BEFORE: I'm going in knowing almost nothing about this film - at first I thought maybe it was something to do with spies or crime, but now it looks like that's not the case. Really, I'm just looking for something to extend the chain by one to get tomorrow's war film to land on Memorial Day. Some plans I make based on movies I really want to see, others are just calendar based. That's not a direct correlation with which films are bricks and which are just mortar, but sticking this one here between two films with the same actor certainly feels a little mortar-ish - but I shouldn't make that judgment until after viewing.
Woody Harrelson carries over from "Midway" (2019).
THE PLOT: Within the course of one night, Woody Harrelson finds himself in a misadventure in London that winds him up in jail.
AFTER: Probably the most interesting thing about this film is that it was broadcast LIVE (or as live as possible, I guess) to theaters in January of 2017. Certainly there may have been other live simulcasts, for operas and plays and such, but a narrative film going live, that's unusual. It played in theaters in the U.S. on. January 19, 2017, but was recorded in London on January 20. What? How is that possible, that it screened before it was filmed? Oh, yeah, time zones. Still, that's a little freaky, that on paper at least, it looks like somehow the airing preceded the filming. This is the same problem I have with air travel, and crossing the international date line and such - two things can be happening in different parts of the Earth at the same time, but also they're happening at different times, when you look at the local times. Sure, there's Greenwich Mean Time that makes everything clear, only nobody uses that, except maybe the military. I don't know if I could ever live in the Central or Mountain time zones, because then my prime time TV shows would be all wonky, plus does everyone in the Midwest just go to bed earlier? No thanks. I think that would just make me feel like I'm driving that backwards car in "Tenet". Time is a completely arbitrary construct, space isn't, right? Wait, how can that be?
I can't even imagine the amount of planning that had to go into this - filming and broadcasting a story in real time, with one camera. There's just no room for error - other films have tried to mimic this, like "Birdman" and "1917", but we all know they cheated, right? Every film contains a bunch of movie magic tricks, even the ones that look like one-camera, single-take movies - the characters will go into a dark room or through a dark tunnel, and there's an opportunity there for a cut, black to black, and thus the story can start over, or mistakes can be eliminated in post-production, that's all before CGI and other effects are even brought to the table. But LIVE, over 100 minutes, with several different set-ups, traveling around London through a restaurant, then a nightclub, a couple taxis and a police station, everybody had to already be in their places and be ready for the camera crew and actors when they arrived. Maybe they "multiple outs" as some good magic tricks do, or some back-up plans in place in case something went wrong, but either way I imagine this was a logistical nightmare for somebody, and a big gamble to boot.
The second most interesting thing here is that is based on real events that happened to Woody Harrelson - he did accidentally break an ashtray in a London cab, and it did lead to him being chased by police and spending a night in jail. Also, he did visit the set of one of the "Harry Potter" films with his daughters, as Daniel Radcliffe himself confirms, only were those events connected, and did they play out in this way, or was reality exaggerated for the sake of a story here? In other words, did Harrelson cheat on his wife, was there a story about that in the U.K. tabloids, and what is the nature of celebrity relationships, are they all just as messed up as the ones regular people have, or even more so?
Ah, a quick Google search says that the story is true, according to a People magazine interview with Harrelson. His dalliance with three women in London in 2002 DID happen, and one of the women was connected to the paparazzi, so it may have been some kind of set-up. He did apologize to his wife, she did forgive him, he did cut back on his drinking and then gave up smoking pot after a strange reaction he had. So he's "predominantly" sober now, and the couple is still together. That means he basically made this film to work through any remaining feelings of guilt, and I guess that's what people can do, use their failings and their experiences as inspiration.
Obviously, that's not Harrelson's real-life wife, that's an actress, and one of those young girls is not his daughter, but the other one is (playing a younger version of her older sister, because indeed time is arbitrary). It's the first film that Woody Harrelson produced and directed, and to date it's still the only film he's directed. Props for a directing debut that could NOT have been easy to plan and execute - I'm not sure why he hasn't directed something else, because anything else would probably seem like a cake-walk compared to this. I know it's all tied up with his personal life and such, but at least it seems like an original way of doing things, compared to all the films that break down every scene and shot to tiny little pieces, which often leads to continuity errors and dozens of other problems. This "one and done" approach was a huge risk, but perhaps a little less work in the long run.
Also starring Eleanor Matsuura (last seen in "The One and Only Ivan"), Owen Wilson (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Zrinka Cvitesic, Willie Nelson (last seen in "Quincy"), Martin McCann (last seen in "Clash of the Titans"), Sean Power (last seen in "War Machine"), Amir El-Masry (last seen in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), David Mumeni (last seen in "Johnny English Strikes Again"), David Avery (last seen in "Criminal"), Nathan Willcocks, Louisa Harland, Rebecca Hazlewood, Naomi Battrick, Peter Ferdinando (last seen in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), Ricky Champ (last seen in "Mortdecai"), Tobi Bamtefa, Ade Oyefeso, Cedric Neal, Dominic Hughes, Al Nedjari, the voices of Bono (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Ali Hewson and a cameo from Daniel Radcliffe (last seen in "Swiss Army Man").
RATING: 5 out of 10 fingerprints
No comments:
Post a Comment