Easy Virtue: Jessica Biel's BMW 328 time traveller

In my review of Easy Virtue I suggested some mischief took place:

An anomaly is the spectacular BMW sports car. A German car was hardly the choice so soon after the war. It also seems an anachronism, probably about a decade too early. Maybe BMW were sponsors or paid for product placement. That badge just keeps appearing in close up.

Thanks to my neighbour who is a MG TC devotee, I have found the answer. He has a copy of The Automobile magazine that featured the sports car on its front cover in November 2004.

It's a BMW 328, manufactured between 1936 and 1940.

Larita Whittaker (Jessica Biel) was clearly a woman ahead of her time.

Not So Gran Torino

The setting for Gran Torino is the Global Financial Crisis' 'Ground Zero': the suburbs of 'Motor-City' Detroit before the worst of the sub-prime meltdown.

I didn't review Gran Torino when it was first released because I was disappointed with it. It deserves big ticks for: good acting; a tight script and topicality. But the crosses are a lot to bear from such great filmmakers: lack of originality; pedestrian predictability and a dearth of insights. Going by the box office and its continuing presence in Australian cinemas I seem to be in a small minority.

This is a story that has all the elements to make some indelible statements about modern urban society in countries like the U.S. and Australia. It has similarities to the recent Oz film The Combination that explored similar issues in Sydney. We have the clash of cultures and generations. Racial and ethnic tensions. Drugs, guns and gangs. Unemployment.

Walt Kowalski is a widower, a Korean War veteran living next to Hmong refugees. He is an alien in his own neighbourhood. This old autoworker and his classic 1972 Ford Gran Torino represent a past glory that has long faded. Clint Eastwood does modern alienation better than anyone. He’s as bitter as the beer that is his constant companion.

However, his character does not move far beyond the stereotype: the redneck who learns to open up his heart of gold; the poor communicator who is misunderstood; the gun toting but ultimately selfless vigilante; the tough, silent enigma who triumphs over his prejudices. His best friend is his dog Daisy. As the official website's Production Notes announce, “They don’t make them like they used to.”

The rest of the cast do an admirable job: Bee Vang as Thao Vang Lor, the teenager who Walt mentors; Ahney HerSue as his sister Lor; Chee Thao as their Grandma.

Nick Schenk’s screenplay is tight but overly sentimental and very predictable. Still it’s a praiseworthy effort for a first timer screenwriter. It certainly suited Director/Producer Eastwood’s acting style: the stare, the locked jaw. At times he feels like a cross between Michael Douglas in Falling Down and Gary Cooper in High Noon .

So what are the messages of Gran Torino? Prejudice breeds in ignorance. All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. The work ethic and self-reliance are the way out.

This film says little new about multi-cultural societies or the possibilities for reconciling their deep-seated problems. We see the good, the bad and the ugly side of community: family, prejudice and gangbangers. The macho ethos that dominates so much of modern life is skimmed over. We discover during a visit to the barber that real men aren’t racist, sexist, ignorant and rude. That’s just the way they interact with their mates.

The ending is clichéd and unsatisfactory in most respects. You would have expected the blatantly telegraphed punches to rankle Million Dollar Baby’s creator a bit more.

Easy Virtue: more nasty than naughty

Easy Virtue did not live up to expectations. Jessica Biel is the best thing about this film. She plays Larita, the unwelcome addition to the English upper crust Whittaker family. Jessica hits just the right note in a version of Noel Coward’s 1925 play that seems off key in many ways. She has the look required of a rally-driving femme fatale, with strong features and typically American teeth. As well she shows the talent to make a bigger splash in the Hollywood star pool in the near future.

Director and Co-writer Stephan Elliott has suggested that the screenplay was softened to make a comedy of manners out of Coward’s very biting social satire. The play has been described as a:

… savage attack on the hypocrisy of the early 1920s — and the way in which it used Victorian standards, already outdated by war, to destroy the lives of those it could not control...
Rediscovered 'Easy Virtue' Is a Revelation : Coward's Early Prime

To a large extent Elliott failed in his endeavour to tone it down.

In post Great War England the landed gentry are fading and failing. Easy Virtue presents them as a nasty, selfish, spiteful, indeed hateful breed. The only really sympathetic character in the dysfunctional Whittaker family is Colin Firth as the defeated and ineffectual lord of the manor.

They exemplify the decline of the British Empire after a generation of young men “took the King’s shilling” in 1914. Neither Whittaker nor his rural lifestyle has recovered. The neighbours all limp their way through the story, both literally and figuratively. Nevertheless, it’s business as usual with a foxhunt, and shooting and black-tie parties.

Ironically the easy virtue is a quality that applies to the English hosts not their notorious new family member. Their complete lack of any personal principles is only matched by their atrociously bad manners. Kristin Scott Thomas’ totally unsympathetic character, Mrs. Whittaker, doesn’t quite fit and I suspect Kristin has been more faithful to Coward’s original. This is a disappointment after her brilliance in the French I’ve loved you for so long. Mrs. Whittaker takes no prisoners and is prepared to destroy her children’s chance at happiness to achieve her own ends.

It’s a decadent society, not in its easy virtue but in its social and financial decay. The children are pampered and dependent. By and large the cast does them justice. Katherine Parkinson, of Doc Martin fame, continues her penchant for eccentric roles as daughter Marion. Kimberley Nixon does not have as much success as her dim witted sister Hilda. Ben Barnes does a more than serviceable job as John Whittaker, Larita’s dashing new husband. He also looks the part.


The film relies as much on visual humour as wit for its comic moments: a risqué can-can, the butt end of a chihuahua, a roll in the hay, a tango, a hovering man servant. As you should expect from a Coward adaptation, there is some very clever dialogue. However, the wit is often lost in the rushed delivery. Elliott seemed reluctant to let the audience savour the lines. Anyway, it’s hardly ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. The audience were not exactly bubbling. Kris Marshall, as the clever young butler Furber, saves many of the scenes with a controlled comic performance.

Its look and the sound track help to make this an enjoyable sensual experience. There are even occasional ventures into musical comedy as Jessica, Ben and Colin sing a few old standards. These include Noel Coward’s ‘Mad About The Boy’ and ‘Room With A View’. The finale is Billy Ocean’s ‘When the Going Gets Tough’.

An anomaly is the spectacular BMW sports car. A German car was hardly the choice so soon after the war. It also seems an anachronism, probably about a decade too early. Maybe BMW were sponsors or paid for product placement. That badge just keeps appearing in close up. The motorcycle also looks a bit like a 1920s BMW.

The movie’s tagline is ‘Let’s Misbehave’. Don't expect a romp or a farce. It is more nasty than naughty.

The Combination: Testosterone Rules

After all the conflict at the opening sessions in Sydney, only one other person was in the St Kilda cinema at lunchtime on Saturday to see The Combination. A pity, because this is an Aussie film with attitude. It’s a good story, competently told. Actor and now director, David Field’s first effort is tight and straightforward.

George Basha wrote and stars in this Lebanese/Australian tale of star-crossed lovers. It’s more like West Side Story than Romeo and Juliet, a clash of cultures in the modern city. George, as the street toughened John Morkos, does tough guy very well but his delivery of love scene dialogue is a bit flat. Firass Dirani as brother Charlie is a rising star. He handles a difficult part without slipping into melodrama. Doris Younane’s performance as their widowed mother Mary is a very professional one.

Testosterone rules: school “gangs”; youth, drugs and crime; the boxing gym; knives and even guns. The background noise includes the 2005 riots in the Sydney beach suburb of Cronulla between Lebanese and so-called “old” Australian youths.

Don’t expect a clash of religions as well. Ironically the only openly Christian group are the Lebanese. The stereotypes just won’t fit. The messages of this film are not subtle. John’s girlfriend Sydney (Clare Bowen) gets the standard assimilation lecture from her father.

We don’t learn much about the inner lives of the characters. We are left to wonder why school student Zeus (Ali Haidar) has the heart of a murderer. Their seemingly irrational behaviour is easy to understand using the usual social stereotypes. Until John confronts his mother when she blames him for Charlie’s criminality. John asserts personal responsibility, his own and Charlie’s. He challenges the web of multi-cultural and economic determinism that has been set up so far in the film. We all live with choices we make.

Tony Ryan plays Wesley, the owner of the gym where John works and trains. His aboriginality gives an added racial dimension. There is further irony when he offers John a way up through boxing.

First-timer Clare Bowen, fresh from the south coast of New South Wales, gets the rookie award. She has that relaxing Toni Collette quality that makes you think you know her from somewhere. You can’t help feeling at home with her character. However, apart from her family, we are left without any history for Sydney or real explanation for why she can withstand all the pressure to walk away. Perhaps this is essentially just a love story after all. And a story about families.

This is another Australian film that deserves a bigger audience. Catch it while you can.

Watchmen: Not Everybody Wants To Rule The World

Who’s watching the Watchmen is one of its themes. Apparently lots of people are, if early box office is any indication.

Others can buy into the disputes between the filmmakers and purists of DC Comics about this story of comic book heroes. The graphic novel hasn’t been my preferred genre since the 1950s but I have enjoyed some of the film adaptations of the less well known super heroes and villains such as Sin City, V for Vendatta and Iron Man. Perhaps the best of the recent ones was Hell Boy.

There have been high expectations for this epic and not just because of its technical brilliance or its length (160 minutes). It doesn’t meet all of them. It’s too long. Catering for a mass audience unfamiliar with the scenarios of the original comics would have been a factor. This movie has a number of love stories, betrayals, and an Armageddon climax. All set against a political background of Richard Nixon as continuing President in 1987. Tricky Dicky just won’t keep way from the cinema lately. Wikipedia has a comprehensive entry that is bound to be regularly re-written by enthusiasts.

It would also been caused by trying to write a screenplay that does justice to its galaxy of super heroes: Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), Silk Spectre (Carla Gugino) and her daughter Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), Doctor Manhattan (Billy Crudup), The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), and Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley). It’s hard to fault any of the cast.

Fittingly the costumes are first class. Rorschach’s mask, with its morphing ink blots, is superb. Makeup is also very well done.

The sets and props have an eighties feel despite a few anachronisms. The Owl craft tickled some old memories of Buck Rogers and other fifties matinee serials. Buck once superfluously remarked in the 1979-80 TV series that everything that had happened so far was in the past. We knew that it was in a 25th Century future. Watchmen takes place in a parallel 1980s universe. Watergate journalists Woodward and Bernstein have been neutralised. The Oscar winning adaptation of their story All the President's Men would never have been made. A U.S. victory in Vietnam War is secured by the intervention of super heroes. Pure fantasy!

If you’re not into the sight of blood, this isn’t for you. As well as extreme violence, the explicit sex means that it’s not a young kids’ movie. Dr. Manhattan has rather kinky tendencies. The young love birds only get it off after some action in costume to the strains of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’.

The themes are probably of little interest to many action fans. This is a meta-hero film that explores the ethics of intervention in human affairs and of appropriate means to an end. It’s the kind of philosophical discussion that the Greek gods might have had on Mount Olympus. The ancient world permeates the whole production. As well as the Greeks we have Egyptians and Persians. Very much the stuff of modern sci-fi.

Watchmen has a dramatic impact when seen on a large screen with the audio turned right up. Migraine territory. Director Zack Snyder has given us a sensual delight otherwise. The computer graphics have the usual high glitz despite working in an old-look context. Tyler Bates’ very effective score owes a debt to many previous films. The ubiquitous Bob Dylan lends The Times They Are a-Changin' to our ears. The compilation of old hots includes: Jimi Hendrix's version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’, Simon & Garfunkel's ‘The Sounds of Silence’, Jimi Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower’ and a version of Tears For Fears' ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’.

The old cliché of the journal, narrated by its author and dropped at a newspaper, is used to give coherence to the convoluted plot. This added film noir element shouldn’t be necessary. As the director’s cut of Blade Runner showed, it’s usually better without the voice over.

If you’re tired of Batman and Spiderman retreads, then this could be the movie for you. If you’re a fan of the comics, then you might want to wait for an extended director’s cut due later in the year. Too much is obviously not enough for some people!