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

The Beekeeper (2024)

I’m the beekeeper. I protect the hive. Rural Massachusetts. Retired schoolteacher Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) lives by herself on an isolated property but she has a tenant in her barn, Adam Clay (Jason Statham) who lives a quiet life as a beekeeper. Eloise falls for an online phishing scam and is robbed of over $2 million, the majority of which belongs to an educational charity she manages. Devastated, she dies by gunshot. Clay finds her body and is immediately arrested by FBI Agent Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Eloise’s daughter. After her mother’s death is ruled a suicide, Clay is released. Verona tells him the group that robbed Eloise has been on the FBI’s radar for a while but is difficult to track. Wanting justice for Eloise, Clay contacts the Beekeepers, a mysterious group, to find the scammers responsible. Clay receives an address for the scammers: a call centre run by Mickey Garnett (David Witts). Clay scares off the employees and destroys the building. Garnett informs his boss, technology executive Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), who sends Garnett to kill Clay. A violent confrontation ensues where Clay kills Garnett’s men and severs Garnett’s fingers. Garnett calls Danforth while stopped at a bridge, informing him that Clay is a Beekeeper. Having followed Garnett, Clay drags him off the bridge with a truck to his death and warns Danforth that he is coming after him. Danforth informs former CIA director Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons), who is currently running security for Danforth Enterprises at the request of Derek’s mother, Jessica, about Clay. Concerned, Wallace contacts the current CIA director Janet Harward (Minnie Driver) hoping to stope Clay. She contacts the Beekeepers and learns that Clay has retired from the organisation. The Beekeepers subsequently declare neutrality after Clay kills the current Beekeeper Anisette Landress (Megan Le) sent to kill him at a gas station. Meanwhile, Verona and her partner, Agent Matt Wiley (Bobby Naderi), figure that Clay will assault the Nine Star United Centre in Boston, which oversees all of Derek’s global scam call centers. After informing FBI Deputy Director Prigg (Don Gilet) that Clay is a Beekeeper, they are shocked to get all the support they ask for. Wallace coordinates a group of ex-special forces personnel, revealing to them that the Beekeepers are a highly skilled and dangerous secret human intelligence organisation tasked with protecting the United States, operating above and beyond governmental jurisdiction. To improve their chances at stopping Clay, Wallace orders the group to secure the inside of the Nine Star Building, while the FBI places their own SWAT team around the perimeter. Danforth’s decision to not evacuate the employees enables Clay to quickly defeat the FBI SWAT team and infiltrate the building. After wiping out all of Wallace’s ex-Special Forces group, Clay proceeds to interrogate the manager, who reveals that Danforth is his boss. Verona informs Prigg that Danforth runs both companies, which several US government agencies use. Verona also brings up the point that not only will Clay try to kill Derek but he may also kill Jessica (Jemma Redgrave), the president of the United States, due to her association with the scam … Beekeepers keep working until they die. The Stath is back! And he’s in pursuit of righteous vengeance in this entertaining and well motivated thriller albeit this probably has the highest body count since the last John Wick entry with added fingers for electronic passes. Was it Aristotle that said character is action?! Literal to the nth degree, we have someone acting out his nominatively determined hobby, and killing his honey bees is just the worst thing you could do to the masked one. I taught CIA software to hunt money and not terrorists. The opening sequence is clear and concise – then we’re brought into a world where a very unlikely character (a very different looking Hutcherson as Derek) turns out to be the son of someone very important indeed – and while Redgrave is clearly powerful the big reveal doesn’t happen until c74 minutes into the running time – at which point many, many people have rued their crossing the Beekeeper. I will never steal from the weak and the vulnerable again! Then the action unspools at a supposedly impenetrable venue followed by a party at a coastal estate where Clay has to contend with a comic book South African mercenary Lazarus (Taylor James) who got unlucky the last time he met a Beekeeper and has the prosthetic leg to prove it. Obviously, this has to be the ultimate encounter. Throughout there are gnomic nods on the one hand to bees (what else) but on the other to the offspring of US Presidents with winks at the ethics of campaign fundraising, a fun set of references in election year. And this will not dissuade anyone of the justifiable fear that technology is theft. At the end of the day Mr Clay disappears just like the man with Black Magic chocolates – or James Bond. What a guy! He’s absolutely fucking terrifying! Truly the strong mostly silent killing machine. The well-hewn screenplay is written by Kurt Wimmer with tongue firmly in cheek and directed by David Ayer with stunning cinematography from Gabriel Beristain. Sometimes when the hive is out of balance you have to replace the queen

Panic in Year Zero! (1962)

Aka Survival. All normal forms of communications appear to have broken down. Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland), his wife Ann (Jean Hagen), their son Rick (Frankie Avalon) and daughter Karen (Mary Mitchel) leave suburban Los Angeles at sunrise to go on a fishing trip to the Sierra Nevada wilderness, bringing with them a small camping trailer. After a couple of hours on the road, Harry and Ann are startled by an unusually bright light, accompanied by the radio station going to static. Tuning through stations, they hear a sporadic news report broadcast on CONELRAD that hint at the start of a nuclear war, confirmed when the Baldwins see a large mushroom cloud from a hydrogen bomb rising over Los Angeles, now many miles away. The family attempt to return home to rescue Ann’s mother but Harry soon realises that the roads will be clogged by panicked people and what is left of the city will be saturated in atomic fallout. Stopping at a small diner to get food and find out what is happening, Harry hears that Los Angeles was hit by two hydrogen bombs: One over Downtown Los Angeles, the other at the  Port of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco were also targets. With this news, deciding that his family’s survival must come first, Harry decides to continue to their secluded holiday spot in the mountains, abandoning Ann’s mother back in LA and weather the crisis from there. In the next few days we’re going to have the kind of togetherness we never dreamt of. The Baldwins stop to buy supplies at a small town off the main road, which has not yet been inundated by refugees from the city. Harry attempts to purchase tools and guns from hardware store owner Ed Johnson (Richard Garland) with a combination of $200 cash and a personal cheque for the remainder. However, Johnson believes only Los Angeles has been hit and the government remains intact, so he insists on following state law and withholding the guns for a 24 hours while Harry’s cheques are verified. Harry absconds with the weapons with Rick’s help but he tells Johnson that he will eventually return and pay for them in full. Back on the road, the family encounter three threatening young hoodlums, Carl (Richard Bakalyan), Mickey (Rex Holman) and Andy (Neil Nephew) but manage to fend them off. There must be some good people left. After a harrowing journey, the Baldwins reach their destination. Realising their trailer offers no protection from radioactive fallout, they take the contents of the trailer and find shelter in a cave where they settle in and wait for civil order to be restored. On their portable radio, they listen to war news and learn that what remains of the UN has declared this to be Year Zero … I guess there’s no such thing as complete isolation. Based on a screenplay by John Morton and Jay Simms from a story by Simms, this is tough stuff, particularly for its era and feels rather close to the knuckle in these dangerous days. It pulls no punches in the rapid descent to aggressive and brutal dissent. This realistic portrait of the aftermath of an atomic bomb is notable for its commitment to the idea that society will immediately fragment and the term ‘civilisation’ figures largely. Director and star Milland as pragmatic Harry ruefully admits, I looked for the worst in others and I found it in myself. His relationship with wife Ann (an underused Hagen – initially!) fractures when he takes charge in a radical way and we can only presume Avalon was cast as his son due to his fan base, an attractive factor for producers American International Pictures who had him tour the US when it went out across the states after making its money back in LA. Mitchel is attacked horrifically by the violent hoodlums whose situation is finally avenged but in the doing another young woman is discovered and it is Rick’s idea to rescue her, not his father’s. It’s an unusual role for Milland and he’s the better for it, a wannabe warrior whose instincts are correct but sometime his judgment is lacking. Intelligent people don’t just turn their back on the rest of the world, Ann reasons. As much as Harry wants to protect his family he ultimately realises his limitations but there is humour here too. Nothing like eating under an open sky, even if it is radioactive, muses Rick. The use of sex as a weapon in what is essentially civil war has a grim outcome for this close knit family. And when mom Ann finally takes action in a story that deprives her of input or consequence for the first two-thirds of the story, it’s decisive. This isn’t exactly optimistic about mankind and save for a few obvious studio shots Milland the director marshals the action well. A striking, serious and atmospheric work, filled with foreboding – and guns. Our country is still full of thieving, murdering patriots

Capricorn One (1978)

A funny thing happened on the way to Mars. Three astronauts Charles Brubaker (James Brolin), Peter Willis (Sam Waterston) and John Walker (O.J. Simpson) are about to launch into space on the first mission to Mars. But when a mechanical failure surfaces that would kill the three men, NASA chief Dr James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) removes them from the Capricorn One capsule otherwise their funding will be pulled by Washington. To prevent a public outcry, NASA secretly launches the capsule unmanned and requires the astronauts to film fake mission footage in a studio in the middle of the desert. They do so under fear of their families being killed on a plane bringing them back home. However, the plan is compromised when ambitious TV journalist Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould) starts reading deeply into a message Brubaker has broadcast to his wife Kay (Brenda Vaccaro) after his friend at NASA Elliot Whitter (Robert Walden) suddenly disappears when he detected the TV signals ahead of the capsule transmissions. When Caulfield’s brakes are tampered with he visits Mrs Brubaker at home to watch some innocuous home movies which confirm his suspicions that the mission is faked then finds the FBI in his apartment framing him for drug possession … With that kind of technology you can convince people of almost anything. Conspiracy theories ahoy! Director Peter Hyams’ screenplay exploits the story that won’t go away about the televised Apollo moon landing and extrapolates a juicy suspenser with an amiable cast. Not in the same league as the major paranoid thrillers of the era, it’s still bright and breezy and pretty plausible given the deniability factors and the political mood. Of cult value for the (non-)performance of Simpson with Karen Black along to help the wonderfully ironic Gould (whose dialogue is superior to the rest of the cast’s) get his man. And then there’s a crop dusting scene that of course recalls North by Northwest – in reverse! With Kojak at the helm! Godalmighty this is a lot of fun but there’s one horrifying scene in the noonday sun that will make you weep. It’ll keep something alive that shouldn’t die

Pixie (2020)

She won’t just break you she’ll take a Kalashnikov to your heart. Sligo, Ireland. Wannabe photographer Pixie O’Brien (Olivia Cooke) uses her ex-boyfriends Fergus (Fra Fee) and Colin (Rory Fleck Byrne ) to stage an elaborate drug heist on gangster priests which winds up with the men of the cloth murdered, and Colin kills Fergus with a bullet to the head. Two smitten local boys Frank (Ben Hardy) and Harland (Daryl McCormack) join her on the run from the hit man Seamus (Ned Dennehy) her gangster stepfather (Colm Meaney) has set on them when they try to sell 15kg of MDMA back to the priest Father Hector McGrath (Alec Baldwin) who runs the drug scene on the west coast. It turns out Pixie has a very personal motivation beyond money – revenge for the death of her mother who was helped along by her psycho step brother Mickey (Turlough Convery) … These guns won’t shoot themselves. Father and son team Barnaby and Preston Thompson direct and write respectively and this road trip down Ireland’s west coast (rechristened the Wild Atlantic Way to attract tourists) is bloody and violent and very funny, played by a well cast ensemble who revel in the opportunity to get up to Tarntino-esque antics in a picturesque setting shot rather niftily by John de Borman. There are some zingers but they’re often let down by the sound which prioritises a crazily effective set of songs curated by David Holmes and punch lines get lost in the mix (which does not include any songs by Pixies …). Cooke is fantastic in what is likely her best role to date as the amoral (not manic) pixie dream girl but there is also effective characterisation by Meaney and Baldwin as well as her companions Hardy and McCormack whom she seduces into a homoerotic scene that definitely was not on their cards. It’s got references from all over the shop, it’s rackety and fun with a very spirited tone. Dylan Moran appears as a very nasty piece of work indeed. You’ll cheer when you see what Pixie does to him. Naturally there’s a shootout that features nuns with guns. A great bit of craic altogether. I’m sorry we didn’t fucking cover body disposal in our economics course

A Man and a Woman (1966)

Aka Un homme et une femme. If I had to go through this again what would I do? Widowed script girl Anne Gauthier (Anouk Aimee) travels from her home in Paris to Deauville to visit her little girl Francoise (Souad Amidou) at boarding school in Deauville. She accepts a lift back with racing driver Jean-Louis Duroc who is a widower visiting his little boy Antoine (Antoine Sire). A friendship blossoms into romance but she can’t tell him her husband Pierre (Pierre Barouh) is dead and speaks of Pierre in the present tense, confusing their perceptions of each other. His wife Valerie (Valerie Lagrange) committed suicide when she saw him in a near-fatal accident and believed he died. But he survived. Now when he races in icy conditions on the Riviera in the Monte Carlo rally Anne watches the coverage on the radio (voiced by presenter Gerard Sire, father of Antoine) and sends him a telegram saying she loves him and he drives back north in his Mustang to see her  …  Why? Just your everyday story of a widowed script girl meeting cute with a widowed racing driver. From this slim premise evolved a glorious melodrama. Two of the most beautiful people to ever grace the earth in a romantic movie about movie-making and romance: this is how the Nouvelle Vague was repackaged and commercialised by writer/director Claude Lelouch and it was a cultural phenomenon in its day, a Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, an Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film and Original Screenplay as well as a huge box office success on both sides of the Atlantic. Shot quickly with just seven crew on a low budget, the flashy techniques were born of necessity. Different black and white film stocks were used until an American distributor contributed more money upfront enabling Lelouch to buy colour film. The old cameras used had to be covered in blankets to protect them from wintry damp – there was a lot of rain on those supposedly exotic resort locations: the antithesis of glamour. Yet did any actors ever wear sheepskin coats so well?! Trintignant was on board first and it was he who suggested Aimee as his co-star when Lelouch asked him who would be his ideal woman. They were old friends. When she closes her eyes during their scenes of radiant intimacy she paradoxically creates an even more empathetic heroine, this woman who can’t come to terms with her husband’s death.  This is always about how the mind works to permit people to fall in love in the aftermath of unspeakable tragedy. Danger underlines everything – these men who love Anne dally with it in their daily occupations. Hope is a little beyond her, the future unthinkable.  Isn’t death the ultimate subject of all art? The film’s conclusion was kept secret from Aimee:  that’s real surprise registering on her gravely luminous face. The score by Francis Lai is simply unforgettable. It was written before the production commenced and Lelouch used playback during the scenes to inspire the performers who where encouraged to improvise their dialogue. Lelouch said of working with Trintignant: I think Jean-Louis is the actor who taught me how to direct actors. We really brought each other a lot. He changed his method of acting while working with me, and I began to truly understand what directing actors was all about, working with him. I think the relationship between a director and actor is the same relationship as in a love story between two people. One cannot direct an actor if you do not love him or her. And he cannot be good if he or she does not love you in turn.  How astonishing has Trintignant been in the evolution of contemporary romantic dramas? Starting with And God Created Woman, A Man and A Woman, through Amour, he is the cornerstone of how we perceive the male psyche from the 1950s onwards. He will celebrate his 90th birthday December 2020. Co-written with Pierre Uytterhoeven. Not just a film, this is a landmark in cinema. If you ever find yourself in Deauville you can book into the suite named for the film at the Hotel Barriere Le Normandy. Some Sundays start well and end badly

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Everything is flat and empty here. There’s nothing to do. In 1951 Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges) are high-school seniors and friends in Anarene, North Texas. Duane is dating Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd), who Sonny considers the prettiest girl in town. Sonny breaks up with his girlfriend Charlene Duggs. Over the Christmas holiday Sonny begins an affair with lonely Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman) the depressed wife of high-school “Coach” Popper (Bill Thurman) who is secretly gay. At the Christmas dance Jacy is invited by Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid) to a naked indoor pool party at the home of Bobby Sheen (Gary Brockette) a wealthy young man who seems a better romantic prospect than Duane. Bobby tells Jacy that he isn’t interested in virgins and to come back after she’s had sex. Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) bans the boys from his cafe, pool hall and cinema when they mistreat their retarded friend Billy (Sam Bottoms) taking him to a prostitute who beats him for making a mess. Sam dies while the boys are on a road trip to Mexico and leaves his property to different people, including Sonny. Jacy invites Duane for sex in a motel and eventually breaks up with him by phone, eventually losing her viriginity on a pool table to her mother’s lover Abilene (Clu Gulager). Sonny fights with Duane over Jacy  and Duane leaves town to work on the rigs out of town. Jacy sets her sight on Sonny and they elope to her parents’ fury. The war in Korea provides an escape route for Duane but there’s one last picture show on before the cinema closes down forever … Nothing’s ever the way it’s supposed to be at all. They say the third time’s the charm and so it was for neophyte director Peter Bogdanovich in this adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel about kids growing up in small town North Texas which he co-wrote with the author as well as wife Polly Platt, who was the production designer and collaborator with Bogdanovich on all his films. (Then he fell in love with his young leading lady Shepherd, but that’s another story). The film was shot in black and white following advice from Orson Welles, Bogdanovich’s house guest at the time (and the best book on Welles derives from this era of their wide-ranging conversations, This Is Orson Welles, edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum).  The cinematography rendered by Robert Surtees is simply exquisite, the attention to detail extraordinary but this is no nostalgic trip down memory lane. The universally pitch-perfect performances exist in this very specific texture as a kind of miracle, duly rewarding Johnson and Leachman at the Academy Awards. But Ellen Burstyn as Jacy’s mom Lois has some of the best lines and delivers them with power. She and Shepherd have one amazing scene together. This is a coming of age movie but it’s also about ageing and loneliness and deception and disappointment and it’s the acknowledging of the sliding scale of desperation where the emotions hit gold. And there are juxtapositions which still manage to shock – like when Sonny looks out the window to see one horse mount another while a great romantic poem is being read in class. The realisation that Sam’s great love was Lois and vice versa. The callous way sexual manipulation is used as a casual transaction for the bored. There were controversies over scenes of sex and nudity which didn’t make it into the initial release but those parts were restored in 1992 by Bogdanovich so that the full potential of the story could be contextualised. A poignant Fordian masterpiece now firmly imprinted as an American classic.  You couldn’t believe how this country’s changed

The Pledge (2001)

There can’t be such devils.  Veteran detective  Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) investigates the murder of a little girl in small-town Nevada just six hours before he’s officially retired.  He makes a pledge on a crucifix the dead girl made to her anguished mother (Patricia Clarkson) that he will catch the perpetrator. When the only suspect Native American Toby Jay Wadenah (Benicio del Toro) blows his head off in custody, Jerry sets off on his longed-for retirement fishing trip but TV coverage of the case affects him deeply and he moves into the neighbourhood buying a gas station where the killing occurred. When he begins a relationship with a waitress and mother Lori (Robin Wright) and gives a home to her and her young daughter Chrissy (Pauline Roberts) after she takes a beating from her ex, he has all the more reason to nail the killer – but by this time his colleagues reckon they have long since wrapped up an open-and-shut case.  The behaviour of a local Jesus freak Gary Jackson (Tom Noonan) causes Jerry to believe he might have solved not just the mystery death of the young girl the previous winter but the grisly crimes of a previously unnoticed serial killer and when Chrissy goes to meet a man she calls The Wizard Jerry decides to set a trap … All at once you became like an animal. Nicholson’s heartbreaking performance, as the twice-divorced retired cop who might just find happiness late in life and solve the crimes of a serial killer, is everything in this meticulously staged murder mystery. The relationships are well observed, the contrast with blowhard ‘tec Stan Krolak (Aaron Eckhart), the wonderfully observed eccentrics (Harry Dean Stanton, Mickey Rourke, Eileen Ryan, Vanessa Redgrave) who populate the ensemble, the visual tics and psychological hints at Nicholson’s state of mind, the clues, signs and portents which inflect the text. Friedrich Durrenmatt’s novella (adapted by Jerzy Kromolowski & Mary Olson-Kromolowski) was already transposed three times to both big and small screen but its tragic undertow is an understandable lure for someone like director Sean Penn, a performer who himself never shirks complex dramas. Nobody gets away with anything here – and it’s not a pretty picture and even Wright (Mrs Penn at the time) looks careworn with half a tooth missing. Far more than a police procedural, this is a deeply affecting, emotive exploration of loss and missed chances, with the revelations managed so very well.  It’s not just about the predilections of paedophiles but also about paying heed to small children and what they tell adults. The ending is just horrendous and Nicholson, reunited with Penn from The Crossing Guard, is just wonderful, a dedicated cop pursuing his suspicions to the very last. What a great performance. How could God be so greedy?

First Blood (1982)

Killed for vagrancy in Jerkwater USA. Former ‘Nam vet, Green Beret John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) arrives in a small town in the Pacific North West looking for his former colleague whom he discovers has died from a cancer caused by Agent Orange. Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy) doesn’t like the look of him and tells him to get out of his town but Rambo is hungry and comes back because he just wants something to eat. Teasle cites him for vagrancy and hands him to his colleagues to teach him a lesson. Rambo has flashbacks to his torture at the hands of the Viet Cong and beats up his assailants before escaping into the local woods where he is hunted by the police and then Teasle gets unwanted help from Rambo’s senior officer, Colonel Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna), who declares of the war hero, God didn’t make Rambo – I made him. He contacts Rambo by radio and tries to reason with him, promising him an escape route. But Rambo has a score to settle, escaping from the cave where he has secured a hiding place and confronting the National Guard before he has his revenge on Teasle  … I’m going to pin that Congressional Medal of Honour to his liver. It may lack the irony and subtlety of the original 1972 novel about PTSD by David Morrell but it makes up for it in the pure thrill of pursuit, sustained justifiable violence and its morality narrative about what really separates the men from the boys:  war. Let it go. Let it go! Crenna’s almost paternal pride in his killer progeny is laugh out loud enjoyable, Stallone’s ingenuity at survival is a must-see in these lockdown self-sufficiency days and the overall affect is one of sheer unadorned (but not unmotivated) violence. It’s wonderful when the police realise, He’s hunting us! Gripping and visceral by turn, it’s short, sharp and brilliant with a couple of really smart scenes between the marvellous Crenna and the late great Dennehy, who really doesn’t understand what he’s dealing with. People start fuckin’ around with the law, all hell breaks loose. A young David Caruso has a good role as a policeman disgusted by his co-workers’ attack on Rambo; while if you look quickly you’ll notice Bruce Greenwood as a Guardsman. Stallone rewrote the original screenplay by Michael Kozzoll and William Sackheim to make the protagonist more sympathetic and you truly empathise with this misunderstood soldier. There’s a notable score by Jerry Goldsmith with a theme song that enhances Rambo’s persona as more victim than villain. It’s all directed by Ted Kotcheff. The first of three in the series, this is iconic. Nothing is over. You just don’t turn it off

Knight and Day (2010)

Sometimes things happen for a reason. June Havens (Cameron Diaz) is a car fanatic preparing to board a flight back home for her sister’s wedding when she bumps into Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) in the middle of a busy airport. A few minutes later, they’re making small talk on the plane when June excuses herself to the bathroom, and all hell breaks loose in the fuselage. By the time June emerges with her makeup fixed and ready for some romance, Roy has killed everybody on board, including the pilots. After crash-landing the plane in a darkened cornfield, Roy tells June that she should expect a visit from government agents, but warns her that by cooperating with them she risks almost certain death. He drugs her and she wakes up at home the following day, and his prediction comes true when June is confronted by a group of CIA agents who come under heavy fire while bombarding her with questions about her mysterious companion who it transpires is a lethal CIA operative who is to be feared. Suddenly, Roy is back, whisking June away to safety and away from her ex, fireman Rodney (Mark Blucas).  Before long the girl who never travelled far from home and doesn’t even possess a passport is off on an impromptu global adventure that takes her from the Azores to Austria, France, and Spain. Somewhere in all of the confusion and gunfire, June begins to forge a bond with Roy, a disgraced spy who’s trying to clear his name while trying to avoid being murdered. Unfortunately, it’s never quite clear whether he’s one of the good guys and by the time he reveals that he’s attempting to protect a valuable new energy source, a never-ending battery hidden in a toy knight and created by an autistic wunderkind called Simon Feck (Paul Dano), he’s got to protect him from not just his former colleague Fitz (Peter Sarsgard) but also a gang keen to get it for themselves … Nobody follows us or I kill myself and then her. A completely nutty action comedy with thrills, spills and mayhem is just what the doctor ordered so here it is, a star vehicle perfectly tailored to the respective talents of Cruise and Diaz, previously paired in the rather (in)different Vanilla Sky and taking place on planes, trains, automobiles and motorbikes. And yet they weren’t meant to be the stars when this was originally mooted and of the twelve writers – you read correctly, twelve – only one, Patrick O’Neill, gets credited. It takes some narrative shortcuts – every time June might pose a problem, Roy drugs her – but he doesn’t take advantage (no, really!) and she has some skills, and she gets to use them in the wittiest way possible no matter that she might fire off in all directions. Totally left field, barmy fun with amazing stunts, a stunning car-bike chase in the middle of a bull run and a nice twist ending. That’s Gal Gadot as a spy in a restaurant. Directed by James Mangold. Who are you?