Dirty Work

[See “Conventional Cuts,” The American Spectator of December, 2006-January, 2007 under “Articles”]

This well-made French film by Cédric Kahn re-examines the relationship between civilization and savagery. Again.

Cool violence is no more able to make up for the absurdities of the story than it is in The Matrix, which was Kurt Wimmer’s model.

In Love and War is a New Line release of a Richard Attenborough film, based on Henry Villard’s book, Hemingway in Love and War. It is co-written by Villard’s son, Dimitri. Villard Sr. was in Italy with Hemingway and Agnes von Kurowsky, the (American) nurse on whom Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms is…

In Donnie Brasco, based, as it is at pains to remind you, on a true story, Mike Newell and his screenwriter, Paul Attanasio, set up a highly interesting conflict with a great deal of skill and then simply slither out of it at the end, leaving the issues they raise unresolved. The excuse for this…

Hard Rain by Mikael Salomon could have been and almost is a really competently managed thriller. Half-way through it I was weighing up whether it deserved one or two stars and delighting in what I took to be an unexpected throwback to the old days in Hollywood when the stories the movies told were tough…