The Equalizer 3 (2023)

They should have let me in. Sicily. At a remote winery Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) kills gangster Lorenzo Vitale (Bruno Bilotta) and his henchmen to obtain a key to the winery’s vault and recoup money stolen in a cyber-heist. While leaving the winery, Robert is shot in the back by Vitale’s young grandson (Adriano Sabrie). Robert attempts suicide due to his injury but finds his gun out of bullets and then takes the ferry back to the mainland. While driving on the Amalfi Coast, Robert pulls over and slips into unconsciousness from shock. He is found and rescued by local carabiniere Gio Bonucci (Eugenio Mastrandrea) who brings Robert to a small coastal Italian town called Altamonte where he is treated by a doctor, Enzo Arisio (Remo Girone). As he recovers and regains his mobility Robert becomes acquainted with the locals and becomes fond of the town and its people. He makes an anonymous phone call to CIA officer Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) to tip her off about the winery’s role in the drug trade, disguised as normal business transactions in Sicily. Collins and other CIA operatives arrive at the winery and find millions in cash along with bags of synthetic amphetamines used by ISIS terrorists hidden in a storeroom, confirming Robert’s suspicions. Meanwhile, members of the Camorra harass and kill villagers in an attempt to coerce them out of their housing and take over Altamonte for property development. Robert overhears Marco Quaranta (Andrea Dodero) a high-ranking Camorra member, pressuring local shop owner Angelo (Daniele Perrone) for protection payments. To make an example of him, the Camorra firebombs Angelo’s fish store as the entire town watches. Gio reviews video of the firebombing and calls the Italian central police for an inquiry. Along with his wife Chiara (Sonia Ben Ammar) and daughter Gabriella (Dea Lanzaro), Gio is attacked by the Camorra and beaten for interfering in their operations. Thereafter, Marco demands that Gio set up a boat for him. Overhearing the conversation, Robert asks Marco to move his operations to a different location. When Marco refuses, Robert kills him and his henchmen. The Naples head of police Chief Barella (Adolfo Margiotta) is threatened and tortured by Marco’s brother Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio) the head of the Camorra and is ordered to find the person responsible for Marco’s death … Those people don’t know where to go. Our favourite vigilante returns to equalize everything in sight, starting with the mysterious catalyst whose payoff takes the entire film to establish. Transported to Sicily and the Italian mainland, the violence returns with verve in Robert Wenk’s screenplay, the scribe of the others in the series, in the finale adapted from the TV show that starred Edward Woodward and was created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim. What do you see when you look at me? McCall is ageing now and even he must be tired of all the killing. Lord knows I’m allergic to bad things. Availing of R&R in a pretty village with a pleasant woman restaurateur Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro) which introduces the hint if not the actuality of romance and a civilised doctor to oversee his recuperation he’s glad of it. Do I look like a guy who kills people? That’s an existential question that’s really kinda silly at this point in the trilogy: this film commences with a horrifying sequence of murders – yes, we know it’s McCall doing in some of the Camorra but it’s extremely shocking. Giving the CIA a tip-off is just the start of an elaborate denouement which unearths a terror cell and reveals the extent of the Mafia’s viciousness. The phone relationship with Emma is a preview of coming attractions: You don’t look like you sound/You do! That’s the opening gambit when they finally come face to face 48 minutes in. In these films Denzel is paired with younger women in a non-romantic way – they get the opportunity to do stuff and he returns to pleasantly predictable vengeful type. It’s his question to her that makes her think of the situation from a different angle: Why smuggle drugs into the most secure port in the entire region? That sets her off doing what he knows she will – directing the CIA action where it needs to go and hopefully keeping her out of the line of fire. While the women in this series are given an opportunity for some action it’s curtailed as here, where a well-timed call saves her but effectively puts her out of action – allowing him to rescue her and save the day because he’s the hero and that’s his job. That’s appropriate considering their previous pairing two decades ago in Man On Fire. Washington is an incredibly charismatic movie star and it’s a relief to have the first 45 minutes dedicated to rebuilding his constitution which allows him to cultivate relationships while the gangsters have their way with the locals, setting up an awesome revenge. His medical treatment and slow recovery gives the audience a chance to recover too before the inevitable kicks in. His visceral method leads him to explain his MO to a victim: It’s called pain compliance. It’s like he’s a doctor too! Shot in a palette verging on monochrome with chiaroscuro features by the brilliant Robert Richardson, the scheme complements the black and white morality, with the amorphous evil villainy of the Mafia rather less attractive than the mesmerising Marton Csokas in the first outing. It’s a stylish way for the series to take a bow – a kind of revenge Western with some spaghetti thrown in for good measure and a coda that explains why McCall fetched up there in the first place, a one-man reenacting of The Magnificent Seven against the mafia on their own turf. Directed as ever by Antoine Fuqua. I’m where I’m supposed to be

Civil War (2024)

We are now closer than we have ever been to victory. The near future. A civil war has broken out between an authoritarian US Government and various regional factions. The dictatorial President (Nick Offerman) who is serving a third term, claims that victory is close at hand. Renowned war photojournalist, Colorado-born Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) saves aspiring photojournalist Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny) from a suicide bombing in Brooklyn. Lee and her colleague, Florida-born Reuters journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) intend travelling to Washington DC to interview and photograph the president before the city falls. Lee’s mentor New York Times veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson)asks to accompany them as far as Charlottesville where the Western Forces (‘WF’) of Texas and California are presently assembling. Despite Lee’s hesitance she and Joel agree. Unbeknownst to Lee, Jessie persuades Joel to take her with them as well. After leaving NYC, the group stops at a rural gas station protected by armed men where Lee negotiates the purchase of fuel in Canadian dollars. Jessie wanders off to a nearby car wash, which she saw from the road. There, she finds two men being tortured by the owners, who claim that the men are looters. One owner follows Jessie but Lee defuses the situation by taking a photo of the man posing with his victims. After leaving, Jessie berates herself for being too scared to take photos. Following an overnight stop close to ongoing fighting, the group documents the combat the next day as militiamen assault a building held by loyalists. Lee sees Jessie’s potential as a war photographer, while Jessie photographs the militia executing captured loyalist soldiers. Continuing on, the group spends the night at a refugee camp  before passing through a small town where, under watchful guard, residents attempt to live in blissful ignorance. Look at the tops of the buildings. Be subtle. Lee and Jessie grow closer, trying on clothes at a local shop. Later, they are pinned down in a sniper battle amid the remains of a Winter Wonderland theme park. No one’s giving us orders, man. Someone’s trying to kill us and we’re trying to kill them. The snipers they are with mock Joel’s attempts to ascertain which party they are fighting for or against, telling Joel that they and the sniper in a nearby house are simply engaged in a struggle for survival. Jessie’s nerve builds and her photography skills improve as she witnesses several deaths and she develops a mentorship under Lee … They shoot journalists on sight in the capital. Writer/director Alex Garland’s latest film plugs into the inflammatory State of the Union as it currently pertains, figuring a fissure that is as much physical as ideological with the Western secessionist states of California and Texas pitched against the federal forces that protect a President hiding out in the White House. Garland’s work from The Beach onwards has focused on trouble in paradise and lately on dystopia. Lee and Joel are both camouflaging psychological disturbance from previous war zones – she has PTSD, he has modern-day shellshock and Lee especially exhibits something world weary cynicism to control symptoms that threaten to erupt into something worse. It’s gonna make a good image. How that dissonance within Lee translates into a kind of mentoring relationship with Jessie reflecting Sammy’s relationship with her provides much of the tension as the action and violence spiral the further into the US they travel. I remember you at her age. The juxtaposing of beautiful landscapes with jarring imagery of shock and awe combat provides much of the troubling visual texture. The sense of reality, the minutiae of a road trip under fire and the urgency of the storytelling has the quality of reportage from the front line. The fact that Lee wants to photograph the President to prove he is still alive speaks volumes. What happens ultimately is straight out of the Romanian playbook. The ones who get taken are always lesser men than you think. With no enemies identified, the viewer is asked to come to their own conclusions, a motley crew of varying protagonist-journalists providing a kind of collegiate and immersive focus group of the population, a prism for coming to terms with radical change and war as Americans fight Americans. Every instinct in me tells me this is death. Whether the presence and role of good old-fashioned photojournalists recording events makes a difference is not really questioned here – it’s presumed necessary for history: proof that things are happening because seeing is believing. Hence the acknowledged reference to Lee Miller in Dunst’s character’s name. What kind of American are you? A powerful state of the nation portrait that feels immediate and true. What happened back there is nothing in comparison with what we’re heading into

Deja Vu (2006)

See you yesterday. New Orleans. A ferry carrying US Navy sailors and their families across the Mississippi River for the Mardi Gras celebrations explodes, killing 543 people. ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) Special Agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) evidence of a bomb planted by a domestic terrorist and goes to the mortuary where he examines the body of Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) seemingly killed in the explosion but found in the river shortly before the time of the blast. Informing Claire’s father and searching her apartment, Doug learns that she called his ATF office the morning of the bombing and figures out that she was abducted and killed by the bomber hours before the explosion. Impressed with Doug’s deductive ability, FBI Special Agent Paul Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) invites him to join a new governmental unit investigating the bombing. Led by Dr. Alexander Denny (Adam Goldberg) the team uses a surveillance programme called Snow White which they claim uses previous satellite footage to form a triangulated image of events four-and-a-half days in the past. Convinced that Claire is a vital link to the unfolding bomb plot, Doug watches her footage and can track the soon-to-be-bomber when he calls about a truck she has for sale. Figuring out that Snow White is actually a time window, Doug persuades the team to send a note to his past self with the time and place the suspect will be. However it’s his partner Larry Minuti (Matt Craven) finds the note instead, and is shot attempting to arrest the suspect. By using a mobile Snow White unit, Doug is able to follow the suspect’s past movements as he flees to his hideout with the wounded Minuti and then witnesses Minuti’s murder. In the present, the bomber is taken into custody after facial recognition systems identify him as Carroll Oerstadt (Jim Caviezel) an unstable self-proclaimed patriot rejected from enlisting in the military. He confesses to killing Minuti and Claire, taking her truck to transport the bomb and staging her death as one of the ferry victims. The government closes the investigation, but Doug, convinced that Snow White can be used to alter history persuades Denny to send him back to the morning of the bombing so he can save Claire and prevent the explosion … What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world but you knew they would never believe you? The premise of this dazzling sci-fi action thriller is perfectly preposterous but is set up so persuasively it never fails to engage. It helps that this has Washington at his most movie star-ish as you’d expect in his third of five collaborations with director Tony Scott, whose command of the medium is embellished by Paul Cameron’s elegant cinematography. For once in my life I’d like to catch somebody before they do something horrible. The actual time capsule that Doug enters literally enables a race against time. What if it’s more than physics? That’s what Doug suggests to elevate rationale for the potential experience because he’s fallen head over heels for the gorgeous Claire on the mortician’s slab so he calls it spirituality but it’s good old fashioned romance – and he means to have this woman come back from the dead. Seeing her eventually spring back to life is fabulous. One man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot. As the domestic murderer paying homage to Oklahoma, Caviezel has the blankness to match his unshakeable convictions that what he is doing is righteous. Satan reasons like a man but God thinks of eternity, Doug counters with unarguable post hoc knowledge which momentarily throws his captive. Then there’s nothing for it but to enter the world as it was days earlier – and to alter one more bit of history to try change the outcome for hundreds of people: alt-history as we watch. There’s a terrific supporting cast including Kilmer and also Bruce Greenwood and the director’s wife, Donna. Super-stylish, fast-moving and an avowed homage to the great city of N’Oleans, cher. Written by Bill Marsilli & Terri Rossio. I see what’s coming

Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012)(TVM)

There’s war and there’s war. 1990s: Renowned war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (Nicole Kidman) is recalling her youthful relationship with novelist Ernest Hemingway (Clive Owen). 1936, Key West, Florida. She meets him by chance in a bar and back at his house run by his wife Pauline Pfeiffer (Molly Parker) the two’s undeniable attraction is noted. My husband always says kill enough animals and you won’t kill yourself. The two writers encounter each other a year later in Spain where both are covering the Civil War, staying in the same hotel on the same floor. Initially, Gellhorn resists romantic advances made by Hemingway but during a bombing raid the two find themselves trapped alone in the same room and are overcome by lust as dust from the conflagration covers their bodies. They become lovers and stay in Spain until 1939. Hemingway collaborates with Joris Ivens (Lars Ulrich) to make the film The Spanish Earth. In 1940 Hemingway divorces Pauline so that he and Gellhorn can be married. He credits her with having inspired him to write the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and dedicates it to her. Over time however Gellhorn becomes more prominent in her own right, leading to some career jealousies between them. Gellhorn leaves Hemingway to go to Finland to cover the Winter War by herself. When she returns to the Lookout Farm in Havana the maid has quit and she tells him the place looks like a Tijuana whorehouse. Hemingway tells her that he has divorced Pauline. The two marry and travel together to China to cover the bombings by Japan. In China, they interview Chiang Kai Shek (Larry Tse) and his wife (Joan Chen) who Gelhorn can’t best when she expresses her horror after visiting an opium den where she has spotted a little girl. Chiang Kai shek is fighting the Chinese Communists and Japanese invaders. Hemingway and Gellhorn secretly visit Zhou Enlai (Anthony Brandon Wong) the revolutionary content to play both ends against the middle until his time comes. Gellhorn covers D-Day in Normandy. She reports on the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps and his so horrified she runs out of them … There’s nothing to writing. Sit at your typewriter and bleed. Bluster and confidence, the devastation of war, lust and fine writing, a universe of division and conflict and conscience, all are called upon as the affair and marriage of two of the twentieth century’s best writers bear witness to unfolding history. Beautifully shot by Rogier Stoffers using different camera effects and archive montages to insert the characters into both colorised and monochrome footage, there is an uneven tone to this biopic as well as shifts in performance particularly by Owen who doesn’t quite capture the self-aggrandising charisma of Hemingway but certainly asserts his sexist boorish aspect. There is a certain comedy to the introduction of the famous characters, who take time to establish themselves in the narrative and sometimes play minor roles, there to augment and embellish the self-mythologising author who is hard to pin down here (Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris does this with caustic aplomb). Surrounded by an entourage of sycophants and hangers on, only John Dos Passos (David Strathairn) appears to question Hemingway’s macho posturing. When Hemingway admits he’s taken her Collier’s contract, Martha repeats what the man he calls the second best American writer has said of Hemingway and he hits her across the face: we know the marriage must be over. But not quite. There’s still a final act of war and humiliation. They have persuasively created a sexual and co-habiting relationship that is sometimes hard to watch when they exchange harsh words – but then wind up laughing at the good of it all. Until they fight again and it becomes ever more vicious. They’ll still be reading me long after you’ve been eaten by worms. Hemingway’s demise following his marriage to Mary Welsh (Parker Posey), who’s written as a celeb-hunting nicompoop, which may not be quite fair, is dramatic and swift in storytelling time (those presumably causative head injuries in the later aeroplane crashes are not covered albeit the car crash here with Welsh probably contributed to it). It’s a rich tapestry and while not successful overall, with an occasional (if forgivable) lurch into domestic melodrama, there are moments of genuine humour, black comedy and horror. For instance when Kai Shek dumps his dentures into a teacup and his verbose spider spouse does the talking and makes an unwilling Gellhorn take a gift. That’s history. The only thing that really interests me is people. Their lives. Their daily lives. And there are instances in war zones when Gellhorn scoops up children as their parents bleed to death and Hemingway, the father of sons by his previous wives, scoffs yet paradoxically admires her humanity. When Gellhorn walks into Dachau but then says Auschwitz was unbelievably worse and just takes off running we sense her disbelief. Kidman is quite splendid for much of the film. This is an amazingly comprehensive and visually immersive portrait of a man and a woman who were at the heart of a decade of world-changing events whose impact we still live with today. However their characters are almost too big to contain (and the gargantuan 2021 Ken Burns and Lynn Novick docu-series Hemingway has far more biographical information), literally covering too much ground with the prism of a domestic battle perhaps too slight for such an enormous focus. Necessarily episodic, the protagonists’ differences are sketched out schematically so this goes just a little way toward explaining why both are legends and Gellhorn fought so hard for her individuation. As she says here, she’s more than just a footnote to Hemingway. Consider this film restitution. At 155 minutes, this was premiered at Cannes but broadcast as a mini-series by HBO. Written by Jerry Stahl & Barbara Turner and directed by Philip Kaufman. We were good in war. And where there was no war we made our own. The battlefield we couldn’t survive was domestic life

The Hurt Locker (2008)

Pretty much the bottom line is if you are in Iraq you are dead. The second year of the Iraq War. A U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team with Bravo Company led by Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) identifies and attempts to destroy an IED (improvised explosive device) with a robot but the wagon carrying the trigger charge breaks. Team leader Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson (Guy Pearce) places the charge by hand, but is killed when an Iraqi insurgent in a nearby shop uses a mobile phone to detonate the charge. Squad mate Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) feels guilty for failing to kill the man with the phone. Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) replaces Staff Sergeant Thompson. He is often at odds with Sergeant J. T. Sanborn because he prefers to defuse devices by hand and does not communicate his plans, removing his headset to prevent communications. He blocks Sanborn’s view with smoke grenades as he approaches an IED and defuses it only moments before an Iraqi insurgent attempts to detonate it with a 9-volt battery. In another incident, James insists on disarming a complex car bomb despite Sanborn’s protests that it is taking too long; James responds by taking off his uniform headset and ‘flipping off’ Sanborn, saying if he’s going to die he might as well be comfortable. Sanborn is so worried by his conduct that he openly suggests killing James to Eldridge while they are exploding unused ordnance outside of base. On their return to base, they encounter five armed men in Iraqi garb by an SUV which has a flat tyre. After a tense encounter, James learns they are friendly British mercenaries (aka ‘private military contractors’) led by a handsome supposed crack shot (Ralph Fiennes). While fixing the tyre, they come under sniper fire. Three of the contractors are killed before James and Sanborn take over counter-sniping, killing three insurgents. Eldridge kills the fourth who attempts to flank their position. During a raid on a warehouse, James discovers a ‘body bomb’ he believes is Beckham (Christopher Sayegh), the Iraqi boy who sells him porn DVDs and plays soccer outside of base. During the evacuation, Lt. Colonel John Cambridge (Christian Camargo), the camp’s psychiatrist and Eldridge’s counsellor, is killed in an explosion; Eldridge is more deeply traumatised. James sneaks off base with Beckham’s apparent DVD sales associate at gunpoint in his truck, telling him to take him to Beckham’s home. He is left at the home of an unrelated Iraqi professor who tells him in English he is pleased to meet someone in the CIA and when his wife attacks James he flees. Called to a petrol tanker detonation, James decides to hunt for the insurgents responsible nearby. Sanborn protests but when James begins a pursuit, he and Eldridge follow. After they split up, insurgents capture Eldridge. James and Sanborn rescue him, although Eldridge gets shot in the leg … You are now in the kill zone. Independently directed and produced by Kathryn Bigelow with a screenplay by freelance writer Mark Boal who had been embedded in the war zone in 2004, this is a relentless, fully immersive trawl through a parched, sunblasted bombscape with three men whose differing takes on their shocking reality lend this an unparalleled realism. The management of the narrative is supreme. Episodic by nature, with six roughly fifteen-minute scene-sequences demarcated by alternating forms of action and different kinds of explosive and disposal style, the contrast between the characters and their various predilections or weaknesses exhibited in their dealings with each other and situations are heightened by the escalating violence, repetition and juxtaposition. Killing off a major star is an appropriately Hitchcockian start in a story that is structurally suspenseful. In comes Renner as James, a wild man who earns the admiration of a vicious commander Colonel Reed (David Morse in one of a number of notable cameos) who sees a guy after his own take-no-injured-prisoners (literally) heart. Sanborn’s ire is juxtaposed with Eldridge’s increasing fear, handled maladroitly by a Yalie shrink whom he inadvertently invites to finally see some action – and boy does he get his after engaging in a dumb talkshow with the local terrorists. This is what we think of psychology/psychiatry – we are in a film where the right wrench is more useful than trying to rationalise the unspeakable violence of modern warfare. When the scene changes and the guys encounter the mercenaries led by Fiennes out in the desert they form a tight trio – right after Sanborn has been conspiring with Eldridge to kill James, who invariably calms things and they are rewarded with a sunset after an exhausting thirsty day of picking off the Iraqis. That happens at 65 minutes and they finally let rip back at base where Eldridge finds James’s memory box of bomb parts that didn’t kill him under his bed. It’s a bonding experience which culminates in a bout of roughhousing between James and Sanborn in which the latter comes off much worse. They discover that James has a wife and son (he’s not sure if he’s divorced) and Sanborn wants that for himself. The scene shifts and another element is finally introduced – water: on the floor of a building where they find a dead boy rigged up with a body bomb and James exhibits emotion believing him to be Beckham, the teen chancer who sells him porn outside the base. A really good bad guy hides out in the dark. Then there’s a massive explosion which results in a cauldron of fire with James believing that it was done remotely and the bomber is likely just beyond the kill zone. So he and Sanborn and Eldridge set off into the nighttime streets in uniform – a difference to the preceding evening when he went out looking for Beckham’s home as a civilian and getting beaten up by that Iraqi woman for his trouble. He shoots Eldridge – accidentally? He’s the one who’s been keeping him sane, now Eldridge has a reason to go home, falling apart physically with a busted femur just as he’s been falling apart mentally with a broken mind. Sanborn stands in a shower and does it in his uniform, collapsing in grief, adrenaline rushing out of him. Then there’s a different kind of bomb – and another variety of conflagration. Back home, shopping in the supermarket, playing with his baby, cleaning the gutters, James tells his wife Connie (Evangeline Lilly) the military needs more bomb techs. And there’s a circular conclusion, like a hero’s journey tale. Bigelow says it’s about the psychology behind the type of soldier who volunteers for this particular conflict and then, because of [their] aptitude, is chosen and given the opportunity to go into bomb disarmament and goes toward what everybody else is running from. Unfailingly tense and suspenseful, this is never less than subjective. And there goes Renner, like an astronaut in his dirtbound bombsuit, walking alone, into a moral void. This was shot by Barry Ackroyd using four 16mm cameras at a time, in Jordan and Kuwait. Two hundred hours of material were edited by Chris Innis and Bob Murawski with a score by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders. Simply stunning filmmaking, rivetting storytelling, anxiety-inducing, utterly compelling. Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director while the film got Picture, Original Screenplay, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Film Editing. A modern masterpiece. Going to war is a once in a lifetime experience. It could be fun!

Paul Temple’s Triumph (1950)

I am afraid you are going to have to take the evening off after all. Private detective Paul Temple (John Bentley) and his lovely wife Steve (Dinah Sheridan) are searching for the missing scientist Professor Hardwick (Andrew Leigh) behind a pioneering nuclear missile shield when their friend, his daughter Celia (Anne Hayes), appeals to them for help. When they find her dead at the family home they eventually find out it’s got something to do with a shadowy crime organisation known only by the initial Z. There are Teutonic boffins, petrol smugglers, snooping reporters and French singer Jacqueline Giraud (Jenny Mathot) armed with doped cigarettes distracting the Temples from cracking the case but time is running out and the bodies are piling up … Never should have sent it from Rangoon. The poor man’s British take on Nick and Nora Charles has a convoluted plot, so many bodies we couldn’t keep count and Sheridan dripping in full length furs. She also looks good with a gun. And great in trousers. She knows too much. It’s a rare film indeed that has a credit that reads, Cars by Aston-Martin and Lagonda. It’s an even rarer one whose turning point into the third act is The Radio Times! But, as the World Service broadcast Europe Today triggers catastrophic events that elicit little more than blithe cheeriness from our protagonists – even moments after finding the body of their good friend – this rattles on, damn it, whether we can keep up with developments or not. The late arrival of Peter Butterworth raises a smile in a story where virtually nobody is who they say they are and the villains really are ruthless people. The third in the popular series this B-movie entry was adapted by A. R. Rawlinson from the Francis Durbridge novel which was also a radio serial, News of Paul Temple , this works like a low rent James Bond episode with pertinent post-war references including rationing. Celebrity spotters might recognise Hayes (whose only feature credit this was) as the first wife of Peter Sellers. Produced by Ernest G. Roy and directed by Maclean Rogers at Nettlefold Studios with location shooting at Hillingdon, Northolt Airport, Walton-on-Thames, Beaulieu, Shepperton and East Horsley. What have you got in here – cast iron camisoles?

Argylle (2024)

You need to stay on target. Introverted spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) has almost finished writing her fifth book about Aubrey Argylle (Henry Cavill), the title character of the Argylle spy series. On a train journey with her cat Alfie (Chip) to go and visit her mother Ruth (Catherine O’Hara) home in Chicago, Elly is saved from an ambush by an actual spy, Aidan Wylde (Sam Rockwell) who explains to her that a devious organisation, known as the Division, headed by Ritter (Bryan Cranston) has targeted her because her novels seemingly predict their future. Aidan travels with Elly to England, hoping that her next chapter will reveal how to stop the Division. In London, the duo searches for a Masterkey that would help expose the Division that Elly had also referenced in her novels. Suspecting Aidan wants to kill her too, Elly calls her mother for help and she immediately travels to rescue her daughter. There’s a knock at the door and it’s Elly’s father (Bryan Cranston). Then Aidan arrives and reveals that her parents are both operatives of the Division, forcing him and Elly to fend them off before fleeing. Who’s the only person who hasn’t tried to kill you in the past seventy-two hours? Escaping to France, Aidan and former CIA deputy director Alfie Solomon reveal that Argylle is not entirely fictional: Elly is in fact agent Rachel Kylle (‘Argylle’ having been derived from ‘R. Kylle’), who was captured and brainwashed by the Division five years ago and made to believe that Dr. Margaret Vogeler (Ruth) and Director Ritter (Barry) were her real parents. Elly put her suppressed memories into her novels in modified form … We’re on our own now. Cats. Writers. Spies. A recipe for success! Starwise it’s essentially Bryce versus Bryan – with a lot of Sam and Henry to spice things up. Even John Cena and pop star Dua Lipa show up in the great opening sequence and later Samuel L. Jackson and Ariana DeBose enter the fray. There’s an argument to be made for a director with such clear gifts as Matthew Vaughn that he should be making serious films – that is, narratives with more significant content and in reality it would appear he is painting himself into a corner of ridiculousness if not necessarily one of large scale likeable silliness. But we might mention that here he’s making a film about the inside of a woman’s mind (and even her eyelids) – kudos for that. Spies lie. It’s part of the game. As the perennially youthful Rockwell morphs into the amusingly Action Man-like Cavill we understand how a writer thinks, the rules of the espionage genre and enjoy Vaughn’s permanently witty point of view as Ellie figures out how to do adventure and spying in the real world (again). You’re just a character I made up. As usual in a Vaughn production, everything looks beautiful courtesy of DoP George Richmond and production designers Russell De Rozario and Daniel Taylor, the action is well managed and there are even some meta references (Argylle is definitely suited and booted by Kingsman). There’s an impressive score by Lorne Balfe with an astute use of the Beatles’ final song to lend poignancy. The midpoint reveal is great fun. Thereafter the conventions necessarily come into play. The greater the spy – the bigger the lie. There’s an easy bond (James?!) between our principals: You’re one hell of a spy, Ellie. Not a bad writer, either. And it’s a jolly sight indeed to have Howard spend most of the film carting her cat Alfie around in a posh backpack – and you know what they say about cats in dramatic structure (Save the Cat?!) – if there’s one in the first act, it has to go off in the third! It makes us think Vaughn is precisely the director to reinvigorate that moribund franchise albeit this is the first in a series of its own to perhaps be fused with Kingsman at a later date. Bonkers, nutty and fun, to be honest, this had us at Cat. Just tell us what happens in the next chapter

Hide and Seek (1964)

Very clever the Russians, aren’t they. Cambridge University. Astrophysics professor David Garrett (Ian Carmichael) is working on tracking Russian rocket launches. He meets up with an old mentor and friend, Professor Frank Melnicker (George Pravda) who is playing multiple games of chess at a display of simultaneous play at a local temperance hall. Garrett is confused by the apparently secretive way that one player, Paul Richter (Kieron Morre) transfers the knight chess piece to Melnicker. When Melnicker notices two individuals enter the hall he is distracted and excuses himself for the lunch break. Garrett offers to drive Melnicker to his hotel. There are two men (James Houlihand and Leslie Crawford) waiting for Melnicker outside. When Garrett intimates that since they are in England that Melnicker could find safety, Melnicker cryptically tells Garrett that he should recall his seventh chess move. Garrett’s driver (Judy Parfitt) informs him that Major McPherson (Edward Chapman) wishes to meet with him. The Major tells Garrett that he must stop socialising with Melnicker since he is a known East German communist. Garrett arrives at the Ministry of Defence for a meeting, and while in the bathroom a box of chess pieces is dropped off to him that his driver believes he mistakenly left in the car. In fact, it was left by Melnicker. It contains the knight chess piece and a money belt containing a large amount of cash. Garrett takes the chess piece and money belt with him and leaves the building to return to the hall where the chess demonstration was happening. When he arrives at the hall he finds the display being torn down, with the demonstration cancelled due to Melnicker not returning after lunch. Garrett remembers the moves Melnicker had made and comes up with king’s square four. When he says this to a cabby, the man suggests they drive to King’s Square, an address in Chelsea, Garrett rings the doorbell and a young woman named Maggie (Janet Munro) calls to him from the second floor. She is apparently expecting him and throws down keys so he can let himself in. Others arrive, – there for a wedding reception. Garrett is starting to wonder if he’s in the right place, when he sees Maggie talking to Richter and finds a room upstairs with a chessboard that is missing the knight piece he has in his pocket. Garrett talks with Maggie and finds out she does know of Melnicker. Maggie then says she has to leave and Garrett leaves alone after copying down Maggie’s phone number. Outside Garrett realises two men are following him. A running chase happens, with Garrett escaping by hiding in a children’s sandbox in Royal Chelsea Gardens which is packed with nannies and their charges. He phones Maggie and says he must meet up with her so he can return the money to Melnicker. Maggie tells Garrett to meet her at the train station at Watford, where she convinces him to board the train with her. On the train, Garrett continues to ask Maggie where Melnicker is and where they are travelling to but they’re going through Grantham. Maggie seems to be avoiding committing to anything and Garrett resigns himself to continuing on the train for the time being. Sometime later Maggie goes out into the corridor to smoke a cigarette and notices two men she identifies as secret police that they must avoid. They are chased around in the train until Maggie pulls the emergency stop cord and she and Garrett jump off the train. After a series of mishaps they are picked up by a bargeman called Wilkins (Hugh Griffith) who’s travelling with a menagerie, escaping potential nuclear disaster to what he calls his Magical Island … I think the game would have turned out quite differently if you had realised the importance of my seventh move. A Cold War picaresque, you say? We have just the thing! This jaunty jape-filled English travelogue is replete with Noah’s Ark (on a barge), a pixie-like love interest who is just this short of manic dream girl, a scientist who can’t swim but manages to rig a bomb in a boat and sexier-than-thou Curt Jurgens posing political equivocations in a series of chess moves but manages to get himself checkmated. Carmichael is of course an unlikely romantic hero but in his early Sixties customary comic-satiric mode he’s quite the dashing Hannay-style wrong man protagonist in a film that owes probably as much to Hitchcock and Buchan as the source novel by Harold Greene, adapted for the screen by Robert Foshko and David Stone. When our (eventually) romantic couple goes walkabout and winds up being picked up by Wilkins on a barge which transpires is filled with pairs of animals and 136 bottles of Jamaican rum it’s a highly diverting interlude filled with references to Shakespeare as this former teacher bemoans the colleague who advised in case of nuclear armageddon, cover your head with a brown paper bag. Garrett is inclined to agree with his colleague. Rather amusingly, there’s a graphic of the H-bomb behind this prepper declaring Annihilation Imminent. After a spell hitchhiking and meeting their nemesis Richter which winds up in a literal cliffhanger and apparent death, things can only conclude by meeting the main man, Hubert Marek (Jurgens), at a fortress-like hostelry where mind games matter as much as chess before Garrett uses his own little grey cells after being confronted Poirot-like by every player in the story. Then he goes all Tintin (L’Ile Noire) and figures things out. It’s an ingenious plot that might have been a bit better handled but the constant trickery, chess moves, the toilet and sex references, the theatrical quotes and the sheer chutzpah of the twist are all to be cherished in a film that has a deceptive tone all its own. This is billed as (producer) Hal E. Chester’s Hide and Seek which is a bit of a cheek even in these days of possessory credits. Beautifully shot in black and white by Gilbert Taylor, this is directed by Cy Endfield and was made before Zulu but released months after that fabled film. This probably wasn’t his wheelhouse but he makes a pretty good fist of a tongue in cheek Cold War movie that is as far from Bond as we could imagine even if starts off with a stonking rocket launch. What is all this horseplay?

Sammy Going South (1963)

Aka A Boy Ten Feet Tall. We’re not going south. Port Said, Egypt during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Ten-year old English boy Sammy Hartland (Fergus McClelland) lives with his ex-pat parents. When they are killed in a bombing while Sammy is playing by the canal, he flees the city in the ensuing panic. He sets out to reach his only living relative, Aunt Jane (Zena Walker) his mother’s sister whom he has never met and who lives 5,000 miles to the south in Durban, South Africa, the other end of the continent. Along his journey Sammy encounters a colourful array of characters. His first guide is an Arab peddler (Zia Mohyeddin) who takes him over the mountains and dies in a freak accident when a stone explodes in a fire and ruins his eyes. Sammy is then rescued in Luxor by wealthy tourist Gloria van Imhoff (Constance Cummings) who pays Spyros Dracandopoulos (Paul Stassino) to find him when Sammy runs off and takes a ferry along the Nile. He encounters a gruff old hunter and diamond smuggler, Cocky Wainwright (Edward G. Robinson) whose life is subsequently saved by the boy after Sammy shoots dead a leopard the old man is hunting. The news is out that the boy is missing and being sought. When the police search for Sammy, he pretends he never wanted him for anything except the money being offered as a reward for finding him. Then they arrest the old man, who has been a fugitive for years … Jumpin’ Jehosophat, don’t you think I’ve got eyes in my head?! Perhaps it’s a moot point as to whether director Alexander Mackendrick can be classed an auteur given the variability of his output and this is probably categorised at the lesser end of his films which included the masterpieces Sweet Smell of Success and The Ladykillers. This portrait of childhood is tough yet engaging, somewhere in the sphere of the later A High Wind in Jamaica yet very much moving to its own beat. This boy is tough, wary, diffident, trusting, smart, scared and engaging and newcomer McClelland is given a lot to do with a cast of different characters, most of whom appear to want something from him. He is basically worth a reward and he puts together his own worth. It starts when he loses his parents after he’s been playing down at the Suez Canal – we are placed in the major news event of the late 50s by dint of radio bulletins – and then narrowly avoids a beating by an Egyptian teenager. What follows is an amazing travelogue and his path is traced from Port Said to Luxor, the White Nile, the Sudan and finally Durban, all in different vehicles from donkeys and taxis to a ferry and a missed train and even a plane ride. The wallet he carries is from the rascal who gains his trust with the line, Don’t be frightened. I’m not Egyptian. I’m Syrian. I’m pro-British! That tallies with what was on the verge of being done to him on the streets of Port Said. When the man dies horrifically (we see his death from the child’s point of view) Sammy is smart enough to liberate his wallet which Gloria then finds and Spyros figures out it was stolen when he sees the photo of a sexpot tucked away in it. Adapted from the W. H. Canaway novel by Denis Cannan, this gains traction from the intertitles – starting in December 1956 and finishing March 1957, lending it a realism. But this is not a kid who spreads sweetness and light despite the blond hair and blue eyes – he’s tough as old boots and seems to leave disaster in his wake. When he is presented with the dead leopard’s offspring and Cocky tells the preternatual crack shot he just killed the animal’s mother there is genuine anguish in his eyes at putting the beautiful creature in the same situation as his own – that of an orphan. The moment passes - then he wears her skin – just like Tarzan, he declares. He gets over things but he has to do it on his own terms. The relationship with Cocky is that of a son and a father but Lem (Harry H. Corbett) tells Cocky if he wanted to do that he should have thought of it twenty years earlier. Cocky knows this boy’s heart and he lets him go with a lie which Sammy realises later on. Perhaps this isn’t a classic exactly but it’s determinedly unsentimental, relentlessly pitting this singleminded child on a path towards individuation and experience, come what may. Beautifully shot on location in Kenya (with some second unit shots done clandestinely in Egypt) in CinemaScope and Eastmancolor by the venerable Erwin Hillier, this received its premiere before Queen Elizabeth II 18th March 1963. He has to be left alone

Last Action Hero (1993)

You’re going to play chicken, aren’t you. Just like Jack Slater! New York City. Ten-year-old Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien)lives in a crime-ridden area of the city with his widowed mother, Irene (Mercedes Ruehl). Since his father’s death, Danny takes comfort in watching action movies, especially a series featuring Los Angeles cop Jack Slater at a cinema owned by Nick (Robert Prosky), who is also the projectionist. Nick gives Danny a golden ticket once owned by Harry Houdini, to see an early screening of Jack Slater IV before its official release. During the film, the ticket stub (counterfoil) transports Danny into the fictional world, interrupting Slater during a car chase following the murder of his favourite Slater cousin (Art Carney). After escaping from their pursuers, Slater takes Danny to the LAPD headquarters, where Danny points out evidence of the fictional nature of Slater’s world, such as the presence of numerous attractive women (even working at the counter in the video store) and a cartoon cat detective named Whiskers. Danny says Slater’s friend John Practice (F. Murray Abraham) should not be trusted as he killed Mozart (as he is played by the actor who played Salieri in Amadeus). Though Slater dismisses all of this as part of Danny’s wild imagination, Slater’s shouty supervisor, Lieutenant Dekker (Frank McRae) assigns Danny as his new partner and instructs them to investigate criminal activities related to mafia boss Tony Vivaldi (Anthony Quinn). Danny guides Slater to Vivaldi’s mansion, recognising its location from the start of the movie. There, they meet Vivaldi’s henchman, Mr. Benedict (Charles Dance) albeit he claims never to have risen above the position of lackey. Vivaldi and Benedict killed Slater’s second cousin but Slater has no evidence and is forced to leave with Danny; however, Benedict is curious as to how Danny knew and he and several hired guns follow Slater and Danny back to Slater’s home. There, Slater, his daughter Whitney (Bridgette Wilson) and Danny thwart the attack, though Benedict ends up getting the ticket stub. He discovers it can transport him out of the film and into the real world. Slater deduces Vivaldi’s plan to murder the Torelli mob by releasing a lethal gas during a funeral atop a skyscraper. He and Danny go to stop it, but are waylaid by Practice, who reveals that Danny was right: he is working for Vivaldi. Whiskers kills Practice, saving Slater and Danny, who manage to prevent any deaths from the gas release. After Vivaldi’s plan fails, Benedict kills him and uses the stub to escape into the real world, pursued by Slater and Danny. I’ve never met a fictional character before. Slater becomes despondent upon learning the truth, as well as his mortality in the real world but cheers up after spending time with Irene. Meanwhile, Benedict devises a plan to kill the actor portraying Slater in the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger (attending with his wife, TV journalist Maria Shriver), using the villain Ripper (Tom Noonan, who’s also attending the movie as himself), bring other movie villains into the real world and take over  … I’m in the movie! Holy cow, I’m in the movie! Loud, meta, self-referential, this could only be an 80s action movie. Except it’s a 90s satire of the action movie made by the duo who made the 80s action movie – star der Ahnuldt and partner in crime director John McTiernan who made him a megastar with quintessential 80s sci-fi actioner Predator. With a screenplay by Shane Black & David Arnott from a story by Zak Penn & Adam Leff, this in essence is the dream team and of course it’s set in Los Angeles at Christmas. There are problems however. Oh shit! I’m a comedy sidekick! It’s not going to work! A famous flop, this grossed $15M against a production budget of $85M a year after Arnold Schwarzenegger had his biggest ever hit, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Part of the reason this celebration of movies and of Schwarzenegger’s cultural persona and movie iconicity doesn’t entirely resonate is probably the character played by O’Brien. He’s not obnoxious exactly but he’s far too knowing and while that may have looked good on the page and plays to the postmodernist conceit at work from the first frame there is an empathy quotient that’s missing – crucially, we know everything is all going to be alright. This, despite the opening sequence when in the first film within the film Slater’s son is involved in a terrible dilemma for his father, a hostage drama which we later discover transpires to have had a fatal outcome. This gives the characters a kind of equality but because the kid knows more than the adult Slater is always a beat behind. That golden ticket suggests a Wonka-esque outcome that never quite plays out: the stakes are never raised despite the evident danger. You’re the best celebrity lookalike I’ve ever seen, says Schwarzenegger to Slater at the movie premiere which precipitates the climax and brings real and reel life together in cataclysmic fashion. With a boss who shouts all the time, a British villain, a mom who works late and a dead dad, a dead kid, a treacherous colleague and the promise of hoodlums running the world, not to mention a nod to Bergman (Ingmar, we hasten to mention) with Ian McKellen as Death, and a host of stars playing either themselves or their cinematic incarnations (Sharon Stone shows up in a walkthrough as Catherine Trammell from Basic Instinct) this muscular workout may have taken all the genre tropes and a leaf from Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo but goes somewhere different and is not at all satisfactory. It’s a messy headscratching Rorschach blot of a film. We blame the writers, who clearly struggled with the tone and structure. Is this what all cinema is leading us to? Hollywood is writing our lives