Screen: Reviews

ACTION
Body of Lies (15)
3/5

Ridley Scott is a big fan of popping overseas for the odd movie.

But, like a few other Westerners we could name, he seems to get a bit muddled with what to do when he gets there.

Black Hawk Down was a fun gung-ho war movie, but offered so little political insight that it might as well have been set in Swindon rather than Somalia. And his crusade romp Kingdom Of Heaven was fatally wounded by the casting of head-prefect Orlando Bloom as someone whose job was to look valiant.

While Body Of Lies offers a little more political intrigue than those two, it still struggles to squeeze it all into the big jelly mould marked “action movie� that Scott brought with him.

There’s ample opportunity to harness current events here, as CIA op Leonardo DiCaprio tries to smoke out a terrorist leader by setting up a fake rival terror cell to steal his thunder. All the while, he’s on the phone to his boss Russell Crowe, who’s mostly tracking him using super-hi-tech surveillance toys.

America’s spy games take them into the path of Jordanian intelligence chief Hani, played brilliantly by Brit Mark Strong, who prefers a less headstrong approach to the tried-and-trusted American way.

The contrast between DiCaprio’s understanding of Arabic culture and Crowe’s logic over empathy would have been a good place to start digging for insight. But Body Of Lies decides to go flying off in the Action Helicopter of Ridiculousness instead, launching the twin missiles of Shoehorned Love Story and Ludicrous Ending at its defenceless plot.

The result is that an interesting political study and a well-shot actioner get lumped together in the same film, and end up mixing like lager and milk.

ROMANTIC COMEDY
My Best Friend's Girl (15)
2/5

A friend of mine spent some of his summer in Cuba, and ate so much rice that the mere mention of Uncle Ben now sends him into a frenzy of confusion and fear.

If that can happen to a man in just one month, imagine how former American Pie star Jason Biggs must feel.

For close to a decade, all the former pie-lover has done is turn up in mediocre gross-out mainstream comedies with about as much bite as a stapler made entirely out of wet burger buns.

So what would you say if I told you that he’s finally broken with all that, and appeared in an interesting, warm and funny film that’s genuinely not just another wannabe dorm room shelf-filler?

You’d call me a big, furry lying scumbag, and you’d be right. Because My Best Friend’s Girl is precisely what you’d expect to see Jason Biggs in, with the dead look in his eyes that shows he’s dreaming of a day when his agent stops calling him.

Biggs is the titular “best friend� who scares off new girlfriend Kate Hudson with his clinginess. He employs close pal and “emotional terrorist� Dane Cook to treat her to such an awful date that she comes rushing back to him, only for Dane to start getting all mushy about his latest target.

Cue several minutes of crude jokes and grim gross-out fare, until the rom-com convention takes hold and the film dumps several buckets of slush on everyone’s heads like a Saturday morning kids TV host.

Many critics have pointed out that there’s a certain chemistry between stars Dane Cook and Kate Hudson, but Cook’s character is so sleazy and unlikeable that you start hoping that Hudson is carrying Mace.

It’s not that romantic, but then this isn’t much of a comedy either.

DRAMA
Choke (18)
4/5

Chuck Palahniuk is a tough name to spell. So just remember him as “the guy who wrote Fight Club�. Everyone else does.

Maybe that’s why it’s taken nearly a decade for a second of his books to hit the big screen. And I’m a little surprised it’s this one.

Choke follows a self-confessed sex addict who pays for his sick mother’s medical bills by faking choking attacks in restaurants, and scrounges money off the rich diners who save him.

It’s a tricky tale to translate, mainly because it has to navigate the un-Hollywood path of making perverted characters sympathetic, while keeping as much of the very distinctive text intact.

Rookie director Clark Gregg has a reasonable shot at this, but does leave the film feeling a little directionless. But what could have been a jumbled mess is rescued by the performances of star Sam Rockwell and Angelica Huston as his mother. Rockwell is difficult to dislike even at his worst, and expertly wields Palahniuk’s written flourishes through a series of voiceovers.

Next up on screen for Chuck is Haunted, a far more cinematic tale of creative writers who go peculiar while locked in an abandoned theatre.