Film review: The Shape of Water and Den of Thieves

It’s a twofer! Yes, I’m even lazy when I’m being lazy. On with this week's film reviews:

The Shape of Water (14th February 2018)

Guillermo del Toro, Doug Jones, Michael Shannon, Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer - what could go wrong? Not a lot, as it turns out. This is wonderfully scripted, nicely turned out and a joy to soak up, if you’ll pardon the pun. The story is two-fold; you have your average secret government facility bent on making the most out of a river ‘monster’ worshipped in South America as a god, and then you have Elisa (Sally Hawkins) who has been mute since birth but is certainly smart enough to take them all on. Add in a Russian spy, some criminally unacceptable behaviour and you have the makings of a very good film. In fact, the only thing I didn’t like about it was the run time; it felt quite long, even if you didn’t know what to expect from the ending. There was no urgency once the main plot point had happened, and it felt like the climax was very far off. However, the characters were very enjoyable (even the ones you loved to hate) and well fleshed out - you even felt sorry for the bath tub at one point.

Verdict: 8/10; a Sunday afternoon movie that will grow on you.

Den of Thieves (18th February 2018)

Where do I start with this one? Hmm… This is one of those films that, in ten years from now, people will look back and say ‘were we still making these films in 2018?’ I don’t mean that it looked dated, or it felt like an 80’s flick. What I mean is, it’s yet another movie about men doing man things with manly men backing them up. It’s hard to relate to a movie when 51% of the planet’s population is ignored, or even worse, relegated to non-speaking hooker roles, or made the ‘evil, nagging wife’. I’m not surprised she divorced him; she probably wanted someone who wasn’t male to talk to once in a while.

The film itself is formulaic; a heist movie pretty much along the lines of something like Ocean’s 11 but without the humour or panache. However the details that are different are Gerard Butler’s character ‘Big Nick’ (because he’s tall or because of some kind of ‘inadequate penis’ joke? Make of it what you will) and his team of highly trained, don’t-give-a-fuck-for-the-rules gang of tough, manly cops against a gang of highly trained, don’t-give-a-fuck-for-the-rules gang of tough, manly robbers. The only wrinkle is a single character who doesn’t seem to to belong to either, and yet he’s interesting enough to evade every attempt the plot makes to kill him.

Not a fan of the ending; of course the ‘good’ guy has to win out, but come on - really? When you’ve spent the last 2 hours making Big Nick the worst fucking disaster of a human being you’ve ever seen pretend to care about anything that’s not work, do you really expect anyone to be happy with how you end it? The one saving grace was again the magic character who Would Not Die. I am happy he got out, but there again, they took pains to spell it out for you after the fact. I don’t need to to spoon-fed how someone masterminded something; I’ve seen and read (and written) a few twisty endings and I can work it out for myself.

But whatever - I’m getting worked up over a movie I may never have to be subjected to again, so I’m going to just move on.

Shout out to Pablo Schreiber for his performance that made you wish he would pull the whole thing off without a hitch by just being superior. Also to O'Shea Jackson Jr for his portrayal of piggy-in-the-middle that was not so middle.

Verdict: 6/10; while it’s true there’s nothing new under the sun, if you’re going to remake one of the 7 plots for the 50th time you can at least bring it into the 21st century.

And that’s it for this week.


Soopytwist.