The Invasion

The Invasion (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2007) Every era gets "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers"* it deserves; every adaptation reflects the times it was made—it's just how you interpret the message of the movie is key. Don Siegel's 1950's original could be either an allegory for Communists in our midst, or the sheep-like betrayal of those naming names in the McCarthy (Joe, not Kevin) hearings. Philip Kaufman's 1970's remake featured intellectuals who succumbed to like-minded behavior, not unlike a cult, speaking in alien tongues. The 90's saw Abel Ferrara's version simply called Body Snatchers, and treated the plot like it was an epidemic, or an AIDS allegory.

Now, we get (simply) The Invasion and it has a slightly different spin. Post-Iraq occupation, the feeling of paranoia and subsequent running through the city streets are accompanied by the intermittent soundtrack of world tragedy that tallies just how much of a mess we've made of it. These particular "pod-people" (humans are not replaced, cloned, or supplanted, but spores infect their DNA, affecting their "genetic expression,"** putting the human host to sleep, and allowing the alien spores to live through the host, unemotionally, except for an aggressive tendency to regurgitate in order to multiply their numbers, indoctrinate, coming to your door, using the police to forcibly take people to clinics to be converted. One can make comparisons to Iraq, but also terrorist sleeper-cells "in our midst." 

But, just so you know which side the film-makers are coming down on, one of the converted makes an un-impassioned speech to Dr. Bennell (Nicole Kidman) about embedded pod-ification being a better life—a more tranquil life...except, of course, for all the chasing around, the deliberate traffic accidents and projectile vomiting, the kind of which culminates in an extremely loopy sequence where Benell and her child have hijacked a car and go tearing around the streets with pod-people clinging to it while its hood is on fire. Pretty hard to make an intellectual case for "Better World" stick with that evidence.

Except for the emphasis on strong women protecting their brood this time around, the changes are mostly cosmetic. Instead of pods, which would imply cloning or replacement (so last century!), these spores infect you, then while you sleep encase you in a caul-like casing (evidently of the junk you take out of your eye in the morning, supplying the necessary "Ewww" factor).

But, there's an added creepiness to this movie and it belongs to star, Nicole Kidman, who seems decidely plasticene—almost "Barbie-like" in this film. I'm not talking about that huge shiny forehead that she wears during awards show. Here's she's rail thin, and her costumer has fitted her with extremely tight ensembles—so tight, in fact, that (how do I put this delicately?) no part of her anatomy moves when she's in motion, if you get my drift. One begins to suspect that she has already been taken over, or she's the same character who escaped from The Stepford Wives. Whatever the reason, it's a bit creepy.

* Just to be clear what we're talking about here: "The Body Snatchers" was a 1955 sci-fi novel by the extraordinary Jack Finney (read his "Time and Again" sometime), who, although, he usually fudged the science bit, managed to use the genre for great allegorical points. "The Body Snatchers" was about an invasion of "space-pods" that infected a California town and would replace human beings with emotionless drones. The time might be right for a new version where the pods come already accessorized with cell-phones.

** The poor guy saddled with the "Basil Exposition" gobbledy-gook dialogue is the brilliant Jeffrey Wright, who does a yeoman's job of making it seem like he's actually thinking of all this tech-speak off the top of his head, although he looks a tad uncomfortable doing it.

Our Kind of Traitor

Our Man in Nirvana
or
It was My Mother...You Get Sentimental.

It seems to be another good year for John le Carré adaptations. The BBC did a quite honorable version of his 1993 "The Night Manager", and this, Our Kind of Traitor—one of David Cornwell's shorter books—is just concise enough to make it to feature film length without feeling like cheating the source. I have a particular love for le Carré's books, as I've been reading them since the Cold War days with their intricate chess strategies between spy networks, undermined by human frailties and loyalties, often drawn with Dickensian complexity and piquancies. With glasnost, le Carré's antagonists moved from behind the Iron Curtain and into the boardrooms of friendly nations, criminals by nature but with an undercover veneer of prosperity and prominence. Their goals were not political (were the others, really?) so much as a craven desire for power...and more of it and taking down any threats to acquiring it. Although the targets were different, the battles were business, as usual.

His protagonists are not larger-than-life secret agents hiding in plain sight, but government functionaries, rumpled men, flawed and quite extraordinary in their ordinariness, or Hitchcockian innocents caught in the gears of machinations they were quite unaware of working in the background. 

Le Carré's characters either are professionals keeping secrets or amateurs having secrets thrust upon them, but are compelled by their Nature to do the best they can, even to the point of sacrifice. Sometimes they suffer for their efforts and sometimes they can't accomplish their goals with 100% satisfaction. In the current political climate, such might be labeled "losers." They've always been heroes to me, even if they're mourned rather than lauded.

But, the stakes have changed. In the earlier simpler times, they've fought for ideals, for governments. But, around the time of "The Russia House," that changed. In that version of Casablanca-turned-on-its-head, it is not that "the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world," but they weigh a lot more in a topsy-turvy crazy world of overstuffed bureaucracies in which ideals are sacrificed for not much and for the most worthless of McGuffins. The loyalties are spoken very plainly in that novel (and film) by it's ex-pat Brit: "You're my country now." When the country of your birth proves undeserving of loyalty, better to take it personally, on a human level, and protect what you can...and what you should.

Perry Makepiece (Ewan McGregor) is good at keeping secrets. A teacher on Holiday in Marrakech with his lawyer-girlfriend Gail Perkins (Naomie Harris), he's trying to patch things up with her after having an affair with one of his students. But Gail is diffident, not trusting him, and business back home pulls her away from a dinner at an expensive restaurant, leaving Perry alone. What do you do to fill the gaps left by absence?

Perry is invited by a fellow restaurant patron, a garrulous, gregarious Russian, Dima (Stellan Skarsgård, looking the worst for wear but giving one of his best performances) to join him for some after-dinner drinking. Drinking leads to gamesmanship and an invite to a party with sex, drugs and rock and roll, but when Perry stumbles on a rape in progress, he interferes despite being physically outmatched by the perpetrator. Dima interjects, and perhaps noting Perry's tendency to "white knight," invites him and Gail to his daughter's birthday party. When Perry comes back in the morning, his lawyer-lover cross-examines him about where he's been and why he's scruffed up, suspecting that he's catting around again. But, Perry tells her about his encounter with Dima and mentions the birthday party. Gail is reluctant, but accompanies him.

At the party, the two are overwhelmed by Dima's extravagance (his daughter is given a camel for her birthday...a camel, not a pony) and by his generosity with his time and his family. But, at some point Perry and Dima disappear, leaving Gail fuming a bit, but this may be one of those times when it's best not to find out too much.

Dima gives Perry a flash-drive, which he wants delivered to "MI6." Dima is a money launderer for a Russian drug cartel, which is going through a spate of extremely hostile take-overs by a kingpin calling himself The Prince. A friend of Dima's, a fellow "account manager," has been murdered, along with his wife and oldest daughter and Dima suspects his organization's next, and when that happens...Perry is tasked to contact Intelligence so that Dima can get his family, and with luck himself, to the West. Perry agrees. He doesn't tell Gail.

At customs, Perry reveals what he's got and authorities detain him, bringing in investigator Hector Meredith (Damian Lewis) and Luke Weaver (Khalid Abdalla) to question him for hours, leaving Gail quite peeved. When she finds out about all the hub-bub at the airport hub, she thinks Perry has gone mad—what has he gotten himself into now? A suspicious alliance forms between Perry and Hector, who has his own reasons for handling all this personally—he's on the "outs" at the Service, due to the arrest and incarceration of his son for drug possession, a prosecution pushed for by a government official (Jeremy Northam) Hector has been investigating for collusion with the Soviets. He's warned by his boss, Billy Matlock (Mark Gatiss, co-creator and "Mycroft" of the new "Sherlock") to not take it too personally or any gains might be "disappeared" again.

But, it's personal for everybody. As personal as family. And governments, bureaucracies and spies know bupkis about "family values." They know little about trust. And act accordingly.

Performances by the cast are measured and assured throughout, everyone having outstanding moments and director Susanna White keeps things low-key and lived-in. Its another fine adaptation of le Carré with no false notes or grand-standing. Definitely recommended, it's my kind of movie.

Eye in the Sky

The Nail
or
Attack of the Drones: Showing Your Collateral

Patton loathed the modern age of warfare (circa 20th Century), not just in the movie bearing his name, but in his real life, too. Patton yearned for the era of the personal warrior, battles fought mano a mano. He learned tank strategies at West Point, devised some of them himself, but generally despaired of mechanized warfare and fantasized taking on Rommel in a one on one tank fight, like jousters. Push-button warfare, he saw no point to it, certainly no glory, certainly no triumph.

Patton was a bit crazy, but he had a point.  No triumph also means no responsibility. You can't wash your hands from a killing. Ask Pontius Pilate. Ask Lady Macbeth. No matter how far removed you may place yourself, culpability is still there. In the 40's Humphrey Bogart's characters sarcastically derided "push-button killers...killing by remote-control" especially when he was being written by Howard Hawks. His opinion usually earned a drink thrown in his face—or worse—for the remark, as it implied cowardice, shirking off responsibility.

Modern warfare (in the 21st Century) is conducted by drones, and one could look at that as killing by remote control, if one wanted to over-simplify it. But, as the new film by Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine—but don't hold it against him—and Ender's Game, rather appropriately) Eye in the Sky, shows it is hardly removed from responsibility. It takes place over twelve hours, focusing on one military operation, dubbed "Operation Egret," focusing on an Al Shebaab terrorist cell in Nairobi, Kenya that has been under surveillance for several months by British military forces, the operation headed by Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren). 

This particular group, made up of Kenyan, American and British fanatics with murder on their minds, is being monitored as they come from various parts of the globe to converge on one house in a small Nairobi neighborhood. What they're planning is not known, but, given their collective history, it can't be good. 

The plan is to remove them from the terror equation by capturing them and separate teams from around the globe are pressed to this purpose: In Surrey, Col. Powell heads the direct operation; at Permanent Joint Headquarters in North London the situation is being overseen by the Foreign Ministry and by Lt. General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman in what will be his last filmed performance), AG George Matherson (Richard McCabe), and observers Brian Woodale (Jeremy Northam) and Angela Northam (Monica Dolan)—their parts must have been described in the script as "insufferable bleeding hearts"; drone flight operations originate in Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas, the pilots being 2nd Lieutenant Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) and Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox); charged with imaging intel at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii is Lucy Galvez (Kim Engelbrecht).

Oh, for the local angle, the "boots on the ground" are headed by Major Moses Owiti (Vusi Kunene), with close surveillance by Damisi (Ebby Weyime), she of the "hummingbird-cam" and Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi of Captain Philips), he of the "beetle-cam," who employ these ludicrous little surveillance systems to get extraordinarily close views of the terrorists.

Then, there are the Mo'Allim family, who live in the same block as the terrorist safe-house—Fatima (Faissa Hassan), Musa (Armaan Haggio) and 8 year old Alia (Aisha Takow), who studies behind shuttered windows away from the disapproving eyes of Al Shebaab thugs. Allah knows what they'd do if they knew that she rocks a hula-hoop.

Aliah will be the focus of concern for all of the eyes in the sky, as her daily chore is to walk to a corner table and sell the bread her mother bakes. Today, her spare little stand is in a kill-zone, watched around the world and discussed in urgent tones, especially when the surveillance shows that the safe-house meeting is for the pre-blast meeting of a suicide bomber. As the C4 is unwrapped in a back bedroom, the "capture" scenario is upgraded to a "kill" scenario, the troops are ordered to stand down, and the reconnaissance drone is brought to bear as a missile launcher. The clock ticks down and the discussions go up levels of responsibility to the PM. Then the US, who is monitoring—they monitor EVERYBODY—butts in to remind that these Al Shebaabers are, after all, No's 3, 4 and 5 on the East Africa Most Wanted list, and how often do you get to pull a "hat-trick?"

The conversations turn slightly "Strangelovely" with talk of 45% versus 65% "kill probabilities," "real war" versus "propaganda war" victories, and "kill-chains," but the reality is those hovering pictures and the little girl with the bread-stand. A savage balance is weighed—her life versus the lives of the potential victims of the suicide bomber. The piloters in Vegas have their orders—if there's a 50% chance (or greater) that civilians will be killed (the "collateral assessment"), they can't launch—or, more appropriately, can go "by the book" and countermand the generals and refuse. And their evidence is on the same screen every one is looking at. That is more than a little unprecedented in modern warfare. It is certainly a far cry from "chateau generals," far removed from the repercussions of their orders. It is real. It is now. And the entire kill-chain of command must stare into the face of death, whether they're satisfied with the results or not.

I mentioned Dr. Strangelove earlier. This is more like Fail-Safe, warfare conducted in closed rooms, but, as opposed to that film, with the hand-wringing kept to a minimum (in the movie, but the film is tense enough to produce that result in an audience). Concentrated, focused, it is like a great BBC drama compressed into a taut, tense 90 minutes. Hood doesn't mess a lot with Guy Hibbert's screenplay, doesn't over-complicate it. He lets the situation and the superb crew of actors, some new, some veterans, do all the heavy lifting (one amazing bit of trivia is that the film was shot entirely in Hood's home country of South Africa).

Performances are universally good, although a bit too teary-eyed in places for professional soldiers, especially if it's more than their first week on duty. Mirren is back in her "Prime Suspect" phase with a chip on her shoulder that almost makes her hunch-backed. Paul cool and assured, even under duress, with his finger on the trigger, I was surprised by my delight at seeing Agbi, who's too keen a presence to disappear after his Oscar-nominated performance for Phillips.

And then, there's Rickman. The man died January 14th of this year and the film is dedicated to him. He also has the best, most multi-layered line (which he delivers with the cold, nuanced melancholy he excelled at), effectively ending the film as it hangs in the mind, not only because of the way it reflects on the entire film, but also in the way his reading of it complicates its wording, echoing, echoing, echoing. Eye in the Sky is provocative enough, one hopes it's not remembered solely for being his final visual bow, but he couldn't have had a better exit line.