JK Simmons – The Magnificent 60s

The Red One (2024) ***

Santa Claus meets Die Hard might have worked well enough if it hadn’t been padded out with all sorts of other festive characters from the dark side of Xmas and a sludge of sentiment about an absent father reconnecting with his son. Can’t quite decide if it’s family-friendly or aiming for a queasier relationship with a Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice audience. And I suspect if Amazon had the courage of its theatrical convictions, it would made this a Xmas cinema release rather than chucking it into picture houses now and lining it up for a small-screen Xmas special.

Attempts to merge James Bond-style big budget thriller with underworld shenanigans conjuring up the kind of misfits who’d have been slung out of a Star Wars cantina while at the same time as making up the rules as it goes along. There’s a mix-and-match feel to the characters – we get Gryla, a mythical Icelandic monster, Krampus, a hairy devil of Germanic extraction who has his fun the night before Xmas, but is repurposed here as a Santa’s big bad brother, as well as a bunch of gargoyles who are way too easily distracted by a hen who they, mysteriously, can’t manage to catch, and then like a throwback to Transformers we get tiny Lego style figures who turn gigantic when let loose. You can stop snowmen in their tracks by whipping off their carrot noses.

Face-slapping is reinvented, shapeshifting is the game, and as if nobody had watched how badly Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire failed we’re back to a villain with icy superpowers. The giant polar bear featured – cousin to the armored bear in The Golden Compass (2007) – in the poster is underused. Not to mention that Xmas staple, the kids threatened with losing out on presents if they are naughty. None of this should work at all, but it does fairly well.

On the eve of said Mr Claus’s big night, he gets kidnapped. Bodyguard Callum (Dwayne Johnson), who turns out to be more than 500 years old, is on the trail and tracks down hacker Jack (Chris Evans) who’s sold Santa’s secret location to villain Gryla (Kieman Shipka), the ex- of Krampus’s (Kristofer Hivju), who wants to trap every night child in the world inside the kind of glass snow globe that was a traditional Xmas present. She’s manufactured these in the gazillions.

Callum and Jack team up though the latter’s not much use, his contribution to the double act consisting mainly of double takes and it’s only when he doesn’t take the opportunity to escape Krampus’s lair that he becomes one of the team. Mostly, it’s one bizarre situation after another and although at just over two hours it’s already outstaying its welcome it could have done with spending some more time on outlining the background and developing the fiendish characters. It’s a world that seems surprisingly undercooked given the mega budget. On the plus side – or perhaps the minus depending on your perspective – there’s a cuteness bypass. There’s a little too much time spent on – unsuccessfully – showing how Santa manages to get himself down every single chimney in the world in the space of a night including time to gobble down some treats. Would have done better to stick to the Santa hijack than include a technologically-improved Xmas.

*Xmas spirit missing in this previous red one.*

This didn’t need the presence of Dwayne Johnson (Black Adam, 2022) and certainly Chris Evans (The Gray Man, 2022) is wasted but with the MCU world closing its doors on both actors, perhaps this is an attempt to set up a new series. As Mr Claus, J.K. Simmons (Juror #2, 2024) isn’t in it long enough. Jake Kasdan (Jumanji, The Next Level, 2019) directed from a script by Chris Morgan (Shazam! Fury of the Gods, 2023) and Hiram Garcia (Jumaji, The Next Level).

Not as bad as I expected.

Juror # 2 (2024) ****

Last hurrahs are rarely as sweet. But I’m beginning to wonder if the Warner Brothers very restricted U.S. domestic release isn’t a clever publicity ploy. You know the kind, attract the ire of critics who like nothing better than painting studios in a bad light and hope for a tsunami of social media outpourings. It’s now beginning to look more like a standard platform release, the kind employed to win Oscar favor.

Directors are often declared geniuses because they have a particular facility with visuals, can use the sweep of the camera or a particularly vivid composition, tackle controversial subjects, or build up a distinctive oeuver by returning again and again to a theme or genre. This is well outside Clint Eastwood’s comfort zone. For a start he’s not acting in it, it’s not a western and it doesn’t concern on-screen violence of any kind. His most common screen persona was of the man with a past trying to live a quiet life who is roused into anger and violence.

*WB has been sparing on the poster front but you may notice a certain visual*
*similarity between this old poster and the new one.*

There’s none of that here. In fact, this all seems deliberately damped down. The tale is not told in faux documentary style and there’s no grandstanding. And yet this is one of the best directed movies I’ve ever seen. With no scene-stealing, it flies, and when it lands it’s with a thoughtful air. Just when you think it’s going to head off in he direction of one of two cliches – the high-risk pregnant wife giving birth at a dramatic juncture in the trial, or some zealous cop undertaking an equally dramatic last-minute investigation that tips the trial ass over tip – it damps down on those two.

The set up is ingenious. Recovering alcoholic Justin (Nicholas Hoult) discovers in the course of the murder trial on which he is a juror that he not only knows more about the incident in which the girlfriend of accused is killed, he may even be the accidental cause of her death. On the night in question he was nursing a drink in a bar and noticed the couple having an argument. Driving home on a wild and stormy night, he has a recollection of hitting something, knows it’s not, as he told he told partner Allison (Zooey Dutch), a deer.

Because, after several years of sobriety, he should never have been in a bar in the first place, and because there’s no evidence to the contrary – a field sobriety test should he have reported the incident – it’s automatically assumed that he would have consumed the whisky he bought in the bar. The hint of DUI would condemn him to 30 years in prison and not the new life as a father he has fought hard for.

*Hello darkness would be the design theme*.

So, in a ironic twist on Twelve Angry Men (1957), he’s the only person who stands up for the accused, but out of guilt rather than as with Henry Fonda an uplifted sense of morality. Guilt has certainly struck deep. For it’s insane for him to fight for the man’s innocence, to even raise questions of doubt, when everyone else is convinced he’s the killer. If the man is convicted, Justin will be let off. A hung jury might be a better outcome. A second trial would likely still end in conviction, as the circumstantial evidence and the accused’s drug-running background count against him, but at least Justin will not blame himself for sending an innocent man to prison.

The thing is, we don’t want Justin to be guilty. It’s an accident. Could have happened to anyone. At worst, had he fessed up at the time he would be cleared of any accusation of DUI, given the benefit of the doubt, what with the driving conditions and the fact that the victim was inebriated. He’s turned his life around. He adores his wife and looks forward to fatherhood.

He’s not the only one conflicted. Some of the jurors just want the trial over as fast as possible to get back to more pressing domestic issues. One character is dead set against anyone with anything to do with drugs. Overworked prosecutor Faith Killibrew (Toni Collette) is more concerned with a political future, running for district attorney. Ex-detective Harold (JK Simmons) commits the grievous sin – for a juror – of doing a bit of investigation on his own and is chucked off the jury.

What little information he does collect ends up with Faith. As a prosecutor she wants people put away, not let off. And she’s amassed sufficient evidence against the accused to get him sent down. So she’s not inspired with a desire for justice, the kind of firebrand character that would turn up in any other courtroom drama, digging away for an eternity, refusing to accept guilt as presented. She’s not a beacon for doing the right thing. Rather, the kind of person who doesn’t like the idea of nagging doubt upsetting her well-ordered life.

Given how many Clint Eastwood pictures end in violent showdown, perhaps his biggest directorial coup here is finishing the picture without that episode, it’s more reminiscent of the scene in American Gangster (2007) where Denzel Washington emerges from church to be confronted by a battalion of cops.

Couple of flaws – forensics so derelict there’s no suggestion that the blunt instrument that killed the victim could be a car is explained away by overworked scientists. That Faith doesn’t notice the photos of Justin sprayed around the house of Allison during her investigation reveals just how cursory a box-ticking exercise the detection is in her eyes.

Most of this plays out in the tortured eyes of Justin and in the unseen mind of Faith. With Justin, conflict is upfront, with Faith buried deep, laboriously roused from slumber.

Apart from Toni Collette and Nicholas Hoult, reunited after over two decades from their mother-and-son turn in About a Boy (2002), there is some distinctive playing – though under-playing would be more appropriate – from JK Simmons (Whiplash, 2014) and Kiefer Sutherland (The Lost Boys, 1987).

The boldness of the narrative – debut from screenwriter Jonathan Abrams – takes your breath away, avoiding the obvious route of concentrating on the innocent man, or on devious counsellors (all is played straight here) and the usual courtroom theatrics.

Absolutely superb performance from Hoult, who virtually has to do everything through his eyes. Had he been more over-the-top, Oscar would certainly have come calling, but deprived of that it’s an even more convincing performance. The low-ball direction swings this into a different class of courtroom picture, putting the audience in the situation of wanting the “bad guy” to get off.

Go see. Let Clint make you day (for likely) one last time.

The Union (2024) ****

Wahey! At long last Netflix gets it right (almost). Admittedly, the narrative depends on a very slippery MacGuffin, the kind that would take gold at the MacGuffin Olympics and still come back for more. That aside, it’s got pretty much what audiences are looking for in a fresh take on the hoary old espionage combo. Mark Wahlberg has been long under-rated, can do action (Planet of the Apes, 2001, Uncharted, 2022), caper (The Italian Job, 2003), comedy (Ted, 2012) and drama (Father Stu, 2022). Half the time he’s the driving force behind his projects, 44 credits as producer, which means he’s pretty independent and often turns in the type of picture you think he shouldn’t do or won’t work and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.

He’s wearing the producer’s jacket for this one and you’d be surprised how well it spins because this is a team effort, very much dependent on the chemistry created with Halle Berry, who you have to agree you wondered where the hell she had gone beyond the lead in the financially disastrous Moonfall (2022), supporting parts in the likes of John Wick 3: Parabellum (2019) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and some worthy but ignored pictures.

*Netflix is pretty mean when it comes to posters so here’s another with Mark Wahlberg*
*that I reviewed before.*

Well, she’s back and yes she’s kicking ass, but that’s not what makes this movie tick any more than Mark Wahlberg punching and shooting. What makes it sizzle is their chemistry, every bit as solid as Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney in Anyone But You (2023). And if you recall, that worked because Powell and Sweeney bickered all the way through it. Maybe this is what contemporary romance has come to: a quarrelsome couple.

It certainly keeps this pair on their toes. There’s been any number of fish-out-of-water action scenarios that have sunk like a stone (Argylle, anyone?) because the director didn’t hit the correct tone. Here, English director Julian Farino, best known for television, strikes exactly the right tone between incipient romance, action and comedy.

Middle-aged Mike (Mark Wahlberg) isn’t exactly hero material or Brad Pitt. He goes for the cougars, and we first come upon him in the bed of his Seventh Grade school teacher while his mother (Lorraine Bracco) is always one step ahead of her cocky son. We meet secret agent Roxanne (Halle Berry) in the middle of a disastrous operation of which she’s the only survivor.

You have to pass over the logic of how ultra-secret Government agency The Union comes to recruit construction worker Mike, setting aside that Roxanne once had the hots for him. Anyway – MacGuffin alert – the Government has lost the biggest MacGuffin of All Time and have to get it back by way of lots of things that don’t make much sense, but we’ll let that go as well. Anyways, Mark gets trained up in a mighty peculiar and highly entertaining fashion and becomes her sidekick as they hit the MacGuffin trail which takes them to foreign spots.

*I was one of the few people who liked “Moonfall” with Hally Berry so I don’t mind giving it another plug.*

There’s supposedly a mole in the Union and the finger points at their boss Tom Brennan (J.K. Simmons) but there’s a whole bunch of other secrets and twists in the mix and not much time what with the frenetic action to work out what exactly is going on beyond said MacGuffin running riot.

But there are some terrific set pieces and Mike’s girder-balancing skills come in handy when there’s even a moment when the action stays relatively still because most of the time it’s hurtling all over the place, chase upon chase, and normally that would spell the kiss of death, as we discovered with Argylle et al, except somehow here, with the chemical interplay between the two leads and supporting characters more interesting than most – look out for Jackie Earle Haley and Jessica De Gouw – and some zingy lines, it’s just dandy.

The ending sets up a sequel so bring it on. Top marks to Mark Wahlberg in his producer’s capacity for seeing this over the line and also, as with Uncharted, not trying to hog the picture and happy to accept that even as the denoted hero he’s going to be outfought and outsmarted a good chunk of the time and better not think he’s ever going to get the better of the Halle Berry character.

Wahlberg is as good as I’ve seen him and this is Halle Berry back on top form, with a lot more to do than in previous action outings where her character got stuck in first gear. As I said, super chemistry between the pair. J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2022) tones it down from his normal over-acting to splendid effect. Jessica De Gouw is one to watch. Joe Barton (Girl/Haji TV series, 2019) and David Guggenheim (Safe House, 2012), in places with their tongues firmly in their cheeks, knocked out the screenplay.

Highly entertaining, even if the MacGuffins are a bit rampant.