In this week's Expatica cinema section - in collaboration with Picturenose - James Drew reviews the "gimmicky" remake of 'The Eye', the "loathsome" 'Step Up 2: The Streets', the glossy '21' and Loach's "satisfying" 'It's a Free World...'

The Eye

Hot-on-the-heels of its first European screening at the recent Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, the latest Asian horror remake opens this week.

Based on the well-received Chinese 2002 film Gin Gwai by Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang, David Moreau and Xavier Palud make over the original story of Lee Sin-je's young woman who receives a corneal transplant that restores her sight (she's been blind since early childhood) but also gives her the unwanted ability to see ghosts, with post-op Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba) realising that she can not only know see the spectres that share our world, but can also hear and feel them.

The updated screenplay by Sebastian Gutierrez (Gothika, (2003)) arrives at the entirely gimmicky and disposable conclusion that Sydney’s new sensitivity is due to the phenomenon of 'cellular memory' in which recipients of transplanted organs acquire the characteristics and recollections of their original owners.

Ho hum. Not much can really be expected from such a muddle, and the film as a whole follows the by-now depressingly familiar pattern of movies that must be judged in the context of their postproduction alterations. Patrick Lussier apparently conducted two weeks of reshoots of reshoots after the original directors (who were the talented team behind the entirely unsettling Ils (2006)) had delivered their cut, to bump up the explicit scare factor, which entirely misses the point of an original that, despite its slam-bang ending, was based far more on cumulative shudders. Unfortunately, it's the in-yer-face approach that has been adopted wholesale by the remake, more's the pity.
98 mins.


Step Up 2: The Streets

Loathsome sequel to a loathsome original, 2006's Step Up, which was in itself nothing more than a dreary soap opera espoused by teen girls the world over, who turned it into a surprise hit, The Streets offers no more than desultory dancing, an appalling script, and knuckle-chewingly bad acting. Director Jon Chu's excuse for a film sees our original hero Andie (Briana Evigan) fight for acceptance, man, via choreography that's no better than the worst rap video and scene after scene showcasing both the director's incompetence and the dumb, dumb script, written by two 'we're down with the kids, no really we are' 40 year-olds, Toni Ann Johnson and Karen Barna. Do me a favour – don't.
98 mins.

21
Director Robert Luketic's glossy 21, is based on the true story of six MIT students who took Vegas for millions, Ben Mezrich's non-fiction best-seller Bringing Down The House.

Despite that, the film is quite obviously a fictionalized Hollywood soufflé, with Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb's script comprising the hangers-on from the criminal traditions of old Vegas finding themselves pushed out by computer technology along with the sort of Disney World for adults that Vegas has become. To this end, the film introduces Cole Williams, played by a fierce Laurence Fishburne as a security expert who uses his own card counting skill to catch scheming gamblers and finds his attention being drawn to the new casino wiz kid, Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess), who's part of the team that's fleecing the house.
123 mins.

It's a Free World...
Released in the Netherlands this week, uncompromising 'social' director Ken Loach (whom Picturenose interviewed in January of this year, see link below) turns his withering gaze on the realities of the UK’s immigrant labour market, based on nationwide research by writer Paul Laverty.

Our ambiguous heroine Angie (Kierston Wareing), a working class, down-on-her-luck single mother is fired from a recruitment agency after she reacts badly to her boss’s leering advances.  Unbowed, she teams up with her flatmate and friend Rose (Juliet Ellis), and the pair combine their previous working experience to create a small but profitable working agency for illegal immigrants.

Ignoring the warnings of established ‘people traders’ to stay away from this risky business, her growing success hardens her not only to the grim realities facing the workers that she’s exploiting, but also begins to further distance her from her already troubled young son Jamie (Joe Siffleet) - the social services have already warned her that he may be taken into care. How far can she go in her efforts to ‘make something’ of herself? And is she actually hurting the people whom she believes to be ‘giving a chance’ to?

As much an antidote to the anti-immigrant screaming-headline excesses of the UK tabloids as it is a reasonably satisfying social drama, It’s A Free World… succeeds largely thanks to an excellent central performance by relative newcomer Wareing (it’s her first major film role), and a screenplay that by and large convinces the viewer that this is more a documentary than feature film. Loach does not shy away from posing difficult questions of his audience - despite her obvious good intentions, Angie’s actions become increasingly exploitative, even ruthless, as the film progresses, leaving the viewer unsure as to where sympathies should lie. Yet, wisely, Loach does not sit in judgement upon any of his characters’ viewpoints, instead allowing viewers to make up their own minds. Would that sections of the British press might do the same…
96 mins.

James Drew

Interview with Ken Loach

Also expatica and Picturenose would like to draw your attention to ‘Become a Cineuropean’, in which the winner will be given the chance to cover the Cannes Film Festival for Cineuropa’s blog during the festival.

'Expatica's weekly cinema-review section is brought to you in collaboration with Picturenose.com'  

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(expatica 2008)