Review: Avatar

James Cameron knows how to pick a fight. Ripley rendered men useless by fighting off Aliens, The Terminator shut down his own upgrade and Titanic took vengeance on the history books.

It's no surprise then that his new film, the highly anticipated Avatar, takes on the world and wins...but not by knockout.

Cameron took twelve years to develop Avatar, allowing technology to catch up with his vision. In doing so the director has made his most personal film to date: this is his anti-war, eco-warrior statement.

Avatar is set on Pandora, a lush, mineral rich moon inhabited by the blue-skinned indigenous Na'vi civilisation. The year is 2154 and a mining company has begun excavating Pandora for its valuable ore. Valuable both commercially, it sells for tens of millions of dollars per tonne, and for the survival of an energy-depleted Earth.

To improve relations between humans and the Na'vi, avatars are created so that humans can take the form of the tribe and survive in Pandora's environment.

Cente to the film is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic marine sent to Pandora to replace his deceased scientist brother. He is transported into an avatar and, given his military background, becomes a body guard to head scientist Grace Augustine (a typically great Sigourney Weaver).

When Jake becomes lost in Pandora's jungle he is saved from native beasts by Neytiri, a Na'vi from the ruling family. She takes him in against her initial judgement only for Sam to eventually fall for her and Pandora.

It's then that Jake goes native, siding with the Na’vi, and disregarding a mission of infiltration given to him by the brutish Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang). In doing so Jake sacrifices a promise of new legs.

Much of the talk in the run up to Avatar's release focused on the 3D technology Cameron mooted as being the future of cinema and the gamble has paid off. To see this film in 3D is an experience unlike anything else. It's exactly how one imagines audience's felt when they first saw 2001, Star Wars or Blade Runner: other sci-fi classics.

As a result Avatar is a beautiful film, that's undeniable. But Cameron has polished the films shortcomings with guaranteed crowd pleasers. Some of the sequences are nothing short of spectacular; it's easy to see where that $300m budget went.

The plot is, ironically, very 2D. Essentially this is a love story on a broad canvas (sound familiar?) that never steers to far away from the expected.

Unlike the effects the characters of Avatar are conventional too. There's the unlikely hero, military mad-man, beautiful native and even a jealous team mate.

The same can be said for the films themes. They're all there, from a Shakespearean forbidden love down to bastard bosses.

Cameron does however give food for thought. Avatar is an enormous advert for the team Green. The director who has previously been hell-bent on blowing up a plant now wants to save one and seems to say that ravaging a planet is not the way to maintain one.

The film also carries an anti-war message. "Shock and awe" tactics don't work here and it's hard to see this as anything other than a two-fingers to the previous administration.

Avatar is a visually stunning cinematic experience and one that serves best when your brain is switched off.

Cameron has created something beyond a vanity project and something that could genuinely challenge the way producers make films.

But the next time Cameron picks a fight hopefully the result has the brains to match the beauty and brawn.

Review: The Hurt Locker

There’s a shot towards the end of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker when returning Staff Sergeant Will James goes to the supermarket after a year’s tour in Iraq. He becomes daunted, almost intimidated, by the simple everyday task of selecting a breakfast cereal. Endless rows of commercial packaging swallow James rendering him as a bland entity against the artificial backdrop of ‘real life’. This one image captures the essence not only of Sergeant Will James but the film entire: to seize life or be seized by it.

The Hurt Locker follows an elite bomb unit as they clear the streets of Baghdad of IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices), something that is considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the army – something we find out all too soon.

Following the death of unit leader Staff Sergeant Thompson the group lands itself another explosives expert in the shape of William James. James quickly loses the trust of the others in his unit by almost turning a routine seek and diffuse mission into a suicide plan. We know that what James is doing is wrong – as we do with most of his actions – but it’s exhilarating to watch such undeniable instinct and talent combined with an apparent disregard for life. His childish behaviour is hardly surprising given the relationship he quickly builds with DVD salesboy ‘Beckham’.

The unit comprises of three relatively stereotypical characters: there’s James - the renegade Cowboy, Sandborn – the all-American by the book Good boy and then there’s Eldridge the Lost boy. As the group manoeuvre from war-torn street to the next the film is devoid of any lengthy getting to know you small-talk. This instead comes in the others’ reaction to James’ borderline showboat methods. Although never outright trusting James both Sandborn and Eldridge begin to look to James for guidance, particularly Eldridge who at times looks as though he needs an arm around the shoulder, not a rifle in his hands.

The fact that Bigelow decided against casting marquee names as the three main leads adds to the vitality of the film. As an audience we become attached to this band of brothers and part of that is because we don’t have a, say, Tom Cruise to detach ourselves from. What we see is, quite rightly, what we get.

The film looks and sounds as intense as it feels. The screen sweats from the heat of the bright yellows and whites and the aggressive editing perfectly matches the unfolding chaos. Look at the way that when the unit move towards a suspected bomb Bigelow flash cuts to locals peering out of their windows. All of a sudden it’s as though the soldiers are being examined by hundreds of dark eyes.

All in all Bigelow has created something very unique with The Hurt Locker. It’s a very twenty first century war movie when violence is often invisible (coming from mobile phones and video cameras) but when it inevitably arrives it’s as much of a shock to us as it is the troops. This film is for the Staff Sergeant William James in all of us.

Rather than highlight the banality of war like Jarhead or glamorise it like The Green Berets, Bigelow shows us how war is, as is quoted at the very beginning, like a drug: for some it’s prescribed and others addictive.

Review: Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds

Cert:18

Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger

Running Time: 157mins

A leaked script, actors dropping from the project and audiences feeling shot down with disappointment by Death Proof. Hardly an ideal way to start a movie that’s been ten years in the making. But that Tarantino, he’s a confident fellow you know. Twenty minutes into Inglourious Basterds, in a scene that has suspense (note the repetitive ticking clock, an homage to the endless sounds in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West’s opening station sequence), and emotions ranging from fear to grief, we’ve already learnt one thing: this is Tarantino’s world.

Tarantino’s epic World War II pastiche opens with the obligatory title card: “Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France”. It’s the perfect and most characteristic way to open a show that is devoid of historical fact and heavy on creative interpretation. Schindlers List this ain’t.

The movie, Tarantino’s seventh as director, tells the story (never has the word ‘story’ been more apt) of a platoon of eight American-Jewish soldiers, lead by a Lt. Randolph Raine (Pitt), a delicious blend of Lee Marvin and Clark Gable, to capture “100 Nazi scalps”. It’s only when Dr. Joseph Goebbels decides to premiere his latest propaganda picture ‘Nations Pride’(a sarcastic, mythological Tarantino creation)in a Parisian cinema that the Basterds become part of Operation Kino, a plan to set alight the theatre, cremating all top-ranking Nazi’s including the Fuhrer himself.

As we drift between genres, predominantly spaghetti western, there is one character who defines the film entirely: Colonel Hans Landa of the SS aka The Jew Hunter (Waltz). Tarantino said that without Hans Landa there wouldn’t be Inglourious Basterds and here he has found his most intriguing amalgamation and one likely to go into the directors’ canon of creations. Landa is as charming as he is manipulative and dangerous. Mia Wallace meets Mr. Blonde if you will. He’s also the film’s most fun and Tarantino knew this giving Landa most of the best lines (“Bingo!"). The performance from Waltz is similar to Pitt’s: camp and just the right level of over-the-top.

A re-occurring theme used throughout Tarantino’s work is revenge and the story behind Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent) is at the heart of Inglorious Basterds. An escapee of Landa’s opening scene massacre, she inherits the cinema chosen by Goebbels and plays a key role in the films already well-publicised finale. It’s with Dreyfus’ transformation from rural belle to femme fatale that cinematographer Robert Richardson gets to grips with Nazi iconography (Leni Riefenstahl would be proud) and Tarantino dusts off his record collection. Instead of opting for the obvious strains of Wagner the auteur gives the film it’s most surreal, two-fingers-to-convention moment: a David Bowie track.

Inglourious is, inevitably, loquacious. Indeed much of the Basterd’s development as characters and how we feel about them is based on dialogue, what they say and who to. Much of the films violence is preceded by both searing and delicate exchanges but this means the film does suffer from a long-winded middle chapter. But such is the self-awareness in his craft Tarantino has written a script that is a pop-culture minefield and is far more cerebral and entertaining than a baseball bat to the head.

Inglourious Basterds is an undoubted masterpiece, deserving to be mentioned in the same breath as Pulp Fiction, but it’s likely to split audiences. There will be those who applaud the undoubted showmanship on display and those who disapprove of the cavalier approach to fact. War is hell but in the hands of an unstoppable Tarantino never has war been bastardised so gloriously.