Film Review Round-Up: American Assassin, Wind River & mother! (2017)

While I've continued to go to the cinema as frequently as usual, lately I've been completely preoccupied playing Destiny 2 so I'm a bit behind schedule when it comes to getting reviews done. So here for the first time ever at The Welsh Geek Reviews is a triple feature; a round-up of three films with much shorter reviews than usual. Hope you enjoy!

First up . . .

American Assassin (18)

Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Michael Keaton, Taylor Kitsch

Director: Michael Cuesta

The Plot: When his fiancé is killed during an attack by Islamic terrorists while on holiday, Mitch Rapp (O'Brien) devotes himself to destroying those responsible. Training himself in weapons and martial arts, his actions draws the attention of the CIA, who recruit him into an elite unit run by Stan Hurley (Keaton). His first assignment is to prevent a Russian terrorist from assembling a nuclear bomb, but the real threat is from Hurley's former protégé Ghost (Kitsch) who is masterminding the attack.

Review: This is a fairly standard action thriller that's heavy on the violence - which I'm all for, as I do like a lot of action in my action films - and actually starts off pretty well, very effectively playing to the state of affairs in today's society with a hard-hitting depiction of the terrorist attack that kills Rapp's fiancé, but goes downhill in the third act when it lapses into a clichéd hunt for the nuclear bomb. O'Brien is solid enough (and portrays his character's grief effectively in the few scenes he's allowed to show it) but Keaton chews the scenery here while Kitsch is saddled with a stereotypical villain. The action scenes are great, but the film is too long and attempts to cram in too many sub-plots.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A watchable enough action thriller with a likeable cast, but unfortunately suffers from being predictable and much too long.

Wind River (15)

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen

Director: Taylor Sheridan

The Plot: On an Indian reservation in Wyoming, veteran tracker Cory Lambert (Renner) discovers the dead body of a young Native American woman, the evidence pointing to the woman having been raped and fleeing from person(s) unknown. Calling in the FBI, they're only able to send rookie agent Jane Banner (Olsen) and, unprepared for the lack of resources and harsh winter conditions, she enlists Lambert's help in finding the culprit. For Lambert the crime is all too personal, as his own daughter died in similar circumstances . . .

Review: This is an absolutely fantastic film, already in the top 5 of films I've watched this year. I'm a big fan of Taylor Sheridan, whose previous scripts for Sicario and Hell or High Water produced amazing films, and he not only writes but directs here as well. The film skilfully blends a crime thriller, a study of loss, grief and the desire for revenge, and a social commentary on the injustices faced by Native American women. It's beautifully shot and Sheridan directs with confidence, and he produces two fantastic performances from the leads. Olsen is excellent as the inexperienced Jane, but Renner is absolutely phenomenal here, a masterful performance of a man still battling the grief from losing a child and now given the chance to avenge another.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
A phenomenal film with a powerful story, beautifully shot and featuring an outstanding performance from Jeremy Renner in particular. This is a must-see.

mother! (18)

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer

Director: Darren Aronofsky

The Plot: I don't even know if I can describe this accurately. Mother (Lawrence) shares a house with her writer husband Him (Bardem) that she has been restoring after a fire. The arrival of two strangers - Man (Harris) and Woman (Pfeiffer) - sparks the beginning of truly bizarre sequence of events that will forever alter their lives. I'm being ambiguous as possible because, really, what the fuck.

Review: I'm all for directors taking risks and making films that are challenging for audiences to watch - case in point, my review of A Ghost Story last month. I'm also a fan of Aronofsky, as I think Black Swan is a masterpiece. But I have no idea what the fuck he was attempting with this appalling mess of a film, which he's been quoted as saying he wrote in 5 days during a "fever dream", which I think was actually PCP as this is some of the weirdest shit I've ever seen. The film is split into two hour-long halves, the first of which is bizarre enough and feels like a claustrophobic play, but the second half loses any sense of plot cohesion and descends into utter chaos as a legion of Him's fans invade the house, culminating in a truly awful scene featuring the murder and cannibalisation of a newborn baby that made me feel sick. I'm not making that up - what the serious fuck. I'm sure there are some audiences who will be able to connect with all the symbolism that's apparently going on in this film, but I wasn't one of them, and left the cinema without a clue as to what the fuck I'd just watched or what Aronofsky was trying to do with this.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

An awful, confusing mess of a film which I'm giving one star to purely for the effort Jennifer Lawrence puts into her performance. I cannot even begin to describe how insane the second hour of this film is. Truly dreadful.