THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE WATER...



Lady In The Water (15)
reviewed by David Mahmoudieh at the
UK premier, Leicester Sq, London

M. Night Shyamalan, writer and director of such tales as Stuart Little, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village has earned himself a reputation over the past seven years for being – however talented – a downright difficult, self-promotional prima donna. His insistence on controlling every facet of his productions, refusing to accept any executive interference from his producers in favor of his own trusted, non-conformist methodologies mirrors that of a cocaine-fuelled rock star trying to play every instrument in his band. The word 'collaborative' obviously doesn't exist within this particular director's private vocabulary.

His newest solo-effort, the non-genre Lady In The Water has, as expected, done nothing to dispel these views – through crucially, where his previous efforts spoke for themselves, LITW is in fact a disappointment of nigh-epic proportions, carrying none of the uplifting or triumphant values as its predecessors.

Shyamalan attempts to tell the somewhat strange story of an apartment superintendent named Cleveland Heep (reliable sad-sack Paul Giamatti, Sideways) who becomes ensconced within a mythological fantasy after being rescued by the title character (Bryce Dallas Howard) – a mysterious, delicate young woman from a fairy-tale, trying to make the treacherous journey from our world back to hers.

Why she wondered out of wonderland in the first place soon becomes apparent in her quest of awakening the latent inspiration of a struggling writer who lives within the apartment block.

Before long Cleveland and his fellow tenants begin to realize that they too are implicated as characters in this fable and must help the young nymph get back to her “Blue World”, whilst protecting her from a snarling “Scrunt” who will do everything to kill her along the way; a “Scrunt” being a big wolf-like creature with a back covered in grass.

I have to say, it feels pretty damn pointless trying to explain what a “Scrunt” is, because a “Scrunt”, in truth, is whatever M. Night Shyamalan wants it to be. None of it has any practical or foundational basis and so you either throw yourself in at the deep-end with childlike compliance, or you take the cynic's route. In this case, the latter is most definitely justified.

A story originally conceived by Shyamalan for his children, the filmmaker clearly sets out to make a celluloid bed-time story. And given that bedtime stories are supposed to send you to sleep, does succeed in one sense.

But Lady in the Water is mythmaking in its most complex and un-enjoyable form, creating a cat-and-mouse game between him and his audience, almost necessitating that we try and figure out the filmmaker’s machinations rather than simply be swept along for the ride.



To Shyamalan’s credit, he has assembled an immensely talented cast and engraved the picture with a well-thought-out, strong visual design (engineered by legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle), and the end-result does inject glimpses of genuine menace and mystery into the otherwise mundane location of a secluded apartment complex.

But the essential magic needed to teleport you from reality into fantasy is missing; the specifics of the fairy tale are simply too vague and convoluted to inspire any real confidence in its mythology.

Shyamalan's films have earned $2 billion box-office dollars worldwide, with his last film alone, the critically-panned The Village, taking $250 million in worldwide receipts, so there’s clearly something about his ideas which resonate with an audience.

The career of a long-time filmmaker carries almost an inevitability of a flop rearing its ugly head somewhere along the line. And in all fairness, Shyamalan has given us two genuine masterpieces in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, meaning there’s every reason to believe there are still voices in the director’s head well worth a listen.

Unfortunately, Lady in the Water isn’t one of them.

© David Mahmoudieh 2006

My, Oh Miami



Miami Vice (15)
reviewed by David Mahmoudieh at the
UK premier, Leicester Sq, London

Thursday July 27, 2006, a day that will live long in the memory, for it was the day I came face-to-face with one of my ultimate filmmaking idols: Michael Mann.

One of the last great method storytellers of his kind, the reclusive writer/director has been channelling a hidden flamboyancy through the medium of cinema for nearly twenty-five years, and is responsible for such classics as Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Ali, Collateral - and of course, the ultimate paradoxical character study and perhaps my favourite modern crime saga of all-time, Heat.


(Mann gets his hands dirty on the set of Miam Vice)

For anyone born in the 90’s, or those living in a cave for the past two decades, the original Miami Vice was a cult 80’s TV show depicting the excursions of two Miami cops who dressed like Duran, Duran and solved crimes in hot cars, picking up hot babes along the way.

Well, the name may have stayed the same but just about everything else has changed. For starters there’s no Don ‘Ladies Man’ Johnson or his delightful pet alligator ‘Elvis’ (hey, this was the Eighties) and everybody actually seems to wear socks.



From beginning to end this is a much darker exploration into the enigma of Miami; the blood-towns and drugdrenched neighbourhoods where bullets are traded like baseball cards and anything goes for the right price. But not if resident detectives Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) have anything to say about it.

When a security breach blows the deep cover (not to mention a few limbs) right off two covert FBI agents posing as drugdealers, the Feds reluctantly ask for help from the only un-compromised detectives at their disposal, the Miami Vice squad.

Posing for offshore boat racers moonlighting as outlaw smugglers, partners Crockett and Tubbs cross every line of their own law as they seek to win the trust of the scum whose multi-million dollar cargo they’re delivering in a bid to infiltrate a treacherous ring of international drugtrafficking.



Like so many Mann-manifested protagonists, the lines between his characters’ personal and professional existences soon become more blurred and distorted. His style is humanly dark and audacious; choosing to emphasise the dedication of personnel on both sides of the law – stories that journey inwards, not outward – these arcane character explorations which venture deep into those inner middle-grounds of discipline and selfobedience we all face from time to time. Crockett and Tubbs are no exception to that format, though here he chooses to deliver it with a little more grit.


(Foxx at the film's after-party in London)

Mann wants us to know that these characters are real, just like us. Except, of course, they drive lots of fast cars, shoot lots of people and sleep with lots of women. Call me voyeuristic, but I’m quite content just to watch.

And, as always, the eyes never go hungry with Mann.

The visionary director serves up entire banquets of rich, delectable, panorama for us to ogle at. Not least in the form of Chinese actress Gong Li (Memoirs of a Geisha) who plays Isabella, the femme fatale love-interest, heavily implicated in the very shady underworld both Crockett and Tubbs are intent on bringing down.


(The film's after-party was held at the
understated Sanderson Hotel, London)

Although such dangerous surroundings may seem the most unlikeliest of places for anything more than violence to blossom, the sheer impracticality of a forbidden romance helps humanize Mann’s characters, augmenting Crockett and Tubbs' personas beyond the confides of the banal clichés of “rogue cops”.

And before long, it's Crockett’s feelings that threaten to jeopardise the entire operation, with Tubbs also finds himself making tough decisions – both private and in the name of duty – the subsequent ripple effects of which lure the duo into a final bout of mind-blowing gunplay that is worth the admission fee alone.


(Mann on set, churning words into
images in his private little corner)

As you’ve no doubt already gathered by now, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m in absolute awe of Mann as a story-teller and wholly subscribe to his breed of grandeur filmmaking.

Yet despite my obvious unreserved admiration for the director, his film isn’t without some flaws that even I must attest to.

For starters the editing is jagged and confusing, often leaving the viewer playing catch-up. Add to this a quite literally thrown-in-at-the-deep-end beginning to proceedings, with no back-stories – minus any explanation of how, where and why – and the final sum of all events for Crockett and Tubbs is a somewhat confusing supposition.

Not quite up there with his best, but certainly not down with the worst of this summer’s over-hyped disenchantments, Miami Vice won’t be everyone’s cup. It’s relatively predictable. It’s incoherent. And in all honesty, it’s probably a story that would’ve been more original if told twenty-years ago. But a tale of this kind couldn’t be in better hands. And that’s just it, regardless of its imperfections - Mann still delivers it with style.

© David Mahmoudieh 2006

SEE MY INTERVIEW WITH MANN BELOW

DM MEETS THE MANN

Interview with Miami Vice director Michael Mann

DM: "Thief, Heat, Collateral... your previous works have all heavily chronicled both sides of the law. In this, you shift that focus back onto the detectives. There's not much of that 'other side of the coin' perspective which is so prevalent in your previous films. Was that a conscious decision?"

MM: "That's a great question. The original Vice series wasn't very sympathetic - if that's the right word - to the criminals. And that was definitely one aspect we wanted to transport into the movie. The other factor is that Tubbs and Crockett are themselves fully imperfect characters who already embody both sides of the law. With there being two of them, I felt it would be a distraction more than an insight to be thorough about the back-stories of who they were up against on this one. I think a lot of this movie is about two detectives trying to do the right thing whilst being surrounded by all the wrong things, and the constant temptation which comes with that."

DM: "In the original Heat script, adapted from your earlier movie, LA Takedown, you had a scene where Al Pacino's character, Vincent Hanna, snorts cocaine in a nightclub. If I'm correct, that was removed from the script before filming commenced, presumably to preserve the virtue of the character. These two characters feel like young Vincent Hanna's who weren't as disciplined even if no less dedicated. How much of an influence, if any, was that character on Crockett and Tubbs."

MM: "These two certainly have Hanna's dedication, no doubt. But I think where they differ - going back to your earlier point earlier - is that in Heat we contrast that dedication against the commitment of a counterpart. What I thought would be interesting in Vice would be to show these guys imbedded in the world they operate in. Vincent Hanna goes home to his wife and step-daughter each night, and takes his world into theirs because he's so dedicated he can't escape it even when he's removed from it. These [Crockett and Tubbs] detectives have no home to go. This world is their home, and they risk being dragged deeper into it the longer they live there. We did have a few scenes I thought about putting in there to go deeper into Crockett and Tubbs' back-stories, but it didn't make sense to in the end because I wanted to keep that air of mystery about the characters. You never know what these guys are going to do next, and I think that for most of the movie they're still figuring that out themselves as characters. They don't have the surety of Vincent Hanna, but they definitely have the composure to carry out the choices they make."

DM: "You were involved with the original Miami Vice TV series back in the 80's; what made you wait so long before adapting Vice for the big-screen?"

MM: "I don’t have to tell you that near-on 20-years is a long, long time so perceptions and premises change somewhere along the line. I knew it needed to be updated to a contemporary story and setting, I knew the old format wouldn’t translate, so what we ended up with was a little bit of the old and a lot of the new. I think, considering the whole time thing, this was what a Miami Vice movie was always going to have to be like."

DM: "Did you ever start to think you’d waited too long to resurrect interest in something like Vice, especially given that the current era might not harbour the same exclusive tastes of the original series?"

MM: "Oh, it was difficult. I think that was the whole reason for needing to change it. You’re absolutely right, people’s tastes change. A lot of people still love the series, but I’d been wanting to update it for some time, working on the script privately for a long time, too. The biggest thing though was to find the right people; two first-rate, young actors who were up to the job. They honestly don’t come much better than Jamie and Colin so as soon as I had them on board and a draft of the script I was happy with I knew it was finally time to do it."

DM: "Knowing you as a career perfectionist, were you satisfied with the end result?"

MM: "I’m glad it’s over and done with. It’s always nice to just be able to do this part, the fun part, enjoy the memory of it. I guess I’m happy with the final cut but ultimately it’s about what everybody else thinks of it. What did you think of it?"

I’ll leave you to answer that one for yourselves.

© David Mahmoudieh 2006