Half Pint Reviews: Ravenous & Face

A new feature today, one I'll probably start to utilise a little more often, is Half Pint reviews. The idea behind this is that I pick out a couple of films to give a quick going over and a rating, rather than delving into the detail I usually do.

To start us off, a pair of contrasting but obscure little gems from Antonia Bird, both featuring Robert Carlyle.


Ravenous


A bizzare little slice of horror and blacker than black comedy, Ravenous charts a somewhat disturbing and borderline supernatural tale of cannibalism in 19th Century frontier California. A box office lead balloon, following development hell that saw original director Milcho Manchevski fired, the film has slipped into obscurity despite it's uniqueness.

John Boyd (Guy Pearce), a veteran of the American-Mexican war, is promoted to Captain after single handedly capturing an enemy command post. However, it soon emerges that he is a coward who only managed to infiltrate the enemy lines by playing dead as his men were killed around him. Found out by his commanding officer, General Slauson (the late John Spencer), Boyd is dished out an unofficial punishment by being sent to the sleepy, dysfunctional Sierra Nevada outpost Fort Spencer.

Here, he is third in command of a skeleton eight man detachment, consisting of the neurotic Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones), simpleton Private Cleaves (David Arquette), stuttering Chaplain Toffler (Jeremy Davies), drunkard Major Knox (Stephen Spinella), borderline psychotic Private Reich (Neal McDonough) and Native American brother and sister George (Joseph Running Fox) and Martha (Sheila Tousey).

Their sitcom-esque boredom is struck off when a freezing, starving traveller, Calqhoun (Robert Carlyle) arrives at the camp. He recounts how his wagon convoy ran into foul weather and terrain, became stuck in a mountain cave, and how he has escaped the cannibalism that gripped them in order to survive. The garrison saddle up for a rescue mission, which quickly turns pear shaped, and upon his return to Fort Spencer, Boyd is shocked to find that nobody believes his story. Already despised and distrusted, things get worse with the arrival of the camp's new commanding officer, the seemingly impossible arrival of a very much known character. A battle of wills follows, as Boyd is stuck between any moral fortitude he possesses and the need for surival as the twists and shocks pile up.

Ravenous takes enormous risks as a film, some of which pay off handsomely, others which take some getting used to. First off, our protaganist Boyd is a coward. He shys away from conflict, painfully so at times, and his being found out on a number of occasions is difficult to watch. His fellows are not much better, with only Reich providing any real threat. Guy Pearce takes introverted, thoughtful steps towards the role, a quiet figure who, despite being the leading man, doesn't utter a full sentence for the first twenty minutes of the film.

The approach, however, is the big deciding point on whether you can enjoy the piece. Rather than take a serious approach to a fairly absurd story, Antonia Bird goes for a surreal, unsettling plan of attack in which pitch black moments are presented as bizzare knock about farce. Music choice sees a potentially tense chase being overlayed by slapstick, upbeat western campfire tunes. The characters, with a couple of exceptions, string together oddball dialogue, whether by failing to put any point into the words or by contradicting themselves constantly.

By refusing to take itself seriously, Ravenous in a roundabout way becomes more unsettling than it would had it gone for standard, campy horror in the mountains, defusing the impossibility of the plot and the stretches it takes for the benefit of our entertainment. Pearce is typically reliable, a surprisingly subtle perfomance, and Robert Carlyle displays chameleon abilities to channel characters within his character, and suitably menacing and superior when needs be. Jeffrey Jones is a lot of fun in his role too.

So, a hugely unpredictable horror thriller/dark comedy hybrid with plenty of laughs and thrills, as one would hope for, but one that leaves you wondering what would have resulted had the film gone down the conventional route.

7/10




Face


A perhaps unfairly overlooked, virtually unheard of London gangster thriller, Face takes a low key, almost relaxed approach towards the ramifications of a job gone wrong and the treachery that follows.

Ray (Robert Carlyle, bearing a flawlessly toned down Cockney accent) is a firmly established professional criminal, a former socialist protestor turned armed robber.

Along with his close friend Dave (Ray Winstone), simple sidekick Stevie (Steven Waddington), fixer Julian (Phillip Davis) and newboy Jason (Damon Albarn), he orchestrates a robbery of a security depot intended to earn the gang £2 million to split between them.

However, despite carefully planned routine and precision, they in fact only scalp £300k, resulting in some tension within the crew. Ray attempts to pass this off, settling on his cut and happy to share the night with girlfriend Connie (Lena Headey). But when the next morning comes, each of the men have had their money stolen, with trusted friends killed in the process. Realising his precarious predicament, with nobody to trust and the police taking a keen interest, Ray leads the group's efforts to find the loot before he walks into the sunset.

Rather than going for sensationalised gangster lifestyles, or Guy Ritchie style high thrills and beat thumping style, Antonia Bird instead takes a straight forward approach to the story, with Ken Loach style honest camera angles and techniques, lettling a shadowed but fairly simple plot provide the entertainment and interest rather than jazzing it up. Even gunfights and action sequences, not to mention the violence, occur almost naturally, making them more piercing without build up.

This, in turn, gives a great opportunity for a character study of Ray to occur, highlighting his contradictory views and confused lifestyle, a million miles away from the old life that still presents itself to him on a daily basis. It's a subtle, honest perfomance by Carlyle, almost the hero of the story, bringing a realistic degree of pathos and complexity to his character and expressing more through mannerisms than lines of dialogue.

Ray Winstone plays against type as a more pent up, straight collared type, no sign of the wolfy voice and demeanour. He isn't even the hardest man of the group, let alone the East End. The rest of the cast play their roles well, bringing various, neccesary energies to the story, while a laid back choice of music brings an odd relaxed aptmosphere to a fairly frantic and stressful story.

A very watchable crime flick without pretensions or the need to steal Scorscese style tub thumping or British gangster snarls, Face is a film that perhaps would benefit from a little more energy, a little less detachment.

7/10