Eye in the Sky

is a rough movie to watch, an hour and forty-two minutes centered on the human cost of drone attacks.  If that sounds like a dull political tract, it's anything but; the filmmakers infuse the story with plenty of tension and uniformly interesting characters.  From start to finish, you know where the movie is going, but the journey is intriguing and terrifying.

I didn't like all the characters in this film, but all of them came across as real people with real agendas facing complex issues as best they could.  Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman, in his last film, delivered strong performances despite having relatively simple characters to portray, but every actor in the movie did a great job.

It's easy to imagine a Hollywood version of this film that ekes out a happy ending in which everything wraps up perfectly and easily, but fortunately, that's not what we get here.  Instead, we end with victories and losses, which is the best outcome any conflict can generate.  No war, no matter how it may seem from the history books or the news reports, is without huge costs, both to the losers and to the people who fight it.  Eye in the Sky shows some of those costs.

I'm not sure you'll enjoy it, though I did, but I am sure you should see it.  As we move further and further into a world in which remote warfare is commonplace, we all need to try yet again to understand the costs involved.

R.I.P., Alan Rickman

I loved Alan Rickman's work.  Like many Americans, I first became aware of him in Die Hard, but from then on if he was in a film, I would see it.  I've loved him in the roles everyone knew--the Harry Potter films spring to mind, in the roles in which his character was one of the few difficult ones (Love Actually), and in those pictures almost no one saw (e.g., Gambit and his wonderful turn in The January Man).  The world is poorer for his absence, and I am once again reminded of my increasing age and how many people near me in age have died.

Damn, another fine artist whose work I love has passed away.

Gambit - the original

In Monday's entry, I wrote about our recent viewing of the 2012 version of Gambit. Having just seen this remake, we decided to check out the 1966 original.  I'd seen it a long time ago, but aside from remembering Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine, and Herbert Lom as the stars, the movie hadn't stuck with me much.

After watching it, I understand why:  The 1966 original just didn't quite work as well as it should have.  Two problems kept the film from being all it should have been.

First, the bad guy, the man they were plotting to rob, simply wasn't all that bad.  In the remake, Alan Rickman chewed the scenery and made himself easy to dislike.  In the same role earlier, Herbert Lom was a bit of a jerk, but not exceptionally so.  It wasn't Lom's fault; he did all he could with the part.  The script simply gave him little to do.

Second, the original was too long, so long that at times it dragged.  A full 20 minutes longer than the remake, it just didn't have enough going on to warrant all the extra time.

I found the exercise of comparing the two films interesting, but even though the original has rather higher ratings than the remake on the few sites I checked, I very much prefer the 2012 version to the original.

 

Gambit

Back in the dim dark days of 1966, Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine starred in a fun little heist romp of a film, Gambit.  In 2012, a new team appropriated the name and the underlying concept of that earlier film and created their own version of Gambit, this time with Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz in the starring roles.  The film did so badly in the U.K. that the studio never even released it in the U.S.  Instead, they took it straight to DVD.

To my surprise, I only recently learned about this new version.  Given that it also features Alan Rickman and Stanley Tucci, two actors I follow, I am amazed that I had never heard of the movie before--but I had indeed somehow missed it.  Once I discovered it, however, I ordered it, and the other night a group of us watched it.

I loved it from start to finish.  With Colin Firth doing a blend of his usual performance and the sort of comedy Peter Sellers once provided, he was a wonderful lead.  Cameron Diaz kept up well enough to make her character interesting.  Alan Rickman was, as always, delightful, and Stanley Tucci chewed hard on the scenery.  The plot was engaging and constructed well enough that even though you could spot the ending early on, you still had a great time getting to it.

If you can find this movie on Netflix or for sale on DVD, do check it out.  You'll have a delightful hour and a half.