We decide what artistic endeavour passed approval to earn the Scorcher label from the past seven days & what also had the dishonour of being that week's Torture...
I spent most of last week with my head buried in a couple of books after I decided to continue with the adventures of Miss Peregrine's peculiar children. I still managed to watch a few films as well as continue my re-watch of Buffy and Angel; something which inspired my previous trial. Without any further ado here are the items for this week's witch hunt.
The Scorcher
Apart from pitting young adults against one another and supplying them with weapons they both then move in different directions. I have to say The Hunger Games movies are definitely light entertainment in comparison to the visceral bloodletting that happens in Battle Royale.
What I enjoyed the most was how nearly every child competing has their moment of death play out on screen. Now that I have written that as a sentence it feels so wrong! But, regardless of morality, I was highly entertained. When you have over 40 people competing it would be easy to miss a few but we do see everyone's death scene or at least their body after they have been slaughtered. The death tally appearing was a cool notion too.
There are so many varied ways they kill off the unwilling contestants and the brutal instinct of kill or be killed comes out in the most unlikely people. I particularly enjoyed the scene where some of the girls have teamed up together. Then when the wrong person takes a sip of poisoned soup suddenly all hell breaks loose as trust goes out the window and the survival instinct kicks in for every one of them.
Beat Takeshi is excellent as the teacher who has had enough of these unruly pupils. You get a real sense from him early on that he has been beaten down and knows that no matter what methods he tries; nothing will get these students to learn and become contributing members of society.
If you are after some bloodthirsty action with a reasonable story and some decent acting then this will not disappoint. There are also social messages hidden amongst the violence but, hey, I just came to see a bunch of teenagers chop one another to pieces!
The Torture
Jack O'Connell's Kyle Budwell takes money advisor Lee Gates, played by George Clooney, hostage during a live broadcast of Lee's show Money Monster which is where we get the film's title. Julia Roberts plays the shows director Patty Fenn.
As soon as Kyle comes in waving a gun around Patty rightfully shuts down the broadcast. This infuriates Kyle and he forces them to put the show back on the air, which Patty then does. Now I am sure that in reality this would never happen.
What could have taken place is the studio monitors should have still been able to stream the camera feed. This would give Kyle the impression that his message is being broadcast. They could have kept the tension level just as high if both Kyle and Lee thought that they were streaming live to millions of viewers but in reality it was only seen by those present in the studio. Neither would be any the wiser. It would have made the futility of Kyle's attempt to make these big corporations accountable for their errors, have more of an impact once you get the reveal at the end that no one in the outside world saw what unravelled.
After all one of the messages that I got as the film concludes was that it didn't make much difference what action Kyle took; it would be business as usual come the morning. Once they started showing the hostage situation live, and the constant switching to people watching events unfold, it lost something for me and this happens reasonable early on in the film.
The other plot point that infuriated me was how Lee and Kyle were allowed to leave the studio. The police have managed to clear all but a few people from danger and yet they allow this terrorist to then leave an isolated building. They don't know where he is going, or why, or what he intends to do; thus endangering far more civilians than were originally taken as hostage in the first place. It just wouldn't be allowed to happen. They would have shot him as soon as he stepped outside and taken the subsequent death of Lee as collateral damage rather than put all those other people at risk.
Those two flaws in the plot took away from my overall enjoyment. There is definitely a half decent story to be told here, it just isn't portrayed very well overall.
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