Thoughts on Jia Zhangke’s 24 City 對賈樟柯新電影《24城記》之隨想

Normally I prefer to write a straight up review, but in light of an unusual experience in watching film, I thought I’d make this a meta-review of sorts:

I went to watch this film at Zhongshan park in Shanghai last Tuesday. When the lights dimmed, a “documentary” about Tibet came on. As you know, this is the sensitive year for anniversaries in China, and is, in particular, the 50th anniversary of the uprising in Tibet that led to the exile of the Dalai Lama.The documentary was called, quite pointedly, “China’s Tibet, Past and Future”. If you’ve followed this issue at all, none of the information presented in this film are surprising:

*Tibet has always been part of China and the Tibetan rulers have acknowledged Chinese suzerainty since ancient times. Here are pictures and images of various historical documents that prove this point.
*WHy bother decrying the vetting of Tibetan religious leaders by China’s central government? Emperors used to do this, including with the latest Dalai Lama, so what’s the big deal if the CCP inherits this role.
*Tibet was a despotic, feudal system before the Chinese liberated it. It was a cruel theocracy of vast socio-economic inequality. The lamas and their families–the upper strata of the ancien regime–owned everything, including virtually all the arable land and other resources of production. Regular people had next to nothing.
*China liberated Tibet and gave it a good dose of progressive socialist ideology–and things improved greatly.
*Tibetan heritage is fluorishng and the standard of living has steadily improved.

It was clearly and unambiguously agitprop, but 21st. century China style, wrapping the historical narrative of Tibet up in and interweaving it with that of modern China as a whole, including the successful Beijing Olympics and the upcoming World Expo. At fifteen minutes, it was long and tendentious, and made me a bit impatient, since even after it finished, there was yet another long preview (of a regular movie), so that the film we came to watch didn’t start until a good twenty or twenty five minutes after the time stated on the ticket.

*24 City (24城記）*

Jia Zhangke has said, over the years, that he wants to alternate making docs and fiction films, and in this case he has melded the two.There are real people mixed with actors doing recreations–Joan Chen, Lv Liping, Zhao Tao, among others–but while these actors put on some decent performances these interviewees, the film doesn’t end up being more than a series of vignettes. I doubt that Jia intended to put together some systematic history of the place, but there is an unfinished, work-in-progress feel to this movie that tends to work towards its detriment. However, many of the interviews with the real people are better, because you know they are real–so here, again,is a meta-level question–how does the fact that you are watching Joan Chen change your perception of what’s being shown? It’s obvious that no matter how good Chen’s acting chops are, what she is doing is a performance. Most of the time, of course, we accept this–because that’s what makes fictional films possible in the first place–however, in this case, while Chen and the others are fine, they are still a bit actorly–and you wouldn’t really notice that fact unless you had all these more “real” performances to compare them with.

Jia is probably too intelligent not to notice this himself, but it still took me aback when he confronted this head on during the Joan Chen segment, where she says in her youth, at the prime of her beauty, her coworkers at the factory compared her to the actress Joan Chen. A little pomo joke? Maybe, but it made me a bit skittish. I suppose I still relish the suspension of disbelief,and don’t like the feeling of being taken for a ride, even if the ride, for the most part, is an enjoyable one.

That said, there are some moving moments, both from the actors and the real interviewees–enough to remind you that Jia Zhangke is one of the only Chinese filmmakers out there that can convey the gravity of China’s changing. That pathos, that uniquely Chinese pathos that glossier magazines and Western media don’t–or rather, *can’t* pick up on–are captured by Jia’s lens. One can almost forgive the lack of polish for that very reason–Jia, more than other filmmakers is continually creating audiovisual artifacts for us, the rest of the world, Chinese and non-Chinese alike–that will, I believe, stand the test of time,not only for their aesthetic excellence but because they are excellent chronicles of China. They are chronicles of physical reality, of its metamorphosis–but more than that,they are chronicles of the spirit, of what Chinese people call *jingshen*, which can mean anything mental, intellectual, spiritual–and in Jia’s case, it’s the emotional undertow, the things that are not said, that are glossed over and ignored by ideological or mainstream rhetorics that finally, as it were, get their say.

It is this kind of pathos that you don’t normally see among the audiovisual artifacts being produced today: and that’s what makes the contrast with the Tibetan propaganda film so striking. Jia was once an unofficial or underground filmmaker–and he no longer is, and he is, as well as know, no longer a skint and scrappy indie guy. He makes money. He’s got connections. But there’s still something very real, and very heartfelt at the core, and in a world of cinematic
phoniness, there’s something to be said for that stick to your guns type mentality.

To bring it back to Tibet: it is a strange juxtaposition, watching these two films together–we’re so used to seeing just previews before the movie that to see this stylish bit of agitprop is a bit startling: it hearkens back to newsreels of old, a time when the news was delivered on big screens, or when the political just had to intrude everywhere
because the world was in the throes of war or what have you. I feel obliged to mention that when we went, on Tuesday afternoon, even with the half off discount the theater was nearly empty.I highly doubt that Jia is going to make much money off this film, at least on the domestic market. Likewise, watching propaganda in the afternoon with a handful of other people didn’t quite jibe with I am sure that they play the Tibet film before the other, popular movies, so that before you settle down to watching “Transporter 3″ you get a good dose of “historical” education about the Tibet issue. Just in case things get hairy and out of control in Tibetan areas this March, or throughout the rest of this sensitive year.

China changes, or China never changes. Same ideological posture, except now in IMAX. However, Jia’s world, everything changes–and the only thing that lasts, the only thing that binds us are memories.Children are lost to their parents. Migrations, emotional rows, generation gaps all tear families asunder. The ligature of memory is strained as people get older–it seems strong when they are recalling it in front of us–but of course, we know that simply recalling something and saying it verbally doesn’t really do justice to the “strength” or “saturation” of that memory among the many memories that are stored in your brain or the salient memories constitutive of the sense of self and identity. Therefore, you get the uneasy sense that you are watching something that was unearthed quite by accident, and could very well have been lost. Maybe these “little people”, these “laobaixing” don’t mean much in the large scale of things: you read media articles with Chinese government planners, bureaucrats and energy scientists that are talking about the year 2100 like it’s tomorrow. Just about all of us who are alive now will be dead by that time, and our secrets and wounds, the maybes and could have beens–both individual and collective–will be just as gone. I’ve always been afraid that the official Chinese meta-narrative would swamp and subsume everything else–which is why it’s that much more incumbent on artists, in whatever medium, to keep recording the micro-sadnesses, vicissitudes, twists and turns, warp and woof of the individual life and consciousness. Lest it be completely be forgotten by History.

Desultory thoughts on why I didn’t like Slumdog Millionaire

For one, it comes a little too close to the voyeurism of “slum tours” to me. Of course, I myself am a bit torn about this since photojournalism and documentary photography, crudely put, often partake in this kind of dynamic. most photographers and filmmakers try to justify, at least to themselves, their actions with some principle of moral concern, whereas the slum tours are more experientially akin to the one night stand.
You could argue that this film isn’t like that, and is above that, and again, this is not meant to be a full condemnation—but I think it appropriate to discuss the relation of the film to the sociological backdrop of which it partakes.

People in the film industry are quite utilitarian: they are investing what for most people is an astronomical sum of money, and they hope to make as much as possible on it. Someone like Danny Boyle, an established filmmaker, operates within these parameters as much as anyone else. So they pick these exotic backgrounds and make these feelgood stories so that middle classes of the developed world will fork over their money. Of course, most movies are like that. That’s what they are—mass entertainment. A chance to forget the world for two hours.

So they go there and scout locations, and learn about their characters by staying there. Again, this is standard operating procedure, and its no doubt educational for someone.

But that’s at the microlevel, and what bothers me is that at the macro-level, nothing changes. They come in and shoot their movie and go out. The slums don’t change. Poverty is not eliminated. They couldn’t find a suitable boy in the slums for this role—because as we know, the main actor is everything and has to be vetted by the suits before the movie is a go. So they get an English Indian kid to play the lead. So they exploit the area and the social reality for the backdrop, but when push comes to shove and there’s money on the line, they go with something a bit more safe. Dev Patel isn’t a bad person, but honestly, he does, no matter what, look a lot more London than Mumbai.

And now, Danny Boyle, Dev Patel, et al. get their statues, and DVD sales go through the roof.
They make f*ckloads of money and get more gigs, sustaining or in Patel’s case, launching a career. He was just a somewhat well-known TV actor in England before all of this. And now, in some sense, he belongs in a rarefied elite of actors who played leads in Best Picture films. So his life, no doubt, has been changed, and drastically so.

And yet the slums remain. Of course, the slums aren’t all misery—there is real human community there, and, at least according to Dev Patel on the Jon Stewart show, there is a real joie de vivre there as well. Which is a nice and uplifting thing to say, and which no doubt assuages the conscience of the popcorn munchers around the world. All I know is that the amount of money that Dev Patel and Danny Boyle and them are worth is more than most of those slumdogs will make in their entire lives. I bet Danny Boyle himself is worth more than the aggregate wealth of at least 100 slumdogs.

Of course, I am not better: the whole reason why my conscience is troubled is because I belong to that same global middle class of popcorn munching voyeurs. But I stand by the point that the meta-discussion of the relation of the movie business to the social realities they depict—be it war-torn Iraq, Israeli vets, Japanese orphans, what have you—is something we ought to continue, or, in the case of many people, begin. Movies—what are they? No one is naive enough to dream that they could ever be vehicles of human liberation. How about make them mildly educational, give us isolated, navel-gazers a glimpse of a world we might not ever see. Saturated and vibrant images, great camera work is much appreciated, thanks. We can do that. Yes we can. But of course, I hope for more. I hope for art to somehow trump business, and I hope that egalitarian distributions of income, around the world, will become normative, will become something that human civilization aspires to, because of the basic dignity it could afford us.

So, then, what about the relation of global capitalism to the global South then? That’s a huge can of worms, and one that I, ill-educated in economics of any sort, am not able to answer. I can say that capitalism can create jobs and thus alleviate poverty. But I can also say that this should never be used as a means of justifying the status quo, that is, actually existing capitalism. There can be a better capitalism, I believe. A more humane one. Right now, capitalism seems to do more for the greedy CEOs and elites of the developing countries than it does for the bottom fifth dwelling in the slums of the South. Sometimes we middle-class people get some tax breaks. Sometimes Republicans and Democrats pretend to care about people in the US working minimum wage, even while their overriding goal is to keep the system runnign smoothly and not rock the boat.

The movie business is no different, and no number of George Clooneys or movie star UN ambassadors is going to change the fact that it is still a huge for-profit machine, one that generates huge sums of money for its stars and one that, for the most part, doesn’t mind its role as an opiate for the masses. Art brings liberation. Revolution can bring liberation. Is it naive to believe in these? Of course it is, and I know better—but in my heart of hearts, I will go on believing these, maybe just to spite those who are better adjusted to reality than I am. Or maybe because not only am I an idealist, but also because I believe there are too few of those out there, especially among that demographic that can afford a bit of extra idealism here and there. But they refuse, for the most part, and keep reading their business and financial news and keep caring about companies and people who do things that neither illuminate nor change something about the human condition, in the most fulsome sense of that phrase—but where’s the surprise there? These traits are rampant. But let’s not that call them traits. They are, ahem, the discreet charms of the global bourgeoisie.

Movies I’m Watching: Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders

Everyone knows that Godard is a bit of an acquired taste, and that no matter how much some cinephile effuses about the man’s genius, there are plenty of people that are going to find his movies unwatchable. This film, however, is a bit of an exception. It’s a rollicking tale with quirky narration (done by godard himself) and digressions. ALso worth mentioning is that slightly off kilter and shaky, grainy and contrasty black and white cinematography of Paris streets that has become, thanks to Godard more so than other filmmakers, an essential addition to our cinematic imagination and vocabulary.

The plot follows the familiar two men and a woman triangle, as they live their lives in Paris: they are layabouts, dandies, not bad but perhaps bored by something in their lives. Anna Karina’s character, Odile, tells them about a stash of money that her aunt’s employer has, a huge wad of cash, and they hatch a half-baked plan to get the loot and then leave Paris for some place better.

But this film is not about the story or the plot, but about the very texture of films themselves; the ways they make you feel, the idiosyncracies of each section. There are so many classic conversations and pieces in the movie, it’s hard to talk about them all: from the opening sequence, the almost still but machine gun fast montage of their three faces, to the classic game of suggestive looks and innuendos when they are in English class together: this movie is a several course dinner, and while you appreciate the whole, you get there by separately savoring its parts.
Of course, there are things binding the whole thing together: the beauty and grace of each one of the actors. Their sense of cool, of what to say, when to say it: the games they play, the way they offer and then light cigarettes: you can’t tell if these are the imaginations of a movie man or have some root in Parisian youth culture of the day–but no matter. That is perhaps what makes for its magic: this creation of a familiar yet alternative universe, right in front of us.

Of course, I am not the first and will certainly not be the last to rave about that classic cafe dance scene. The dance they are doing is called the Madison, and you can see the scene here. Its heyday was, i believe, in the late 1950s.

If I could make movies, I would really love to do a “remake” of this movie in Shanghai, or else do some kind of sequel, but of course, that’s thinking like a HOllywood producer, and movies like this, and filmmakers like godard, survive insofar as they find a breathing space outside that system. And thank god that they have managed to do so for as long as they have.

Movies I’m Watching: The Reader

[spoiler alert] Kate Winslet, as well all know, has had a big year with Revolutionary Road and The Reader. Both are decent films that I really would like to cheer for, though they never seem to reach beyond the B+ range; they both just fall short of being excellent. The Reader role, was, to be sure, challenging. There wasn’t nearly enough about the “banality of evil” after you discover that Hannah (played by Winslet) was a former Nazi concentration camp guard who knowingly sent thousands of Jews to their deaths. Perhaps we don’t need to rehash these arguments or reinvestigate this psychology because of most of what is worthwhile of saying about this subject perhaps already has, in far more eloquent terms than can be managed by a mainstream movie.

As usual, Ralph Fiennes is a bit insufferable, but what can you expect, for the most part, he’s got a monopoly on these stiff upper-lip, handsome man of many secrets and mysterious past type roles. The bits with his daughter are not that moving, but then again, you know where most of the drama lies–in the parts about his youth and romance with Hanna–the rest is stocking stuffer.

The bits with the law students talking about the Nazi trials is also a bit stiff and didactic, again, maybe perhaps the subject has already been talked about ad infinitum.

Winslet’s performance is quite good, and does remind me, in a ways, of her role in Revolutionary Road–in both she’s been a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It’s not surprising that Hannah commits suicide at the The Reader–was she like that character in Shawshank REdemption, that couldn’t adapt and cope with the outside world? NOt really, she never even made it out. No doubt she was afraid, but perhaps she also felt like she did not deserve to be out, to regain her freedom–as long as she was in prison, she was still, in effect, doing penance for her sins.

These characters should have no problem winning our basic sympathy, but there isn’t really much to them beyond that–I prefer characters of the mysterious, unpredictable, and beguiling type–and none of them were that.

Movies I’m Watching: Outlander

I hadn’t really heard of this film prior to dling it, and i didnt have any high expectations from it. It’s based on a fantasy novel about a future man that travels back in time to Earth circa the 8th century CE, in Norway during the time of the Vikings. So there’s many typical elements of time travel stories in it; the guy from the future somehow has to win the trust of the simple folk of an earlier age, has to fret about whether or not to go back, has to decide whether or not his emotional baggage is worth keeping or must be chucked in order to save the universe or get laid with the woman we all know he is going to get the very first moment we see them on the screen together.

It wasn’t terrible though, there wasn’t anything too cheesy. Although John Hurt is in the movie, there aren’t that many super famous people in the film, which to me is always a good thing b/c it means we don’t see the entire repertoire of media images of the actor when we see them in the role. You don’t know these actors, so, seeing them for the first time, you can almost believe that what you are seeing is something “real.”

The morwin, the creature that wreaks havoc on the Vikings, is quite creepy: it’s very Alien-esque, not as scary, but it does manage to pluck people up and away in the darkness in that same ninja way. The books form a series, so naturally one expects that if this movie is successful that there might be another in the future.

Usually these medieval costume type films make you want to retch, so cliche they are: but again, I found this film to be entertaining and fairly inoffensive. Worth a watch on a lazy Sunday, if nothing else.

Movies I’m Watching: Paris Nous Appartient

Well, after taking a look at the blurb on the DVd cover and feeling in the mood for some black and white Nouvelle Vague classics, i decided to get this one…and was quite disappointed. The themes treated in the movie, including the worldwide conspiracy against disaffected lefty artists in Paris, made me roll my eyes more than once. But that’s part of what makes it charming, in another sense–the refusal to do conspiracy in the conventional manner. I have to say that one of the highlights of film, like with any others of this period, is the visual delight of taking in 1960s Paris in black and white. Everything about it tickles my fancy, and in a way that i would be at a loss to explain, at least in rational terms.

The other highlight of the film would have to be Jean-Luc Godard’s cameo in the movie, which is quite funny…he’s so iconic that i didn’t have a hard time knowing when it was him, but it seems, even in that very brief scene, that the man has some comic chops and that, had he applied himself in that direction, might not have been an entirely shabby actor.

Reverse Shot has an article about this film, which i think places it in context, both with respect to Rivette’s ongoing ouevre as well as his place among the pantheon of nouvelle vague greats:

To end at the beginning, then, comparing Paris Belongs to Us to New Wave debuts might seem unfair, but it ultimately vindicates its director. Those other films (and that’s not including Cleo from 5 to 7 and Le Beau serge) immediately displayed their creator’s talent in what turned out to be—to borrow a phrase—instant classics, whereas Paris displayed Rivette’s arguably richer potential (and definitely his greater difficulty) at the expense of solidified “quality.” That’s the way it is sometimes. Artists develop in their own way, at their own rhythm and by their own logic. Fortunately, though, if Pericles is to Paris Belongs to Us as Gerard is to Rivette, then at least Rivette went on to master his craft—at least we can see and evaluate this fascinating disappointment with its future payoffs excitedly in mind.—MICHAEL JOSHUA ROWIN”

Movies I’m Watching: Un Conte De Noel

I’ve waited a long time to lose the Desplechin virginity, and finally got around to it recently by watching “Un Conte De Noel.” The films tells the story of the Vuillard family, with a history of shared mental and physical illnesses,making their family an atypically unhappy one.

The critics, from what I’ve read thus far, tend to be split along two lines:those that admire the film despite the plot not always being “coherent”, and enjoying the “spectacle” aspects of the film, versus those that believe in substance over style and found the movie to be essentially empty at the core.

There are some real family conflicts here, but I can see how some people think the pathos of that has been lost amid all the black comedy and sketch-like scenes. Part of this is due to the fantastic ensemble cast, including Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Almaric, Melvin Poupaud and others. With actors as talented as these, one would believe that Desplechin would just get out of the way and let them act–which is usually not a bad strategy, but which can backfire when the arc and rhythm of the film are sacrificed along the way.

There are some parts that I found a bit off-putting or confusing, like the bit with the cousin and one of the wives of the sons. The wife is played by Chiara Mastroianni, the daughter of Catherine Deneuve and Marcello. She combines the physical look of her father (esp. the features of her face) and the sultriness of her mother. It’s all that stuff about former, unrequited and uncompleted loves, and whether or not we can go back, salvage some of that emotion, reverse and change, if only for a night, the inalterable.

Almaric’s madcap performance is quite enjoyable, though it kind of grates on you after awhile. Other notable performances include the father and the mother, the latter portrayed by Catherine Deneuve. The elders of the cast were, in my opinion, the best, wearing these roles like old shoes. There is a soothing naturalism to such performances that only happens when you get a good match between actor and role, and that’s something that cannot entirely be prepackaged into a script, even if you are writing that script for a particular actor. In any case, it’s that naturalism that makes these performances so eminently watchable.

Movies I’m Watching: The Wrestler

I’m glad that Mickey Rourke won a Golden Globe for his performance in The Wrestler, because although the movie tends to be fairly predictable overall, this was one of the most honest performances I’ve seen in a while. Now everyone is talking about the Mickey Rourke comeback tour, which made me curious enough about the actor (I haven’t seen his other films) to get 9 1/2 weeks when i came across it at the DVD store. I don’t have anything particularly new or interesting to add to what’s been said about The Wrestler, but i think there are some interesting tidbits about how the movie has been received in other quarters: the Iranian government considers it insulting, after a fictional wrestler in the movie named The Ayatollah gets his Iranian flag smashed by Rourke’s character, while the folks at the WWE, a professional wrestling organization, aren’t too happy with what they considered the stereotyped and negative portrayals of certain wrestling circuits.

Director Aronofsky thinks that professional wrestlers do get shafted when it comes to their working conditions: he considers them actors and entertainers — and believes that they ought to be unionized and eligible for the same types of benefits that SAG members receive. Yet in reality, many wrestlers exist in some kind of legal limbo, not quite athletes, and not quite actors — and when things go awry, or when they simply exhaust their youth, bodies, and 15 minutes of fame, they are left, like Randy the Ram Robinson, out in the cold — oftentimes in desolate places, like New Jersey, the setting for this film.

Anyhow, that’s quite an interesting issue that i would not have ever been aware of otherwise. But good on Mickey Rourke – I’m glad that his career is picking up and that he is being given a second chance to share his talents with the world.

A final note: Marisa Tomei — yowzer, does that woman just get hotter with age?

Movies I’m Watching:Seven Pounds

OK, so Will Smith is sad because he caused the death of his beloved wife and a bunch of other innocent souls, and now is suicidal. He impersonates his brother’s IRS identity and goes on moral audits of people, people that we find he is scoping out for eventual organ donations–where the organs being donated are his own.

At first you might not see where the movie is going. You might think that he really is just an eccentric IRS man, a former hotshot entrepreneur that lost it after the tragic accident. However, when the meandering strands start falling into place, you begin to realize what is happening.

The disparate strands keep you guessing, and sometimes to the detriment to the emotional depth of the movie–because you could never fully settle into the lives of any of the characters, other than Will Smith’s character. For example, Woody Harrelson’s fine turn as a blind telephone operator/piano player gets somewhat short-shrifted, mostly in order to develop Will Smith and Rosario Dawson’s blooming romance. Many aspects of the plot defy belief, but overall, there was great chemistry and charisma in the two leads as they slowly, haltingly, did a little dance and then finally got around to making a little love. Dawson’s character has a failing heart that puts her at fate’s mercy, and the tremulous romance that develops between someone on the verge of death and someone who has planned his own death–opposites, in that regard–is quite interesting. Dawson has a lot of charisma. She can take something as far-fetched as this role and use her naturally accessible beauty to make it completely believable.

Part of that is because she isn’t say, Nicole Kidman. Rosario Dawson is the undiscovered Latina beauty next door that vast idiotic mass of men somehow managed to ignore. I can’t say the same for Will Smith–being, after all, the black actor with the most star power working in Hollywood today. He tries to be shy, diffident, damaged, despairing–and for the most part, he pulls off this range, though for the longest time you still stare at his face and say to yourself, “this is Will Smith”. This is an aspect of the modern cinema-going experience that I wonder if anyone has explored–that is, how does someone’s off-screen fame and media exposure influence the way that we judge their performances. Of course, it’s not to say that our criterion are warped by their fame, just that the basic act of suspension of disbelief, upon which the act of watching movies is predicated, becomes that much harder when you are talking about someone famous.

The industry perpetuates that, of course, by making them take huge roles. Thus Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman do roles like the ones in Australia. You aren’t going to find them in small indie, character-driven movies anytime soon. As far as recent movies go, I would have to say that Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler or any of the actors in Ken Loach’s It’s a Free World was much better, in terms of bringing the emotional truth of a character out.

So as far as Seven Pounds goes, I would have to say that the movie ain’t terrible, but fairly forgettable as they go.

Movies I’m Watching:Defiance

This is one of the few Daniel Craig movies that didn’t immediately ratchet my inferiority complex up to a new level. The movie stars Craig and Liev Schreiber as Jewish brothers living in Byelorussia during the time of the Nazis. They end up rescuing many Jews from the area and staking and decamping from the cities and ghettos to the forest, where they could live relatively freely.

They struggle with the ethical issues you’d expect: whether or not to brutally murder a captured Nazi for revenge, and whether or not by doing so they become as bad as them. Of course such quandaries are at the heart of debates regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue, though of course as everyone has already pointed out, the Jews invading Gaza today are not the ones that escaped the Shoah.

Back to the movie: fairly good combination of action and drama. The love story parts are fairly boilerplate. The scenes with Schreiber as a Red Army soldier facing anti-Semitism from his Russian comrades are interesting. The Abel-Cain split between the brothers and their philosophies is a common trope, but the filmmakers made it fairly interesting. Of course, in the end, one of them comes riding out of nowhere to save the ass of the other just when all seems to be lost, and then they hug and make up.

There are few typical Biblical moments of truth, which are not quite trite, but are so expected by anyone conversant in Hollywood conventions that its effect cannot be but dampened, somewhat.
On the other hand there was one moment, during a funeral, where the Rabbi says something interesting about asking God to take back the covenant he offered the Jews. The Rabbi was saying something about not wanting to be the chosen people, and all the baggage that came with it. Interesting but they cut from it fairly quickly, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

All in all: not a fantastic, movie, but not bad. Some gritty action scenes. And of course, Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber kicking ass with their faux-Slavic accents is always cool. It’s harder to be smitten with Daniel Craig when he’s not speaking that posh British English. And it’s a bit of change to, which is nice, after Bond and Confessions.