Reviews: The Runaways & A Prophet

Rock Pout

Among the few things that are certain in life, one is that audiences can never seem to get enough of the musical biopic. Make no mistake, even though we’ve seen a recent surge of this genre as Oscar-guzzling, baity projects from the likes of Ray, Walk the Line and even Dreamgirls (unofficially), this genre has had a long life stretching as far back as to the introduction of the sound era. Some of these pictures are good and others are a bit more cliched, but in the right hands, any of them can be successful. The latest outing takes a keen eye to this budding rock group in the seventies, and while it suffers from many of the same tired plot points of other films, it is bolstered by some fine performances that make it worth checking out.

The starting point is 1975, and hard, punk-rock is coming into its own. But ambitious, rebel artist Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) is looking to revolutionize an industry that requires a shakeup every five years by starting an all female rock band. With the help of the extremely eccentric and flamboyant music producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), she teams up with Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) and three other rock out chicks to form The Runaways. The group never had a huge following in America, and actually found more success overseas in Japan. With any rock’n’roll group, there are abuses of drugs, sex and personal relationships all the way until the group was disbanded in 1979. Currie went back to a normal life, and Jett became a more famous name with her new more famous band Joan Jett and the Blackheart’s.

If you are one of the lucky few that have avoided witnessing the black hole of entertainment that is Twilight, I’d advise you to continue your abstinence lest your opinion of every Kristen Stewart performance be tainted. I do believe she is capable of being a good actress, and I constantly refer to Adventureland as an example. But I saw that film before I was even aware she was in those vampire films. Now it’s hard for me to judge if she’s an accomplished actress here because I keep getting recalls of her bland work in Twilight. I will say she doesn’t harm the movie any, and her presence in the film does add enough of the angsty intensity needed, but nothing about her never catches on. Shannon probably has the greatest range of character ticks, and even though a little bit of Fowley can go a long way, he still manages to find ways to make him funny and insightful.

However, the real performance to check out here is Fanning. It’s true that we’ve never seen Fanning take on such a hard edge character, but I think she handles the material beautifully. Those who still remember the eight-year-old Fanning pleading to be reunited with a mentally challenged Sean Penn might find some of the drug and sexual content rather jarring, and even I did in some instances, I still look at it as a very talented young actress transitioning to a very talented young adult actress. You’ll have to be ready to hear all the phrases on your list of “Things I Thought I’d Never Hear Dakota Fanning Say”, but it will be totally worth it to see such a mature and well rounded performance.

First time feature director Floria Sigismondi does have an interesting style as director, and she manages to keep the wild spirit of the era alive and crafts the more quiet, intimate moments well also. However, it’s her screenplay that is filled with the usual rock band cliches, and the story never becomes quite ambitious enough to break free from what would normally be seen in a dramatized “Behind the Music” television movie. Often times the predictability of the plot takes away from the some of the positive elements, and it is the major flaw of the film, that plus some poor shooting choices, but the performances do help tremendously.

I can’t say this is a great film, or even a great biopic based on the current standard, because of the pedestrian plot that follows the biopic rules to a tee, and the film goes on for a bit too long. However, because the film is saved by tremendous performances, particularly from Fanning, the film is worth checking out for that reason alone. This will certainly not be the last musical biopic, and there’s plenty of room for improvement. But, in the end, I still look forward to them all. *** / ****; GRADE: B

Foreign Aid

I know I say that with every Oscar season that I try to get to see all the films nominated, but there are always some categories that I miss completely before the awards are given out. The Foreign Language Film category is one that I usually don't see because these films are not released in Chicago in time. Not too many people know of these films nominated, but there's generally two well known films that get beaten out by a lesser known film that ends up taking the Oscar. For instance, in 2008, Waltz with Bashir and The Class were two highly acclaimed films that lost to the little known Departures. This time, A Prophet and The White Ribbon were beat out by Argentina's The Secret in Their Eyes. I have not seen Ribbon or Secrets, but I can say that judging by how strong this particular film is, I would say this film deserved to be called an Oscar winner.

The film centers on Malik, played by relative newcommer Tahar Rahim. Malik is a French-Arab who is sentenced to a six year prison sentence when he is nineteen years old. On the inside, he is taken under the wing of Cesar (Niels Arestrup), the veteran inmate with deep mafia connections from the Corsicans (close to Italy). After Cesar orders Malik to kill an inmate who poses a threat at an upcoming trial, Malik slowly rises in ranks, becoming his own mafia kingpin all within his prison walls.

There have been a lot of comparisons made about this film to the likes of The Godfather and Scarface. It's true that Malik goes through a similar transformation that Michael Corleone had, but fortunately Rahim is a talented enough actor for the character not to feel like a carbon copy. Rahim does a magnificent job at creating the complex change in character that Malik goes through, and it's quite an admirable job he does. Every scene of his feels authentic to the character, and he makes a good case for his name to be a recognizable on a global scale. Likewise, Arestrup is fantastic as the more villainous character, also showing many sides to a character that could have been one note. These two are the heart and soul of why the film works so much, even though other members of the cast, unknown to American audiences, are just as excellent.

Director Jacques Audiard always knows how to find the right balance to strike in each scene. When the quiet tension needs to slowly rise, the sly humor subtly sneaks in, the intense drama pierces the atmosphere, it is all delivered. The ambitions of the film never seem extraordinary, but Audiard direction and screenplay find the perfect way to tell this story. Even when some of the directorial choices seem a bit out of place, or give the film a strange beat to hold on, there's still a sense of the overall scheme of things, and the staging of the final moments of the film add a breath of astonishment that can only be achieved through such simplicity.

I know there's a lot of people who avoid the subtitles, and even those who don't mind them will notice a bit of difficulty trying to decipher the uses of three different foreign languages. But once again, I must beg you not to be afraid of the subtitles because you will discover a beautifully crafted film with fantastic performances from the two leads. I know I'm late on seeing this film, but the old adage of "better late than never" applies here. And I also know I'm cheating a little bit with this statement, but considering the movie didn't premiere in my city until March, I would say this is the best film of the year so far. **** / ****; GRADE: A