the Thugee cult as slave-labour in the caves beneath the titular temple.
Jones and the dancer (Spielberg's then wife Kate Capshaw) encounter all manner of booby traps (what else?) at the temple, along with horrific human sacrifice practices and highly unpleasant dining habits (live snakes and jellied monkey brains anyone?), before eventually an escape plan is hatched and attempted.
Many dislike this entry in the franchise, finding it too dark after the relatively light and breezy tone of the first film. Certainly it is a darker film and deliberately so, but it has many set pieces that represent realisations of fundamental staples of the genre (mining cart chase = rollercoaster ride, rope bridge finale = literal cliffhanger) and the relentless pace is hugely enjoyable. It is by no means as good as Raiders, but a film need not scale those heights in order to be excellent in its own right. It's not one for younger children by any stretch of the imagination and suffers by comparison to the franchise entries either side of it but is still well worth a watch.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Putting the word "last" in the title always made this feel like it was closing the book on Indiana Jones and the more time that went past, the more that seemed destined to be the case. In the end, as we now know, Crystal Skull was finally made (more on that below) but until then, we had a trilogy that pretty much matched Star Wars stroke for stroke, at least tonally. After the crowd-pleasing action adventure of the first film, we had the darker second entry, before lightening up again for the "final" part.
Last Crusade was in fact the first of the films that I saw, at the cinema with my brother and some of our friends. I absolutely loved it and still do. The film opens with Jones as a teenager, getting caught up with some gentlemen who are trying to steal a relic that belongs in a museum. We discover how his fear of snakes began, where that scar on his chin came from and how the whip, jacket and hat all became part of his ensemble. We then leap forward to the quest - locating the Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus and his disciples drank at the Last Supper and into which his blood ran when he was crucified. Jones finds that his father initially set off on the quest but had disappeared without a trace.
As with Raiders, this is a globe-trotting adventure, starting in the US and taking in Venice, Berlin and Alexandria, as Jones and those fiendish Nazis close in on the final resting place of the cup and its ancient guardians. The booby traps don't quite measure up to the opening sequence of Raiders but they are fiendishly inventive none the less and loaded with subtext in terms of how Jones must overcome his fears and achieve victory. We even get a death scene to rival the face-melting from the climax of Raiders!
Sean Connery was inspired casting as Jones Snr, with Lucas and Spielberg having originally conceived of Indiana Jones as being their stab at James Bond-style action/adventure. As always, the pacing is perfect, the script zings again and we even get the heroes literally riding off into the sunset as the curtain drops. Perfect.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Having loved Indiana Jones for close on two decades, I faced this latest entry with some trepidation. I didn't like the sound of the title and the plot/concept/mcguffin sounded a little too "sci-fi" for what is essentially a series revolving around ancient artefacts. But then, I reasoned, this is Spielberg. He is on a roll. His last dozen or so films had been stone-cold classics and he wouldn't sign on to a mediocre, or half-baked project.
Hmm. I still don't know what to think. For the first 95 minutes I was grinning like a Cheshire cat, enjoying ace stunts, ridiculous fist fights, car chases and Jones, back in his hat and reflecting on his declining strength. "This won't be easy", says Ray Winstone's Mac, "not as easy as it used to be," replies Jones. Ford is clearly so comfortable in Jones' skin, picking up where he left off without any apparent shift in performance - more than any other character he has played, this seems to be the one that fits him like a well-tailored suit. The flying fridge sequence was, of course, patently ridiculous, but this was a film, or at least a franchise that already had so much goodwill from me built in, it was going to take great deal to spoil it for me.
But they managed it. In the space of an asonishingly mis-judged final 10 minutes, all of that goodwill was undone as the film lurched off into Area 51-style flying saucers and alien visiters. John Hurt wittering about "the space between space" and "inter-dimensional beings" left my jaw on the floor and nothing Jones said about them being intergalactic archaeologists was going to help matters.
It was so frustrating. 95% of the film was fantastic. The initial raid on the warehouse wherein the Ark was stored in Raiders, the truck chase in the Amazonian forest, the motorbike chase, even the punchup with the evil Russkies (no Nazis no more) were all thoroughly worthy entries in a franchise that pretty much wrote the book on exciting action-adventure set pieces, but then that was all trashed by a betrayal of the fundamental ethos of the films. It just is not a sci-fi franchise and I cannot believe that of all the ideas being bounced around after Last Crusade, this was the only one deemed suitable. I blame George Lucas personally.
Wednesday 15 September 2010
Thursday 9 September 2010
Jarhead (2005)
I must confess to not having read the memoirs of Anthony "Swoff" Swofford, on which this intriguing, striking but ultimately frustrating film is based.
Swoff, played here by the effective and talented Jake Gyllenhaal, "fought" in the first Iraq war and the film tells for the most part the story of his boredom and frustration as he sat in the Kuwaiti desert with increasing numbers of US soldiers, waiting for the all clear to proceed with an invasion that in the end lasted all of four days.
We find Swoff first of all at boot camp, getting yelled at by a drill sergeant in a manner not remotely dissimilar to the first half of the superior Full Metal Jacket. So far, so predictable. Soon though, orders come through to ship out to the Middle East as part of Operation Desert Shield, the precursor to Desert Storm. Those orders arrive halfway through unabashed hollering and cheering during a troop screening of the chopper attack from Apocalypse Now. Rather than being a generation of grunts raised on the harsh realities of Platoon and The Deer Hunter, aware of the brutality and ultimate futility of much of modern warfare, we instead have a room full of jarheads, yelling along to "Ride of the Valkyries" and crying "get some", like there's no tomorrow. These are boys and men entirely consumed by their love for battle, unaware in any sense of what really awaits them.
What turns out to await them is spirit-sapping, soul-destroying boredom. They arrive, they drill, they practice shooting, the play football in their chemical warfare suits, they pretend to dry-hump each other in front of a visiting news crew, they set off a truckload of flares while frying sausages and they rib each other with merciless vulgarity and enthusiasm. On screen titles regularly update us as to how many troops have arrived from the US and how long Swoff has been there until finally, mercifully, they set off into Iraq to drive out the Iraq Republican Army and reclaim Kuwait for the Kuwaitis. The invasion winds up being over before it has even started and there is a hugely affecting and effective scene when Swoff and his target man, the excellent Peter Sarsgaard, are camped out, ready to take out an Iraqi officer by sniper rifle, when a major steps in and tells them to stop so that he can carpet bomb the building they have scouted. Sarsgaard is desperate to contribute something, anything to the war effort and begs and pleads the Major for the chance to take their shot before the bombing commences, only to be refused. Sarsgaard goes off the deep end, screaming and crying, before collapsing in the corner, destroyed by the frustration and futility of the entire situation.
It is moments like these that ultimately make the film worthwhile, but it is worthwhile rather than essential. Director Sam Mendes seems to have an uncanny grasp of the tone and style of essentially American films, despite his background in English theatre. American Beauty and Road to Perdition got under the skin of white picket fence Americana and the Prohibition-era gangster film respectively and Mendes successfully grapples with the US war film genre as well. We feel Swoff's weariness, his exasperation, his despair and the cinematography is breathtaking too. Endless shimmering deserts eventually give way to burning oil wells, the sky thick with black smoke and raining oil. "The earth is bleeding", says Swoff.
The difficulty ultimately is not with the performances or the cinematography. Fundamentally, the film seems to a lack a sense of its place in history. Set during the first Iraqi war, but released during the second, the film seems uninterested in saying anything about the current invasion and war, or modern warfare in general. The boredom of the wait in the desert is effectively presented but that leaves the overall message as "waiting in the desert is really boring and frustrating when you are keen to get on and invade", which is really no message at all. Does every film have to be loaded with meaning? Of course not, but for a film set and released in the historical and political climates of 1991 and 2005 respectively, it represents something of a missed opportunity. Worth watching, but once will be enough.
Swoff, played here by the effective and talented Jake Gyllenhaal, "fought" in the first Iraq war and the film tells for the most part the story of his boredom and frustration as he sat in the Kuwaiti desert with increasing numbers of US soldiers, waiting for the all clear to proceed with an invasion that in the end lasted all of four days.
We find Swoff first of all at boot camp, getting yelled at by a drill sergeant in a manner not remotely dissimilar to the first half of the superior Full Metal Jacket. So far, so predictable. Soon though, orders come through to ship out to the Middle East as part of Operation Desert Shield, the precursor to Desert Storm. Those orders arrive halfway through unabashed hollering and cheering during a troop screening of the chopper attack from Apocalypse Now. Rather than being a generation of grunts raised on the harsh realities of Platoon and The Deer Hunter, aware of the brutality and ultimate futility of much of modern warfare, we instead have a room full of jarheads, yelling along to "Ride of the Valkyries" and crying "get some", like there's no tomorrow. These are boys and men entirely consumed by their love for battle, unaware in any sense of what really awaits them.
What turns out to await them is spirit-sapping, soul-destroying boredom. They arrive, they drill, they practice shooting, the play football in their chemical warfare suits, they pretend to dry-hump each other in front of a visiting news crew, they set off a truckload of flares while frying sausages and they rib each other with merciless vulgarity and enthusiasm. On screen titles regularly update us as to how many troops have arrived from the US and how long Swoff has been there until finally, mercifully, they set off into Iraq to drive out the Iraq Republican Army and reclaim Kuwait for the Kuwaitis. The invasion winds up being over before it has even started and there is a hugely affecting and effective scene when Swoff and his target man, the excellent Peter Sarsgaard, are camped out, ready to take out an Iraqi officer by sniper rifle, when a major steps in and tells them to stop so that he can carpet bomb the building they have scouted. Sarsgaard is desperate to contribute something, anything to the war effort and begs and pleads the Major for the chance to take their shot before the bombing commences, only to be refused. Sarsgaard goes off the deep end, screaming and crying, before collapsing in the corner, destroyed by the frustration and futility of the entire situation.
It is moments like these that ultimately make the film worthwhile, but it is worthwhile rather than essential. Director Sam Mendes seems to have an uncanny grasp of the tone and style of essentially American films, despite his background in English theatre. American Beauty and Road to Perdition got under the skin of white picket fence Americana and the Prohibition-era gangster film respectively and Mendes successfully grapples with the US war film genre as well. We feel Swoff's weariness, his exasperation, his despair and the cinematography is breathtaking too. Endless shimmering deserts eventually give way to burning oil wells, the sky thick with black smoke and raining oil. "The earth is bleeding", says Swoff.
The difficulty ultimately is not with the performances or the cinematography. Fundamentally, the film seems to a lack a sense of its place in history. Set during the first Iraqi war, but released during the second, the film seems uninterested in saying anything about the current invasion and war, or modern warfare in general. The boredom of the wait in the desert is effectively presented but that leaves the overall message as "waiting in the desert is really boring and frustrating when you are keen to get on and invade", which is really no message at all. Does every film have to be loaded with meaning? Of course not, but for a film set and released in the historical and political climates of 1991 and 2005 respectively, it represents something of a missed opportunity. Worth watching, but once will be enough.
Tuesday 7 September 2010
Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010)
Scott Pilgrim is out of his depth. He is dating a 17 year old school girl called Knives Chau, he is in a struggling band called Sex Bob-omb that is going nowhere and he has now met Ramona Flowers, fallen in love with her and decided to try to win her.
What he does not realise is that if he is going to date Ramona, he will have to defeat her seven evil ex's. He decides it is worth it, but he does not really have the faintest idea what he is doing or how he is going to do it.
For a film such as Scott Pilgrim, the above plot summary helps very little, as it is so much more about the film's style than its content. Edgar Wright, who got this gig off the back of his barn-storming work on Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz has taken a comic book and adapted it with an endless and endlessly breath-taking barrage of stylistic flourishes. There are comic book style panels on screen, a retro gaming graphics-tweaked Universal logo at the outset, Tekken / Street Fighter style "vs" square-offs before each fight, on-screen score cards for each character when they are introduced, even a "pee bar" that goes down as Scott empties his bladder.
This is a genuinely excellent film, wittily scripted, with a truly touching romance between Scott and Ramona developing in a surprisingly natural manner, given the wealth of fantastical elements on display. Perhaps that is Wright's great victory, to anchor the film with an engaging central paring and a relationship that feels real, so that we are invested in and care about what becomes of them as they whirl off into fights that involve giant hammers, CGI dragons, super-powered vegans, flaming swords, kung fu and Bollywood dance routines. It should not be underestimated how difficult it is to hold such disparate elements in tension, while still keeping the film's tone even. Having said that, it should come as no surprise that Edgar Wright manages it, given (for example) his handling of the death of Shaun's mother in Shaun of the Dead in the midst of an entirely preposterous Crouch End zombie holocaust. This clearly the work of a supremely talented and self-assured director and it will be intriguing to see where he goes from here.
As for the cast, they are great. Michael Cera as Scott is similar to Michael Cera in Superbad or Juno, although he is perhaps a little more clueless and helpless here, baffled by much of what is going on. He plays it to perfection. Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona is also spot on, managing to be alluring but not annoying, desirable but tangible. The supporting work is great too. Anna Kendrick follows up her sterling work in "Up in the Air" as Scott's younger sister, Ellen Wong as "Knives Chau" is adorable and makes the pain of being passed over by Scott in favour of Ramona truly moving and Kieren Culkin plays a slightly predatory gay flatmate who is hilarious without ever being cliched or patronising.
Best of all are the evil ex's. Special kudos to Chris Evans as a vain, skateboarding action star and Brandon Routh as a vegan bassist with big muscles and a tiny brain. It is a film that scoops you up, carries you along and then throws you out at the end with a big smile on your face and a long list of lines that you keep dropping into conversations for weeks afterwards. I said lesbians.
What he does not realise is that if he is going to date Ramona, he will have to defeat her seven evil ex's. He decides it is worth it, but he does not really have the faintest idea what he is doing or how he is going to do it.
For a film such as Scott Pilgrim, the above plot summary helps very little, as it is so much more about the film's style than its content. Edgar Wright, who got this gig off the back of his barn-storming work on Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz has taken a comic book and adapted it with an endless and endlessly breath-taking barrage of stylistic flourishes. There are comic book style panels on screen, a retro gaming graphics-tweaked Universal logo at the outset, Tekken / Street Fighter style "vs" square-offs before each fight, on-screen score cards for each character when they are introduced, even a "pee bar" that goes down as Scott empties his bladder.
This is a genuinely excellent film, wittily scripted, with a truly touching romance between Scott and Ramona developing in a surprisingly natural manner, given the wealth of fantastical elements on display. Perhaps that is Wright's great victory, to anchor the film with an engaging central paring and a relationship that feels real, so that we are invested in and care about what becomes of them as they whirl off into fights that involve giant hammers, CGI dragons, super-powered vegans, flaming swords, kung fu and Bollywood dance routines. It should not be underestimated how difficult it is to hold such disparate elements in tension, while still keeping the film's tone even. Having said that, it should come as no surprise that Edgar Wright manages it, given (for example) his handling of the death of Shaun's mother in Shaun of the Dead in the midst of an entirely preposterous Crouch End zombie holocaust. This clearly the work of a supremely talented and self-assured director and it will be intriguing to see where he goes from here.
As for the cast, they are great. Michael Cera as Scott is similar to Michael Cera in Superbad or Juno, although he is perhaps a little more clueless and helpless here, baffled by much of what is going on. He plays it to perfection. Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona is also spot on, managing to be alluring but not annoying, desirable but tangible. The supporting work is great too. Anna Kendrick follows up her sterling work in "Up in the Air" as Scott's younger sister, Ellen Wong as "Knives Chau" is adorable and makes the pain of being passed over by Scott in favour of Ramona truly moving and Kieren Culkin plays a slightly predatory gay flatmate who is hilarious without ever being cliched or patronising.
Best of all are the evil ex's. Special kudos to Chris Evans as a vain, skateboarding action star and Brandon Routh as a vegan bassist with big muscles and a tiny brain. It is a film that scoops you up, carries you along and then throws you out at the end with a big smile on your face and a long list of lines that you keep dropping into conversations for weeks afterwards. I said lesbians.
Jerry Maguire (1996)
Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is a sports agent, handling contract negotiations, merchandising deals and press duties for a variety of the best sportsmen and women in the US. Then, one night, he gets a moment of clarity and writes a memo to his colleagues about his vision for a different way of being sports agents - fewer clients, more personal attention, more support.
Jerry's firm, rather than being inspired, are appalled and fire him. He tries to take his best clients with him, but is only able to persuade Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr), a wide receiver for the Cardinals, to come with him, before his firm snatch everyone else. Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger) loves Jerry and is inspired by his memo and agrees to come with him as well.
What then follows is Jerry's journey to try to secure a new contract for Tidwell, run his new company according to the values laid out in his memo and work out what he really wants from the relationship with Dorothy that quickly develops.
The film is very well known and much of it has entered the general consciousness, ("show me the money!", "you had me at hello", "you complete me") but what is interesting in watching it again recently is how fresh it all seems, how full of life rather than cliche. Jerry's initial romancing of Dorothy is a product of his own desperation to avoid loneliness, her desire to find a husband for herself and a father for her son, but its' ups and downs are handled with real honesty. Likewise, Jerry's professional relationship and then developing friendship with Rod has unusual shades for a Hollywood film. Lines such as, "how's your marriage, Jerry?" and "a real man wouldn't shoplift the pooty from a single mum" demonstrate a depth of friendship between them where they are able to ask the difficult questions that men these days are not supposed to ever bring up with each other.
It all builds up to a climax where lives are changed, epiphanies are experienced and tears are cried. It is a genuinely great film, full of winning performances, beautifully written characters, excellent scripting and none of those involved have been better, before or since, with the possible exception of Cruise in Magnolia. It's that good.
Jerry's firm, rather than being inspired, are appalled and fire him. He tries to take his best clients with him, but is only able to persuade Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr), a wide receiver for the Cardinals, to come with him, before his firm snatch everyone else. Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger) loves Jerry and is inspired by his memo and agrees to come with him as well.
What then follows is Jerry's journey to try to secure a new contract for Tidwell, run his new company according to the values laid out in his memo and work out what he really wants from the relationship with Dorothy that quickly develops.
The film is very well known and much of it has entered the general consciousness, ("show me the money!", "you had me at hello", "you complete me") but what is interesting in watching it again recently is how fresh it all seems, how full of life rather than cliche. Jerry's initial romancing of Dorothy is a product of his own desperation to avoid loneliness, her desire to find a husband for herself and a father for her son, but its' ups and downs are handled with real honesty. Likewise, Jerry's professional relationship and then developing friendship with Rod has unusual shades for a Hollywood film. Lines such as, "how's your marriage, Jerry?" and "a real man wouldn't shoplift the pooty from a single mum" demonstrate a depth of friendship between them where they are able to ask the difficult questions that men these days are not supposed to ever bring up with each other.
It all builds up to a climax where lives are changed, epiphanies are experienced and tears are cried. It is a genuinely great film, full of winning performances, beautifully written characters, excellent scripting and none of those involved have been better, before or since, with the possible exception of Cruise in Magnolia. It's that good.
In Bruges (2007)
This is a genuinely odd film, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, it just makes it hard to pigeon-hole. It has elements of the cockney, gangster film popularised by Guy Ritchie, a bit of the fish-out-of-water style of Sexy Beast and then lurches wildly from comedy, to fairly bloody violence, to tragedy and pathos. At times it can be very hard to work out whether we are supposed to just sit back and laugh, identify with the characters, be horrified, or something else.
Colin Farrell plays Ray, a strange puppy-dog of a man, dispatched with fellow hitman Ken (Brendan Gleeson) to Bruges after a hit on a Catholic priest goes tragically wrong. Ray finds Bruges dull and pathetic, ("If I grew up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn't, so it doesn't") but Ken finds himself enjoying it. Harry (played by Ralph Fiennes), their boss back in England eventually finds his way to Bruges to confront the two of them, where Ray has begun to enjoy some time with a local drug dealer named Chloe. There is also a dwarf actor, a Canadian tourist and some overweight Americans caught up in the mix.
The violence, when it comes, is genuinely affecting and realistic and you really feel like it hurts (as opposed to many of the Ritchie capers and their kin, where it all starts to feel like a bit of a laugh). A burnt face from a cap gun, a destroyed leg from a gun shot and a serious arterial neck wound all feel very real.
The pacing and plot are a bit of a liability, as not an awful lot happens and it takes quite a long time to not happen, but there is a lot of fun to be had in sharing Ray's genuine misery at being stuck in what he considers to be a nothing town. There is also utter joy in watching Ralph Fiennes destroy an otherwise perfectly useful telephone before yelling completely unwarranted verbal abuse at his wife, in front of their young children. It's not how we would all necessarily run our homes, but it is pretty funny. The swearing count is pretty much up there with Goodfellas, with pretty much all of the worst words you could imagine cropping up fairly regularly. It's not intended to shock though, it is simply a reflection on how casually these words find their way into the regular speech of these characters. They think nothing of it.
I really enjoyed the couple of house spent in this film's company and although I feel no great need to watch it again and again, it was time well spent.
Colin Farrell plays Ray, a strange puppy-dog of a man, dispatched with fellow hitman Ken (Brendan Gleeson) to Bruges after a hit on a Catholic priest goes tragically wrong. Ray finds Bruges dull and pathetic, ("If I grew up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn't, so it doesn't") but Ken finds himself enjoying it. Harry (played by Ralph Fiennes), their boss back in England eventually finds his way to Bruges to confront the two of them, where Ray has begun to enjoy some time with a local drug dealer named Chloe. There is also a dwarf actor, a Canadian tourist and some overweight Americans caught up in the mix.
The violence, when it comes, is genuinely affecting and realistic and you really feel like it hurts (as opposed to many of the Ritchie capers and their kin, where it all starts to feel like a bit of a laugh). A burnt face from a cap gun, a destroyed leg from a gun shot and a serious arterial neck wound all feel very real.
The pacing and plot are a bit of a liability, as not an awful lot happens and it takes quite a long time to not happen, but there is a lot of fun to be had in sharing Ray's genuine misery at being stuck in what he considers to be a nothing town. There is also utter joy in watching Ralph Fiennes destroy an otherwise perfectly useful telephone before yelling completely unwarranted verbal abuse at his wife, in front of their young children. It's not how we would all necessarily run our homes, but it is pretty funny. The swearing count is pretty much up there with Goodfellas, with pretty much all of the worst words you could imagine cropping up fairly regularly. It's not intended to shock though, it is simply a reflection on how casually these words find their way into the regular speech of these characters. They think nothing of it.
I really enjoyed the couple of house spent in this film's company and although I feel no great need to watch it again and again, it was time well spent.
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