Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan

(MA15+) ★★★

Director: Kriv Stenders.

Cast: Travis Fimmel, Daniel Webber, Luke Bracey, Richard Roxburgh, Nicholas Hamilton, Matt Doran, Stephen Peacocke, Myles Pollard, Uli Latukefu, Anthony Hayes, Sam Parsonson.

"No, I said half Hawaiian, half Mexican, with extra cheese."

"War? Huh! Good lord! What is it good for?" asked The Temptations (and Edwin Starr and Bruce Springsteen and Frankie Goes To Hollywood).

The answer to this question is "movies". Or, more particularly in this case, "Aussie movies".

We Aussies do love churning out war films, almost as much as we love commemorating Anzac Day. In the past decade alone we've seen Beneath Hill 60, The Railway Man, The Water Diviner and Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge (and you could probably include Tomorrow When The War Began in that lot if you wanted).

The latest addition to the list is the awkwardly titled Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan, which tries (and succeeds) at putting you in the midst of that fateful day in 1966.

For those who slept through history class (or didn't get taught about it), the Battle Of Long Tan is one of Australia's best "against great odds" war stories - 100 Aussies and some long range Howitzers versus an estimated North Vietnamese/Viet Cong force of about 2000 troops in a South Vietnamese rubber plantation.

Stenders' film puts you among the soldiers in visceral and well filmed fashion. It looks stunning and when shit gets real early on, it's heart-pounding stuff. There is also an admirable level of authenticity to proceedings. The battle seems to play out in real time, and the lingo, uniforms and behaviours make it feel like the real deal.

The downside of this is that the film becomes a near-endless barrage of shoot-outs that unfortunately begin to look and feel exactly the same. The shots become identical from one mini-battle to the next - count how many times you see a slo-mo of a faceless North Vietnamese soldier blown into the air by a Howitzer blast.

This action focus is at the expense of character. We get to meet five of the soldiers, led by Fimmel's Harry Smith, very briefly in the opening, but after that you're left to guess out who is who, with no names or character arcs for context. It makes it hard to feel for those that don't make it, which sucks a lot of the emotional punch out of the film.

Having said that, the performances are pretty solid all round. Fimmel is given the most to do and is a nice mix of suitably damaged, overly gung-ho, and quietly human in the face of great adversity. The rest of the nameless grunts are left to be scared/brave/determined/exhausted and do a good job of it, with Bracey standing out. Roxburgh, as the hissable "villain" Brigadier Jackson, is the only one outside of Fimmel given a lot of dramatic work to do.

There is some pretty impressive stuntwork, the cinematography from Ben Nott is superb, and the production design is good. One strange thing that bears mentioning is how bad the monsoon in the film looks - it's painfully obvious that it wasn't really raining, and that a too-small number of overhead sprinklers and minimal CGI were used to ill effect.

Stenders has put together a well shot and engaging re-enactment of the Battle of Long Tan, which strives for authenticity and should at least be praised for its efforts in achieving this and honouring the fallen. As a film though, it falls short in many areas, becoming a repetitive, emotionless and vaguely propagandist endeavour due to there being no context around the battle or the brave men who sadly gave their lives.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Quentin Tarantino.

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Austin Butler, Mike Moh, Al Pacino.

"I loved you in Johnny Suede."

Welcome to Tarantino's weirdest film yet. It's easily his most mystifying work since Pulp Fiction, his least accessible piece to date, and the most self-indulgent movie of his career (which is saying something for Tarantino).

Admittedly, upon leaving the cinema it felt like QT had missed his mark - that it was a bloated, plotless mess, more caught up in reproducing a lost era of cinema than telling a ripping yarn. But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced his aim is true.

It's long, yes - too long - but it's surprising, hilarious, and unlike anything else in his catalogue. Yet it's also definitely, distinctively, decidedly Tarantino. It will leave a lot of people cold, but that has always been Tarantino's thing - his idiosyncrasies have never been to all tastes, but here he really serves up something that many will find unpalatable, while others will savour for days.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is QT's ode to the final days of Hollywood's golden age; an era that he posits ended when a bunch of Charles Manson's minions committed the so-called Tate Murders in August 1969.

As the film counts down to that bloody full stop, we meet actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and his stuntman/buddy Cliff Booth (Pitt). Rick's star is fading, making him a perennial guest star on TV shows while he hopes and waits for a career revival. Meanwhile Cliff fills his days doing odd jobs for Rick and driving around Los Angeles. It's during one of these drives that he meets Pussycat (Qualley), who is a member of the "Manson Family".

And living next door to Rick is Sharon Tate (Robbie) - a fun-loving actress whose star is rising.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is Tarantino's homage to the twilight of Tinsel Town's halcyon days, and he mirrors this decline in Rick Dalton's career. The role is a gift for DiCaprio, who gets to give some truly cheesy performances, as well as have an on-set meltdown, in between delivering some quite powerful and masterful moments.

DiCaprio gets Pitt to bounce off, and they make for a great pairing that keeps the film moving when it doesn't feel like anything is actually happening. While Rick is a bundle of flaws, fears and inadequacies, his ol' buddy Cliff is always there to reassure him. Cliff's own dark past is teased and tantalised, partly as a way to build the character, but its frustrating. Subject matter aside, Pitt makes Cliff a great mix of gumshoe and goon - an affable and easygoing stuntman from an era of L.A. that's about to wink out of existence, and he doesn't seem to mind.

Robbie's Tate is frustratingly underwritten, but in the context of the wider film, it works. She is the bubbly, oblivious flower child enjoying the best that Hollywood has to offer in this era.

The character focus makes the film feel plotless and meandering. It's first act is painfully slow, while the middle segments which follow Sharon, Rick and Cliff individually are long but more interesting. Then the finale hits and all bets are off. Surprises abound, gears are shifted, and you won't know what hit you. It's impossible to talk about it thoroughly and how much it all means without spoilers, but this isn't that kind of review. All that can be said is that Tarantino's choices for the ending will have you thinking, speculating and wondering for days to come.

It's this last half hour that really changes everything. Prior to that, the film felt like some great performances played out in a well-captured era, with the production design, radio ads, costumes, and soundtrack all serving to evoke the movie's time capsule vibe. But it seemed like little more than that.

But there's an exhilarating and bizarre boldness to the ending that is not only oddly hilarious, but hugely entertaining, like a pay off for the previous slowness. It also fits together so many pieces of the puzzle, helping to fully realise the picture QT was trying to paint. Some sections still feel overpadded, and it could easily be half an hour shorter, even in light of his magnificent outro, but it makes the journey worthwhile.

Like many Tarantino films, this bears re-watching, study and analysis. It's hard to tell where this fits in his oeuvre, but it's a fascinatingly strange movie from an incomparable artist.

Palm Beach

(M) ★★½

Director: Rachel Ward.

Cast: Bryan Brown, Greta Scacchi, Sam Neill, Richard E Grant, Heather Mitchell, Jacqueline McKenzie, Claire van der Boom, Aaron Jeffery, Matilda Brown, Charlie Vickers, Frances Berry.

The latest Endless Summer movie was a real disappointment.

In a rare week when there is not one but two Aussie films getting a wide release in our cinemas (see also Danger Close: The Battle Of Long Tan), you could be forgiven for thinking there was some kind of local movie industry resurgence going on.

But Palm Beach is not the signal of a new wave - rather it's evidence of an industry stuck in the sand. The film fills a void for an oft-ignored demographic, and hopefully gets bums on seats, but it lacks the vitality, spark and originality to make it a runaway success or even highly recommendable. It is okay, but nothing more than that. It is pleasantly average, vaguely disappointing, and largely forgettable.

If nothing else, the top-shelf cast and the colourful characters they portray are welcome company as they reunite at the scenic Palm Beach. It's the birthday (60th? 70th?) of former band manager and T-shirt designer Frank (Bryan Brown), and flying in to join him and his wife (Scacchi) for a boozy long weekend are their kids (Matilda Brown and Vickers), ex-bandmates Billy (Grant) and Leo (Neill), along with their wives - actress Eva (Mitchell) and the fun-loving Bridget (McKenzie) - plus Holly (van der Boom), who is the daughter of the band's deceased lead singer, and her beau Doug (Jeffery).

Over the next few days, they will bicker and laugh, and dig up old memories and long-buried secrets as they re-evaluate what went wrong and right with their lives.

A better Aussie cast you'd be hard-pressed to find, and their chemistry helps give the film some necessary warmth, even in the face of a script that struggles to drum up any real emotion. In the "having a good time" scenes, you get the sense this was fun to make, and that the cast enjoyed themselves. That goodwill flows over into the film, and the older actors all acquit themselves well. It's only a woefully miscast Jeffery (he's 50, not a young lover) and an underwhelming van der Boom who let the side down. But they are the least of the film's problems.

Palm Beach lacks tension, which induces tedium. Several potentially large issues are dealt with either too quickly or not at all. One character uses the band's hit song for an ad without the knowledge of the other members, and the next day, all is forgiven, despite it being a huge deal the day before (and there is no discussion about royalties - is it just me or is that weird? On a sidenote, this is representative of the film's unrealistic portrayal of its old ex-musos - they never seem like former bandmates in their inter-relationships or the way they talk about the band's past, if at all). A character damages a neighbouring house, but this is ignored.

The script's biggest disservice is done to its female characters. Their arcs all revolve around their men or are non-existent. Faring worst is McKenzie's Bridget who gets no subplot at all. But worst of all is the fact a lot of their conversations are about their men, as if they have no lives of their own. The female characters don't feel as well fleshed out as the male ones, which is disappointing.

The slow-burn central mystery of the film is hackneyed and fails to spark anything, while the various in-and-out of love plots are tiring. All of these issues boil down to the lacklustre and unoriginal script. It's The Big Chill meets The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and that's not necessarily a recommendation.

(I thought I was clever coming up with that comparison, but it turns out Bryan Brown has been describing it thus in interviews. So if nothing else, I at least feel like I was right.)

It leaves Palm Beach lacking any distinguishing features beyond the cast. Ward's direction captures the setting well, and imbues shots with warmth, but the script (which she co-wrote) falls short. It needed more laughs, some sizzle in the dialogue, and some actual stakes. It doesn't help that the movie wanders from one mid-life crisis to the next, occasionally hitting a nice theme or seam of story, before meandering off to a montage of postcard-worthy scenery.

This blandness is also exemplified by the soundtrack. It's a mix of overplayed '60s and '70s rock, folk and soul songs that don't add to the film. Instead they unsubtly labour points, or feel like generic selections. Are these songs supposed to speak to the bygone halcyon days of these characters, because if so, the time span feels too wide? Why isn't the soundtrack buzzing with the "contemporaries" of the main characters' band, or a narrower selection from a particular era to invoke a welcome feeling of nostalgia?

This is a missed opportunity because the cast is largely fun to hang out with. But their high spirits and strong performances wear out in the face of tired tropes between the patchy entertainment.

Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw

(M) ★★★

Director: David Leitch.

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Eiza González, Eddie Marsan, Helen Mirren, Cliff Curtis, Ryan Reynolds, Rob Delaney, Kevin Hart.

The new series of The Block was going to be lit.

Read my review of Fast Five here.
Read my review of Fast & Furious 6 here.
Read my review of Furious 7 here.
Read my review of The Fate Of The Furious (F&F8) here.

Here's a fun experiment - find someone who's never seen a Fast & Furious film. Then make them sit down and watch the first movie in the series (The Fast & The Furious from all the way back in 2001). Then get them to watch Hobbs & Shaw.

And then see if they can explain what the hell happened in between, and how these two films can possibly inhabit the same cinematic universe.

This spin-off is the ninth film in the series (although the actual Fast & Furious 9 is due out next year) and it certainly captures the over-the-top insanity and complete disregard for physics that the F&F franchise has made its stock-in-trade. There are still fast cars, although they are less prominent in this sidequel - this is less about cars, and more about Brosnan-era Bond-type OTT mayhem. Except on steroids. And possibly meth.

There is no subtlety here - Hobbs & Shaw makes past F&F movies look positively restrained. Remember when a high speed chase through tunnels under the Mexican border (see F&F4) seemed ludicrous? Well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

The plot revolves around the unlikely pairing of Johnson's federal agent Hobbs (first seen in F&F5) and Statham's soldier-turned-mercenary Shaw (first seen in an F&F6 cameo). They team up to track a stolen programmable virus, which is in the hands of an MI6 agent (Kirby) who has seemingly gone rogue. Also on the trail is cybernetically enhanced baddie Brixton (Elba), who has his own designs on the technovirus.

The films in the F&F series have ranged from bad and dumb (2 Fast 2 Furious) to good and dumb (Fast Five and Furious 7), and this is somewhere in the middle. It's particularly idiotic, but there's enough fun to be had to make its gargantuan run time almost worthwhile.

First to the dumb stuff. The contrivances in the first act-and-a-half are a real stretch. To get Johnson and Statham's supposed sworn enemies to work together, but also to keep Kirby's MI6 agent on the run means no one's motives make any sense. And your suspension of disbelief has to be tuned pretty high to be on board from the start. As with previous instalments, the way anything works - physics, law enforcement, the media, airports - is disregarded and replaced with an in-film logic that is basically whatever the filmmakers want it to be.

But Hobbs & Shaw's biggest sin is its length. After reaching a place where the film should have ended, our lead trio (and the plot) keep on running. While this brings us to Samoa for a memorable climax and some sledgehammering of F&F's eternal maxim - family is the most important thing ever -  it stretches the film well past its end-by time.

But now the fun stuff, and top of that list is Idris Elba. Despite boasting paper-thin villains with dodgy plans for world domination, F&F has managed to get some good actors to go bad and have a blast in the process. Charlize Theron and Luke Evans, as well as Statham and Johnson, have proven enjoyable antagonists in the franchise, and you can add Elba to that roster. Again, his character has little depth and a ridiculous motive, but he's formidable and entertaining. And, if nothing else, it looks like Elba is having blast.

Ditto for Johnson and Statham. Even if their insults and banter occasionally sink, there is still a half-decent dynamic between them. Kirby is an underwritten third wheel, poorly served by the script, but the film is definitely stronger when the three of them are on screen together. It's also worth noting that Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart, despite seemingly dropping in to visit the set from different movies, give really good cameos.

There's a lot about this that is not worth caring about and it's too long by nearly half an hour. But it's still fun, it still has some good moments (particularly its somewhat redeeming Samoan showdown), and it's batshit insane. But you get the feeling that it knows it's batshit insane. And that kind of makes it all okay.