TIFF 2010, Day Seven

[przed]

Today's two films were a fifty/fifty proposition. And the one that paid off wasn't the one I was expecting to.



Title: Henry's Crime
Director: Malcolm Venville
Country: U.S.
P's Rating: Recommended
I picked this film as a lark, because I like Keanu Reeves and his millimetre thin range, and it fit a gap I had in my schedule. Turns out it's an exceptionally charming comedy that casts Reeves perfectly, and has a wonderful supporting cast led by James Caan and Vera Farmiga. Reeves is Henry, an unhappy tollbooth operator who gets sucked into an unsuccessful armed robbery by a high school friend and ends up in jail. Caan is Max, his cellmate, a friendly confidence man who shows Reeves the ropes in jail and encourages him to find a goal in his life. When he's released, Henry decides his goal is to rob the bank he was convicted of robbing before. ("You've done the time, why not do the crime?" Max tells him.) Along the way, Henry talks Max into applying for parole to help him rob the bank, falls in love with the lead actress in a regional theatre company, and takes a role in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. It's wacky and sweet and well worth a watch. And as a bonus, Keanu, the good Toronto boy, did a Q&A at the screening, and came off as goofy as you'd expect, but also far smarter. (I'm suddenly jonesing for a re-watch of Point Break and The Lake House. No, seriously.)

Title: Brighton Rock
Director: Rowan Joffe
Country: U.K.
P's Rating: Okay
I can't say this is a bad film, but I also can't say I particularly liked it. It's an adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, the story of Pinky, a thug who becomes involved with an innocent waitress, Rose, who can tie him to a killing. The movie is artfully shot (almost too artfully in some scenes) and the acting is solid, but I just never warmed up to the story, nor cared about any of the characters, not even the put upon Rose. The one positive thing the film does is throw the story forward from the late '30s, when Greene wrote it, to 1964, when Mod and Rockers were rioting on Brighton's shores. It's an interesting shift, and gives the movie a certain life, but still can't save it for me.

Comments

[zillah975]

Keanu's so lovely! :) And a much better actor than he gets credit for. He's terrific in The Gift, in a secondary role as the abusive husband of one of the characters, and in Thumbsucker, and Scanner Darkly, River's Edge, Street Kings -- he's turned in some less than stellar performances, but he's done some really good work, too. Sometimes I think his reputation for being a crappy actor is something that feeds on itself more than it does his actual work.