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The year was 1971. A young, punk kid of a director, barely out of film school and who had scarcely cut his teeth on TV episodes, pitched the impossible task of turning a short story about a truck from Playboy magazine into a feature-length TV movie of the week, shooting extensive car chases on location, in only ten days. It seemed a bellyflop waiting to happen, a classic Tinseltown Icarus tale of ambitious overshooting (in every sense of the word), and a potentially promising career cut ingloriously short.
Instead, cinema history was born.
The story of Duel's production (that young punk kid, of course, being one Steven Spielberg - maybe you've heard of him?) has, inevitably, since etched itself into Hollywood legend - a ballad of a film, and career, emphatically coaxed into being through sheer will, ingenuity, and equally generous helpings of hard work and luck. Regardless, it's a testament to the gumption and keen intuition of that Spielberg kid that his film still stands alone, far from overshadowed by its own behind-the-scenes. A crackling, ruthlessly whittled down hour-and-a-half of pure suspense, Duel is as lean, mean, and voraciously fun as they come, a classic in singularly white-knuckle tension practically bursting at the seams with cinematic joie-de-vivre.
Like so many of the best suspense thrillers, the impetus for Duel's conflict is so universally accessible (a simple case of road rage gone mad) it's almost primal. Like an eighteen wheeler version of the Jaws shark, Spielberg's malevolent truck and ever-unseen driver (a classy, timeless touch) are less antagonist and more force of nature, defying laws of laws, manners, speed limits, and narrative conventions alike to run down travelling salesman David Mann (Dennis Weaver), no matter what. And as excellent as Weaver is, delivering a masterclass in amiable charisma turned weedy, paranoid histrionics, Spielberg's truck is just as timelessly perilous an adversary, streaked in oil smears and insect corpses like war paint, and roaring and rumbling with nail-biting menace.
In terms of sheer exercise in formal perfection, it's hard to do better than Duel. Spielberg's pacing is honed to razor-sharp, rollercoaster precision, aggressively accelerating and coasting between patches of overwhelming action and spells of suspicious respite, while keeping the tension unfalteringly dialled up to 11 throughout. He gradually but continuously gears up from a meditative opening - a dreamy, first-person opening of Mann leaving suburbia and entering the desert highway with the radio peacefully chattering in the background - to the relatively innocuous cat-and-mouse back and forth passing between car and truck. Suddenly, we find ourselves clutching the passenger door handle in the midst of a dizzyingly intense, breathless chase, with both vehicles zooming down the highway at breakneck speeds, as cameras capture the frenzy perched precariously on dashboards, or zooming by with death-defying low-angle shots that feel palpably dangerous. It's a robust, exhausting thrill ride that cements its standing alongside Bullit and The French Connection as one of the great car chases of the epoch. All that within the first 25 minutes - and things only get more frantic from that point on!
Fortunately, Spielberg, and scribe Richard Matheson, are savvy to the pitfalls of how easily a feature-length car chase could grow boring, and they each bust out each clever trick in the book in keeping the vehicles in motion, and their audience engaged. Intermittent pauses in the action - Mann stops to tussle with his wife over the phone, or feverishly scrutinize beer-guzzling truckers at a café, attempting to deduce which one ardently wants him dead - may allow the audience to catch their breath as the vehicles refuel, but are no less tense, as Spielberg keeps a mercilessly tight grip on the tension valve. So consistent is the veil of perennial danger that each sudden scuff of a passerby's boot or clink of glass on a café table bring the frenzied cortisol rush of a gunshot, with Spielberg's sound editing playfully amping up each looming threat. Matheson and Spielberg also demonstrate a knack for sucker-punching the tension with moments of subtly bizarre humour (an expansive display of snake terrariums framing a gas station action sequence is nearly as good as the truck stopping to help a stranded school bus full of jubilantly chattering kids mid-chase - and don't forget to listen for the sneaky Godzilla scream cameo Spielberg was too mirthful to resist), as if coaxing the audience into cathartic relate through nervous laughter. It's not entirely airtight - Matheson's sporadic patches of Weaver's nervy voiceover are a tad cheesy and unnecessary - but so damn near close it boggles the mind.
Imagine jumping into a race car in front of Alfred Hitchcock let loose after chugging a pot full of coffee, and you'll start to get a sense of the heady, intoxicating thrills of Spielberg's immaculate directorial debut. As riveting as it is fun, Duel is a modest classic of relentless suspense, voraciously flayed down to the bare essentials, injected with pure, unfiltered adrenaline, and filmed gorgeously with unfettered delight. It's a heady, cheeky rush of pure cinema, and it's oodles more effective and unforgettable than it had any business being. Maybe that Spielberg kid will amount to something after all.
-9/10
Instead, cinema history was born.
The story of Duel's production (that young punk kid, of course, being one Steven Spielberg - maybe you've heard of him?) has, inevitably, since etched itself into Hollywood legend - a ballad of a film, and career, emphatically coaxed into being through sheer will, ingenuity, and equally generous helpings of hard work and luck. Regardless, it's a testament to the gumption and keen intuition of that Spielberg kid that his film still stands alone, far from overshadowed by its own behind-the-scenes. A crackling, ruthlessly whittled down hour-and-a-half of pure suspense, Duel is as lean, mean, and voraciously fun as they come, a classic in singularly white-knuckle tension practically bursting at the seams with cinematic joie-de-vivre.
Like so many of the best suspense thrillers, the impetus for Duel's conflict is so universally accessible (a simple case of road rage gone mad) it's almost primal. Like an eighteen wheeler version of the Jaws shark, Spielberg's malevolent truck and ever-unseen driver (a classy, timeless touch) are less antagonist and more force of nature, defying laws of laws, manners, speed limits, and narrative conventions alike to run down travelling salesman David Mann (Dennis Weaver), no matter what. And as excellent as Weaver is, delivering a masterclass in amiable charisma turned weedy, paranoid histrionics, Spielberg's truck is just as timelessly perilous an adversary, streaked in oil smears and insect corpses like war paint, and roaring and rumbling with nail-biting menace.
In terms of sheer exercise in formal perfection, it's hard to do better than Duel. Spielberg's pacing is honed to razor-sharp, rollercoaster precision, aggressively accelerating and coasting between patches of overwhelming action and spells of suspicious respite, while keeping the tension unfalteringly dialled up to 11 throughout. He gradually but continuously gears up from a meditative opening - a dreamy, first-person opening of Mann leaving suburbia and entering the desert highway with the radio peacefully chattering in the background - to the relatively innocuous cat-and-mouse back and forth passing between car and truck. Suddenly, we find ourselves clutching the passenger door handle in the midst of a dizzyingly intense, breathless chase, with both vehicles zooming down the highway at breakneck speeds, as cameras capture the frenzy perched precariously on dashboards, or zooming by with death-defying low-angle shots that feel palpably dangerous. It's a robust, exhausting thrill ride that cements its standing alongside Bullit and The French Connection as one of the great car chases of the epoch. All that within the first 25 minutes - and things only get more frantic from that point on!
Fortunately, Spielberg, and scribe Richard Matheson, are savvy to the pitfalls of how easily a feature-length car chase could grow boring, and they each bust out each clever trick in the book in keeping the vehicles in motion, and their audience engaged. Intermittent pauses in the action - Mann stops to tussle with his wife over the phone, or feverishly scrutinize beer-guzzling truckers at a café, attempting to deduce which one ardently wants him dead - may allow the audience to catch their breath as the vehicles refuel, but are no less tense, as Spielberg keeps a mercilessly tight grip on the tension valve. So consistent is the veil of perennial danger that each sudden scuff of a passerby's boot or clink of glass on a café table bring the frenzied cortisol rush of a gunshot, with Spielberg's sound editing playfully amping up each looming threat. Matheson and Spielberg also demonstrate a knack for sucker-punching the tension with moments of subtly bizarre humour (an expansive display of snake terrariums framing a gas station action sequence is nearly as good as the truck stopping to help a stranded school bus full of jubilantly chattering kids mid-chase - and don't forget to listen for the sneaky Godzilla scream cameo Spielberg was too mirthful to resist), as if coaxing the audience into cathartic relate through nervous laughter. It's not entirely airtight - Matheson's sporadic patches of Weaver's nervy voiceover are a tad cheesy and unnecessary - but so damn near close it boggles the mind.
Imagine jumping into a race car in front of Alfred Hitchcock let loose after chugging a pot full of coffee, and you'll start to get a sense of the heady, intoxicating thrills of Spielberg's immaculate directorial debut. As riveting as it is fun, Duel is a modest classic of relentless suspense, voraciously flayed down to the bare essentials, injected with pure, unfiltered adrenaline, and filmed gorgeously with unfettered delight. It's a heady, cheeky rush of pure cinema, and it's oodles more effective and unforgettable than it had any business being. Maybe that Spielberg kid will amount to something after all.
-9/10
Djibril Diop Mambéty's Hyenas doesn't quite jump the shark to the extent of Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros, a corrosive social satire which dramatizes the macro and micro fallibility of humankind by having people literally transform into the titular safari animal... but so searingly incisive is Mambéty's critique that you get the sense he's at least toyed with the idea. Adapting Swiss-German satirist Friedrich Dürrenmatt's play The Visit, Mambéty ups the stakes of the text's Sophie's choice scenario (is one man's life worth untold millions for a town fallen into ruin?) by setting it in rural Senegal, wherein the collective battle of moralism and pride against a paradigm shift of wealth is amplified to poignant and sobering heights. As such, Hyenas serves to both savagely lambast the corrosive legacy of colonialism in a recently independent Senegal, while equally shedding the spotlight of judgment on the role of virtue in a capitalist society - an experience which generally proves equally squirmy for the average viewer, as for the characters onscreen. Hyenas is billed as a dark comedy, but, apart from trace elements of allegorical magic realism (we never find out exactly how an exiled, former teenage prostitute has become "richer than the world's bank"), there's only the bleakest, most mirthless of incredulous guffaws to be found therein. Instead, Mambéty wrings out every last drop of uncomfortable empathy in depicting a poor but proud people steadily succumbing to materialistic, murderous mob mentality* - a scenario that starts absurd, but quickly becomes far too familiar. Mambéty's witty screenplay deftly unspools each wrinkle of collective corruption, from the nattily dressed mayor bemoaning the degraded state of his town, oblivious to the rag-wearing homeless man bemusedly building a fire immediately behind him, to the townspeople vocally expressing their outrage ("She thinks we're Americans who would kill each other for nothing!") while blatantly strutting around wearing their bribes, practically collectively willing the murder into a fatalistic eventuality. As the situation escalates, Mambéty lets the poignancy of the joke fester. Things may start with comparative levity, (Mambéty turns each townsperson lobbying for new refrigerators and air conditioners into a sordid, Oprah-esque gameshow), but it isn't long before the initial paradoxical joviality decays into a literal torch-bearing mob (the town gaslighting their 'walking dead' peer by barring him entrance to a train leaving town while wishing him a good trip is genuinely hard to watch), before culminating in a dirge of chanting, shuffling zombies. Though Hyenas is, for the most part, a slow, sombre, methodical film, Mambéty lends it a larger-than-life aesthetic grandeur. His cinematography employs a high saturation rate, with the vibrancy of colours (glaring, aggressive reds, and the encroaching, corrupting sheen of gold) popping against the beige of (gorgeously shot) sweeping expanses of desert perfectly encapsulating the intoxicating allure of colonial socioeconomic transformation. Similarly, Wasis Diop's moody guitar score lends a thoughtful, eulogistic dignity to the slow, fatalistic social decay at play. While some of Mambéty's visual metaphors are a touch hit-and-miss (while having the townspeople slowly adapt hairstyles recalling hangman's nooses is a slick piece of visual trickery, his Modern Times-esq consistent cross-cutting between brewing mobs and a pack of snarling hyenas is a bit too on-the-nose), the consistent framing device of herds of local animals stirring uneasily (including a poor captive monkey at the film's central hub, who ends up becoming a disapproving Greek chorus unto itself) does lend the film an effectively disquieting restlessness. And as for the perplexing, sneaky ambiguity of the film's final shot? Mambéty is content to let the viewer stew, and draw their own conclusions. As the formerly "most popular man in Colobane" turned 'most likely to be assassinated,' Mansour Diouf anchors the film with an immaculately balanced performance that shifts from irreverent goofiness, to exasperated histrionics, before finishing with a quieter, sadder dignity. He carefully toes the line of remaining sympathetic without ever becoming too likeable throughout, instead wearing his flawed humanity on his sleeve with a gentle, sad, side-smile. As the imposingly wealthy homecoming Linguère Ramatou, Ami Diakhate steals the show with a formidable, commanding presence. In less capable hands, Ramatou, with her devious master plan and golden artificial limbs, would play like a Bond villain - but Diakhate ensures that Ramatou's vitriol is grounded in a lifetime of real, radiating hurt, which Diakhate rawly embodies with consummate class. Faly Gueye consistently steals scenes with an icy deadpan humour as Diouf's perennially unimpressed wife, while Mahourédia Gueye pompously postures like the best of them as the town's blustery mayor.
Fuelled with the timeless wisdom of a Classical Greek tragedy, yet coursing with the contemporary, acrid urgency of an itching postcolonial critique, Mambéty's Hyenas is a stirring, vibrant, and grimly entrancing watch. Although one can't help but with that Mambéty had dialled back the somewhat overblown visual symbolism a tad, and instead redirected that energy into a shade more of the tension-breaking humour just aching to surface, his film remains an unflinchingly striking watch. A cornerstone of contemporary African cinema, Hyenas is a timeless snarl at the overbearing fatalism of colonialism and capitalism - and, over 25 years on, it hasn't lost a whit of potency or relevance.
-8.5/10
*How's THAT for alliteration?
Fuelled with the timeless wisdom of a Classical Greek tragedy, yet coursing with the contemporary, acrid urgency of an itching postcolonial critique, Mambéty's Hyenas is a stirring, vibrant, and grimly entrancing watch. Although one can't help but with that Mambéty had dialled back the somewhat overblown visual symbolism a tad, and instead redirected that energy into a shade more of the tension-breaking humour just aching to surface, his film remains an unflinchingly striking watch. A cornerstone of contemporary African cinema, Hyenas is a timeless snarl at the overbearing fatalism of colonialism and capitalism - and, over 25 years on, it hasn't lost a whit of potency or relevance.
-8.5/10
*How's THAT for alliteration?
It's fitting that author Kevin Kwan has been heralded as the 'Jane Austen of the 2010s,' as the cinematic adaptation of his smash hit Crazy Rich Asians opens in a prim, stately British manor that the Bennetts would feel right at home at - then has its eponymous protagonists triumphantly turn the power tables on the stuffy Brits who have the gall to be racist to their faces. It's a purposefully reappropriative moment of triumph - an opening 'hell yeah' fist pump, coyly acknowledging the 25 years(!) of cinematic silence since Hollywood has bankrolled an Asian-focused story with a functionally entirely Asian cast. And, like Black Panther, 2018's fellow benchmark of Hollywood representation, it's about damn time.
And Crazy Rich Asians owns its rumbling fanfare of expectation with the jaunty confidence of a pair of Jimmy Choos sauntering down a runway. Replete with riotous humour and consummate charm, it's a two hour slice of flashiness, fashion, fireworks, and frivolity - bubbly, escapist silliness and sentiment with just enough heart and slyly satirical cultural critique to keep from becoming superfluously frothy. In short: it's a perfectly delightful romantic comedy, and a fun as hell time at the movies. Director Jon M. Chu handles his international audiences with care. His pacing is cleverly canny, starting with a slow ingratiation into the architectural (Merlions, Marina Bay Sands, and Botanical Gardens, oh my!), culinary (the food, the FOOD! Whatever you do, don't watch Crazy Rich Asians on an empty stomach), and cultural landscapes of Singapore - shot on dazzling location - before plunging down the rabbit hole into the dizzying wonderland of wealth. Cleverly, the story's melodramatic histrionics ramp up in direct correlation with the display of jaw-dropping money being thrown around, and the dramaaaaaa unfolding amidst a sea of private islands, million dollar earrings, and one of the most unforgettably over-the-top movie weddings lends it a firmly tongue-in-cheek, bawdy escapism, like the best kind of reality TV show.
Chu attacks his subject matter with a champagne pop of vibrancy, with appropriately flooring haute couture costumes and production values, and a candy-coloured aesthetic that brings the opulence to life so energetically you'll nearly want Ray Bans in the theatre. Initial fourth-wall poking flourishes (including a zig-zagging coloured line jaunting across the planet, in the WeeChat equivalent of a 1970s telephone split-screen) punch up the playfulness, but quickly fizzle out - probably for the best, lest they grow obnoxiously overbearing, but still indicative of the film settling a mite too comfortably into cliché. Still, the devilish cleverness of touches like the superb soundtrack, punctuating the party with Mandarin covers of on-the-nose Western songs like "Material Girl" and "Baby You're A Rich Man" (as well as a climactic accompaniment that somehow blends teary sentiment with hilarious incongruity, too good to spoil), are enough to stave off Great Gatsby showy hollowness, and keep the film playfully fresh and fiendishly fun.
Still, within the tsunami of showiness lies an intimate, affecting parable of love and family, with aspirations of modernity and shrouds of tradition going viciously head to head. The genius of Crazy Rich Asians is the populist accessibility of its story yet unique cultural specificity of its telling, and Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim's screenplay is careful to sprinkle in idiosyncratic moments specific to Southeast Asia, including interchangeably switching languages between English, Mandarin, and Cantonese and carefully delineating the cultural milieus of 'old' and 'new money,' to ensure the narrative's cultural roots aren't excessively diluted in the wash of its international audience (the peppering of knowing chuckles in my theatre would suggest they succeeded). Chu proves as adept at letting tender private moments breathe as fanning the razzle-dazzle of the loftier celebrations. He anchors several tearjerking emotional beats on scenes that would play as Asian stereotypes in most other Hollywood productions (a family making dumplings together; an emotionally charged game of Mahjong), thereby deftly reappropriating their authenticity. The film will inevitably draw crowds for its lavish blowouts, but it's the sweetness and resonance of the story that will linger long after the confetti and caviar settle to the floorboards.
Constance Wu makes for an irresistibly lovable lead, her disarming goofiness making her a perfect fish-out-of-water guide through the film's capitalistic culture shocks, while her sparky charisma and emotive vulnerability make her the perfect emotional fulcrum. As her secretly superrich beau, Henry Golding is consummately dashing, while Gemma Chan embodies sympathetic socialite Astrid's effortless elegance and deep sadness with ever fibre of her being. Still, the unquestionable show-stealing performance goes to the wonderful Michelle Yeoh. Cementing her standing in the annals of 'scariest movie moms,' Yeoh is terrifyingly austere and magnetic in her glacial stillness, so subtle and effective that she can summon a tidal wave of staggeringly intricate conflicting emotions with an almost indiscernible tightening of her jaw. Supporting them, rapper Awkwafina is surprisingly funny without overstaying as Rachel's bombastic comic relief friend, while Chris Pang and Sonoya Mizuno are delightfully down to earth and loopy respectively, headlining the wedding of the century. Finally, Ronny Chieng, Jimmy O. Yang, and Nico Santos each take turns stealing scenery with side-splitting aplomb, while the incomparable Ken Jeong is customarily hysterical, perfectly encapsulating the flashiness of 'new money' with gleeful excess.
Crazy Rich Asians is a perfectly populist summer delight - a kaleidoscope of sensory delights and cinematic energy ensconcing a terrific cast bringing a quality story to life with honesty and humour to spare. Chu leaves us with enough of a hangover of giddiness to keep expectations fierce for the invariable upcoming China Rich Girlfriend. And if it continues to pave the way for more diverse, personal stories reaching international exposure in the meantime? Well, that's the most enriching (ha) outcome of all.
-8.5/10
And Crazy Rich Asians owns its rumbling fanfare of expectation with the jaunty confidence of a pair of Jimmy Choos sauntering down a runway. Replete with riotous humour and consummate charm, it's a two hour slice of flashiness, fashion, fireworks, and frivolity - bubbly, escapist silliness and sentiment with just enough heart and slyly satirical cultural critique to keep from becoming superfluously frothy. In short: it's a perfectly delightful romantic comedy, and a fun as hell time at the movies. Director Jon M. Chu handles his international audiences with care. His pacing is cleverly canny, starting with a slow ingratiation into the architectural (Merlions, Marina Bay Sands, and Botanical Gardens, oh my!), culinary (the food, the FOOD! Whatever you do, don't watch Crazy Rich Asians on an empty stomach), and cultural landscapes of Singapore - shot on dazzling location - before plunging down the rabbit hole into the dizzying wonderland of wealth. Cleverly, the story's melodramatic histrionics ramp up in direct correlation with the display of jaw-dropping money being thrown around, and the dramaaaaaa unfolding amidst a sea of private islands, million dollar earrings, and one of the most unforgettably over-the-top movie weddings lends it a firmly tongue-in-cheek, bawdy escapism, like the best kind of reality TV show.
Chu attacks his subject matter with a champagne pop of vibrancy, with appropriately flooring haute couture costumes and production values, and a candy-coloured aesthetic that brings the opulence to life so energetically you'll nearly want Ray Bans in the theatre. Initial fourth-wall poking flourishes (including a zig-zagging coloured line jaunting across the planet, in the WeeChat equivalent of a 1970s telephone split-screen) punch up the playfulness, but quickly fizzle out - probably for the best, lest they grow obnoxiously overbearing, but still indicative of the film settling a mite too comfortably into cliché. Still, the devilish cleverness of touches like the superb soundtrack, punctuating the party with Mandarin covers of on-the-nose Western songs like "Material Girl" and "Baby You're A Rich Man" (as well as a climactic accompaniment that somehow blends teary sentiment with hilarious incongruity, too good to spoil), are enough to stave off Great Gatsby showy hollowness, and keep the film playfully fresh and fiendishly fun.
Still, within the tsunami of showiness lies an intimate, affecting parable of love and family, with aspirations of modernity and shrouds of tradition going viciously head to head. The genius of Crazy Rich Asians is the populist accessibility of its story yet unique cultural specificity of its telling, and Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim's screenplay is careful to sprinkle in idiosyncratic moments specific to Southeast Asia, including interchangeably switching languages between English, Mandarin, and Cantonese and carefully delineating the cultural milieus of 'old' and 'new money,' to ensure the narrative's cultural roots aren't excessively diluted in the wash of its international audience (the peppering of knowing chuckles in my theatre would suggest they succeeded). Chu proves as adept at letting tender private moments breathe as fanning the razzle-dazzle of the loftier celebrations. He anchors several tearjerking emotional beats on scenes that would play as Asian stereotypes in most other Hollywood productions (a family making dumplings together; an emotionally charged game of Mahjong), thereby deftly reappropriating their authenticity. The film will inevitably draw crowds for its lavish blowouts, but it's the sweetness and resonance of the story that will linger long after the confetti and caviar settle to the floorboards.
Constance Wu makes for an irresistibly lovable lead, her disarming goofiness making her a perfect fish-out-of-water guide through the film's capitalistic culture shocks, while her sparky charisma and emotive vulnerability make her the perfect emotional fulcrum. As her secretly superrich beau, Henry Golding is consummately dashing, while Gemma Chan embodies sympathetic socialite Astrid's effortless elegance and deep sadness with ever fibre of her being. Still, the unquestionable show-stealing performance goes to the wonderful Michelle Yeoh. Cementing her standing in the annals of 'scariest movie moms,' Yeoh is terrifyingly austere and magnetic in her glacial stillness, so subtle and effective that she can summon a tidal wave of staggeringly intricate conflicting emotions with an almost indiscernible tightening of her jaw. Supporting them, rapper Awkwafina is surprisingly funny without overstaying as Rachel's bombastic comic relief friend, while Chris Pang and Sonoya Mizuno are delightfully down to earth and loopy respectively, headlining the wedding of the century. Finally, Ronny Chieng, Jimmy O. Yang, and Nico Santos each take turns stealing scenery with side-splitting aplomb, while the incomparable Ken Jeong is customarily hysterical, perfectly encapsulating the flashiness of 'new money' with gleeful excess.
Crazy Rich Asians is a perfectly populist summer delight - a kaleidoscope of sensory delights and cinematic energy ensconcing a terrific cast bringing a quality story to life with honesty and humour to spare. Chu leaves us with enough of a hangover of giddiness to keep expectations fierce for the invariable upcoming China Rich Girlfriend. And if it continues to pave the way for more diverse, personal stories reaching international exposure in the meantime? Well, that's the most enriching (ha) outcome of all.
-8.5/10