The Kingdom

The verdict: Slick, tense thriller with plenty of smarts and bucketloads of action.

The rating: 7/10

Nothing at all to do with County Kerry, 'The Kingdom' tells the story of the FBI's attempts to investigate a large-scale attack on an Western housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabian. Ronald Fleury (Foxx) heads the investigation team pushing to put their boots on Saudi soil, but the the complex political backdrop, as well as high-profile nature of the atrocity, means that they are not entirely welcome.

The American brass are initially unwilling to send FBI investigators to Saudi on the grounds that they are targets for the fundamentalist Muslim attackers who committed the original atrocity, and that their presence would render the situation even more unstable. The Saudis, for their part, are unwilling to allow interference in their own investigation, especially from non-Muslims. The presence of a female investigator is also a cause for some concern. Cue some serious political wrangling from Fleury.

Once in Saudi, the team are reluctantly assisted in their investigation by a Saudi Colonel, played with real presence by Ashraf Barhom, and the initially frosty association between Foxx and his guide slowly develops into a mutually beneficial working relationship. You know, the old 'frosty at first' kind of deal.

The movie is essentially a tense investigation book-ended by two long action set-pieces, and this structure works well. The investigation is well scripted, and builds the tension well, with all five central characters likeable enough to win the audience over. And why not, when the supporting cast is this good? Chris Cooper is amiable enough as the bomb site investigator, and Jennifer Garner works well; even if she does spend a lot of the movie crying, each episode of tears is thoroughly warranted. Jason Bateman too, continues his career resurgence with a creditable performance as the comic foil, and he has some great one-liners, which serve as a welcome coping mechanism for the audience as the tension builds. Jeremy Piven also has a nice turn as an American foreign department official, popping up every now and again to try and persuade the team to return home, before they do any political damage.

As for the action, well there is a moment about an hour into the movie where things suddenly take a turn into '24' territory, but it works very well. The action is visceral, realistic, and very much in the Paul Greengrass style, with hand-held shaky-cams following the cast, and everything ticking along at a relentless pace. Bullets, grenades and rockets fly, and we are right in the thick of it.

I have reservations about Jamie Foxx as a leading man, but he does a decent job here, despite still needing serious elecution lessons. The script is tight, with almost every central character likeable enough to root for. My only quibble was the Saudi Colonel. Foreign heroes in American movies must be god-fearing, squeaky-clean and have young kids for some reason, and his presence in the movie unfortunately reminded me of the away missions on the old Star Trek shows. Imagine Kirk (Foxx), Bones (Bateman), Spock (Cooper) and Uhura (Garner) beaming down to a planet with an anonymous red-shirted crew member, and you get the idea of the Saudi character's precarious position, right from the opening scenes.

That said, this is a quality movie, a diverting, well-written, actioner with a liekable cast, and PCMR heartily gives it two thumbs up.

Dreamgirls

Dreamgirls is a musical. Stick with me though, lads, Beyonce's in it!! Ah, lost most of ye already I'd imagine... That's the problem with musicals, they just don't tend to pack the lads into the cinemas, unless they're dragged by a focussed and determined girlfriend, keen not to get stuck watching another 'Apocalypto' or some such.

The thing is, to blindly rule out an entire genre can mean missing out on the occasional gem. Hollywood has a long-standing tradition of churning out musical feature films that showcase genuinely talented people performing at the top of their game. Fair enough, the term 'chick-flick' is a facile label to apply to some of these, but more recently, the Hollywood musical has attempted to attract a more broad audience. While 'Chicago', 'Rent' and (choke) 'Moulin Rouge' were more or less targeted at 'burds', other recent musical releases such as '8 Mile', 'Hustle and Flow', 'The Producers' and even 'Team America' and 'SouthPark' (one of PCMR's all-time favourites) can be described as appealing to the lads just as much as the ladies. (possibly more so with the last two - Ed)

'Dreamgirls' is slightly more difficult to categorise in these terms. Eddie Murphy's turn as an aging soul singer will appeal to male audiences, as will Beyonce's doe-eyed presence. However, the real star of the movie, Jennifer Hudson, will probably appeal more to the female audience members, giving this movie a broader audience than a straight-forward chick-flick.

There are two great performances in this movie, but Jennifer Hudson's is pretty much a revelation. This is a girl who entered American Idol, a 'Popstars'-style audition show in the U.S., and made it to the final six before getting booted off. An inauspicious beginning to a showbiz career, you might think, and you'd be right. However, when Hudson won the role of Effie White in Dreamgirls, she was chosen ahead of hundreds of other hopefuls, including the eventual winner of that show. Progress perhaps. Well, after watching this movie, I can't help thinking that Hudson misrepresented herself on that American Idol, because she literally owns this movie. Her voice is soulful, powerful and mature, and she has most of the lead numbers. Rightfully so, because she is by a mile the best singer of the ensemble group.

The story charts the rise of Effie's (Hudson's) group, 'The Dreamettes' from beginning as backing singers to James "Thunder" Early, (Eddie Murphy) to being the biggest thing in the pop charts in the 60's and 70's. (It's strongly implied that this is the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes, but names have been changed to protect the innocent - Ed) Although Effie is universally recognised as being the best singer of the group, she is eventually asked to take a backseat to allow Deena Jones (Beyonce) take the lead of the group. It is perhaps art reflecting life, but when the girls' manager (Jamie Foxx) reveals to Beyonce's character that he chose her for lead vocals because her voice was 'bland' and had more cross-over appeal to a pop audience, this rings quite true to reality. Compared to Hudson's vocal power and range, Beyonce really is put in the shade as a vocalist. She only gets one opportunity to shine with a musical number, and she does a very good job, but by that stage in the movie, Hudson has already well and truly stolen the show, run away with it, and is smugly sitting in her dressing room waiting for the awards to roll in.

Eddie Murphy's performance is worthy of a mention too, for the pleasant surprise of its brilliance. He has always been a more than capable singer, a James Brown riff forming a big part of his early stand-up routines. Consequently, he is genuinely good in the three or four numbers he tackles in this movie, and his acting performance is the strongest in the film, undoubtedly the best he has turned in for years, decades even. (Shrek doesn't count!). His character is the most interesting in the piece, and although it is steeped in music lore and cliche, his story is an excellent couterbalance to the meteoric rise of the band who used to be his backing singers. (He also has the best song, 'Patience', worthy of download even, and up for the Oscar - Ed).

Jamie Foxx is in his comfort zone in this one, and didn't really stand out for me, but he was competent enough I suppose. Beyonce's musical performances were excellent as you would expect, but she's not quite an actress yet. Her wide-eyed, honey-voiced turn in 'Goldmember' was great for novelty value, but she seems like a rabbit caught in the camera's headlights in certain scenes in Dreamgirls, mostly the ones involving her dialogue. This is only her first serious acting role though, so let's not be too harsh, because her stage performances are top stuff.

And it is in these performance pieces where Dreamgirls really cranks up the Hollywood glitz, the stagey razzamatazz, as 'Chicago' referred to. The staging of the musical numbers is engaging and showy enough to appeal to the MTV generation as much as fans of, oh I don't know, Cats or something. (Philistine - Ed). But for fans of Motown, 70's funk, Curtis Mayfield, and Disco, there is a great range of musical numbers on show here, all smartly choreographed and expertly performed. Also, there is not so much of that annoying feature of some Hollywood musicals, where the characters simply sing their dialogue to each other.. this device always smarts with me, and thankfully there's not too much of that sort of thing in Dreamgirls.

Although Oscar traditionally doesn't reward comedies, musicals are an entirely different matter. 'Ray', 'Walk the Line' and 'Chicago' have picked up Oscars in recent years, (for Jamie Foxx, Reese Witherspoon and Catherine Zeta-Jones) and PCMR predicts with confidence that of the 8 oscar nominations that Dreamgirls has received, Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy are water-tight no-brainer shoe-ins, and the movie will pick up at least two more for art and music direction, and also best song (where it has no less than three chances to win).

If you don't like musicals, I shake my head disapprovingly at you and urge you to reconsider this unfair prejudice. There are enough recent examples ('Walk the Line' dammit!?) to make a strong case for the movie musical as a potentially cracking piece of entertainment. Put it this way, when the wife/girlfriend 'suggests' you go see 'Dreamgirls' together, rest assured in the knowledge that you can go along, secretly really enjoy it, and also earn the required brownie point credits to go see something like 'Apocalypto' the following week. The perfect crime...


The verdict: A musical, but a very very good one. This is Hollywood razzamatazz at it's glitzy glamorous best, and Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy are excellent.
The rating: 8/10

Miami Vice

The movie business, like most areas of the entertainment industry, loves a good re-invention. Hollywood remakes have been hitting the multiplex screens in their droves of late, and the focus has recently shifted to contemporary updating of familiar, but dated tv shows: Bewitched, The Dukes of Hazzard, the troubled - but apparently imminent - Dallas, and of course Michael Mann's recent re-mix of Miami Vice. Now, this list should demonstrate that the TV-to-movie adaptation hasn't exactly produced a string of roaring box-office successes to date. Indeed, audiences are often reluctant to buy into what they perceive to be another re-hash of an old idea.

However, Michael Mann, the director of Miami Vice, is a genuine Hollywood heavyweight. (Think 'Manhunter', 'The Insider' and of course 'Heat'). This is a man who can squeeze an oscar-nomination-worthy performance out of Will Smith (Ali) and who in 'Collateral' successfully experimented with landmark digital photography techniques, bringing Los Angeles to life on the big screen to visually stunning effect. The critics loved Collateral, and it seemd Mann could pick and choose his projects on the foot of this success.

So why then, would he choose to remake Miami Vice? Well, I'm not sure I can provide an answer to that question and to be honest, I'm not sure if the movie can either. The contemporising of a franchise that is so emblematic of 1980's America can only have been something of a personal challenge and labour of love for the director, who has a close relationship with Miami Vice, having produced many episodes of the tv show early in his career.

The movie version of Miami Vice does not bear much resemblance to world populated by Don Johnson's sleeves, that Jan Hammer soundtrack, and all the associated trappings of 80's extravagance. No, this is a grittier more modern world altogether, and this Tubs and Crockett are most certainly not a buddy buddy partnership a la Lethal Weapon. Neither is theirs a frosty-at-first, but thanks to surviving a few scrapes, actually best mates scenario, in the vein of the Die Hard movies. Mann has avoided obvious cliches in the relationship between Sonny (Colin Farrell) and Rico (Jamie Foxx) and this is something I enjoyed about the movie. The closest the two come to a buddy moment is in the build-up to their final showdown scene, where they exchange a few terse words, and, as Colin Farrell starts the Ferrari, a quick handshake. I got the feeling as the two lads exchanged the odd macho word with each other that perhaps Mann was aiming for a knowing familiarity between the two, and a relationship that meant they didn't need to constantly ask what the other was thinking. Indeed, the line "where you at?" is exchanged between the two only a couple of times, despite the almost absurd complexity of what they are routinely faced with in the course of their undercover work.

While Mann has avoided the cliched two-dimensional caricatures of action heroes with his two Miami Vice leads, I was left a little cold by Colin and Jamie. The knowing familiarity between the two characters would perhaps have been better portrayed by two actors who knew each other well, and I got the impression Farrell and Foxx lacked a little of that kind of chemistry themselves.

In terms of their other on-screen relationships, Farrell shares some of his best scenes with the really quite beautiful Gong Li, and although these are pretty hot and heavy more often than not, the two characters at least develop something approaching a relationship. It's in these scenes with Gong Li that Farrell demonstrates his acting ability, rather than simply using his disguise of that truly shocking handlebar moustache, designer mullet and gravelly voice.

Foxx, too has a love interest, but they aren't really given much of a chance in the movie to share anything except a few soft-focus moments, so this relationship was less interesting for me, and one which I always felt was building up to a moment where Foxx cried "noooo!!". (This didn't happen in the movie by the way!)

However, the action scenes, as you would expect from Michael Mann, are expertly crafted. There is a shootout sequence that is very reminiscent of Heat, but modernised, and with more of a feel of the beach in 'Saving Private Ryan' than a Miami dockside, and this was the strongest action sequence for me. However, the tension is always high, as the two lads get further involved with the criminals they are trying to take down, the tempo of the action moves along nicely.

The movie looks amazing, and at times is genuinely breathtaking. Mann has a unique celluloid signature, and his sweeping shots of Venezuelan waterfalls, beachside mansions, and of course the night-time cityscapes of Miami fill the screen and are as cinematic as you are likely to see.

The plot of Miami Vice is tight enough, and the action rolls along with nary a dull moment. Both love interests are involved in the action, and both Sonny and Rico have a lot at stake as the inevitable climactic bullet-fest approaches. The logistical detail of the crime syndicate is dense, and is believable if a little fantastic. However the 'baddies' are basically just that, and are little more than two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. The vice squad themselves though, are believable enough in their roles, in particular the unlikely chief who does a better than decent job.

So, a solid enough actioner then? Well, yes, but like much of the decade of the 80's, it was a little shallow for my liking. Miami Vice is heavily reliant on the performances of its two male leads and, while Farrell was debatably the stronger of the two, I wouldn't single out either as being exceptional. Farrell's accent is particularly annoying, and he mumbles much of his dialogue in a gravelly southern drawl that almost makes him incomprehensible. He is good in the scenes where some vulnerability is required, but not so strong at the action hero routine... My advice for Colin is: try another comedy mate. All these earnest performances are fine, but in my book, his two best performances have been in the excellent 'Intermission' and as Bullseye in the otherwise appaling 'Daredevil'.

One thing the re-make of Miami Vice has in common with another franchise reboot - Casino Royale - is the presence of Chris Cornell on the soundtrack, this time in his more usual day job with Audioslave. Cornell himself is going through a bit of a renaissance lately, so perhaps his presence in these two remakes is no accident. Perhaps the theme of reinvention is moot however, as although Casino Royale left the audience wanting more from Bond, I unfortunately don't think the same can be said for Miami Vice.


The Verdict: Slick and polished, but ultimately shallow. If this movie was a decade, it would be the 80's.
Rating: 6/10