The Fall Guy (2024)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Could the 2020s see the return of simple, original, fabulous standalone blockbusters from major studios? So far, the signs are good, and after starring in both Barbie and now The Fall Guy, Ryan Gosling is making quite the splash as Hollywood's "it" leading man. It's refreshing to have these big budget, creatively inspired, wholly joyful movie experiences in an age when everything is part of larger IPs and guaranteed message boards meant to tease out obscure references in other media that is required for full comprehension. The studio effort to entertain above all else is admirable for the first time in a while, and especially with these titles that aren't weighty or even apparently eager for awards.

And just as how Barbie worked to remind us of the magic of production design in practical ways, The Fall Guy explicitly wants to lionize stunt workers in our age of fully saturated CGI action. It helps that it's being directed by David Leitch, who started his career as a stunt double and whose previously directed films (including John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Deadpool 2) have significantly altered the landscape of contemporary action as a genre. Here, Leitch is clearly in his element, and the labor of love is palpable in every single scene of this film, which carries a uniquely electrifying energy that never lags. Every time I thought the film might zig it zagged, and not necessarily in terms of plot (though the writing by Drew Pearce is fine) but in terms of style and tone. Here we have a rambunctious mix of humor, romance, mystery, crime, and of course action but never in the expected manner. Each set piece gets bigger and more elaborate, whether it's an insane ride in a dump truck through urban streets and a dog that bites crotches or an emotionally fraught slow chase between speedboats in a marina, and all are executed with obvious care and good awareness for its audience's patience.

The plot is easy enough to follow with a few arguably unnecessary complications, so we won't recount it here. Gosling himself carries the movie with the kind of '80s panache of Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, or Sylvester Stallone, and he's magnetic on screen. Emily Blunt isn't given a whole lot to do, but she performs reliably and shines in the first act, and again in the finale, well after her shoehorned karaoke scene (which isn't her fault, it's just an annoying trope of rom-coms that can be put to bed now, thank you very much). With their leading power, The Fall Guy reminds us that sometimes, and only really in movies like this, star power can be both the saving grace of a picture and completely earned by the performer. Effortlessly funny and sexy at the same time, Gosling's swagger isn't just his brand; he also acts his face off here, bringing his sizable filmography in indie dramas to bear on a film that he certainly could have just shown up to glide through.

The supporting cast are all excellent but shockingly understated. In a film where style arguably supersedes substance, it's telling that nobody is really hamming it up like they could. Everyone is grounded in a refreshing way. Key to this is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, playing the big movie star for whom Gosling is meant to double in stunts. While he consciously references other big stars like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in his mannerisms and delivery (even his voice feels stolen from Matthew McConaughey), he's not making fun of any of them or even really trying to pull focus; he's just reminding us of the reality of leading men we know and demonstrating the separation of expectation versus production process. It's carefully calibrated and really smart. Similarly, the film-within-the-film that acts as the plot's mobilizing entity always has its trusty producer Gail at hand, and Hannah Waddingham (in a shocking dark wig) comes the closest to a full camp performance without really stepping over that line. Always with a bag on her arm, a drink in her hand, and a plastered grin on her face -- always somewhat masked by hair or glasses -- she moves through the world of the film in a more diminished capacity that we're used to seeing from her, which has the added effect of making her less predictable and more interesting.

The rest of the cast is fine, though I'd like to have seen more for Winston Duke and Stephanie Hsu to do. A great soundtrack of period-appropriate music keeps things moving when the plot threatens to slack. The behind-the-scenes of the movie industry on display could have been featured more, and frankly the organized crime plot was overbaked to a point of distraction. But it allows for some truly eye-popping stunt work which is what the film is really all about anyway. A love letter to the guys on set with their thumbs up as they risk their bodies and lives, The Fall Guy feels as much a gift to modern audiences annoyed with CGI-laden three-hour features that take themselves too seriously as it does to its own industry as anxieties about AI and deepfakes reach a boiling point. It's a great way to start the summer blockbuster season.

Tarot (2024)

Score: 1.5 / 5

A group of seven friends rent a mansion in the Catskills to celebrate a birthday and, while there, they discover a box of unique Tarot cards in the basement. Naturally, they use them to read their astrological horoscopes and soon after their readings start to come true in the worst ways possible. As their friends die in violent ways, the survivors race against time to learn the mystery of the deck and stop its curse from continuing.

There is nothing -- nothing -- original about this story, the latest example of the same plot used in horror films for well over fifty years now. Naughty, pretentious, vaguely self-aware teens (who inexplicably can afford a mansion as their weekend getaway) read the proverbial Latin and summon an evil force that preys on them one by one. That's what the film is and is meant to be, so perhaps a rote screenplay and familiar ground isn't the point? Sure, let's follow that line of thinking.

What, then, could Tarot offer a discerning audience? A masterful plot twist, or unexpectedly timely character arc? Sadly, no such luck. I hoped that perhaps the reader of the cards might have an ulterior motive, revealed in climactic fashion, or that the cards themselves might be sentient. Again we are disappointed. SPOILER ALERT: the cards formerly belonged to an 18th century astrologer whose daughter was unjustly murdered by a grieving baron, so she cursed the cards to kill anyone who used them in the future. Yet it's also very much the same astrologer who appears to possess the cards, manifesting as the various figures as she haunts and hunts her victims. So the internal logic of the central horror conceit doesn't quite line up.

Frustrating as that may be -- and indeed it is -- it is not the film's only nor greatest sin. First-time feature directors Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg have no clear sense of what exactly they are filming. Helped by an unfocused and droll screenplay, they are unable to determine which (if any) characters are worth investing in, leaving us adrift in an ensemble of actors who look and perform like they'd rather be doing anything else. The only interesting thing for us is to see when and how they will inevitably face their fates. Well, if it is fate; the "main" character, who recently went through a breakup, spends lots of time talking about fate but conveniently forgets her own words repeatedly. Worse still, the directors never engage with any tone for the proceedings, allowing one particularly annoying character (Jacob Batalon) to crank out obnoxious attempts at comedy and others to be simpering, shaken, or silly in their turn.

The kills are the only memorable parts of this film for me, and even most of them are lackluster in terms of editing technique, recalling as they do scary flicks from the early 2000s. The designs of the manifested cards -- mostly practical -- are pretty great, which is a boon. But they are featured so briefly, in such woefully dim lighting, and with such choppy cuts that they're hardly introduced before disappearing again. If this was meant to be a creature feature, why don't we see more of the goods? If it's meant to be a possession shockfest, where's the ingenuity and creativity with these nominally diverse bodies? If it's meant to be a warning against occultism (or, better yet, a satire on teens and New Age spirituality, which is absolutely the direction I'd have taken), where is its earnestness or conviction?

The irritatingly vaguely titled Tarot is apparently based on the 1992 novel Horrorscope, and while I'm curious about that material and hope it's more inventive than this dismal adaptation, I'm more curious why that fabulous title wasn't carried over. Perhaps the writers (also the directors, mind) took to heart the idea of being read to and so decided to read to us, over-explaining every single step of the plot in exposition that had me audibly groaning in the theater. Wasting its potential for novelty, the film relies on the worst kind of jump scares in the most predictable places, insulting the monster designer by poorly lighting and frantically jerking us away from the film's most interesting assets. It also insults its own production designer by starting us in a suitably creepy mansion (please ignore the unlikelihood of that, as a rule) and then tossing us into a shitty college campus for most of the movie. A movie that insults its own creative minds -- and the only ones with clear artistic effort here -- doesn't deserve to have a life of its own.

Challengers (2024)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The surprise of the season: me, finding a romantic sports drama to be entertaining, riveting, and indeed challenging. Its central conceit -- that of a love triangle between young tennis pros -- is fun enough even without its shockingly effective cast of excellent actors. Its presentation for us is something akin to a Greek tragicomedy, where we access the trio from both interior and exterior perspectives as learn along with them how their actions in one time period echo through consequences and tribulations in other times of their lives. And, in the caring hands of director Luca Guadagnino, its energy is that of an arthouse thriller, one perhaps less explicitly erotic than we might prefer, but absorbingly sensual in its tactile pleasures.

To each of my points: first, the story itself. I loved Battle of the Sexes and its real-life basis more than I anticipated, too, but something about a sports drama completely divorced from biopic strictures was fiercely refreshing this time. Especially tennis, which I've always found rather elegant and indeed oddly intriguing in its singles-or-pairs setup. So to feature a duo who become a sort of trio, all with conflicting and competing professional desires (to say nothing of their personal desires), is a radically cool way of approaching people devoted to their craft. So many movies have been made about actors doing this, but not as many about athletes, at least not in such desperately physical and psychological ways. Zendaya (The Greatest Showman, Malcolm & Marie) has never looked nor acted better as the pro-turned-manager due to an injury she never seems to have dealt with mentally, while Mike Faist (West Side Story, The Bikeriders) makes an incredible case for himself as a hunky leading man caught in an existential crisis and dealing with insecurities on all fronts. Their counterpart enters in the form of Josh O'Connor (God's Own Country, Emma.), who similarly delivers a career-best performance as the rakish pro-turned-hustler fated to triangulate the other two.

Structured less as a puzzle box and more as a knot, the film leaps back and forth in time to demonstrate in real time how the characters' actions in the past impact them in the present. It is occasionally confusing, but the heady swirl of strong personalities and usually bad decisions make for a sort of fever dream effect on us, offering the right insight just when we need it to understand a key moment in the present. One of the film's key scenes takes place fairly early, as Zendaya visits the motel room of the guys, whose partnership is unusually close already, and ends up seducing them so much that they engage with each other as she leans back to admire her handiwork. It's never -- and I mean never -- quite clear what game she is playing (it's telling that she's the only one whose athletic dreams were dashed, yet she manages to maintain and even increase her power over virtually everyone around her), her enigmatic presence works best when she's at her most instinctive, reacting in real time to the stimuli around her before retreating to scheme and calculate some more. The guys are much easier to read, and the implied inclusion of O'Connor's queerness was welcome for this viewer.

There will be some who are disappointed in this film not being -- as was suggested in its marketing -- about a throuple, and while there is certainly not group sex happening on screen, this film does dramatize the toxicity of this kind of emotional and psychological investment in two intimate partners exceptionally well. Much can be discussed about all three characters, none of whom are very healthy individually (mentally, that is; all are in peak physical condition) and so none of whom are very healthy when paired up. Some might compare this film to others in the popular narrative subgenre that show episodic scenes out of chronological order in order to deconstruct a relationship and its apparently fated demise. This isn't wholly inaccurate, but its kinetic energy is far more arresting than the usual marital talkfest, and its finale leaves us on a surprising high note after the much heavier weight of all that came before.

I'd have liked more workshopping between the writer and editor, as a streamlined approach to the narrative would have helped me feel more grounded in each scene and, I think, would feel less gimmicky in terms of pure storytelling. This story doesn't need the volleys back and forth in time; we get enough exciting shots of that on the court. Speaking of which (and I can't believe I'm saying this) the sports scenes were actually really interesting to me! Shots are served by the characters and the camera in tandem -- helped by a relentless, propulsive score that leans heavily into techno beats that really worked for me -- making our experience of the film one of some complicity. They aren't walking away from these encounters unscathed, and neither are we; in fact, we're having fun while they hit us around. One shot in the climax literally has us in the ball's POV, and it's just as absurd as it is gut-wrenching.

These actors take their jobs as seriously as Guadagnino clearly does, and dialogue that could often be laughable or flat often feels red-hot and dirty. They gleam with sweat most of the time, cameras swooning a little too close to them all as they breathe and serve and hit on and off the court. They're performing like tried and true stars of old with a script that caters to them and under the eye of accomplished filmmakers who support them in getting that chance. They all embrace a ferocity and eroticism we rarely see in films these days, and I'm not talking about steamy sex a la Bridgerton. Even on the court, with stylized presentation, the drama between characters is just as clear and intentional as it is off the court, where their rivalries and intrigues mirror the action. While the film reaches for intangibles, it never lets anything get in the way of its own fierce physicality or its kinetic forward motion, a masterful approach to this material.

Civil War (2024)

Score: 5 / 5

Movies like this rarely come along. They also rarely measure up to their potential. But Alex Garland does some of the most clever, interesting, and provocative filmmaking yet of his career here, which is saying a hell of a lot (considering his directorial filmography of Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men). 

Whatever you think Civil War is going to be, you're wrong. Its title and any brief synopsis might lead you to expect a cautionary tale about contemporary social anxieties in the US. Many professional reviews laud Garland's technique and vision but decry what they see as vapid, pointless violence without real political or historical grounding or consequence, a safe bet to avoid upsetting any real-life factions. Several friends I know who have seen it thoroughly enjoyed it as a summer blockbuster-type action war flick with a little too much drama and pretense. But all these descriptions are horribly reductive, leading audiences into specific, limiting perspectives on the film without encouraging the kind of free curiosity the film explicitly lionizes.

It's not like anything Garland -- hell, anyone -- has made before. Endlessly convincing, haunting and disturbing in equal measure, the film constantly feels like something we shouldn't be witnessing. Despite Garland's clear love of other films and stories that clearly influenced this project, perhaps most notably Apocalypse Now and The Year of Living Dangerously (though Salvador and A Private War came to my mind; a friend referenced Under Fire and Welcome to Sarajevo, which I've not seen), here he carves out his own niche by having us follow Western journalists covering the collapse of a country. The difference is that, this time, it's our country.

Set in the not very distant future, one perhaps approaching us sooner than we would like, we're first introduced to the US President (Nick Offerman) announcing that the country's civil war is near an end. We're not told, ever, the exact origin or nature of this strife. We're not told, yet, that this is the president's third term in office, though hints are dropped later about his authoritarian rule in what has become a dystopian nation. Exact politics are intentionally blurry and counter-intuitive: there are no red/blue divides in the way we understand them, but rather multiple factions at play. A New People's Army controls the Pacific Northwest and northern Plains, and the Florida Alliance apparently recently failed, while the main players we follow are the Loyalists (presumably what is left of the "united" states) and the Western Forces (of California and Texas by name). And, in fact, though the president claims victory is nigh, we're given lots of reasons to doubt that.

Intentionally -- and effectively -- vague politics aside, even the nature and exact geography of this war are unclear. A brief shot of the contiguous map, color coded for its factions, does little to help. This isn't a hyperrealistic prophecy about the fall of America, and it's not meant to be. This is a hypothesis, a thought experiment of what American values are and why we never seem able to agree on things. Garland's tight-wire act between what could be thickly politicized melodrama and propaganda (in an election year, no less) manifests as an arthouse film about everything wrong with US culture even as it deliberately sidesteps our specifics. It's an enormous gamble both narratively and stylistically, but Garland and his team pull it off in his biggest film yet as well as what will be known as one of the best films of the year.

Its most novel aspect is its characters, the small group of reporters with whom we enter and exit the world of the film. The journalists -- specifically photographers, whose work is nonverbal and slightly more defensible against accusations of bias or "fake news" -- aren't interested in explaining the conflict or searching for meaning in it. They do, however, want the first scoop, and it's not always clear why; they don't seem to have much editorial oversight or quota to meet, so perhaps they simply want to convey images from the battlefield to the public as quickly and transparently as possible. They have apparently no concern for the politics of what's happening, and as they embark on a tour of the battlefront, their values take shape as something far more meaningful than what the soldiers around them are fighting for.

I won't recap the plot in detail here. Nor will I summarize the characters (the actors are, uniformly, excellent, especially Kirsten Dunst and Wagner Moura). They assemble somewhat haphazardly in Brooklyn at a horrific scene before deciding to go to Washington, D.C., to interview the president before the rebels assault the city. Needing to follow the battlefront leads them in a wide circle to the south -- Charlottesville, in fact, which is noteworthy -- and the horrors they witness, endure, and escape en route make up the story. Much like the characters, we're forced to see the unthinkable and decide what to do with it, either to weep or avert our eyes, either to sit with the impact or compartmentalize it to keep going. The film is a test of endurance that I'm not sure it's possible to experience entirely unscathed.

Hot-topic items extend beyond the dropping of key red/blue locations that aren't as obvious as they might seem (consider the film's California/Texas alliance, even as California becomes more libertarian in real life). The president is referred to as a fascist, but that label is less politically distinctive than it used to be. Questions of race abound, not only because Stephen McKinley Henderson plays one of the characters. Soldiers of indeterminate allegiance are clueless on the battlefront, sometimes just shooting because someone a mile away has a gun, explicitly aware that there is no leadership or oversight for their own private battles. Some soldiers, like Jesse Plemons in rosy red sunglasses, grill them for what "kind" of Americans their group of two white women and four people of color really are without any indication of what "kind" of American he is. Others let the journalists tag along without question or reserve as they storm the White House in the film's thrilling climax.

And while some audiences may resent not being told more via thick exposition and heavier world-building, I appreciate the vagaries and deliberate ambivalence baked into Civil War. The characters know where they are and what's happening -- more or less -- so they don't constantly talk about it to let us in. Because that's not what real people in their shoes would do. This holds true right through the film's ending, which features a moment of revelation that shook me to the core in a manner not unlike that in Nightcrawler. I can hardly wait to see this film again, but I'll need some comfort food to go with it.

Abigail (2024)

Score: 3.5 / 5

I don't often get on this soapbox but today is the day. Marketing rarely matters to me personally, and I don't usually avoid spoilers because regardless of what "happens" in a film, in terms of plot, I'd rather focus on other elements. But for a film whose primary purpose seems to be its unique mashup of genres, a film that hinges on its own conceptual novelty, to broadcast its main point of interest -- and its only twist -- without room for doubt or speculation in its trailers, is a problem.

Everyone knows it by now, so it's no spoiler: Abigail features its titular character as its antagonist, a little girl whose desire to be a ballerina far exceeds her desire for blood. She's a vampire. This high-concept horror aspect of the film doesn't materialize until about halfway through, about the time when we need something to pick up the energy and raise the stakes. For the first half, though, the film is simply a home invasion thriller, a crime heist in which a needlessly large group of criminals kidnap Abigail, the daughter of a powerful underworld figure in NYC and hold her in an upstate mansion. Their goal is to hold her for 24 hours and they'll each get a massive payout.

Note: the money is laughably excessive and a general disregard for the specifics of any plot details makes even the start of this film difficult to swallow. You've got to give your audience a little more than "big money, easy target, some crime" to make your story compelling. And delightful as his presence is, it takes more than a spooky Giancarlo Esposito setting the scene to make for a chilling premise. It's as though the writers were so eager to get to the climactic encounter between vampire ballerina child and adult thugs that they didn't really care to set it up properly.

Thankfully, the cast are likable and interesting enough to help carry us over any initial misgivings. Not that any of them are written with depth or intrigue, mind. But Dan Stevens, Kevin Durand, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, and the late Angus Cloud are all compelling in their own ways, especially Stevens here, whose deliciously wicked streak of unpredictability carries most of the group scenes. Melissa Barrera is unfortunately slighted by the screenplay, which treats her character as a sort of anti-heroine, so thinly drawn she couldn't stand up to any analysis and so blandly delivered that I repeatedly forgot it was the otherwise skilled actress. To be fair, it's a thankless role, and I don't think she played it badly; there's just so little for her to work with or believably imbue into the role. 

Alisha Weir plays the title role with a confidence and charm that, frankly, shocked me. Reportedly doing most of her own stunts, she embodies a physical force of evil like I haven't seen in a film in years. People will surely compare this film to M3GAN, but the dancing and violent little girl are shallow comparison points; that film was a mess, but this one consistently knows what it's doing and why. By the time she's given the full monster treatment -- with some excellent makeup and special effects -- the film tips over the edge into a gorefest that makes its latter half infinitely more entertaining. Well-choreographed action scenes see Abigail chasing her prey through Gothic halls, and though frenetic editing makes for some truly hard-to-watch sequences (the editor should be slapped for repeatedly cutting right at the most interesting part or before the actor actually enters the frame of the shot where action is supposed to be occurring), at least it is a fun time to watch.

It just sucks that there is no further interest in the premise. Can we get mad at a film for giving us exactly what it promises us? Perhaps not, but when the trailer is essentially the entire story, what's the point of a 90-minute screening when a 90-second trailer will suffice? When the marketing spoils something as crucial as "hey, the girl you're about to kidnap is actually a vampire that will suck you dry one by one," you naturally expect there to be a further twist in the narrative, a point to be made, even a surprise character or additional plot to follow. Think about Don't Breathe, which has a somewhat similar opening premise. Hell, think about previous films from co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. They seem to have the most fun once Abigail is found out and the characters run amok through the mansion (which has more character than any of the characters) playing a vampiric version of Clue. Actually, there isn't any real mystery here, despite the film's determination to reference Agatha Christie multiple times. The writers don't even seem to care much about the characters they do have, referring to them not with their real names but with Rat Pack-inspired codenames.

It's hard to critique a film in which there was ultimately so little left to explore, because it felt like a rewatch despite it being a first viewing. It's hard to feel excitement or attachment for talented actors playing unbearably shallow characters, especially when you know they're just vampire fodder. It's hard to feel the intelligence of these filmmakers when you see every beat coming well in advance and it's all slowed down by tedious dialogue that should have been workshopped out. I don't understand why the marketing didn't focus on the first half of the film alone so that the delightful reveal of sweet Abigail with her monstrous teeth could come earlier and with more impact. I quite thoroughly enjoyed the film, especially as the B-movie it really is, but I do wish it had scrapped its own marketing budget and paid its writers better. For a horror-comedy, it's never very scary and prompts few laughs (I only really laughed each time a vampire dies, because they explode with a violence that took me completely by surprise), but it gets away with it by sheer bravura in its own conceit.

P.S.: I ran across an interview with the filmmakers that said Universal had planned for this project to be a remake of Dracula's Daughter (1936), and while that title would certainly not have worked for this film, it does add points of interest to note. That film, notoriously heavy with its lesbian subtext, has nothing in common with this film, and while a young vampiric ballerina will surely make for a popular Halloween costume this year, I'd have been much more interested in this film being willing to explore that dynamic more. Perhaps, like the many werewolf movies about young men growing into their monstrous selves, this could have been a coming-of-age story about Dracula's daughter, even with her ballet, learning to become herself. What we get instead is so utterly divergent from the source material that any latent sexuality, gender nonconformity, or even intergenerational connectivity is lost, sacrificed for spectacle and bleak humor.

P.P.S.: Another way to approach this that I'd have preferred: start the film with Stevens or Barrera getting bitten and infected by Abigail or her father. Let them choose to undergo the vampire transformation in order to become their enemy and try to hunt them down, kind of like Blade. If Barrera, we could reinforce some more of the lesbian content in the source material, and it would allow us to skip over the needlessly detailed exposition and excessive setup.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)

Score: 3 / 5

Historical revisionism and swashbuckling action make for a breezy two hours in Guy Ritchie's latest feature film. Ritchie has made his own niche in Hollywood in the past fifteen years, launching from indie dark comedy crime films to mainstream culture in quasi-steampunk adaptations of well-known titles (starting with Sherlock Holmes and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). Since then, he's forayed into war films, fantasy musicals, and even back into his original territory. Ritchie is a middling director for me, one whose vision is indisputable and sense of entertainment never fails but whose ideas and treatment of source material feel misguided at best and often irreverent. So it is with The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, a story inspired by a real-life operation in World War II that was finally declassified within the past decade. While it makes for a suitably entertaining romp, it makes for little more than that, mishandling its themes and characters even as they dazzle in high-energy action pieces.

I won't recount the convoluted plot here, partly because many of its specifics escaped me and partly because it is so fictionalized from the historical Operation Postmaster that it hardly feels grounded in much reality. On a purely cinematic level, it's difficult to follow the plot due to the film's sound editing, which often favors the score and sound effects to the detriment of its dialogue. This will need to be rewatched with subtitles at some point, especially for anyone unfamiliar with British slang and of course endless historical references to people, places, and weapons. It's also told with more than a bit of tongue in cheek with some play on its own timeline, making for a confusing few comments from Churchill (Rory Kinnear) about the US trying to remain out of the war. By film's end, it seems that the 25-day time jump might cover for the December attack on Pearl Harbor, but the rest of the film seems too eager to posit this operation as the gateway for Americans to join the fight.

The film also bounces a bit between war advisory meetings between British military intelligence officials, including Cary Elwes and Freddie Fox, the latter playing Ian Fleming in a cute, knowing nod to what he'd eventually create. They enlist Henry Cavill for their mission: assemble a special ops force to sail to Guinea and sink an Italian supply ship that reinforces German U-boats bedeviling British forces and isolating the UK from outside aid. Cavill isn't impressed by their request -- though he does like their brandy and cigars -- but seems eager to do what he does best and to take out some Nazis along the way. So he assembles his ragtag team of reliable reprobates and they make ready. 

The cast is attractive well past the point of distraction, which is especially jarring at film's end when the real-life agents' pictures are shown. Cavill himself, barrel-chested and mustached, harnesses a strange mischief here where he feels less knowingly cheeky than earnestly irreverent. One imagines Ritchie is much the same. As Cavill maneuvers through allies and enemies alike, he always notes their coats, making a point to collect ones he likes, most notably that of a Nazi officer he only moments previously dispatched. It's wacky and cute, sure, and I think that leads me to how I feel about the film as a whole. 

There is something to be said for irreverence, even in historical material and even with intense subject matter. But Ritchie seems unsure of what he's actually trying to do here. If he's aiming for earnest wartime action -- and that is a significant part of this film -- his quirky, buoyant energy invites more laughs than suspense or thrills. If he's trying to simply laugh at the Nazis getting slaughtered en masse, we have to wonder why there is a palpable sense of danger from them, despite few real consequences to their actions. My impression of this project was originally that of an unwieldy mix of old Hollywood glamour with Tarantino-esque historical revisionism and hyperviolent irreverence; after some reflection, it feels so much more like if Matthew Vaughn tried to make a serious war film. Even Spielberg laughed at Nazis in the Indiana Jones franchise without trivializing them, but here there just seems to be a disregard for the very real stakes underpinning this entire operation.

If being a little too much fun for its own good is a bad thing, you wouldn't know it on a casual watch here. Its ensemble cast may not offer much by way of dynamic development, but they certainly share their reasons for hating Nazis and for being the rebellious troublemakers they are. And they are fun to watch, whether they're kicking butt or briefing after the latest firestorm. Their respective expertises aren't clear, oddly, beyond Henry Golding's penchant for explosives and apparent ability to swim vast distances in haste. The most hulking member of their band, whose archery skills make for one of the film's loveliest visual gags, may or may not be gay. Alex Pettyfer is brooding and flat, which is his usual offering, but could have been really interesting, as we first meet him in the process of getting tortured for information. Cavill has a right-hand man who is only in the film to say positive affirmations to him and his plans. Oh, and there are two others, a Black man (Babs Olusanmokun) and a Jewish woman (Eiza Gonzalez) who go undercover into the Nazi harbor to learn about the ship and its supply runs. She ends up trying to seduce the sadistic SS officer (Til Schweiger) in a few cringey scenes that completely took me out of the movie; she's not meant to be in combat, but she earlier proved her mettle with a gun, making her whole arc a not-at-all-compelling gimmick.

Despite inviting us to forget its own stakes, the film is beautiful beyond its cast. Clearly expensive production design is not wasted for a moment, sweeping us up in the nautical adventure and island harbor with incredible attention to tactile detail. Graciously clear cinematography and editing allow us to follow the action without getting lost in it. Even when the film threatens a moment of lull, it gets launched again into action quite organically by the plot (the two undercover agents learn that the target ship is unsinkable and will be moving days earlier than expected). This expedites the already breakneck pace right before the climax. In a film whose politics are obvious (Nazis are BAD) and whose need for violence mobilizes itself, there is a certain mindless charm in watching hotties carve their way through hordes of their enemies without fear that they will die. It's just going to depend on your mileage with that, and for me, its charm wore off earlier than it should have. Perhaps with cleverer dialogue (come on, the thing has four credited screenwriters, including Ritchie, who we know can craft delightful British repartee), closer (or further) adherence to history, or a firmer grasp on either comedy or drama would have made this film more memorable.