The Hunted (2003)

“I never had to kill anyone myself… just taught people how.”

I felt like The Hunted (2003) received a muted reaction upon its release, because it looked too much like US Marshals, or Tommy Lee Jones in “catch ‘em” Fugitive mode. Also, that he and Benicio Del Toro – their Academy Award Winning status touted in the marketing – working with William Friedkin, and all their combined efforts had just made what looked like a basic action movie. Two hunters are killed and mutilated in the woods by a renegade black-ops specialist (Del Toro). A survival expert (Jones) is brought out from his isolated cabin in the wilderness. While he has never served as a soldier, he has been hired by the military to train their best to track and kill, specifically with a blade. Jones recognises the handiwork of his star pupil, and joins the FBI’s efforts – led by headstrong agent Connie Nielsen – to capture before he is neutralised by the government. I think I watched it on DVD a year after its release and liked it just fine.

Now returning to The Hunted, its taut pacing and pared-back structure is masterful, eschewing dialogue and quips across its third act for sequences of silent tracking, and knife-fights. The fight choreography feels expert, and is captured cleanly and with impact. There’s enough ambiguity around Del Toro’s PTSD-afflicted black ops killing-machine to allow socio-political critiques about the industrial military complex, complimented by the strange air he invokes with his performance, while also delivering a satisfying chase thriller. And then a classic Tommy Lee Jones gruff and taciturn expert, marked by a clear discomfort being in the city and a pained weariness. And Nielsen is very cool, albeit within a limited part. So many great moments in the extended chase sequence, such as the shape glimpsed behind a waterfall, or how your eye keeps getting redirected to where Del Toro actually is while hiding in the frame. Quietly brilliant and an underrated sharp instrument in Friedkin’s later period.

Green moss and raging rapids. Slashes across mud-streaked faces by homemade knives. Johnny Cash’s narration of ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ bookending everything with biblical stature. Recommended.

Breaking News (2004)

Director Johnnie To and his Milky Way production company set themselves a challenge with Breaking News (2004): How to restage the street shoot-out from Heat but introduce it with an unbroken seven minute shot? Opening with a showdown conveyed in that one-shot take between a heist crew (led by Richie Jen) and a squad of investigators (led by Nick Cheung), the movie spills over into its main topic (as clued in by the title). When news footage of the shoot-out embarrasses Hong Kong police, an officer (Kelly Chin) is placed in charge of their media response. A tenement apartment building becomes the hide-out of the gang, and the site of “The Show” being broadcast with coordination by the police, a uniformed squadron swarming outside. While the team of investigators ignore media-friendly orders and remain inside to hunt the crooks, the shootouts give way to volleys between the two sides playing out over camera crews, phone cameras and internet connections.

Breaking News is efficient and compelling with its interweaving of the action thriller and media satire elements, communicated with a sense of style in the cinematography and the music (pseudo Massive Attack style pulsations). What really makes it a Johnnie To film, aside from the appearance of the irascible Lam Seut in a supporting role, is the sense of humour and heart that occurs throughout the tension. A cop with a weak stomach introduces a few fart gags at choice moments. And a lunch break with the criminals eating with their hostages is a wonderful sequence. As a result, Richie Jen steals the movie as the charismatic and clever head thief.

Available to stream on SBS On Demand. Recommended.

Tokyo Sonata (2008)

I watched Tokyo Sonata (2008) after Perfect Days, which made for a nice Koji Yakusho double bill (though he only plays a supporting role in Tokyo Sonata). There was also another moment of connection. While I found the upscale public toilets that Yakusho’s character cleans in Perfect Days almost too pristine, one of the main characters in Tokyo Sonata finds himself having to work on a shopping mall cleaning crew. There’s a scene where he is expected to clean the shopping centre bathrooms and there’s a close up of a shit-stained toilet bowl. A clear low-point for the character. Light and shadow, polish and grime; it made for an interesting contrast and definitely speaks to the depressing terrain Tokyo Sonata takes the viewer into.

Tokyo Sonata had always sat there on Mubi (and occasionally SBS On Demand) as an acclaimed Japanese drama, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, not working explicitly in the horror genre or any particular genre here. Yet, the film is as unsettling as any of Kurosawa’s horror movies like Pulse or Cure. There were moments where I was blown away by Kurosawa’s filmmaking mastery. A scene of a character forcing a smile to himself out in the street before seeing his family. Another character lying on a beach at night, waves of blackness lapping over them. The composition of shots and the movement of the camera. The way, once again in the movies I’ve seen of Kurosawa’s, he’ll use a master shot, or take in a scene from a distance to create a sense of unease. The way the sense of urban space is drained of colour, emptied of life.

The story feels like a Japanese take on the era of American Beauty type American indie cinema where the nuclear family is unmoored and deconstructed, but here often captured in Ozu-styled framing; the dinner table a site of the family congregating, often in the middle distance of the frame, obscure and further framed by the furniture and design of the house. There’s a stronger sense of despair with capitalism and career advancement as the opening sequence finds Teruyuki Kagawa’s character fired from his office position due to outsourcing cheaper foreign labour. Unable to confess his shame at being unemployed, Kagawa lies to his family and continues putting on his suit and carrying his briefcase each day. His oldest son wants to join the international military effort supporting the American war in the Gulf, his youngest son wants to study classical piano. The wife and mother is often forgotten and ignored. Each character dwells on their ambitions and disappointments. Even within the hopeful ending, Kurosawa uses a distancing effect to let the moment sit strangely and uncomfortably. Kazumasa Hashimoto’s lo-fi score occasionally intrudes to further the quasi-dystopian, recession-focused atmosphere. Recommended.

Claire’s Camera (2017)

I think it was Gene Siskel who determined a movie’s quality by the following dictum: Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch? The films of Hong Sang-soo sometimes feel like you’re just watching a documentary actors sitting around and eating, though a key difference in the Sang-soo world is that they’ll also be drinking. My enjoyment of Claire’s Camera (2017) was often predicated on the delight in watching Kim Min-hee and Isabelle Huppert stand on a beach in Cannes complementing each other. Sang-soo’s film was shot during the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and the festival is occasionally discussed, yet happening off-camera in the background. The actors are not playing themselves but performing as characters, and yet, as often the case with Sang-soo, there’s a meta-textual element.

Min-hee plays Jeon who works for a production team in town to premiere a Korean director’s film at Cannes, Jeong Jin-yeong. When the film opens, Min-hee’s character is let go from her job on account of not having an “honest” character. Mystified and distressed, she decides to spend some time at Cannes since she can’t book a flight home. Eventually she crosses paths with Claire (Huppert), a French woman visiting Cannes for the first time to see a friend’s film. A teacher with an interest in photography, she uses a polaroid camera to continually document what’s around her, including people. For some not familiar with Sang-soo’s whole thing – how he writes scenes the morning of shooting, often constructing the narrative as he goes, mainly focused on people talking and sitting and drinking – this film might seem slight. There’s an obvious air that it was shot quickly and cheaply, and that there might be five key locations often visited twice. To me, this was very charming and funny, humour born from observation and the interactions between people, and Huppert’s screen persona always imbues even a kind-hearted, lovely character with a strange, off-kilter aura. And it has sad moments often revolving around Min-hee’s treatment, and her poise as a presence. Recommended.

White Material (2009)

The workers have reluctantly agreed to help. Five days at a coffee plantation as violent conflict happens. An unnamed African country. Rebel soldiers and the military fighting. The French colonialists have withdrawn, only Isabelle Huppert’s character stubbornly staying behind for a business that she married into. One more yield before they pack up and leave. Regular employees have left, fearing for their safety. The new workers have been promised money, and Huppert shows them to their quarters. The water pump is over there, there’s a wheelbarrow of supplies and a torch is handed to one of the men. The light spotlights little more than dirty mattresses in the room. This is all they can expect. They look on hesitantly.

A great scene in director Claire Denis’ White Material (2009), showing the exploitation of Huppert’s character, or just the unthinking treatment of her employees. Despite the violence in the air, the threat amassing around the gates of the coffee plantation, this is what they get. What more would they expect? White Material observes Huppert going on her rounds, doing everything she can to make the business run despite the social upheaval. We follow Huppert but the film is meditative and observant, considering and critically eyeing the colonial legacy of the white industrialists. Chickens coming home to roost. When the violence happens, there is impact in the framing and editing; Denis and her collaborators are not sensationalist, and death can be sudden, with or without warning. A knife draw on a sleeping child soldier. Workers shot down without hesitation.

Huppert is magnetic underneath the observant gaze of the camera. It’s lovely to see Christopher Lambert in a dramatic role like this, as her ex-husband, more concerned about the oncoming danger. Regular collaborators of Denis appear such as Michel Subor as the sickly father, the original manager of the plantation, and Isaac De Bankole as a wounded rebel leader on the run. Score by Tindersticks once again.

Available on Mubi (US) and Tubi (US). Recommended.