Review: "Six Minutes to Midnight"

 

I'm a sucker for World War II movies, especially based-on-true ones like "Six Minutes to Midnight." It was arguably the single most important event in human history, and even today there are still endless tales of unheralded heroism, sacrifice, debasement and tragedy to be told.

Strangely, this spy drama starring Eddie Izzard is curiously flat and lacking emotional appeal. It has an interesting premise: a British school for German girl that becomes a locus of intrigue that could alter the fate of the war. It's got secret agents posing as teachers, double-crosses, intimidating brutes and Dame Judi Dench as the noble but self-deluding head mistress.

Yet I found the movie, directed by Andy Goddard from a screenplay he wrote with Izzard and Celyn Jones, to be predictable and even a tad dull. Izzard's character isn't very well fleshed out, existing as a sort of do-gooding everyman without any history of distinctive personality traits. 

He fills out a suit marvelously, but the role is thin as tissue.

(I should mention Dench and fellow Brit acting legend Jim Broadbent receive top billing, though Izzard's the star and main character, as well as serving as executive producer. This film is clearly his baby, yet he takes a lesser credit. Though I suppose just being in the same movie with those two stalwarts must be reward enough.)

As the story opens in summer of 1939, the English teacher at the Augusta Victoria College for Girls at Bexhill-on-Sea on the southern coast of England goes mysteriously missing. We see him being nervously chased about the boardwalk, so we know it's not just the jitters. Thomas Miller (Izzard), a middle-aged widower with a journeyman's history of going from school to school, is hired on a trial basis as replacement by Miss Rocholl (Dench), who runs the college.

Roscholl is a strong adovcate of Anglo-Saxon cultural alliance, and is aware how this looks in the days before the outbreak of a war that seems certain. She informs Miller that a number of the students are daughters of Nazi high command, so discretion is key.

It turns out Miller is a Brit agent who's been sent to ferret out what's going on at the school. He's disturbed to find the young women listening to Hitler broadcasts and even giving the Nazi salute -- with Rocholl and the young teacher, Ilsa (Carla Juri), joining in. 

Broadbent turns up, all too briefly, as Charlie, the local bus driver who seems to know more than he ought. James D'Arcy plays the police captain looking into the matter who's unreasonably snotty about it. Jones, the co-screenwriter, plays his brutish corporal, one eyebrow melted in a permanent sneer. David Schofield plays Miller's huffy superior who meets him for clandestine hand-offs of secrets.

One of the film's weaknesses is that the students are never really given strong identities, just acting as a sort of greek's chorus of blonde, apple-cheeked emotional windsock. The only two that really stand out are Maria Dragus as Astrid, the headstrong one even Miller confesses he's a little scared of, and Tijan Marei as Gretel, the smart, timid girl the others pick on.

The movie starts to explore Gretel's relationship with Miller a little bit, with him trying to support her against the bullying. There's even a brief suggestion she might be Jewish, or passing as gentile, though it's soon swept aside for more spy vs. spy stuff.

If the intrigue were more exciting, we might forgive the lack of character development. As it is there's just a vague description of there being a list of British undercover agents being circulated through the school, and that the Nazi commanders intend to bring the girls home before declaring war. I never could quite figure out why the MacGuffin has to be tied to the school -- aren't there hundreds of other ways to transmit the secret list?

Izzard isn't terribly convincing as a secret agent, shortish and stocky with floppy blond locks. Miller does a lot of running in the movie, on the lam from both German and British authorities at different points, though there is one clever bit where he impersonantes a marching band musician.

"Six Minutes to Midnight" doesn't work very well either as a human story or as a spy thriller. It seems like the start of something very good, but a lot of ingredients were left on the counter.

 

Video review: "Cloud Atlas"

A grand, brave, often mesmerizing but just as often puzzling cinematic experience, “Cloud Atlas” takes a book generally thought to be unfilmable and delivers something rather astonishing. The Wachowski siblings, best known for the “Matrix” movies, team up again (also joined by co-writer/director Tom Tykwer) to create a sprawling story that encompasses dozens of characters spread over several time spans, with a universal message about the sanctity of the soul.

If that sounds a little full-of-it grandiose, well, that’s because it is. But even as you struggle to understand the accents of Tom Hanks and Halle Berry or even figure out where and when you are, most observers should find the experience thrilling.

Hanks and Berry are joined by a number of other actors, each playing several roles – though it’s often a challenge to recognize them buried under layers of costume and prosthetic makeup. The action jumps from the 19th century Pacific Islands to America in the 1970s, and then to a dystopian future Korea and a post-apocalyptic time in which the Earth is nearly deserted.

Though it may not be up everyone’s alley, “Cloud Atlas” is an innovative and ambitious piece of science fiction drama that’s worth a look.

Extras are rather decent, though you have to upgrade to the Blu-ray edition to get the best stuff. The DVD version only comes with a making-of documentary.

It’s not surprising that the notoriously publicity-shy Wachowskis chose not to record a commentary track, but they make up for it with six more featurettes covering everything from casting to special effects, plus philosophical musings about reincarnation.

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Review: "Cloud Atlas"

Having not read the novel by David Mitchell, my guess is that "Cloud Atlas" is one of those books that was considered untranslatable to the big screen. The Wachowski siblings, the creative team behind the "Matrix" films, and their writing/directing partner Tom Tykwer, have accomplished about as successful an adaptation as could be hoped.

It's a sprawling, ambitious, troubling, occasionally glorious and often vexing film. A hair under three hours long, it links dozens of characters across a multitude of time settings, with the same set of actors playing multiple parts. These stories do not  unfold in temporal sequence, but instead cut back and forth with no transition for the audience. The abruptness is intentional.

So, one moment you can be watching Tom Hanks playing Zachry, a suspicious but good-hearted hunter in a post-apocalyptic primitive society hundreds of years into the future, and in a blink he has become Dr. Henry Goose, a nefarious physician/charlatan in the Pacific Islands circa 1849.

The theme here is that these actors are not simply inhabiting different roles, but represent different incarnations of the same eternal soul replicated over and over again throughout the eons, but facing much the same challenges in each reincarnation.

For instance, Hanks' character(s) struggle with summoning the courage to do the moral thing. For Dr. Goose that battle was obviously lost some time ago. For Zachry it's an ongoing struggle, with the forces of suspicion and hatred represented by Old Georgie, a devil in a top hat who whispers vile thoughts into his ear.

Zachry's time era is probably the most critical, acting as a framing device for the other stories. Sometimes we see the same person decades apart in their lives, but for the most part it is new incarnations each time around.

In Zachry's time, he is suspicious of Meronym (Halle Berry), a representative of a more technologically advanced alien culture, or possibly the remnants of humanity that survived the "Big Fall" of mankind. Meronym and other people of her ilk seem to have electronic devices implanted under the surface of their skin, while Zachry and his people have extensive facial tattoos.

Meronym has ingratiated herself into the people of the valley's tiny community, where they struggle to survive against wretched tribes of cannibals who raid from time to time. Meronym says she's there to help, and indeed heeds Zachry's plea to save the life of his niece, but it's clear she's there with an unspoken mission.

Other significant settings are the Pacific Islands in the mid-19th century, Cambridge of 1936, 1973 San Francisco, modern-day London and Korea somewhere in the 23rd century.

Jim Broadbent plays Timothy Cavendish, an itinerant publisher who hits the big time when his thuggish author executes the dream of what every writer wants to do to a critic, becoming a celebrity in the process. But money troubles and a hateful big brother leave him incarcerated in a mental hospital, which builds up to a septuagenarian version of "The Great Escape."

Ben Whishaw is Robert Frobisher, a brilliant but poor musical genius who takes on a position as assistant to a once great but now forlorn composer. Jim Sturgess plays Adam Ewing, a young man making a highly profitable business trip for his slavemaster father-in-law, and encounters the unexpected friendship of a runaway slave (David Gyasi).

In 1973 Halle Berry plays Luisa Rey, a crusading young journalist who uncovers a nefarious plot at a Three Mile Island-ish nuclear facility, and finds her life in peril.

Perhaps the most evocative setting is Neo Seoul of the future, a nightmarish landscape that seems to combine the worst elements of "Blade Runner" and "The Matrix." Here Doona Bae plays Sonmi-451, a "fabricant" -- aka synthetically created human slave -- who serves as a waitress  in trendy restaurant. One day she's liberated by a leader of the rebellion against this totalitarian society, and finds herself becoming the image and voice of a movement (and later, in Zachry's time, something much more).

"Our lives are not our own," Somni intones, underscoring the film's message. "From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and each kindness, we build our future."

I will say that time does not drag while watching "Cloud Atlas." I looked at my watch exactly once, and was astonished to see that 2½ hours had already gone by.

But the various actors each playing three, four, five or more roles ended up being distracting, especially as I attempted each time to puzzle out who was who under the heavy layers of prosthetic makeup. I found that the mental energy I expended in this exercise left me unable at time to get emotionally engaged the characters' plight.

I also admit to being uncomfortable with some of the transformations. At various times Caucasian actors are made up to look Asian, and Asians as Caucasians, and African-Americans as whites or Asians or Latinos, and none of it very convincing. I did note that at no time was a non-African-American actor made up to look black. Consciously avoiding that risk of an unpalatable accusation of blackface only serves to make the other cross-racial portrayals seem even more squeamish.

"Cloud Atlas" is a bedazzling cinematic experience, though one that will no doubt leave some audience members confused and frustrated. For me, there was enough enchantment to overcome the head-scratching.

3 stars out of four