EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE : Tuesday 27th April 2021.

I saw 'EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE' earlier this week, and this MA15+ Rated American thriller offering is Directed by Vaughn Stein in only his third film making outing after 2018's 'Terminal' and 2020's 'Inheritance'. This film has been in development since 2012 when Rob Reiner was slated to be Directing this film, and over the years that followed that mantle passed to Christine Jeffs in October 2019 before Vaughn Stein was announced as Director in December of that year. Costing US$10M to produce, the film was released in the US in early April to largely unfavourable Reviews. 

Here our film opens up with a car travelling down some deserted highway in Washington State - a big moon in the corner of the shot. We then cut to inside the vehicle which is being driven by Mum Grace Clark (Michelle Monaghan) and her young son Evan (Brenden Sunderland) in the back seat, the pair swapping jokes. Evan is wearing an ice hockey outfit and holding onto a new pair of ice skates, and clearly somewhat reluctant about his debut game. Then out of nowhere, a pick up truck slams straight into the car being driven by mother and son. For one of them it's fatal - and it's not mother Grace.

We then fast forward three years to a lavish isolated home in the hills. Grace is swimming laps in the outdoor heated lap pool while psychiatrist husband Phillip Clark (Casey Affleck) listens intently and takes copious notes from what his patients reveal to him about the inner most thoughts, anxieties and depressions. We subsequently learn that Evan was Grace's only son by a former marriage, and Phillip has a troubled and angst ridden teenage daughter Lucy (India Eisley) also from a former marriage, who was expelled from high school only one week ago because she snorted a line of cocaine in the laboratory during a class. 

One of Phillip's patients is a young 23 year old woman named Daphne (Emily Alyn Lind), who has a history of psychosis in the family and several failed suicide attempts, on whom he performed radical therapy by sharing things about his own personal life and revealing his thoughts and actions that he never even shared with his own wife. This empathetic behaviour, which is somewhat out of the box for psychiatrist's, is frowned upon by some colleagues, most notably Dr. Vanessa Fanning (Veronica Ferres), Phillip's Dean of Faculty at a local psychiatry institute where he also works. Fanning offers words of caution to Phillip, but he replies that Daphne after nine months of therapy has turned the corner, is off her medication, is happy with her life, is being creative for the first time in a very long time and is now in the throes of writing a book about her journey out of the darkness. The only remaining challenge for her is in trying to wrestle herself away from the overly controlling boyfriend. 

Soon afterwards Phillip receives a phone call while travelling home from Daphne who is distraught, saying that her long term best friend was killed in a hit and run accident. This sends Daphne into a downward spiral, although she commits to seeing Phillip the next day. However, the next day never comes, when Police arrive at their home to say that Daphne listed Phillip as her point of contact in the event of an emergency, and that she is now dead, having jumped off the balcony at home and cracked her skull open on the concrete below. Viewing the scene and identifying the body, her brother James Flagg (Sam Claflin) is understandably beside himself. 

A few days later James swings by Phillip's and Grace's home late in the afternoon to return a book that he had lent Daphne. Grace invites James in for dinner where he is more than charming, explains away his English accent, and that he is a failed first time novelist but is working on a second novel which he has higher hopes for. Lucy sends swooning glances James' way throughout dinner, while Phillip is somewhat wary. 

Over the next few days and weeks James gradually works his way into Lucy's life, and she is more than ready and willing to accept his advances. Meanwhile, James has also recruited Grace, who is also a real estate agent, to handle the sale of his sisters lavish home, and at the same time, begins to come on strong with her too. It seems that Phillip, Grace and Lucy have all retreated into their own little closeted worlds since the death of Evan three years ago with very little by way of communication, emotional support or intimacy to go around. 

At about the midway point Phillip comes to the realisation that James is the one behind a series of complaint letters sent to Dr. Fanning and the Washington State Board of Psychiatry about his alleged malpractices. His client base starts to dry up and pretty soon Phillip has lost the majority of his patients. James has been able to finagle his way into Phillip's life as a result of three years of silence and unprocessed grieving which Phillip opens upto Grace one evening asking for her forgiveness, which she grants him. In the meantime, Lucy has persuaded James to take her with him when he eventually leaves, and to get away to anywhere but here. That day is fast approaching. 

With Phillip's and Grace's fractured relationship seemingly repaired, James goes after Grace. In the passenger seat of his car sits Grace without a seatbelt because it is broken, with James tearing down the road at increasing speed. She begs him to stop, but he is not listening. She calls Phillip, and as James veers the car violently from side to side, Grace is knocked unconscious temporarily. James continues the conversation with Phillip telling him of their location. Phillip catches up just as James is about to drive headlong into a truck which would have resulted in the certain death of both. But seconds before, James veers and brings the car to a grinding halt averting a collision. With Grace safely out of the car and in Phillip's arms, James hurriedly drives off, grinning from ear to ear.

Later that night James hands himself into the authorities and is immediately sent to a psychiatric hospital for assessment. He demands to see Phillip as he is the only one he will speak with. Reluctantly Phillip attends an interview with James with Dr. Fanning and a consulting medical physician Dr. Toth (Hiro Kanagawa) in attendance. James comes clean, but clearly is showing signs of being mentally unhinged. Later that night over dinner with Dr. Fanning and her husband Stuart (Vincent Gale), Stuart presents Phillip with James' first novel which he had asked to procure. Turning to the back cover to read the bio of the author James Flagg, the photo of the author is not of the James Flagg that they know. Immediately alarm bells begin to ring. 

Phillip then attempts to call Lucy at home having deduced that James Flagg is a fake and he is in reality Daphne's over controlling boyfriend who threw the girl off the balcony and killed her. Phillip then calls the facility in which James is being held and warns Dr. Toth that there is an imminent danger and to go check on him. In so doing Toth discovers a dead orderly in James' room and no sign of James. While attempting to call Lucy, James has already rocked up to the Clark household, warmly embraced Lucy and told her to go and collect her things, they're leaving tonight. As Lucy goes to collect her bag, James enters the house after her, bolting the door locked from the inside behind him. He grabs Lucy violently and drags her kicking and screaming by the hair up the stairs and into a room with a balcony. By this time Phillip and Grace have arrived, gain easy access to the house, and immediately hear Lucy screaming upstairs. Phillip jumps on James and a fist fight breaks out with each raining down punches on to the other. Lucy and Grace both get thrown across the room, and with James straddling Phillip with his hands clenched tightly around Phillips neck, Grace renders two blows to James's back with Evan's brand new and unused ice skates, and when he reels in pain onto his back she lands another two blows to his chest. James crawls out of the room onto the balcony, rolls over on to his back and dies, just as Police sirens approach. 

'Every Breath You Take' has three fine Actors helming Director Stein's third feature film outing, and each give a solid enough performance, but that said this alone is not enough to lift this all too familiar predictable revenge thriller that offers little by way of surprises and the plot twists and turns you can see coming from a mile away. There is nothing new to see here that hasn't been done before, and better, in countless other similar pot boiling psychological thrillers, and when the end finally comes it all seems almost hurried and underdone, and, left me thinking of Russell Crowe's eventual demise in last years 'Unhinged'. 

'Every Breath You Take' warrants two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

MISSION : IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT - Tuesday 7th August 2018.

'MISSION : IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT' which I saw at my local multiplex this week is the sixth instalment in the Tom Cruise action franchise based on the popular '60's television series, that since 1996 has been dusted off every five years or so with another big budget high octane screen offering. The franchise launched with Brian De Palma's first film adaptation in 1996, followed by John Woo's Directed 'Mission : Impossible 2' in 2000; then J.J. Abrams took over Directing duties with 'Mission : Impossible III' in 2006, then Brad Bird assumed the mantle in 2011 with 'Mission : Impossible - Ghost Protocol' followed by Christoper McQuarrie in 2015 with 'Mission : Impossible - Rogue Nation'. These first five films have grossed at the worldwide Box Office a combined US$2.8B from a collective Budget of US$650M. Now in 2018 Christoper McQuarrie returns to the Directors chair for 'Mission : Impossible - Fallout' which he also wrote. Tom Cruise Produces too, as he has all other films in the series to date. The film has received universal acclaim from Critics, with many praising it as the best in the series so far with the cinematography, action set pieces, stunt work, storyline and cast performances as being particularly credit worthy. The film cost US$178M to Produce and has so far raked in US$360M since its release Stateside last week.

The film opens up with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) woken from his slumber in a Belfast safe house. He is delivered the ubiquitous package detailing his next mission . . . .  should he choose to accept it. Set two years following the events of 'Mission : Impossible - Rogue Nation' in which Soloman Lane (Sean Harris) was captured with what remains of his secretive anarchic organisation 'The Syndicate', reformed into a terrorist group operating across the world known as 'The Apostles'. Hunt's mission is to prevent the sale of three plutonium cores to the group on behalf of their client, one John Lark whose true identity remains a mystery. Hunt's pre-recorded message self destructs within five seconds, and next we find him in Berlin where he meets up with colleagues Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) to arrange the purchase of said plutonium cores. However, the mission goes awry, leaving Hunt a choice to either sacrifice the cores or sacrifice Luther being held at gunpoint. He chooses to save Luther's life, and lo and behold the cores disappear into the night, courtesy of The Apostles.

The team quickly home in on Nils Debruuk (Kristoffer Joner) and set an elaborate trap to make him confess his involvement and hand over the blueprints for his three portable nuclear weapons as well as releasing valuable information relating to The Apostle's next move. Director of CIA Erica Sloane (Angela Bassett) instructs Special Activities Division operative August Walker (Henry Cavill) to shadow Hunt as he attempts to retrieve the plutonium, much to the distrust of IMF Secretary Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin).

Hunt and Walker HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) parachute jump into Paris, where they infiltrate a fundraiser party at a lavish venue where John Lark is set to buy the cores from The Apostles. They track a man whom they suspect to be Lark to a Gents WC, where a fight breaks out between Lark, Hunt and Walker in which Lark gains the upper hand over the other two, but is shot dead unexpectedly by the emergence of Isla Faust (Rebecca Fergusson).

To ensure the successful execution of the mission, Hunt impersonates Lark and meets with an arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis, aka The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) acting as a broker, on the basis that she will not be aware of the true identity of Lark. Agents of The Apostles have been sent to kill John Lark and The White Widow, but she and Hunt escape from the private party in a hail of bullets, knives and fist fights with a room full of guests and panicked onlookers. The White Widow has fallen for Hunt's rouse.

Believing Hunt to be Lark, and in order to secure the plutonium, The White Widow tasks him with extracting Lane from an armoured convoy transporting the fugitive through Paris. She hands over one of the plutonium cores as a payment in kind for the mission. Hunt and his team attack the convoy but not as planned, pushing the armoured vehicle into the Seine so saving the lives of numerous Police Officers who would have been collateral damage, and sending the perpetrators into complete disarray. A straight jacketed Lane is extracted from the now completely submerged armoured vehicle by Benji Dunn and bundled into the back of a waiting speed boat and Luther Stickell.

Walker and Hunt drive a panel van as part of their getaway chased down the back streets of Paris by The White Widows henchmen. They then decamp to getaway motorcycles as the van becomes wedged at the end of a narrow street. Successfully evading the Police, but only narrowly, Hunt is picked up in the speed boat by Dunn and Stickell and a hooded and still straight jacketed Lane.

The team of three and a captured Lane now make for a lock up garage in which is stowed their getaway car - an olive green BMW from yesteryear. Upon raising the garage door they are greeted by a random female Police Officer who suspecting that something is not quite right pulls her gun and orders the three and their hooded and bound captive to freeze. Whereupon four of The White Widows goons arrive to take charge of the situation and reclaim Lane. In the standoff the Police Officer is shot but in a non-life threatening way, and the four goons are all rapidly dispensed with courtesy of Hunt. A high speed car chase ensues across Paris, with Hunt skillfully dodging traffic, pedestrians, motorcyclists and all manner of obstacles while also avoiding The White Widow's forces, the Police and Ilsa, who is under orders to kill Lane to fulfil her mission for MI6 and to be able to walk free following her exploits of two years ago when she joined the IMF and Hunt's team. The mission to extract Lane remains successful, whereupon The White Widow instructs the team to deliver Lane, and Ilsa, to London.

Meanwhile, also in Paris, Walker has secretly met with Erica Sloane and spun her a yarn how Hunt is in fact the elusive Lane, and has framed him by doctoring the evidence found on the man they believed to be Lane and who they killed at the party earlier. Walker hands over the dead mans mobile phone containing all the 'evidence' that Sloane needs to incriminate Hunt. Sloane needs little convincing and orders Walker to put an end to the mission by whatever means necessary, even if it means taking Hunt, and his team, out.

The action now moves to a London safehouse in which Alan Hunley confronts Hunt about being John Lark, based on the fabricated evidence presented by Walker to Sloane. Hunt denies these accusations naturally and incapacitates Hunley to continue with their mission. Benji Dunn masks up as Lane for the purposes of the trade with The White Widow, leaving the real Lane under the charge of Walker while Hunt and his crew go off to make the deal. After being asked to monitor Lane, Walker unwittingly reveals himself to be the real John Lark, in association with Lane. But Benji Dunn and the real Lane did the switcheroo and pulled a fast one on Walker which they recorded for all posterity, with Sloane watching in remotely, while Hunt, Stickell and the real Lane were still in the building.

At this Sloane has instructed a shadow CIA team to take Lane, Walker, and Hunt’s team in. The CIA team though has been infiltrated by The Apostles and Walker orders them to attack the IMF team. Hunley is stabbed and killed in the ensuing fight by Walker, who then escapes on foot across London.  Hunt, after bidding a fond farewell to a dying Hunley, chases Walker on foot aided by Benji Dunn guiding him remotely as a result on implanting a tracking device in Walker's neck during the fracas at the safehouse. Walker leads Hunt on a chase across roof tops to the Tate Modern art gallery, where Walker escapes with Lane in a waiting helicopter on the rooftop, but not before making a threat against Hunt's ex-wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) as added security for Hunt to no longer meddle.  

Using the tracking device still in Walker's neck leads the team to a medical aid camp somewhere in the foothills of Kashmir. Faust deduces that Lane intends to detonate the two remaining nuclear devices at a river that crosses the borders of China, Pakistan and India so contaminating the water supply to a third of the world's population. Upon arrival at the camp, Hunt comes face to face with Julia and her new husband Patrick (Wes Bentley) who are both working as Doctors providing voluntary medical aid to the locals. Walker had set up Julia to be there to raise the incentive for Hunt. 

Lane activates the nuclear weapons choosing to stay behind as his work is now done, but seeing to it that Walker leaves quickly so as to be out of harms way when the atomic blasts come, which is counting down to fifteen minutes hence. Lane hands the detonator key to Walker who exists in a helicopter. Hunt takes off in a second helicopter clinging to a payload hanging below, leaving Dunn, Stickell and Faust to locate the two nuclear devices and attempt to disarm them within the next fifteen minutes. Hunt clambers up the dangling payload and into the cockpit of the helicopter dispensing with the pilot and co-pilot before taking the controls. All the while Hunt is negotiating mountainous terrain, cavernous ravines, glacial landscapes and deep valleys under a barrage of machine gun fire from a mightily pissed off Walker in hot pursuit. 

Hunt and Walker continue to engage in aerial combat each from their own helicopter, before Hunt uses his chopper to ram Walker's helicopter out of the sky, causing the two downed aircraft to come to rest on a snow covered cliff edge. Narrowly escaping the remnants of two destroyed helicopters, the pair fight high up on a flattened cliff edge, where Hunt eventually kills Walker by sending him to his death wearing a helicopter necklace that explodes in a ball of flame a couple of hundred metres below. Ethan gains control of the detonator while Stickell, Dunn, Faust aided by Julia, deactivate the bombs with one second to spare. With the two cores safely recovered, Sloane arrives on the scene having sent a rescue helicopter to air lift Hunt off the precipice. Sloane hands Lane over to MI6 aided by The White Widow who has secretly been working undercover for MI6 to infiltrate Lane and his network. Faust is cleared of any wrongdoing and is off the hook with MI6. Hunt, Stickell and Dunn can say Mission : Accomplished, and the world is safe, for another day at least!

'Mission : Impossible - Fallout' is by far and away the best in an escapist action franchise that just keeps on improving with age. Here the Cruisemeister just reaffirms his position at the top of the ladder in terms of balls out epic big screen action commercial cinema where he chooses to do all his own practical stunts for added realism instead of giving way to green screen CGI enhanced effects, and all credit to ya Tom. He jumps, leaps, runs, climbs, clings, fist fights, kicks, shoots and is involved in a foot chase, a car chase, a motorcycle chase, a helicopter chase, jumps from a plane at 25,000 feet and saves the world all in the space of two and half hours of action packed adrenalin fuelled high octane fast paced drama. All the while, the story is believable, the action sequences of which there are many are delivered with a deft touch, the locations spectacular, and Hunt is presented as human after all with emotions, regrets, feelings and a vulnerability that perhaps we have not seen in previous instalments. This is a well rounded film in every respect - from the performances, the pacing, and the practical effects and the McQuarrie/Cruise combo has proved a sure fire winner here that elevates this franchise much further up the food chain. See it on the big screen while you can - you won't be disappointed.

'Mission : Impossible - Fallout' warrants five claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, out of a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

PATRIOTS DAY : Tuesday 14th February 2017.

'PATRIOTS DAY' is another real life dramatic thriller Co-Written for the screen and Directed by Peter Berg who also brought us last years 'Deepwater Horizon' and 'Lone Survivor' in 2013 which both also starred, like this offering, his go to actor for playing the uniformed ordinary everyman caught up in extraordinary circumstances - Mark Wahlberg. Based on the book 'Boston Strong' by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge this tells the story of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. Costing US$45M to make the film has so far recovered US$38M since its US release at Christmas time. The film has garnered generally positive Reviews from critics and film goers alike.

The film opens up with Boston Police Department Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) busting down a door with his leg to get to a drug dealer inside a seedy downtown apartment. The bust goes according to plan, except that Saunders has hyper-extended his leg and now walks with a limp and a knee brace for the rest of the film. Immediately following the bust his superior officer, Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman) arrives and orders that Saunders reports for Marathon Supervision duties the next day wearing his Police Uniform. He tries to argue back but is quickly brought down a peg by Davis reminding him of some earlier misdemeanour for which he is serving out time on dead beat duties, and tomorrow is his last day of servitude and then he has a clean slate again thereafter. He arrives back home in the early hours of the morning having had a few beers with the boys, wakes his wife Carol (Michelle Monaghan) who dismisses him, and settles onto the sofa with another beer - he has to be up for Marathon duty in less than five hours. The next day, April 15th 2013, with his Police Uniform neatly pressed and high viz jacket on, the pair kiss and bid their farewells.

The next day cuts to an apartment where radical Islam brothers Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Themo Melikidze) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff) are making final preparations for a bomb attack on the Boston Marathon. Using home made devises loaded with all manner of harm inflicting shrapnel, they load the improvised explosive devices into two back-packs and make off for their destination. We trace their journey to the proximity of the finish line, negotiating their way through the crowds of onlookers and revellers out enjoying the Patriots Day public holiday. They weave in and out of spectators young and old, security personnel, Police, and other officials and then lay their back packs at their feet, turn around and depart from whence they came. No one suspects a thing. Pacing up and down the street meanwhile is Tommy Saunders taking it all in and sharing a joke with his on-duty fellow Police Officers. Then boom, as an explosion rips through the crowd just a block away quickly followed by another with smoke billowing out from the side of the street close to the finish line.

With widespread panic all around, Saunders and his fellow Officers are close at hand to issue orders, call in all necessary emergency support and provide assistance to the injured. It's a scene of carnage as the low positioned bombs radiated out their deadly shrapnel on most victims from the waist down. There are badly lacerated legs, ankles and feet, and severed lower limbs lying on the blood soaked pavement - it's a picture of death and destruction. We follow ambulance crews and paramedics attending to the injured and needy and then move to several hospitals where emergency surgery is being performed to amputate legs - on young husband and wife Patrick Downes (Christopher O'Shea) and Jessica Kensky (Rachel Brosnahan) separated after the blast and taken unconscious to separate hospitals.

Quickly afterwards various law enforcement authorities began to gather at the scene while the emergency services go about their business. With Saunders giving orders to his fellow Police Officers on the ground, so arrives Commissioner Ed Davis, with FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon) who survey the fall out and determine if this was a terrorist attack. Upon initial inspection DesLauriers is uncertain, but his mind is soon made up when he picks up a cluster of small blood soaked ball bearings. At this point DesLauriers assumes command and is in charge of operations. For now though he places a widespread embargo on any communication with the press or the media about a possible terrorist attack pending investigations and to avoid the news frenzy associated with acts of terror, especially on American soil.

Within no time a Command Centre is established in an abandoned warehouse where all manner of technological hardware, state of the art software, a reconstruction of the street scape and blast zone, and a whole army of analysts, surveillance experts and officials are mobilised to track down whoever did this. They begin by tapping into every camera lining the streets and those inside shops, cafes, bars and restaurants; using all the abandoned mobile phones from the scene and scanning text messages, photos and videos; and talking to witnesses at the scene, including those hospitalised. Saunders goes home to his wife, emotionally distraught at the sights he has witnessed over the preceding fourteen hours or so. In no time however, he receives a call to come into the Command Centre. There Saunders knowledge of the city and camera locations is put to the test as a person of interest is identified from the footage of the blast zone immediately before the explosions. Tracking the suspects possible whereabouts they trace back his journey in an attempt to get a clear photograph of the individual and any accomplice. It's not long before they do!

With clear photos of the two suspected bombers DesLauriers remains reluctant to go to the press without further hard evidence, but is hand is forced when Fox News announces that they have leaked photos of the suspects that they are going to release on their news channels soon. With photos of the perpetrators out there on all the news channels, the authorities hope that the people of Boston will come forward with information leading to a prompt capture . . . but it doesn't happen.

Meanwhile, the Tsarnaev brothers attempt to lay low while preparing for their next attack - in New York, but they have to get there first. They load up a car with their makeshift explosive devices in two boxes, and head out late at night. They need another weapon with which to protect themselves and so happen upon young Police Officer Sean Collier (Jake Picking) who is on night watch at a University Campus. They ambush him at gun point in his parked patrol car and shoot him twice in the face and attempt to steal his Police issue weapon, but Collier fights back from his drivers seat but is eventually overpowered with several more rounds shot into him at point blank range.

On the outskirts of the Campus, texting while parked in his new Mercedes SUV, Chinese student Dung Meng (Jimmy O. Yang) is car jacked by the two brothers and held captive at gun point. It is now 18th April, late at night, and the brothers brag to their captive that it was they who committed the Boston Marathon bombing and intend to do so again in New York. Meng is fearful for his life at the hands of the two bombers who now have him captive in his own car en route to New York. At a petrol station where the brothers stop to refill for fuel and food, Meng spies his chance to make a bolt for it and does so across the street into a convenience store and immediately calls the Police crouched behind the cashiers desk.

Saunders arrives at the scene and meets with Meng who, in his panicked pigeon English, reveals what the bombers said to him, and the number of his cars GPS tracking device so that they can follow the Mercedes. In Watertown the Mercedes is tracked down to a side street and a passing Police patrol car recognises the vehicle from the alert put out and goes in pursuit. The Mercedes is parked up in a quiet side street, that is about to turn very bloody and very noisy as an all out gun battle ensues between the two armed brothers and the gathering Police force including Police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese (J.K.Simmons). The brothers also use their stash of homemade bombs and in the ensuing firefight several Police Officers are injured, vehicles trashed, but Tamerlan is shot by Pugliese and then ran over by his brother who makes his getaway in the Mercedes. Tamerlan dies on the operating table a short time afterwards in the hospital from his wounds.

The next day the decision is made to lock down the city completely with a house to house search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Saunders is back on the beat aiding the house to house investigations with the full force of the Police, and the military, as marshall law is declared temporarily and for the safety of Boston's citizens. A local man discovers someone hiding under the protective sheet covering his motor cruiser boat, and blood stains at the entry point at the boats rear. He calls the authorities, who converge on the property with Saunders and a colleague being the first to arrive at the scene. It's not long before the might of Uncle Sam reins down on the occupant of the boat who is indeed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He is promptly arrested after a brief stand-off, and the closing credits reveal that he is sentenced to death by lethal injection and is still awaiting an appeal in federal prison.

I enjoyed 'Patriots Day' and felt it was respectful to those that died and were injured in the attack, and the authorities, first responders, survivors and investigators who all played a part in the concerted effort to bring the Tsarnaev brothers to justice as quickly as they did. The film has clearly been meticulously researched and is professionally played out without over dramatising the events or glamourising the subsequent manhunt. This is a procedural Police investigative story that holds true to the timeline, and is told from several different perspectives splicing actual footage from the event into the film that adds authenticity to the suspense and the drama of one of the most sophisticated and celebrated manhunts in history that helped reunite the people of Boston.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

SOURCE CODE : archive from 24th May 2011.

Saw 'SOURCE CODE' last night and loved it -  original story, clever premise, well crafted and Directed by relatively new up & coming talent to watch Duncan Jones AKA Zowie Bowie AKA son of one David Bowie. This film was made for US$32M and grossed US$147M and along the way picked up an award and a handful of nominations from the awards circuit. Nonetheless it garnered positive reviews from this second time Director whose first offering was the acclaimed 'Moon' and next up has 'Warcraft' due for release in 2016.

And so to the story! Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a US Army chopper pilot whose last recollection was flying a sortie in Afghanistan. He wakes up on a commuter train at 7:40am heading for Chicago. All around him he is just an ordinary early morning traveller heading into the city with his travelling mate Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan). But something is not quite right - why is he there, who is he with, and why isn't he in Afghanistan? To the outside world and the person staring back at him in the toilet mirror though he is Sean Fentress - a school teacher - he gets agitated, then, the train on which he is travelling explodes, killing all on board.

He regains consciousness and is inside a cockpit communicating through a video link to Captain Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) who confirms his identity as Colter Stevens and commands that he remains on mission to locate the train bomber before another bomb takes out downtown Chicago in six hours time. In reality Steven's is inside the 'Source Code' - an enclosed self contained chamber developed by scientist Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright) that allows him to experience the final eight minutes of another persons compatible life but in an alternate timeline. Confused - stick with it, because it's worth it!

As each eight minute period comes and goes with increasing urgency and desperation, Stevens must relive those eight minutes but each time learn from the previous experience to find the bomber and prevent the tragedy.  He will die time and time again and witness the horrors of the explosion, the death and carnage, but his purpose is clear and his instructions explicit, even though he may not agree with them. But of course he doesn't know the full story nor yet does he see the full picture.

As time progresses Stevens gets closer to the truth, the location of the bomb and the bomber, but he also gets closer to his travelling companion Christina with whom he begins to fall in love. He believes he can prevent the tragedy but because he is not travelling back in time, but simply reliving eight minutes in time he cannot change what has happened, merely understand it and try to stop it from occurring within those eight minutes. But, he chooses to test the theory but must do so before his time runs out, and before those controlling the 'Source Code' interrupt the proceedings.

One of the most intelligent present day sci-fi movie outings since 'Inception', and a great second offering from Duncan Jones. This film will leave you pondering the story, wondering at the ending, and debating the pieces of the puzzle just seen. If you missed this first time around catch it now on DVD, BluRay or download and enjoy Gyllenhaal for the reliable grounded solid performance he always gives coupled with a great story.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-