Comedy
Christmas Karma (PG)
Review: Following her reworking of Frank Capra (It’s A Wonderful Afterlife) and a Bollywood-style revision of Jane Austen (Bride And Prejudice), writer-director Gurinder Chadha unwraps Charles Dickens’s festive fable of ghostly visitations. She reimagines a cold-hearted curmudgeon’s redemption in modern-day London where timely concerns about immigration, the meaning of Britishness and the rise of Reform UK are at the forefront of her Scrooge’s mind.
“I have no time for the weak,” loudly professes mean-spirited miser Eshaan Sood (Kunal Nayyar), bemoaning the UK’s rising population and the intolerable strain on the NHS and public services. “There is a limit to what this island can manage,” he sneers. Seven years since the death of his business partner Jacob Marley (Hugh Bonneville), Eshaan presides over their loans and financial services business with an absence of compassion for those less fortunate. He callously fires his staff on Christmas Eve except for loyal clerk Bob Cratchit (Leo Suter), who returns home to wife Mary (Pixie Lott) and their four children including Tiny Tim (Freddie Marshall-Ellis). The boy requires urgent medical treatment in Switzerland.
As the clock ticks down to Christmas Day, Eshaan is tormented by Marley’s spirit and three spectral heralds. The Ghost of Christmas Past (Eva Longoria) transports Eshaan to childhood in early 1970s Uganda when Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of the minority Asian population. Happier times working for Mr Fezzywig (Allan Corduner) and his wife (Tracy-Ann Oberman) preface the arrival of the Ghost of Christmas Present (Billy Porter) to offer glimpses at how nephew Eddie (Bilal Hasna) truly feels about Eshaan. A shrouded Ghost of Christmas Future (Boy George) silently awaits Tiny Tim’s funeral cortege, which tips Eshaan over the edge.
Christmas Karma is a well-intentioned update to Dickens, soaked with more Yuletide spirit than the booziest homemade Christmas pud. Chadha’s film doesn’t go up in flames but some of the tonal gear shifts are uncomfortably sharp. Nayyar’s committed lead performance provides grim-faced consistency until his skinflint’s joyful rebirth. Supporting characters sing, rap and quip, including Colin the Cabbie (Danny Dyer), who caterwauls his version of the 12 Days Of Christmas which commences with a butter-basted turkey. “I’m not sayin’ me wife can’t cook but we usually pray after we’ve eaten,” he chuckles.
An eclectic musical soundtrack mirrors the rich multiculturalism of the capital, melding pop, bhangra, gospel, Christmas carols and rap with original contributions from Gary Barlow, Nitin Sawhney, Shaznay Lewis, Ben Cullum, Panjabi MC, Malkit Singh and Jassi Sidhu. The seasonal salutations culminate in Priyanka Chopra performing a Hindi-language version of Last Christmas by Wham!, which becomes a full cast and crew singalong over the end credits in keeping with Chadha’s previous films.
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Thriller
Now You See Me: Now You Don't (12A)
Review: In an early verbal exchange between magicians in director Ruben Fleischer’s heist sequel, one self-aggrandising performer suggests a true master of sleight of hand can perform an old trick with a flourish and fool an audience into believing they are seeing something new. The four scriptwriters pulling the strings of Now You See Me: Now You Don’t act on those words, engineering an elaborate ruse to steal a large, uncut heart-shaped diamond after it is removed from a hi-tech subterranean vault using a few of the same deceptions from the first two films in the series.
A hi-tech team of socially conscious illusionists comprising showman Bosco (Dominic Sessa), expert pickpocket and acrobat June (Ariana Greenblatt) and proud magic history nerd Charlie (Justice Smith) pull off an audacious redistribution of wealth in the name of the disbanded Four Horsemen, who have vanished into the ether. Or so the young pretenders believe. They discover J Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg) in their supposedly secret lair, armed with a playing card from the clandestine society of magicians known as the Eye, which commands him to recruit the wannabes for a daring heist.
Working with Atlas as their arrogant mentor, the untested trio leverage their impressive skills to bamboozle and bewilder during a high-profile auction hosted by ruthless South African diamond despot Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike). The Eye also woos fellow Horsemen Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) and Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) back into action to assist with the elaborate act of misdirection, which is billed as “a chance to drive a stake through the heart of the devil herself”. Innocent bystanders including boorish fashion photographer Marc Schreiber (Dominic Allburn) are the unwitting pawns in the Four… no Seven Horsemen’s risky endeavour.
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is a confidently staged swindle that nestles alongside earlier chapters and blatantly lays its cards on the table about extending the franchise (a fourth film is currently in development with Fleischer at the helm). Friendly rivalry between the original quartet of Eisenberg, Harrelson, Franco and Fisher and their headstrong proteges provides opportunities for spiky repartee and begrudging co-operation. Some of the old guard are starved of meaty character development to demonstrate growth in the nine years since the Horsemen bolted out of their stable.
A reliance on tried and tested trickery allows us to stay a couple of steps ahead of the intentionally knotty plot and pre-empt an obvious ace up the sleeve before filmmakers are ready to play it and reveal who has been secretly conning whom for the best part of two hours. The scriptwriters do not try and cheat us too, which is a disappointment.
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Thriller
Nuremberg (15)
Review: Based on Jack El-Hai’s non-fiction book The Nazi And The Psychiatrist, Nuremberg dramatises the mind games between Hitler’s second-in-command and an American shrink in the days leading up to the 1946 International Military Tribunal on German soil. “This city is about to become the greatest show on Earth,” a journalist (Lydia Peckham) excitedly observes as the eyes of the world turn to bomb-ravaged Nuremberg as a place where unspeakable acts committed during Europe’s darkest hours might be calmly exposed and guilty men brought to justice.
In early May 1945, the upper echelons of the Nazi party are in disarray following the death of Adolf Hitler from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Fuhrer’s bullish second-in-command, Hermann Goring (Russell Crowe), surrenders to American troops in Austria. Supreme Court associate justice Robert H Jackson (Michael Shannon) is charged with identifying a legal framework within which Goring and other members of the Nazi regime can be legally tried for war crimes in front of an International Military Tribunal. To ensure transparent co-operation between Allies, the tribunal will be presided over by four judges representing France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Brilliant American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) travels to Nuremberg, where the prisoners are being held. Sergeant Howie Triest (Leo Woodall) operates as his translator with Nazi party members who only speak German. Kelley becomes fascinated with Goring and the American gains his patient’s trust by delivering letters to Goring’s wife Emmy (Lotte Verbeek) and young daughter Edda (Fleur Bremmer). As the day of reckoning draws near, Jackson prepares to prosecute flanked by British former solicitor general David Maxwell Fyfe (Richard E Grant) and Goring makes a bold prediction: “I’m going to escape the hangman’s noose.”
Nuremberg reduces complex international diplomacy and political brinkmanship to a conventional courtroom drama anchored by a powerhouse performance by Crowe as the overweight figurehead of a party that ruthlessly targeted and exterminated an entire race as a euphemistic Final Solution. He twinkles with malevolence as Goring, firmly believing he is in control of his fate and eager to test the resolve of Malek’s wily student of human behaviour, who understands the importance of his role: anything less than total victory in the courtroom will be utter defeat.
Vanderbilt’s storytelling is linear and when prosecutors at the trial show filmed evidence of the concentration camps, the director shows us real archive photos and footage of the dead bodies of Holocaust victims and emaciated survivors barely clinging to life. It is the first and only time that Nuremberg brings home, with the force of a sledgehammer-blow to the solar plexus, the sickening reality of what transpired behind barbed wire and closed doors.
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Sci-Fi
The Running Man (15)
Review: Take your pick of the athletic turns of phrase that suggest or explicitly describe a disappointing outcome: run out of steam, run aground, run on empty, run dry, run out of luck. Any of them could apply to director Edgar Wright’s high-octane adaptation of Stephen King’s 1985 dystopian thriller, which coincidentally imagined the bleak authoritarian future of… 2025 replete with a government-controlled television network that broadcasts a bloodthirsty survival game show with one inevitable outcome.
Working-class father Ben Richards (Powell) has been blacklisted for exposing corporate negligence and he struggles to find work to pay for the medicine that could save his gravely ill baby daughter Cathy, and prevent his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson) from working long hours as a club waitress. In desperation, Ben auditions for a suite of TV game shows broadcast by the Network, but he is adamant that he will not take part in the most popular and brutal programme on the planet, The Running Man hosted by Bobby T Thompson (Colman Domingo), which has a prize of one billion new dollars for any player who can avoid termination for 30 days. “Don’t worry, daddy’s not that crazy,” Ben whispers to his daughter.
Television producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) masterminds the ratings-grabbing show with the help of his merciless hunters, who stalk runners under the leadership of Evan McCone (Lee Pace). Killian manipulates Ben into signing the contract and the father runs for his life alongside fellow contestants Jansky (Martin Herlihy) and Laughlin (Katy O’Brian). Cameras track Ben’s every move and as he narrowly avoids bullets and blades, ratings skyrocket and the penniless underdog risks upsetting the show’s predetermined outcome.
The Running Man is a very different beast to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 rough and tumble with King’s source material, which deviated wildly from the page. Wright’s script, co-written by Michael Bacall, is slavishly faithful to the book to the remake’s detriment, delivering delirious thrills and spills for the opening hour before the wheels come off this runaway train. Only at the very end does Wright afford himself some welcome artistic licence. The reboot is on a sure footing when it focuses on the stricken hero’s spirited attempts to evade termination, including one vertiginous set piece that convinces Powell to abseil down the side of an apartment building with just a single white bath towel sparing his blushes.
Once Wright flits between Ben’s would-be accomplices, including William H Macy’s fake ID supplier and Michael Cera’s vengeance-seeking misfit, the destination (and getting there quickly) becomes more interesting than the journey ahead. Parallels to present-day political strife are heavy-handed. “This country’s ready to blow and you’re the initiator,” Cera’s oddball coos excitedly to Powell. Wright lights a slow-burning fuse and forgets to attach a killer payload.
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