In the Fade
Starring Diane Kruger, Numan Acar, Denis Moschitto, Johannes Krisch, Hanna Hilsdorf and Ulrich Brandhoff. Directed by Fatih Akin. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 106 minutes. 14A
Diane Kruger took Best Actress at Cannes for her lead role in this new drama by German auteur Fatih Akin (Head-On), which gives agency to a mother’s rage and the most powerful of human emotions.
Kruger seizes and holds every frame as Katja, who is caught with documentary urgency by cinematographer Rainer Klausmann’s camera. Katja is a Hamburg woman out to avenge the terrorist bombing that killed her husband and young son, and the subsequent travesty of justice that added to her misery.
She and her Kurdish-German husband Nuri (Numan Acar), had reason to believe they’d settled into happy domesticity with their six-year-old son Rocco (Rafael Santana).
Nuri had been a drug dealer — the movie opens with his prison wedding to Katja — but he’d gone straight, working as a legal adviser to Turks and Kurds at a community centre. Katja worked as his bookkeeper.
The bombing, which Katja narrowly escapes, takes it all away in a brutal flash. The cops are quick to blame Nuri’s past. Perhaps this was an act of revenge by drug dealers or the Turkish mob? Or maybe Nuri was being “politically active” again?
Other suspects emerge: husband and wife neo-Nazis André (Ulrich Brandhoff) and Edda (Hanna Hilsdorf). (There is a real-life basis for this: Akin, a German with Turkish roots, was moved to make In the Fade by a string of neo-Nazi attacks against immigrants to Germany in the early 2000s.)
A subsequent court trial, ferociously argued by opposing attorneys played by Denis Moschitto and Johannes Krisch, makes a mockery of justice and the concept of “reasonable doubt.”
Katja has now lost not only her family, but also her reason for existence. Akin shows how deep her depression is; he also revealed in the courtroom scene the extent of damage wrought by the nail bomb in the attack.
Katja will decide to take the law into her own hands — she’ll soon sport a samurai tattoo — but the film doesn’t follow the usual path of the payback thriller, where violence is met with even more violence. All credit to Kruger for breathing life into a character typically designed for the taking of it.
In the Fade, Germany’s Oscar entry and a recent Golden Globes winner, offers an unusually thoughtful take on a brutal genre.
It asks questions about grief and justice that resonate with these perilous times, all the more so in light of recent terror atrocities the world over.
Peter Howell
The Final Year
Documentary directed by Greg Barker. Opens Friday at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema. 89 minutes. PG
Filmmaker Greg Barker surely had the best of intentions when he decided to make a film about the final year in office of former U.S. president Barack Obama.
What he ended up with is a film that most people — those intelligent enough to enjoy documentaries — are going to find a real downer simply because we know what’s coming next.
(Supporters of President Donald Trump supporters will almost certainly hate for the film for entirely different reasons.)
Barker focuses on the big players on Obama’s foreign relations team, including secretary of state John Kerry, U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes and national security adviser Susan Rice.
What unfolds is rather interesting although only fitfully compelling and poor Rice gets very short shrift for reasons unknown. In fact, Obama gets more screen time than Rice and he’s a busy man.
Perhaps with the passing of time, the film will be seen as a moderately useful testament to history. Just not for the near future.
Bruce DeMara
Den of Thieves
Starring Gerard Butler, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Pablo Schreiber and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. Directed by Christian Gudegast. Opens Friday at GTA theatres. 140 minutes. 14A
“You’re not the bad guys. We are!” boastful L.A. cop Nick Flanagan (Gerard Butler) tells apprehended gangbanger Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), as Den of Thieves makes multiples of its title.
Donnie’s confused, and so are we, as London Has Fallen screenwriter Christian Gudegast barrels through his first directorial effort with scant regard to narrative clarity. It’s ostensibly a heist thriller, the plan being to steal $30 million from L.A.’s supposedly fail-safe Federal Reserve Bank.
The scheme is led by tattooed master criminal Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber) and his main man Levi (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), with Donnie driving getaway. Flanagan and his fellow nasties from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department have other ideas, none of them terribly legal.
Here’s the real crime: Who shot the editor? Gudegast and co-writer Paul Scheuring forget to keep their eye on the prize, as they detour into the marital misadventures of Butler’s scenery-chewing Flanagan.
There are a few good performances here, especially by Schreiber and Jackson. But at a running time of 140 minutes, the heist is sacrificed.
PH
Blade Runner 2049
Starring Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Jared Leto and Dave Bautista. Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Available now on DVD. 164 minutes. 14A
Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi stunner digs into the mystery about who is real and who isn’t, in a future Earth populated by humans and bioengineered “replicants.”
The film, one of my favourites of 2017, makes us wistful for a past that hasn’t happened yet — the year 2019 of Ridley Scott’s original from 1982, Blade Runner — while also contemplating the world three decades hence.
The film demands close attention but also rewards it. Vibrant dystopian cityscapes are captured by cinematographer Roger Deakins, while the score by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer recalls the majestic gloom of the Vangelis original.
The sequel grandly builds on ideas from its more linear predecessor, which overlaid deep thoughts onto a noir action film about a cop named Deckard (Harrison Ford) seeking to violently “retire” four rogue replicants.
Ryan Gosling is Officer K, a member of the LAPD’s recently reactivated Blade Runner unit, who uncovers secrets that shock even the jaded denizens of this ravaged future world. It's a movie of beautiful disorientation. Extras include multiple making-of and prologue featurettes.
PH
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan. Available Jan. 23 on DVD. Written and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. 121 minutes. 18A
A kinky horror about collecting debts unpaid, brought to you via the fertile mind and eye of Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Lobster).
The story turns on Barry Keoghan’s character Martin, who is shy and lonely one moment, utterly blood-chilling the next. He leaves a family headed by Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman wondering what kind of game is afoot.
Farrell plays Steven Murphy, a successful Cincinnati heart surgeon. He has a big house, a beautiful opthalmalogist wife Anna (Kidman) and adorable children Bob (Sunny Suljic) and Kim (Raffey Cassidy).
He also has money to burn on toys like expensive timepieces, one of which he buys for 16-year-old Martin, a fatherless teen he’s befriended. Tragedy brought them together: Martin’s dad died on Steven’s operating table.
The film makes you squirm as much as the gallows humour makes you laugh. It comes on at first like the blandest of TV hospital dramas, although the strange camera angles, spooky music and affected speech of the characters — all Lanthimos hallmarks — signal that something strange is afoot. Extras include “An Impossible Conundrum” featurette.
PH
