The way to the university auditorium that's
one of my favorite HKIFF screening venues this year
Heat (USA, 1995)
- Part of the HKIFF's Restored Classics program
- Michael Mann, director, writer and co-producer
- Starring: Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Val Kilmer
A
friend of mine recently complained about how many of the films I review
on this blog are very hard to get access to over where she lives (in
small town USA). But she should have no problems being able to view Heat,
the 1995 Hollywood crime drama that's probably raked in the most money
at the box office of any of the Hong Kong International Film Festival
offerings I'm viewing this year (and may well have had the largest
budget too).
Al
Pacino and Robert de Niro head a strong cast featuring many familiar
faces and names (including Jon Voight, a teenaged Natalie Portman and a
young Dennis Haysbert, who I now forever associate with 24's President David Palmer).
The former plays a Lieutanant Vincent Hanna, an LAPD detective leading
the pursuit of a gang of skilled robbers headed by the latter's Neil
McCauley, an ex-con who these days favors suits and the kind of
confident demeanor and swagger that one associates with successful
businessmen.
The cinematic remake of a failed TV pilot that Michael Mann had worked on, Heat clocks
in at close to three hours long and features three sub-plots that look
to flesh out the characters played by Pacino, de Niro and Val Kilmer by
way of their relations to the key females in their lives. While they do
add dimensions to those characters, I still felt like the scenes in
which they are shown interacting with the women in their lives are by
far the weakest of the film. For one thing, none of the female
characters in this offering come across as anything but disappointingly
one-dimensional. For another, the best chemistry displayed between any
two people in the movie occur in the too few scenes that have Pacino's
Lt. Hanna and de Niro's Neil McCauley interacting with each other.
Where Heat
really gets the adrenaline going and temperatures rising is in its
detailed action scenes, which reputedly have inspired real life copycat
crimes as well as the designers of one of the Grand Theft Auto
video games. Also elevating the film beyond that of an average actioner
are the characterizations of McCauley and his team, notably explosives
expert Chris (Val Kilmer), in such a way that you get to realizing that
they may be hardened criminals who won't hesitate to kill on the job but
nonetheless are men who want to do good for those they love, and the
depiction of its nominal hero, Lt. Hanna, in such a way that it seems
inevitable that the more intent he is to nail the bad guys, the more
he'll neglect the females in the life and suffering he'll bring on them
as well as himself.
My rating for the film: 8.0
The Breadwinner (Ireland-Canada-Luxembourg, 2017)
- Part of the HKIFF's Animation Unlimited program
- Nora Twomey, director
- Featuring the voices of: Saara Choudry, Laara Sadiq, Soma Bhatia, etc.
At the Hong Kong International Film Festival three years ago, I viewed my first animated Irish film. The Song of the Sea is the kind of the movie one would feel comfortable to bring children to go see. But while The Breadwinner comes from the same Irish production house, Cartoon Saloon, as that magical movie which introduced me to selkies,
I must admit to being rather startled to catch sight of young tykes in
the audience of the HKIFF screening that I was at yesterday afternoon.
We're
talking after all of a film that, even while it is indeed animated
rather than 'live action', is set in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where
women are liable to get beaten up if they venture out of their homes
unaccompanied by men and a booklover who was a teacher in peace-time can
end up not only missing a leg after being taking part in the war but
also confined to a prison far away from home.
After
her father is unjustly convicted, and with her mother (voiced by Laara
Sadiq) and adult sister not allowed to leave their house without a man
at their side, preadolescent Parvana (voiced by Saara Choudry) cuts her
long hair short and dresses up as a boy to go out and do such as buy
food for the household and become the family's breadwinner. Her days
are enlivened by her encountering and deciding to work in tandem with a
former schoolmate who has similarly disguised herself as a boy (Soma
Bhatia) and she helps banish away fears and nightmares before her baby
brother goes to bed by telling him the fantastical story of a brave boy
who goes off to confront a scary Elephant King.
But
for every little triumph, and joy at discovering the many things she
can do and places she can go when people think she's a boy, Parvana also
experiences the kind of disappointments and setbacks that people
shouldn't have to deal with at least until they grow into adulthood.
Put another way: there's no disguising that The Breadwinner tells
a heart-breakingly sad tale, whose many injustices one will find
oneself thinking of far more than any of the developments that we're
supposed to be (temporarily) happy about; and this not least because
it's so very easy after viewing this offering to imagine that there are
so many real life equivalents of Parvana and her family out there in our
troubled world.
My rating for this film: 7.0
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