"Last Man Standing" (18) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
In Akira Kurosawa's vigorous 1961 Japanese action movie, Yojimbo - the title means "bodyguard" - Toshiro Mifune played a Samurai warrior who happens upon a lawless town ravaged by rival gangs; sought by both sides, he cunningly plays one faction against the other until they destroy each other. Kurosawa's influential film spawned a sequel, Sanjuro, directed by himself a year later; in 1964 Yojimbo served as the basis for Sergio Leone's landmark spaghetti western", A Fistful of Dollars; and now it has been refashioned by writer director Walter Hill for Last Man Standing, which relocates the action to a small Texas born town during the Prohibition era of the early 1930s.
This time the stoic Man With No Name is played by Bruce Willis; when pressed for a name, he unconvincingly replies, "Smith" and, pressed further, offers "John Smith". Willis swaps his dirty white Die Hard vest for a three piece suit and tie as he takes on rival bootlegging gangs Italians led by the ruthless Strozzi (Ned Eisenberg) and an Irish mob under the control of the sadistic Doyle (David Patrick Kelly). An underused Christopher Walken, scarfaced and speaking in a whisper hoarser than Clint Eastwood's, plays Doyle's henchman who is referred to as the Angel of Death.
We are on familiar ground here, not just in terms of the movie's narrative roots but also in Walter Hill's recurring preoccupation with loners caught up in violent events. The violence is relentless in the aptly named Last Man Standing as the Willis character sprays the rival gangsters with bullets in one choreographed shoot out after another and the body count escalates.
While its sheer familiarity does not breed contempt in this case, it does engender ennui with Hill merely going through the motions, albeit with his customary visual sense. At least Last Man Standing may be seen here on the cinema screen, unlike Hill's recent Trespass, Geronimo and Wild Bill, all of which went straight to video in Ireland.
"Jane Eyre" (PG) Screen at D'Olier Street, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
From Hamlet as action man, played with gusto by Mel Gibson to gorgeously lush screenings of Verdis Otello and La traviata, Franco Zeffirelli has a gift for maximising the big screen's potential for dramatic spectacle. The Italian stage designer and theatre, opera and cinema director has now given us a Jane Eyre that is a triumph of millinery, corsetry and upholstery, perfect in its chiaroscuro lighting and attention to period details.
The problem lies in the difference between filming a play or opera, with its speeches or libretto, and a novel with an emotionally heightened first person narrative as rich in imagery, fantasy, gothic and mythic elements as Charlotte Bronte's much loved story.
Screenwriter Hugh Whitemore has pared the novel down to the skeleton of the plot to tell the story of the grim schooldays and the young adulthood of the spirited governess, Jane (Charlotte Gainsborough) who falls in love with her quixotic employer, Mr Rochester (William Hurt) and agrees to marry him, in ignorance of the fact that his mad wife resides in the attic.
Inevitably, Hurt and Gainsborough will he compared to Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine in the 1943 version, and these are altogether more muted, naturalistic performances, without much suggestion of mutual passion. Minor roles are more successful, with Joan Plowright as the kindly housekeeper at Thornfield, Mrs Fairfax and Fiona Shaw as Jane Eyre's stony hearted aunt.
It all rolls on in its well meaning, low key way, until about two thirds of the way through, when there's a sudden rush to the finish, with major plot twists being negotiated at dizzying speed: Aunt Reed dies, Rochester proposes, bigamy is revealed, Jane flees, house and wife burn down, Jane becomes an heiress, rejects cousin's marriage proposal, returns to the maimed Rochester, lives happy ever after. This absurd pace only confirms the sense that the essence of Jane Eyre, its heroine's singular vision and struggle of conscience between love, independence and duty, has been lost.
"Multiplicity" (12) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
Casting an actor in more than one part in the same film is one of the oldest magic tricks in cinema, and a golden opportunity for stars to show off. In Harold Ram is's fantasy comedy, the hyperkindic Michael Keaton takes advantage of new technology to fill the frame with four characters simultaneously - a technically impressive feat, but unfortunately nobody thought to write a decent script around it.
Keaton plays an ordinary working stiff who finds that life is just becoming too much for him. Pushed to spend longer hours at his construction job, he has no time to spend with his wife (Andie McDowell) and kids. When he is approached by an eccentric scientist (Harris Yulin) who offers to clone him, the idea of an extra pair of hands is appealing. But one clone isn't enough, and soon Keaton finds there are three new versions of himself knocking around the place.
Ramis was responsible for Groundhog Day, one of the wittiest and most appealing fantasies of the past few years, and Multiplicity is an obvious attempt to reprise the success of that film. But where Groundhog Day took an ingenious premise and developed it with panache, the new film is short on ideas and far too long in its flaccid narrative. God knows what they're putting in the water in Hollywood in 1996, but they seem to be fast losing the art of telling a simple story well. Multiplicity is full of digressions and distractions, and a truck could comfortably drive through the holes in the plot (a particular sin in fantasy, which demands a rigorous internal logic). McDowell is left simpering on the sidelines, and Keaton seems too preoccupied with the technical demands of his task to inject any real life into proceedings. Not funny at all.
