Anthony Minghella, Bank Job, 10,000 BC: Movie Review Buzz

10,000 BC Revisited

Somewhat expectedly, Roland Emmerich's new film,10,000 BC, has been getting nearly completely trashed by nationally-syndicated critics, with less than 10% of them on RottenTomatoes.com giving the film a favorable opinion. No doubt, Emmerich's films have always been very quite clear on the placement of their heroes, villains, and moral compass, much like most of America's pre-cultural revolutionary adventure films of the 1950s and early 1960s. Indeed, 10,000 BC, like 1,000,000 BC before it, contains virtually no historical accuracy, plausibility or logic, and many of its situations are absurd and seemingly impossible.

However, if you check your mind at the door but expect a purely visual and sometimes stunning entertainment, you could do worse than 10,000 BC. Many of its set pieces are memorable, such as the highly publicized previews of its woolly mammoth stampede and human encounters with a sabre tooth tiger. And Emmerich's film, silly as it might be, is thoroughly diverting and nearly always spectacular, and, in the end, likely aimed for a young audience, much like his previous works, such as STARGATE, GODZILLA, and INDEPENDENCE DAY.

Involving a trek across prehistoric Africa, 10,000 BC posits its heroes in a rescue
through a huge mountain pass, into dense jungle, and traversing the vast Saharan desert, all purportedly in a few weeks time. That this could actually take place on a continent as vast and varied as Africa is likely impossible for its hand-to-mouth natives who use little more than spears and nets to hunt and hardly have adequate clothing or amenities for distant travel.

Gathering other tribes along the way, all of whom apparently learned English from a vagrant wanderer who was thought to have abandoned his family, the rescuers end up in Egyptian territory with the film's greatest sequences still to come as we see the construction of the great pyramids and are offered a suggestion as to the genesis of who might have built them and how.

Yes, there is little nuance and intricacy in 10,000 BC, but Emmerich and the filmmakers here have presented a grand-scale adventure with many flawlessly executed and lasting scenes - even if they are often derivative of work in other films. And yes, the director has produced this type of film in lieu of attempting to give a history lesson. But aren't films at their essence - and were initiated as such over 100 years ago - working in a predominantly visual medium?

THE BANK JOB PAYS OFF

Going back to the earliest silent films with classics including Edwin S. Porter’s seminal 1903 version of The Great Train Robbery, the heist picture is virtually as old as cinema itself. Tackling it in an innovative manner is another matter entirely. With the new English/Australian film based on actual events, THE BANK JOB succeeds in telling an involving tale with more intricacies than most heist pictures contemplate.

Aussie director Roger Donaldson is nothing if not a teller of a variety of tales, from the Anthony Hopkins vehicle THE BOUNTY, his 1984 breakthrough after several down under successes, to the political thriller NO WAY OUT in 1987, to lesser fare including COCKTAIL, Tom Cruise’s followup to TOP GUN, and a wide variety of 1990s films, THE GETAWAY, SPECIES, and DANTE’S PEAK among them. During this decade, he has again varied his output, with two other political thrillers, THIRTEEN DAYS and THE RECRUIT, followed by a re-teaming with Hopkins in the largely underappreciated true story of a New Zealand motorcycle racer, the misleadingly named THE WORLD’s FASTEST INDIAN.

With THE BANK JOB, Donaldson is on different ground again, but has sparked to the material, creating a fast-paced, somewhat spare but gripping true story about a heist in which the thieves have been tricked by a irresistible femme fatale, aptly played (again) by Saffron Burrows, who has gradually become England’s most seductive acting export. Though the heist itself takes up a relatively small portion of the story, Donaldson doesn’t disappoint by providing delicately plotted but always moving post-heist material which concerns business among a variety of criminal underworld, political and small-time figures.

In the 105-year history of cinematic displays of robberies in which the robbers often have a moral code above those who pursue them, THE BANK JOB stands with some of the best heist pictures with a lighter touch and material in which the non-heist aspects of the story stand as tall as the actual heist itself. Certainly, an audience must empathize with the thieves in most cases in order for a story to work. In Michael Mann’s HEAT, for example, we are drawn equally to the plight of both Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s characters. In THE BANK JOB, we are drawn to Jason Statham’s Terry Leather, for mostly unclear reasons. Much of this has to do with the undeniable screen presence of Statham, who is rapidly becoming the English Bruce Willis.

With several plot strands needing resolution, THE BANK JOB relies on Donaldson’s ability to weave these disparate elements together, and he succeeds in an ably minimalist fashion. Except for its lack of inherent comedy, this new film might be compared to an excellent ensemble heist film from the late 1970s that perhaps best exemplifies the genre: William Friedkin’s THE BRINKS JOB. Like the latter film, the former gives an audience a reason to root for the bad guys in a case where there are much worse guys on the fringes of the job with certainly more at stake than the stash which enticed the robbers in the first place.

Anthony Minghella, RIP

British film director Anthony Minghella, who died March 18 of a cerebral hemorrhage at 54, started as a TV writer and emerged in the 1990s as a premiere director of potent dramas. His films won awards and garnered additional accolades for their actors.

Minghella spent most of the 1980s writing for English TV before directing his first feature, Truly Madly Deeply for the BBC in 1990. He followed that with a New York-based comedy, Mr. Wonderful, which starred native New Yorkers Matt Dillon and Annabella Sciorra as former passionate spouses who are destined to reconnect.

His next feature launched Minghella as a critical favorite as The English Patient virtually swept the Academy Awards after its 1996 release. Concerning doomed lovers of all extractions, the serious drama starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, and Kristin Scott Thomas won nine Oscars and was nominated for three others. Though deemed self-important in some circles, the film established Minghella as a vital director who could have his pick of any project at age 42.

He next chose The Talented Mr. Ripley, released three years later, again a very popular dark drama with a strong cast featuring Matt Damon with Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Cate Blanchett. Following a young wanderer as he assumes the identity of the wealthy playboy he is supposed to return home, Ripley received strong notices and elevated Minghella’s status as a potent dramatist with a flair for delivering fully realized characterizations from his performers.

In 2003, Minghella released his next feature, a Civil War narrative with a Homeric plot, Cold Mountain. Though set in the deep South, it featured Australian Nicole Kidman, the English Jude Law, and Texan Renee Zellweger in leading parts with a host of major players in supporting roles or cameos found along Law’s character’s journey. Filmed in Romania, Cold Mountain was less an authentic Civil War piece than the tale of one man’s odyssey, and was nominated for seven Oscars (Zellweger was the lone winner).

Four years following the massive Cold Mountain, Minghella re-emerged with a more intimate film, Breaking and Entering, re-teaming with Law as a businessman featuring dual love interests Binoche and Robin Wright Penn amongst supporting actors from the film’s intended Sarajevo immigrants living in London. With taglines including “Love is no ordinary crime,” and “Lie. Cheat. Steal. Love,” the film had great potential but was somewhat lost in the shuffle of other releases at the time, though it is on DVD. Of note, it was Minghella’s first feature based on his own material since Truly Madly Deeply.

Minghella’s final film, due for release this year, is the even more obscure The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency based on a novel about the first female-owned detective agency in Botswana with a cast of lesser known actors than his previous films. Ostensibly, production had been completed before Minghella passed. At the time of his death, Minghella had also been rumored to make The Ninth Life of Louis Drax based on another novel. The director’s ultimate legacy will be that of an actor’s director who made compelling dramas and might have had his most innovative work in front of him.

Scott Essman
VISIONARY MEDIA
scottessman@yahoo.com
P.O. Box 1722
Glendora, CA 91740
Ph 1 (626) 963-0635
FX 1 (626) 608-0309

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