"Ransom" (15) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
An untypically dark drama from director Ron Howard, this taut thriller takes its title and a few basic narrative ideas from a little known 1956 movie which starred Glenn Ford, Donna Reed and Leslie Neilsen. What distinguishes the new film from its more recent genre counterparts in the Hollywood studio system is the moral complexity injected into the drama by screenwriter Richard Price, who most recently adapted his own novel, Clockers, for the screen.
The result is at quite some remove from the calculated sweetness generally associated with Ron Howard's movies, and it benefits from the principal casting of Mel Gibson, an actor who, like Michael Douglas, is most effective when playing driven, edgy and volatile characters. Gibson plays a self made millionaire, Tom Mullen, a former combat pilot in Vietnam who has built his fortune as an airline tycoon.
However, the most impressive performance in Ransom comes from Gary Sinise as Jimmy Shaker, a disaffected detective who masterminds the kidnapping of Mullen's young son (Brawley Nolte, the real life son of Nick Nolte), and demands a ransom of two million dollars. Shaker pinpoints Mullen as his target because he is aware of Mullen's shady background involving the bribing of a union leader to avert a strike. The FBI, who have been investigating Mullen's involvement in that case, find themselves on Mullen's side when they take on the kidnapping case.
The mood of this psychological thriller is heightened by a number of skilfully developed sequences, such as the chilling one in which the young boy is kidnapped, and by the dark and grainy lighting of Piotr Sobocinski, the Polish cinematographer who lit several episodes of Kieslowski's Dekalog and his Three Colours: Red.
The movie's recurring theme of class divisions is emphasised in the contrast between Mullen's plush Fifth Avenue penthouse and the squalid Queens hideout of the kidnapping gang. Ron Howard keenly builds and sustains the dramatic tension until the movie sacrifices its achievements in an all too conventional crowd pleasing finale.
As Mullen's wife, Rene Russo has little to do beyond looking grief stricken, while the supporting players who fare better with their material include Lili Taylor, Delroy Lindo and former New Kids On the Block singer, Donnie Wahlberg, who is following his brother, Marky Mark, into movies. Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins provides the incessant hardcore drone which plays in the kidnapped boy's room.
"Fly Away Home" (PG) Savoy, Virgin, Dublin
If the nuances of the father daughter relationship at the heart of this film don't quite hold your attention, the glorious aerial photography certainly will. Based on a true story, Caroll Ballard's delicate children's film celebrates the triumph of adventure and enthusiasm over timidity and mean spiritedness. For the most part, it steers clear of mawkishness, as the 13 year old Amy (Anna Paquin), learns from her father Thomas (Jeff Daniels) how to fly a light aircraft, in order to train a flock of orphaned geese to migrate for the winter.
The death of Amy's mother in a car crash has uncomfortably reunited Amy and Thomas after a separation of nine years and it is the joint project of saving the geese, with its series of setbacks and challenges, which finally brings them closer together. While the pace flags half way through, with far too many scenes of Amy sulking around her father's farm in Ontario and glowering at his girlfriend (Dana Delany), it builds to an exciting climax as she and the geese begin their long journey south.
While the range of Anna Paquin (seen in The Piano and Jane Eyre) is limited to a portrayal of petulant rebelliousness that does not develop, Jeff Daniels is nicely understated, and it is the empty, majestic, North American landscapes, drenched in golden light, and Caleb Deschanel's dramatic shots of the geese flying in formation that linger in the mind.
"White Man's Burden" (15) UCI Tallaght; Omniplex, Santry; Virgin, Dublin
It will be interesting to see whether John Travolta's comments here about the best way to control the amount of salt on each, French fry will attain the cults status of his character's celebrated views on burgers in Pulp Fiction. It's one of the lighter moments in this ineffectual critique of racism directed by the Japanese American, Desmond Nakano.
Looking at American society through a distorted mirror, it presents a recognisable world, shot on location in LA, in which black people hold all the power and wealth, and whites live in ghettos, branded as the underclass. While this reversal is interesting initially, the impact is undermined by the superficiality of its treatment, the laughable lack of subtlety, analysis, or historical context, and the cartoonish characterisation.
As a factory worker driven by frustration and debt to kidnap the wealthy black businessman (Harry Belafonte) who is responsible for his dismissal, Travolta's strong, angry performance is hampered by the limitations of Nakano's script. The unfolding drama confirms the unmistakable message of the opening shots from the biscuit factory - showing white sponge fingers being coated by dark chocolate - that it's all a bit, well, black and white.
