By Robert Koehler
Variety, May 2, 2008

The heroic true tale of a Brit journalist’s rescue of dozens of orphaned Chinese youth in the face of an advancing Japanese army has become a cloddish if gorgeous-looking wartime adventure epic in “The Children of Huang Shi.” Giving Jonathan Rhys Meyers the kind of manly yet paternal role Spencer Tracy once mastered, this carefully wrought international production relates the basic story of reporter George Hogg without any vibrancy, emotion or style. Late-act romantic touches seem unlikely to stir commercial interest for what looks like a small-scale performer at best, opening May 23 Stateside after its Chinese mainland preem.

While screenwriters James MacManus and Jane Hawksley stick to the general facts of the situation in China in 1937-38, when Japan brutally thrust deep into the mainland, they have an uncertain grasp of dramatic interest and distinctive characters. Based on the evidence here and in his previous film, the Rwandan-genocide drama “Shake Hands With the Devil” (also a true story of a white man trying to rescue nonwhite innocents), director Roger Spottiswoode’s skills for physical production outpace his ability to generate vitality and bring out the best in his actors.

Young reporter George (Rhys Meyers) arrives in Shanghai in late 1937 to report on the Nippon takeover of China and the combined efforts of Chinese nationalists and communists to fight back. He and colleague Barnes (David Wenham) manage to get behind Japanese lines in Nanjing (better known as Nanking) during the horrific destruction and occupation of the city.

During this section, the pic is intense in its depiction of what a journalist might encounter trying to report and shoot photos of atrocities. George is soon captured, but like cavalry coming over the hill, a rebel unit led by Chen (Chow Yun-fat), a communist engineer whose job is to blow up buildings to thwart the Japanese, saves the journo in the nick of time.

George actually has two last-second rescues at the hands of strangers — the second being doctor Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell) — and it’s at this point that the film begins to show signs of narrative exhaustion. Lee suggests to friend (and, as it turns out, ex-lover) Chen that they shuttle George to the relative safety of rural Huang Shi, site of a children’s orphanage, but once he arrives, George finds nothing but hostility.

Resident mother figure Lo San (Shuyuan Jin) has little control over the rapscallions who run roughshod over the orphanage. Lee tells the reluctant George he must stay here and take care of the boys — all the better to bone up on his Mandarin — while she makes house calls across the region.

Midsection settles into a predictable pattern of sequences in which George adjusts to his surroundings, makes friends with the boys — except their spiky leader, Shi-kai (Guang Li) — and connects with wealthy merchant Madame Wang (Michelle Yeoh, nicely cast).

While the central characters are finally allowed to develop some inner lives and a bit of friction (including a barely developed love triangle of sorts involving George, Lee and Chen), they are generally more pleasant than specific, while the real nemesis is often offscreen, in the vague form of a Japanese army on the march. In this regard, the pic underlines the general rule that humanitarians frequently don’t make for the most vivid film characters; George Hogg is simply drawn as a brave, kindly man who finds his life’s purpose, which isn’t filing daily war dispatches to Fleet Street.

Once those in the orphanage must flee from the encroaching army, the film shifts into an adventure epic that travels across large vistas of interior China, including some brief but striking passages in the Gobi desert. Longtime Zhang Yimou cameraman Zhao Xiaoding once again displays his skills at picturing human beings in the context of vast landscapes, despite plodding direction and editing.

The inevitable George-Lee love story finally blossoms, though all too briefly, and even tragic turns feel somewhat glossed over and emotionally parched. Rhys Meyers is certainly up for the challenge of a forthright hero and brings as many shades as he can, but he and the engaging Mitchell are unfairly saddled with lines like, “You are the bravest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.” Chow leaves little impression, while Guang is impressive in key scenes.

The multinational nature of the production displays all its resources, but that might also explain why too much of the dialogue is in English, including scenes the orphans couldn’t possibly understand.

By Claudia Puig
USA TODAY, November 23, 2007

August Rush (* * * out of four) will not be for everyone, but it works if you surrender to its lilting and unabashedly sentimental tale of evocative music and visual poetry.

If you choose to focus on the plot’s many contrivances, the film falters. But thanks to some wonderfully appealing and emotional performances by Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Terrence Howard, this urban fairy tale/drama weaves a captivating spell.

Director Kirsten Sheridan clearly has been influenced by her filmmaker father, Jim, with whom she co-wrote his lovely 2003 film In America. This bears some resemblance to that New York-based fable, particularly in its impressionistic tribute to the city.

Highmore is an engaging young actor, and the tale of his quest for a family has echoes of Oliver! and Peter Pan. There’s an odd and off-putting element in which Robin Williams plays a musical Fagin (with a look that brings to mind U2′s Bono).

He is an opportunistic mentor who exploits musically talented lost or troubled children by giving them instruments and setting them up to play on street corners for spare change. A kind of musical pimp, he helps himself to a good portion of their earnings.

While Highmore’s poignant saga is playing out — he runs away from an orphanage, and a kindly social services worker, played by Howard, searches for him — the story moves back and forth in time, recounting a romance between Russell and Meyers and the burgeoning musical prowess of Highmore’s prodigy.

Russell is a successful classical cellist, spurred on by a driven father. Meyers is a rock ‘n’ roller in a band that is gaining some fame. They meet one night at a party, share a romantic evening and separate — due to circumstances, not lack of desire. A decade later, both have given up playing professionally and seem adrift.

We sense they will reconnect because they seem destined to be together. In the way of such romances as Sleepless in Seattle, it’s just a matter of time before their paths cross.

The unifying force among these three characters is music and their passion to create it. Early on, there is a particularly powerful scene in which Russell and her cello and Meyers and his guitar are juxtaposed, creating an intriguing sound, a kind of soaring classical-rock hybrid.

August Rush is a film that is all about the transformative emotional power of music. It’s wise to ignore the predictable plot turns and the lack of believability in this urban fantasy, and let yourself slip under the spell of its intensely passionate tribute to the world of melody and harmony.

By Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times, November 21, 2007

Here is a movie drenched in sentimentality, but it’s supposed to be. I dislike sentimentality where it doesn’t belong, but there’s something brave about the way “August Rush” declares itself and goes all the way with coincidence, melodrama and skillful tear-jerking. I think more sensitive younger viewers, in particular, might really like it.

The story is a very free modern adaptation of elements from Oliver Twist. We meet Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore), an 11-year-old who runs away from his orphanage rather than be placed with a foster family. He has been told that his parents are still alive and were musicians, and he believes that through the power of music he can find them again. Do you begin to see what I mean about sentimentality?

As it happens, his parents were musicians, and they met through their music. Lyla (Keri Russell) was a cellist and Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) was an Irish rock singer, and in a flashback, we see them meeting in Greenwich Village, falling in love at first sight, and making love so very discreetly that they remain safely within the PG rating. They promise to meet again, but Lyla’s stage-door father (William Sadler)forces her to leave town for career reasons, and they have no way to contact each other. Young lovers, learn from the movies and always remember: Exchange cell numbers! Inevitably, she is pregnant (otherwise they wouldn’t be Evan’s parents, now would they?), but her father tells her the baby died, and ships Evan to an orphanage. Nothing must interfere with Lyla’s career.

Back to the present again. The runaway Evan sees some street musicians in Washington Square Park, picks up a guitar and, despite having had no training, turns out to be a naturally gifted musician. Another young musician (Leon G. Thomas III), who is not called the Artful Dodger but should be, hears Evan and takes him back to an abandoned theater, where he and other young lads live under the management of a character who is called the Wizard (Robin Williams), but could be called Fagin. He sends his little army out into the streets every day, not as pickpockets but as buskers. Only in a movie like “August Rush” could the endless practical and legal problems suggested by this arrangement be considered plausible.

The Wizard, who dresses like a drugstore cowboy, spots Evan’s talent and introduces him to the world as “August Rush.” August believes, really believes, that music has the power to bring people together, and finds a sympathizer when he comes upon a church choir where the preacher turns out to have connections at Juilliard. So, yes, August is discovered as a child genius, and quickly earns the right to conduct his own symphony at an outdoor concert in Central Park, where he proves himself an expert conductor and (gasp!) his mother is the cellist and his father is nearby, both of them still under the spell of their long-lost love, and…

I’m telling you, the ghost of Dickens would be applauding. The movie, directed by Kirsten Sheridan and written by Nick Castle, James V. Hart and Paul Castro, pulls out all the stops, invents new ones and pulls them out too. But it has a light-footed, cheerful way about its contrivances, and Freddie Highmore (“Finding Neverland”) is so open and winning that he makes August seem completely sincere. One touch of craftiness would sink the whole enterprise.

Another quality about the movie is that it seems to sincerely love music as much as August does. If you’re going to lay it on this thick, you can’t compromise, and Sheridan doesn’t. I don’t have some imaginary barrier in my mind beyond which a movie dare not go. I’d rather “August Rush” went the whole way than just be lukewarm about it. Yes, some older viewers will groan, but I think up to a certain age, kids will buy it, and in imagining their response, I enjoyed my own.

By Patricia Treble
Macleans, October 1, 2007

Rarely has a series slogan been so apt: Romance. Seduction. Murder. Just another day at the office. The Tudors is to a history lesson what Jackie Collins is to fiction-a suck ‘em in and hold ‘em drama that won’t let go. Think of the worst machinations of The Office or Desperate Housewives and then multiply by 100. The Tudors’ cool, hip and rollicking good fun never lets up, even when the script deviates from the numerous bedroom scenes (three in the first half hour alone) to impart a little political and religious background. A leanly muscled Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Match Point, Elvis) oozes royal sex appeal in the role of King Henry VIII.

The Tudor monarch is the perfect candidate for a soap opera miniseries. His personal life featured a mess of mistresses and wives and a dearth of legitimate heirs; his public life took place against a tumultuous time in European history-the discovery of the New World, the Protestant Reformation and the end of the old medieval ways. In Henry’s court aristocrats and ambitious newcomers alike could enjoy a fast rise to power and riches that boggled the mind-or an equally rapid plunge ending with a one-way trip to the Tower of London. Even courtiers such as powerful as Cardinal Wolsey (Sam Neil) knew they were walking a tightrope-at one point the powerful clergyman saves his hide by “voluntarily” handing over his extravagant Hampton Court Palace to his envious monarch.

Today Henry VIII is remembered as an obese lecher who broke away from the Catholic Church and married umpteen times in a desperate attempt to secure a male heir. Those with a bit more knowledge of English history may even recall the rhyme needed to keep separate the fates of those unfortunate six women (three Catherines of various spellings, two Annes and a Jane): “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.”

But in his early years, when The Tudors begin, Henry was a handsome, muscular 30-something with a commanding intellect. Rhys Meyers’ portrayal of a vigorous, athletic and intelligent man in the prime of his life, able not only to joust for hours, but also to have philosophical discussions with Thomas More, offers a historically accurate peek at what Henry was before he grew too fat to wear armour.

By A. O. SCOTT
New York Times, December 28, 2005

Because Woody Allen’s early films are about as funny as any ever made, it is often assumed that his temperament is essentially comic, which leads to all manner of disappointment and misunderstanding. Now and then, Mr. Allen tries to clear up the confusion, insisting, sometimes elegantly and sometimes a little too baldly, that his view of the world is essentially nihilistic. He has announced, in movie after movie, an absolute lack of faith in any ordering moral principle in the universe — and still, people think he’s joking.

In ”Match Point,” his most satisfying film in more than a decade, the director once again brings the bad news, delivering it with a light, sure touch. This is a Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine. You would have to go back to the heady, amoral heyday of Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder to find cynicism so deftly turned into superior entertainment. At the very beginning, Mr. Allen’s hero, a young tennis player recently retired from the professional tour, explains that the role of luck in human affairs is often underestimated. Later, the harsh implications of this idea will be evident, but at first it seems as whimsical as what Fred Astaire said in ”The Gay Divorcee”: that ”chance is the fool’s name for fate.”

Mr. Allen’s accomplishment here is to fool his audience, or at least to misdirect us, with a tale whose gilded surface disguises the darkness beneath. His guile — another name for it is art — keeps the story moving with the fleet momentum of a well-made play. Comparisons to ”Crimes and Misdemeanors” are inevitable, since the themes and some elements of plot are similar, but the philosophical baggage in ”Match Point” is more tightly and discreetly packed. There are few occasions for speech-making, and none of the desperate, self-conscious one-liners that have become, in Mr. Allen’s recent movies, more tics than shtick. Nor is there an obvious surrogate for the director among the youthful, mostly British and altogether splendid cast. If you walked in after the opening titles, it might take you a while to guess who made this picture.

After a while you would, of course. The usual literary signposts are in place: surely no other screenwriter could write a line like ”darling, have you seen my copy of Strindberg?” or send his protagonist to bed with a paperback Dostoyevsky. But while a whiff of Russian fatalism lingers in the air — and more than a whiff of Strindbergian misogyny — these don’t seem to be the most salient influences. The film’s setting is modified Henry James (wealthy London, with a few social and cultural outsiders buzzing around the hives of privilege); the conceit owes something to Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley books; and the narrative engine is pure Theodore Dreiser — hunger, lust, ambition, greed.

Not that the tennis player, Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), seems at first to be consumed by such appetites. An Irishman of modest background, he takes a job at an exclusive London club, helping its rich members polish their ground strokes. He seems both easygoing and slightly ill at ease, ingratiating and diffident. Before long, he befriends Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), the amiable, unserious heir to a business fortune, who invites Chris to the family box at the opera. From there, it is a short trip to an affair with Tom’s sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), a job in the family firm and the intermittently awkward but materially rewarding position of son-in-law to parents played by Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton.

When ”Match Point” was shown in Cannes last spring, some British critics objected that its depiction of London was inaccurate, a demurral that New Yorkers, accustomed to visiting Mr. Allen’s fantasy Manhattan, could only greet with weary shrugs and sighs. Uprooting a script originally set in the Hamptons and repotting it in British soil has refreshed and sharpened the story, which depends not on insight into a particular social situation, but rather on a general theory of human behavior. London is Manhattan seen through a glass, brightly: Tate Modern stands in for the Museum of Modern Art; Covent Garden takes the place of Lincoln Center. As for the breathtaking South Bank loft into which Chris and Chloe move, it will satisfy the lust for high-end real estate that has kept the diehards in their seats during Mr. Allen’s long creative malaise.

In this case, though, what happens in the well-appointed rooms and fashionable restaurants is more interesting than the architecture or the décor. Mr. Rhys-Meyers has an unusual ability to keep the audience guessing, to draw us into sympathetic concord even as we’re trying to figure him out. Is he a cipher or a sociopath? A careful social climber or a reckless rake? The first clue that he may be something other than a mild, well-mannered sidekick comes when Chris meets Tom’s fiancé, an American actress named Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), in a scene that raises the movie’s temperature from a polite simmer to a full sexual boil. (The scene also quietly acknowledges a debt to ”A Place in the Sun,” George Stevens’s adaptation of Dreiser’s ”American Tragedy.” The parallels don’t stop there. Mr. Rhys-Meyers’s hollow-cheeked watchfulness recalls Montgomery Clift. Which makes Ms. Johansson either the next Elizabeth Taylor or the new Shelley Winters. Hmm).

What passes between Chris and Nola is not only desire, but also recognition, which makes their connection especially volatile. As their affair advances, Ms. Johansson and Mr. Rhys-Meyers manage some of the best acting seen in a Woody Allen movie in a long time, escaping the archness and emotional disconnection that his writing often imposes. It is possible to identify with both of them — and to feel an empathetic twinge as they are ensnared in the consequences of their own heedlessness — without entirely liking either one.

But it is the film’s brisk, chilly precision that makes it so bracingly pleasurable. The gloom of random, meaningless existence has rarely been so much fun, and Mr. Allen’s bite has never been so sharp, or so deep. A movie this good is no laughing matter.

By Todd McCarthy
Variety, May 12, 2005

A change of scenery does Woody Allen a world of good in “Match Point.” Making his first film in the U.K. with a story originally conceived for New York, Allen once again takes up issues of morality and guilt in what amounts to “An English Tragedy,” as in Theodore Dreiser. Well-observed and superbly cast picture is the filmmaker’s best in quite a long time and as such reps an attractive potential acquisition for a U.S. distrib keen to break Allen’s recent string of B.O. flops.

Although the script is spiked with mordant humor, the prevailing serious mood is underlined by doom-laden laments from Italian grand opera and refs to Dostoevsky, Strindberg and even Andrew Lloyd Webber’s dramatically similar “The Woman in White.” In thematic terms, “Match Point,” whose tennis allusion reflects a preoccupation with the role of luck in life, comes closest to “Crimes and Misdemeanors” among Allen’s films.

First 45 minutes constitute marvelous social and romantic comedy-drama. With the action set squarely among Britain’s young upper crust, tale has the debonair Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode) taking on Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, the Elvis of the moment) as a tennis coach at his exclusive club. Chris is fresh off the pro tennis circuit, where he did well but never broke through to the winner’s circle. Although identified as Irish, the terribly attractive athlete speaks with an impeccable posh accent that allows him to fit in seamlessly with Tom and his set.

Since Chris’ background is never further explored, memories of notable works about calculated upward mobility from “Washington Square” to “Room at the Top” stir up initial questions as to how much of a schemer Chris may be. But in every respect he seems sincere, evincing an honest interest in serious literature and opera, tastes that ideally suit Tom’s attractive sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer), who a bit over-eagerly takes Chris under her wing and into her bed.

With Chris’ road to success now all but paved with clover, there’s got to be a snake in the underbrush, and it comes in the dazzlingly sexy form of young American Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), who’s Tom’s girlfriend but who strikes immediate sparks with Chris. An obvious tinderbox of trouble, Nola is a moody neurotic with a past who drowns her frustration over a stalled acting career with constant drink. Fully aware of its ill-advisability, nothing can prevent these two pillow-lipped sex objects from getting down to it, which they do during a downpour in a literal roll in the wheat during a weekend in the country.

Suddenly, however, Nola is history, gone from Tom’s and Chris’ lives and apparently from London as well. Chris and Chloe marry, much to the delight of Hewett family patriarch Alec (Brian Cox), who continues to favor Chris with opportunities in the family business world, and Tom quickly follows suit with a new woman. But after Chris spots Nola by chance at the Tate Modern, the juices start flowing all over again, this time in a torrent, which steers the story straight on a collision course toward tragedy.

On a scene-by-scene basis, pic’s midsection slows a bit, as Chloe obsesses over her inability to get pregnant while her husband, busy shagging Nola nonstop, becomes tortured by his increasingly untenable position between the two women. Heavy pressure from Nola eventually forces his hand, resulting in a morally ghastly climax redeemed by a genuinely inspired dramatic twist that beautifully and bitterly dovetails with the philosophical notion posited at the outset.

One immediate advantage of the film’s English setting is that it effectively prevents the young male lead from doing a Woody Allen imitation, as has so often happened in the past. Beyond that, there is an evident refreshment and restimulation that’s resulted from Allen’s immersion in a new milieu, a rarefied one not often depicted by English filmmakers these days. An assortment of mostly upscale locations provides a sumptuous backdrop that takes on added mood from the consistently gray skies, exemplary lensing by Remi Adefarasin and the overlay of excerpts from Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, et al.

Cast is terrific. Rhys-Meyers, who has been flitting about the margins of real recognition for the past few seasons, comes further into his own with an excellent performance in the central role, one which requires him to be both genuinely ingratiating and entirely repugnant. More of a blond bombshell than ever, Johansson combines strong elements of sexuality, self-doubt and emotional insistence in an indelible portrait of tragic beauty. Mortimer aptly pinpoints Chloe’s over-availability as the initial source of her husband’s growing disinterest, while Goode nicely rounds out the young quartet as a smooth chap whose great looks, wit and intelligence seem virtual birthrights. It’s amusing to see Cox, so often associated with threatening or dicey characters, so smoothly essaying a generous man of means.

by Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle, September 1, 2004

Witherspoon makes a strong, sly Becky Sharp in Nair’s upbeat, feisty take on ‘Vanity Fair’

“Vanity Fair” is a conscientious adaptation of the William Makepeace Thackeray novel. A lot of things happen, all of it fairly absorbing, some of it rendered vividly. There’s a nice languorous economy about the movie — scenes have time to breathe, and environments are inhabited, even as the story never flags. Yet something’s missing in director Mira Nair’s treatment — specifically, a point of view about the material, a compelling reason for this historical excavation beyond the fact that Reese Witherspoon makes a convincing Becky Sharp.

She certainly does that. With Witherspoon in the role, we understand, without requiring any explanation, that “Vanity Fair” is an essentially upbeat story, even though it’s about a 19th century orphaned girl forced to live by her wits in a culture that would just as soon toss her into the gutter. Witherspoon’s feistiness, intelligence and resiliency allow us, from the beginning, to put our money on Becky.

Witherspoon is in many ways like Miriam Hopkins, who starred in the 1935 “Becky Sharp,” a “Vanity Fair” adaptation remembered today only for being one of the first color features. Like Hopkins, Witherspoon is American and Southern, little, smart and loquacious, with a smile that’s engaging without being entirely reassuring. What she lacks is the edge of malice Hopkins brought to the role, the anger under the high spirits that served Hopkins particularly well in the first scene, in which Becky is released from a girl’s school that has exploited her for years. In the new “Vanity Fair,” that scene is a pale shadow.

But Witherspoon has her own approach to the part, and it wears well. Her Becky is not just shrewd and hungry. She has also an instinct for life, a quality that encompasses a gift for survival but is bigger than merely that. Witherspoon’s Becky has the gifts of extra confidence, extra energy, extra strength, extra drive, extra instinct. She operates on a level that others can’t touch, and sometimes she gives the impression that, instead of rolling over other people, she’d really rather share her gifts and have some company in these higher reaches of human function.

The movie is the tale of Becky’s adventures, an episodic saga that covers a couple of decades and includes many opportunities and reversals. In sentimental novels, 19th century heroines want love, security and a decent husband. Becky wants what heroes want: money, success and glory. She has no specific talent, just a lot of personality and a sense of mission. She gets her first foothold in the home of a childhood friend, Amelia (Romola Garai), and soon meets the people she’ll be dealing with over the years.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers gets one of his patented roles as Georgie, Amelia’s fiance, the posturing son of a rich merchant. No one can play rich, scowling snobs as well as Rhys-Meyers, who has a talent for making audiences hate him and yet feel for him at the same time. He suggests a vulnerability within Georgie, whose aristocratic ambitions have all to do with wanting to escape the shadow of a cruel, greedy father (Jim Broadbent).

Becky’s trajectory allows her to witness the upper reaches of London society, from the merchant class all the way to the king. Along the way she meets Pitt the Elder, a slovenly fellow with an estate in disrepair (lustily played by Bob Hoskins). On the other end of the spectrum, she gets to know the icy Lord Steyne, whose salon is at the center of London society. It’s Gabriel Byrne, as Steyne, who gets off one of the film’s best lines. He turns on a member of his family and yells, “There’s no one in this household who doesn’t wish you dead.” A good, all-purpose putdown.

Besides Witherspoon, the strongest impression is made by James Purefoy as Rawdon Crawley, a manly and sincere soldier who, in peacetime, is just as manly and sincere but rather useless, a gambler who’s not all that lucky. But then he’s lucky in love. Crawley’s leave-taking of Becky, before the battle of Waterloo, is the film’s single most heartfelt moment by far, the one place where the movie becomes more than clever and goes to a more human place.

“Vanity Fair” is inevitably a feminist tale, because Becky will not be kept down. But there’s another way of looking at the story, which doesn’t preclude the feminist treatment, and which seems potentially richer. That’s to acknowledge the story’s dark side, its inescapable revelation that in 19th century England a woman had to be a genius to achieve success — or even to fight life to a draw.

By Carla Meyer
San Francisco Chronicle, July 9, 2004

Former criminal dips back into old life
Mike Hodges on familiar turf with stylish drama

Mood and portent can conceal any number of flaws in movies about the thug life. In “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” master of stylish criminality Mike Hodges (“Croupier,” “Get Carter”) presents a nighttime London of sharp suits, distorted jazz notes and shiny luxury sedans cruising dirty streets. He does this with such elan that it’s possible to overlook a thin plot and chunks of stilted dialogue.
The script by Trevor Preston centers on an archetype: a former crime boss (Clive Owen, from “Croupier” and “King Arthur”) forced back into the game. Owen’s Will had renounced the criminal life and become a flannel-clad tree trimmer, but he must avenge a crime against his little brother. The brother (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a small-time drug dealer and big-time dandy, was raped by a rich sadist (a snarling Malcolm McDowell) as an act of comeuppance.

The unforeseen repercussions of this crime are doubly disturbing because Rhys-Meyers (the soccer coach from “Bend It Like Beckham”) has created an indelible character. Slim and lush-lipped, Rhys-Meyers gives this hedonist enough charm and unbridled zest that his fate matters. The actor turns the young man’s trip home the morning after the crime into an odyssey of heartbreak. Jacket clutched to chest, he limps through dank alleyways, his last vestiges of innocence obliterated.

Owen is mostly required to look determined, as Will returns to town and delves into what happened to the kid. His presence creates unease in the criminals who have taken control in Will’s absence and imbues the picture with palpable anxiety. The new crime boss, played with insecurity and entitlement by Ken Stott, threatens Will through a lowered tinted window. Will reacts as if swatting away a fly.

There’s never a question of what will happen, only when, but Hodges still defies convention. A sequence of Will’s transformation from scruffy tree trimmer back to smooth criminal happens with the wave of a barber’s towel, sparing us the symbolism of his shaggy beard being removed.

By contrast, a subplot involving Will and a restaurateur played by Charlotte Rampling is simply leaden. Apparently, the two were lovers, but their manner is oddly formal in their first meeting after three years apart. Will, a killer from the lower classes, suddenly sounds like an Oxford grad on a therapist’s couch: “I trust nothing. No one. And it has nothing to do with escape.” She in turn laments Will’s “shaming difficulty in not believing you cannot be loved.” A simple hello apparently wouldn’t do. Rampling, usually an actress of stunning command, seems lost in this movie.

by Sarah Rodman
The Boston Herald, May 23, 2004

“The Lion in Winter” should be required holiday viewing.

Anyone who thinks their family can lay claim to the dysfunction crown will be humbled by this historical tale of scheming royal family members who betray each other with the casual cruelty of a “Survivor” tribemate.

Luckily, in this Showtime remake, they also do it with the elegance and withering wit of James Goldman’s magnificent screenplay, which deservedly won the Oscar for the 1968 original starring Katharine Hepburn as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and Peter O’Toole as King Henry Plantagenet II of England.

Stepping into those large shoes and filling them with spark and vitriol are Glenn Close and Patrick Stewart.

It’s Christmas in 1183 and three of Henry’s sons are lusting after the crown: Conquering soldier and serious mama’s boy Richard the Lionhearted (Andrew Howard) seeks power, devious Geoffrey (John Light) seeks glory and attention from the parents who ignored him, and daddy’s favorite, pimply teenager John (Rafe Spall), is just plain greedy.

Into this churning pot of familial malice comes King Phillip II of France (a divinely delicate but menacing Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) with his own agenda. He quickly embroils himself in the intricate plotting and counterplotting. Matters are complicated by the fact that Henry’s mistress, Alais (Yuliya Vysotskaya), is Phillip’s sister and a surrogate child/competitor for Eleanor, and will be married to whichever son is named heir.

Shot on location in Hungary and Slovakia, the 160-minute “Lion” practically shoots icicles through the screen with its snowy vistas and the chill generated by the gifted ensemble.

Stewart, in an oddly fluffy, layered white wig, nimbly, joyfully even, plays Henry as a man with his wits firmly about him even as his knees give out. Close occasionally lapses into some warbly Hepburnisms but is dynamite at crystallizing Eleanor’s warring emotions, turning on a dime from rage to longing to duplicity and most delicious of all, acidic condescension. As Richard says to his mother, “You’re so deceitful, you can’t ask for water when you’re thirsty.”

The three sons are equally spot on, with Spall in particular giving a hilarious performance as the oafish, petulant and none-too-bright John.

With its smart pacing, terrific visuals and nuanced performances, this “Lion” can roar with pride alongside the original.

by Hannah Mcgill
The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), April 11, 2002

Movies about teenagers haven’t been too inspiring of late, thanks to the dominance of American Pie and its countless imitators. Rich pickings indeed for those who enjoy giggling at vomit gags and having their homophobia reinforced – but not much going on for more complex organisms. A warm welcome, then, to two films that address the trials of the teenage years in very different but equally refreshing ways. Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien takes a trio of adventurers on a hot-headed ramble through rural Mexico; while Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham unfolds its rites of passage against the more workaday backdrop of suburban London semis and amateur football clubs.

Chadha follows two respected, low-key micro-hits – Bhaji on the Beach and What’s Cooking – with a penalty kick at the mainstream. A perky comedy that combines dry English social realism with starry-eyed wish fulfilment more pertinent to a Girls’ Own photo story, Bend It Like Beckham is the tale of gifted footballer Jess (Parminder Nagra), and her efforts to reconcile her sporting ambitions with the demands of her traditional Sikh family.

Rather than come down heavily on restrictive religious lifestyles, however, Chadha takes a light, comic approach to her subject. She’s helped out by a cast who are uniformly good company. Nagra and co-star Keira Knightley are sincere, natural, and convincing leads; Juliet Stevenson provides an enjoyably comic cameo as a reluctant soccer mom who sees her daughter’s formidable ball control skills as a dark threat to future grandmotherhood (“There’s a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one of them without a fella!”) – and in the role of the girls’ coach and mutual crush, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers finally shows that he’s more than a photogenic face.

This is an unashamedly mild film, and some viewers will be frustrated by the slightly circuitous pattern of the narrative (Jess triumphs on the football field; is found out by her parents and reprimanded; lives to fight another day and follow her dream; repeat to fade). In the last 20 minutes of the film, all the obstacles that have confounded Jess vaporise with rather baffling ease, a defiantly feelgood strategy that threatens the film’s credibility. However, it’s hard to dislike such a well-meaning piece of film-making, and the script and performances are a cut above the British norm.