SUNDOWN - Tuesday 12th July 2022.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'SUNDOWN' earlier this week, and this Mexican, French and Swedish Co-Produced drama film is Written, Co-Produced, Directed and Co-Edited by Michel Franco whose previous film making offerings include 'After Lucia' in 2012 that won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes, 'Chronic' in 2015 with Tim Roth and 'New Order' in 2020 with Diego Boneta. The film has garnered generally favourable reviews, and has so far grossed US$372K since its release in the US at the end of January having seen its World Premier as the Venice Film Festival back in September last year.  

Neil Bennett (Tim Roth, who also Executive Produces here), a quiet introverted man from London, is on vacation in Acapulco, Mexico with his sister Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two young adult children, Colin (Samuel Bottomley) and Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan). They stay in a luxurious resort hotel overlooking the ocean and eat at up market restaurants. Day after day, the family participates in a variety of fun activities, or just lounging beside and in their own private pool. Neil, however, is seemingly not enjoying himself. 

One day, Alice receives a phone call telling her that her mother is being taken to the hospital back in England. Following this news, the family immediately prepares to go home. On the way to the airport the next morning, Alice takes a second call informing her that her mother has passed away. Alice bursts into tears while Neil remains very calm and matter of fact. At the airport, Neil says he left his passport at the hotel, so the rest of the family are forced into flying out without him.

Neil lied about the passport, as it was in his suitcase the whole time, and he decided to stay in Acapulco, at least for the next few days. He gets to know a local taxi driver named Jorge Campos (Jesus Godinez), who takes him to a small cheap downbeat hotel. Neil whiles away the day by eating at cheap beachside restaurants, drinking beers and visiting the very crowded local beach. Alice calls him repeatedly to come home but he soon gets tired of her insistence and starts to ignore her calls and messages left. Instead he starts dating a friendly local named Berenice (Iazua Larios). One day he returns to his hotel room to find his belongings have seemingly been stolen, but he exhibits very little reaction to this, accepting it for what it is. The next day while he and Berenice are at the beach, he observes two men approaching the beach at high speed on a jet ski. They pull up and one gets off and walks up to another guy and shoots him dead at point blank range in broad daylight, and then departs immediately afterwards from whence they came. They both witness this, as did numerous others at the time, yet Neil remains apathetic to the whole affair.

Some two weeks later Alice returns to Acapulco and confronts Neil at the beach in a heated one sided conversation about him abandoning her in her days of need. She promptly leaves when she has said all she is going to. As it turns out the Bennett family is extremely wealthy because they are in the meat processing business with farms and abattoirs up and down the country back in the UK. Neil calls Alice and asks if they can meet. After briefly talking about the family business and saying it was never about the money, Neil signs a document relinquishing his assets and inheritance in the presence of the family lawyer, Richard (Henry Goodman). Alice however, agrees to a monthly stipend of £10,000 for as long as he shall live, which should set him up very nicely in Acapulco. 

Later, on the way to the airport Alice is shot and killed by a gang of three car jackers, driven by Jorge. The Police arrest Neil, believing he ordered the assassination as he was seen talking to the three on several occasions down by the beach. Neil bursts into tears upon learning about his sister's death from a newspaper article. His representatives arrive and tell him that the company is now his. After Richard gets him out of prison, after being locked up in very cramped conditions with half of Mexico's low life crims for a few days, Richard orders their driver to take him and Neil straight to the airport. Neil however, has other plans and asks to be returned to his hotel, much to Richard's bemusement. He continues seeing Berenice and spending time at the beach. Sometime later, Richard, Colin, and Alexa confront him in his hotel room unannounced. Alexa hits Neil in the head with an empty beer bottle. Later, Neil signs off the rights to the family company to Colin and Alexa. Neil, in return, will still receive his monthly pension, £100,000 as a once off down payment and have his private health insurance maintained until he dies. After the meeting, Neil returns to Berenice, with the other three departing straightaway back to England. Neil, once again shows no emotion or empathy at all. 

Sometime later, after Neil and Berenice return to her apartment Neil collapses down a flight of stairs carrying an esky full of beers. Berenice takes him to the hospital, where she learns Neil has advanced cancer that has metastasised to his frontal lobe and the Doctor recommends beginning chemo therapy immediately at a specialist hospital in Mexico City. After Berenice falls asleep by his side, Neil collects up his belongings, abandons her and walks down the streets of Mexico City alone at night. Abruptly we cut from his sullen face to an image of the beach's waves breaking on the shoreline some days following, the glaring sunshine, and the shirt and shoes Neil was wearing the night he walked away from the hospital, left unattended on the back of a chair with a beer bottle on a table nearby.

'Sundown' is a film that won't be for everyone that's for sure, and I'm not even sure it was for me! There is no doubt that Tim Roth's understated introverted and bored millionaire Neil Bennet is meticulously played out with all the nuances of a man who has reached the end of his tether and who doesn't really care about anything or anyone. This is hardly an uplifting film either, it's a slow burn, leaves numerous questions unanswered, and when the ending comes after a brisk 82 minute run time I was left thinking where's the final ten minutes that would tie all those unanswered questions together and provide for a less unambiguous conclusion. On the positive front there is Tim Roth's and Charlotte Gainsbourg's performances, the cinematography which depicts both the richer and the poorer side of Mexican life, the random acts of violence that are seemingly all too real in that part of the world, and as a character study it works. 

'Sundown' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THE SNOWMAN : Tuesday 24th October 2017.

'THE SNOWMAN' which I saw earlier this week is potentially the first in what may turn out to be new film franchise for this Norwegian crime fighting detective Harry Hole, based on the Oslo Crime Squad character created by Norwegian author Jo Nesbo in the popular series of novels that have been translated into forty languages, and having sold over thirty million copies worldwide. Harry Hole appears in eleven novels so far, first launched in 1997 with 'The Bat', taking us up to 2017 with the release of 'The Thirst'. 'The Snowman' upon which this film is based is the seventh book in the series and was published in 2007. This film is Directed by Tomas Alfredson, whose previous Directing credits include the acclaimed 'Let The Right One In' and 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'. The film cost US$35M to bring to the big screen and has so far recouped US$23M, and has garnered generally lacklustre Reviews.

Research reveals that Harry Hole (here portrayed by Michael Fassbender) is a brilliant and driven detective prone to using unorthodox methods in his work, a classic loose cannon in the police force. Hole is unmarried and he has few close friends. He frequently makes enemies among his colleagues who, nevertheless, grudgingly respect him. He is a chain smoker and heavy drinker, although for the most part has his reliance on alcohol under control. The effects of his problems however, sometimes bring him into repeated conflict with his superiors, and some colleagues. Hole is also one of just a handful in the force to have undertaken special interrogation techniques and firearms training with the FBI.

Our film opens up on a desolate snow covered mountain side dwelling. Up pulls a VW Golf Police car, and out steps an overweight getting on in years man who delivers two gas cylinder bottles to the house, stashes them away inside and then sits down at the dining table with the mother of the household and her young teenage son. It is presumed to be sometime in the early 80's. The man tests the young lad on notable dates in history, and when the boy falters or answers incorrectly the women gets a stern beating. One such wrong answer sends the mother crashing backwards off her chair and onto the floor. Next up the young lad is spying on the mother and the man through the bedroom window as they have sex. When the boy is seen, the man hurriedly gets up out of the bed, gets dressed, storms out of the house ranting as he does so and speeds off in his car. The mother and boy give chase in the car across the spartan snow covered landscape. At some point the mother releases her hands from the steering wheel and the car careers off the road onto a frozen lake. The boy is screaming at his mother but she doesn't hear, her gaze fixed firmly on the road ahead, emotionless. The boy pulls on the handbrake and the car skids to a halt. He gets out of the passenger side door hearing the ice crack beneath the vehicle. His mother sits motionless as the boys struggles to open the drivers side door to free his mother. But she doesn't want to be freed as the vehicle slowly sinks into the icy depths below and disappears.

We then cut to the present day and waking up from a drunken stupor in a park shelter is Detective Harry Hole of the Oslo Police. He has been absent without leave for the past week or so, and meanders into the office to check on his mail, and is greeted by his superior officer with a reminder of leave protocols, a quick slap on the wrist and told not to do it again. He then ventures outside to a smoking balcony where he meets new recruit Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Fergusson) who has been assigned to his office. They exchange social niceties and go their separate ways, only to meet up hours later when Hole sees Bratt leaving for the day and catches a ride. She is on her way to a reported missing persons case, and Hole tags along. Meanwhile, in Hole's stash of mail is a handwritten cryptic letter sent directly from a supposed killer with a picture of a snowman at the bottom of the page - its plays on Hole's mind momentarily, but then he seems to dismiss it.

The missing person in question is Birte Becker (Genevieve O'Reilly) a married mother of a six or seven year old daughter. The night before her disappearance we see her car being followed by another on the way home from work. She arrives and is greeted by the young child, but the waiting father Filip Becker (James D'Arcy) is angry at her being late and he storms out of the house with bags packed on his way to some important business meeting out of town, leaving mother and daughter alone in the house. The next morning, the child wakes up and mother is gone. No sign of her, and a neighbour alerted the Police who send Bratt along to investigate. Outside in the garden is a squat snowman, with twigs for arms and coffee beans for a wry smile, gazing up the house.

The next case of a missing person requires a drive out to some remote farmstead for a case of a missing Sylvia Ottersen (Chloe Sevigny), but when they arrive Sylvia Ottersen is alive and well and shrugs it off as a prank call form her jilted boyfriend. Hole and Bratt leave from whence they came, only to be alerted over the Police band radio that Sylvia Ottersen has been reported missing . . . two minutes ago! They hastily turn around and return to the farmstead to be greeted by Ane Pedersen (Chloe Sevigny), Sylvia's identical twin, only to find the decapitated corpse of Sylvia Ottersen on the ground in the chicken shed. At this point Hole and Bratt surmise that the Snowman is playing with them and that he must have been watching them all along, calling in that Sylvia was missing even before she was butchered. Hole surveys the surrounding buildings and locates the head of Sylvia perched on top of a snowman at the bottom of a frozen abandoned silo.

In between time we catch glimpses of a back story featuring some Bergen based ace detective who came close to uncovering the Snowman murders some ten or fifteen years back. Detective Gert Rafto (Val Kilmer) was a drunken no nonsense kinda guy who met with a very sticky end at the hands of the Snowman, that was cleverly masked over to make it look like a suicide. When Hole goes to Bergen to investigate he is met by DC Svensson (Toby Jones) who simply reports that it was a plain and simple suicide and was therefore not investigated further. Hole, however, thinks there was more to it and examines further. His closer examination reveals a connection between Rafto and Bratt.

Another side story involves Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons) as an unscrupulous sinister media mogul who is spearheading Oslo's bid for the Winter Olympic Games which is about to be announced. Bratt has a feeling in her bones about Stop and goes undercover to investigate further, installing a hidden camera in his hotel room where she intends to proposition herself to him. Stop had dealings with Frederick Aasen (Adrian Dunbar) back in 2006 involving some kind of industrial development that went tits up leaving Aasen very bitter indeed. Needless to say it doesn't end well for Bratt as the Snowman gets to her first before Stop retires to his room for the night, and the Snowman has erased all footage from the hidden camera, and any evidence of a struggle.

The final plot scenario is the story of Hole's on again off again long term relationship with his ex-partner and art dealer Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her teenage son Oleg (Michael Yates) by her first marriage. Hole feels more than a semi-fatherly connection to Oleg despite Rakel's husband Mathias (Jonas Karlsson) also playing adoptive father duty who works as a medical consultant specialist that sees him away quite often on business or attending conferences, so giving Rakel the chance to rekindle with Hole, albeit temporarily - a fact that Mathias seems to accept.

Meanwhile back to the chilling killing as the body count rises and dismembered corpses turn up in all manner of locations, there seems little to connect the murderous spree other than motherhood, by neglect, abortion, jealousy etc. while their mysterious vanishings seems to coincide with fresh snow fall. Hole seems to do little actual detective work here, leaving all the investigative work to Bratt only to come along at the end and join the dots and bish bash bosh the serial killer is out in the open and exposed back where it all began in that desolate snow covered mountain side dwelling where Rakel and Oleg's lives are hanging in the balance. Hole sits across the table from his two loved ones almost powerless having to answer questions that determine whether the electric motorised garrote held by the Snowman is tightened or loosened around Rakel's neck. Needless to say, it comes down to a face off on a frozen lake with Hole shot to the ground and the Snowman approaching ready to plug him again at close range to finish the job.

This is a disjointed film where, alas, the sum of its parts are not greater than the (Harry) Hole. With a strong ensemble supporting cast who for the most part are left wanting to do more with the little screen time and dialogue afforded them, the film meanders from one grizzly killing to the next while Hole and Bratt join the seemingly simple dots to expose the serial killer. Fassbender and Ferguson are well cast, but that alone can't save this film that is too busy with side stories that go nowhere and add little value instead of getting down and dirty with the detective work and concentrate on what drives The Snowman to commit his unthinkable crimes. When the quality of Scandinavian police driven crime drama film and television is so good, despite the snow covered Norwegian vistas, this film feels like a hurried by the numbers affair that I'm sure will leave the legions of fans of the source novel thinking WTF! If Harry Hole does return to the big screen in another adaptation, and Fassbender could do so easily, let's hope that the lessons learned from this first instalment bode well for any follow-up as there is just enough of a foundation to do so.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-