thinks that two highly-anticipated titles that generated some Oscar buzz during production have tanked upon release and will now undoubtedly be ditched by the golden man. Oliver Hirschbiegel, who did beautiful work in German films Downfall and The Experiment, seems clueless when tasked to put together the last two years of the life of the most photographed woman on Earth. Simply titled Diana, the film is far too eager to bring to life the key tabloid moments of the late princess’ life – treading the landmine in Angola, frolicking with Dodi Fayed on his yacht, declaring herself a queen of hearts during an interview with BBC, connecting with children who lost their limbs to landmines, running from the paparazzi, standing in the Ritz elevator before her final destiny – and connecting all these in a perfunctory manner that tells no more than what we don’t already know. It glosses over the complexities and fragilities that make Diana such an enigma, and we see none of the personal issues (bulimia, depression, divorce) that plague the woman struggling to live the fairy tale everyone else forced upon her. I mean, how credible is this screenplay that wipes Charles completely off the face of the planet and gives no more than one fleeting long shot of William and Harry? Instead, the film spends an extraordinary amount of time on the soap opera romance between Diana and heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, but yet portrays him with nary a loveable trait, and her, as a manipulator of the media who just needs to be loved. And through it all, they spout ridiculous and unintentionally hilarious dialogue that philosophizes everything inane and inconsequential (“You don’t perform the operation. The operation performs you.” Come again?). In the acting department, Naomi Watts, who cannot be faulted for bearing almost no resemblance to Diana, tries too hard with the doe-eyed look, while everyone else has too little written to make much of an impact. Faring slightly less worse is Ridley Scott’s The Counsellor, the story of a lawyer whose virgin foray into drug trafficking goes completely awry but narrated in an unnecessarily complex and tedious manner. There are a few standout scenes, two of which are graphic killing methods involving decapitating the victim’s head, and a third shows Cameron Diaz leaving yet another mark in cinematic history after what she did in There’s Something About Mary. Here, it has to do with what she does with/on/atop a yellow convertible, something which has to be seen to be believed. But these parts do not quite add up to a coherent whole, as scripwriter Cormac McCarthy overloads the lines, Scott overdoes the stylistics, and neither oversees the overall pacing and tone of the film, which sag and drag over the course of 117 minutes. We feel little for the characters, so much so that in the climactic moment when Michael Fassbender bawls his eyes out, it is a strangely cold and detached one. The rest of the A-list cast try their best with what they have, with Javier Bardem being the most successful in fleshing out the flashy Texan kingpin that Fassbender’s counsellor character does business with. Brad Pitt waltzes in and out periodically as a greasy middle man while Penelope Cruz, perhaps in the deal only because her husband’s in it, is completely underused as Fassbender’s girlfriend. It is Rosie whatever-happened-to-her Perez who makes an indelible impression as a convicted murderer whose biker son does more than the speeding he is thrown into jail for. This is a film that hits the occasional high, but is otherwise languishing in its own mix of boredom and incomprehension. (Diana – 4; The Counsellor – 5 red bean steamed cakes)
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 18:46:06 +0000