Film Review of the Week

Thriller

Caught Stealing (15)

Review: Oscar-nominated writer-director Darren Aronofsky struts defiantly on the wrong side of the law in a bruising crime yarn set in 1998 New York. Adapted by Charlie Huston from his own novel, Caught Stealing engineers a frenetic chase through the mean streets of a city in Mayor Giuliani’s iron-fisted grasp, where a draconian law banning dancing in bars without a licence causes nightlife to steadily flatline. Austin Butler is more shook up than his star-making turn in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis as a down-on-his-luck bartender, who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and loses one kidney then his dignity as he is forced to fight for survival against outrageous and overwhelming odds.

Aronofsky stages the bone-crunching fisticuffs and slow-motion car crashes with elan and cinematographer Matthew Libatique, who has worked on all his pictures, brings impeccably lit dynamism to each grimly compelling set-piece. Matt Smith’s extravagantly mohawked punk, who sets the contrived plot in motion, verges on caricature but Carol Kane sparkles in a brief cameo as a Jewish mother, who wisely counsels Butler’s much-abused hero against flashing his pretty boy smile in the face of adversity. “If you can’t bite, don’t show your teeth,” she whispers. He plies his star power regardless.

Henry “Hank” Thompson (Butler) shattered his dreams of playing professional baseball in a fatal car accident and now he seeks refuge in a bottle (or six) when he isn’t working as a bartender on the Lower East Side or enjoying regular hook-ups with paramedic Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz). She urges Hank to face his fears (“Run away from what you’re afraid of, then it owns you!”) especially if he wants a long-term future with her.

Hank foolishly agrees to cat-sit for foul-mouthed British neighbour Russ (Smith) and walks unwittingly into the middle of a turf war between Russian thugs Aleksei (Yuri Kolokolnikov) and Pavel (Nikita Kukushkin), Puerto Rican heavy Colorado (Bad Bunny) and Hassidic brothers Lipa (Liev Schreiber) and Shmully (Vincent D’Onofrio). It transpires that Russ is sitting on “an exotically huge amount of cash” totalling a little over four million dollars, which he should have distributed to interested parties before he flew back to the UK. Hank’s blissful ignorance is rewarded with dizzying physical blows and a visit from police detective Roman (Regina King).

Caught Stealing is a slick and engrossing chase thriller that compels us to root for Butler’s undeserving patsy as cameras barrel through recognisable New York neighbourhoods. Strong female characters impose themselves with limited screen time. While humans are treated like punch bags in close-up, a scene-stealing feline is mistreated off camera. Aronofsky’s fight club has limits.

Comedy

The Roses (15)

Review: Feuding spouses vent frustrations to destructive extremes in a potty-mouthed comedy directed by Meet The Parents maestro Jay Roach, adapted by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Tony McNamara from Warren Adler’s book. The War Of The Roses was previously filmed with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as the materialistic husband and wife, who allow simmering resentment to boil over with shocking consequences (at one point, he urinates on the fish course of her important client dinner).

The Roses burnishes Adler’s text, originally published in the early 1980s, to reflect civil war between an architect and a chef in the oceanside community of Mendocino, California, where you could comfortably “float a boat on the undercurrent of discontent”. Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman toss verbal grenades as their characters’ onscreen marriage disintegrates and openly shed tears as the enormity of love lost hits home with shuddering force between the mean-spirited insults.

A delicate balance of tonal flavours jars with the broad comedy of Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon’s best friends, who play like a Saturday Night Live sketch. The latter is armed with the film’s sharpest one-liner, though, openly admiring Cumberbatch’s flame-scorched phoenix rising from the smouldering ashes of his dumpster fire marriage: “I never thought watching a white man reclaim his power could be so moving!” Ncuti Gatwa enjoys limited screen time as a head restaurant server, who takes that title very seriously when it comes to “servicing” male truckers in the car park, while Allison Janney bulldozes her five-minute interlude as a no-nonsense divorce attorney replete with canine sidekick.

Boorish architect Theo (Cumberbatch) is the main breadwinner for his family while wife Ivy cares for their two children, Hattie (Delaney Quinn) and Roy (Ollie Robinson), and cooks three days a week at a small beachside eaterie, playfully christened We’ve Got Crabs. A disastrous launch for a maritime museum, designed to Theo’s daring specifications, coincides with a stellar five-star review for Ivy’s kitchen wizardry from a revered San Francisco food critic. “Maybe I have been resisting my genius for too long,” she chirps.

As Theo’s fortunes tumble and he becomes an embittered stay-at-home father, Ivy is propelled into the media spotlight. Partnered friends Barry (Samberg) and Amy (McKinnon) and Rory (Jamie Demetriou) and Sally (Zoe Chao) are caught in the crossfire as Ivy and Theo acknowledge mutual dizzying hatred.

The Roses is a smart and occasionally savage portrait of clashing egos and reversed traditional gender roles that slow-cooks the tasty main ingredients: Colman and Cumberbatch. They are a heavenly (and hilariously hellish) pairing, from lustful first glances across a restaurant kitchen to an explosive showdown with bullets and airborne citrus fruit. Screenwriter McNamara, who previously worked with Colman on The Favourite, demonstrates a sharp ear for dialogue that inflicts cumulative pain like hundreds of tiny paper cuts.

Horror

The Toxic Avenger Uncut (18)

Review: Campy 1980s B-movie The Toxic Avenger receives a gore-laden reboot courtesy of writer-director Macon Blair. He retains the severed tongue-in-cheek silliness of the original with a starry cast led by Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood, who gleefully chew scenery in between effusive spurts of wanton violence. A harpoon gun in the opening five minutes teases a full-blown orgy of slaughter festooned with gooey prosthetics and make-up effects that demand a strong stomach and macabre sense of humour.

A severed head is squished to a pulp, numerous limbs are torn merrily from their joint sockets and one victim has their intestines pulled forcefully out of their body through a most unfortunate orifice. Once the destruction begins, no dangling appendage is safe from a sticky fate. Dinklage and co surrender wholeheartedly to the self-referential madness in Blair’s script, beginning with a profanity laden narration: “I didn’t want any of this, not the grief, not the illness, certainly not the heroic voiceover…” Some gags strain to land (quite a few miss entirely) but fans of the original low-budget incarnation will be able to discern the heady scent of nostalgia among the noxious chemicals and rotting flesh.

Winston Gooze (Dinklage) has worked in Hygiene Services at the BTH factory in St Roma’s Villa for 13 years, diligently mopping floors and unclogging toilets while chief executive Bob Garbinger (Bacon) knowingly pumps dangerous chemicals into the surrounding community – population 12,800 and quickly dying. Shortly after a terminal diagnosis that will wrench him away from socially awkward stepson Wade (Jacob Tremblay), Winston plots to steal the money to clear his debts from the BTH’s Corporate Fartplex.

Alas, his timing is impeccable. The heist coincides with corporate whistleblower JJ (Taylour Paige) gathering chemical samples from the factory and evading Bob’s odious brother and head of security, Fritz (Wood), who has been taking fashion tips from Danny DeVito’s Penguin. Winston is caught in the crossfire and his lifeless body is dumped into a vat of chemical waste, where he metamorphoses into the titular terror to a bombastic blast of Mussorgsky’s Night On Bald Mountain (immortalised in the final segment of Disney’s Fantasia with the monstrous Chernabog) and proceeds to eviscerate anyone who threatens his sickly town. Bob, Fritz and BTH personal assistant Kissy Sturnevan (Julia Davis) are all earmarked for sadistic demises.

The Toxic Avenger Uncut is a blast from the past for anyone who enjoys their horrors served exceedingly rare and bloody. Macon’s script lays on the environmental activism with a trowel, declaring war on the rich, powerful elite who willingly sacrifice community spirit and wholesome family values at the altar of greed. Stomach-churning justice is served with a mop and righteous anger.