Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

 

Director: Lasse Hallström

Writers: Simon Beaufoy, Paul Torday (novel)

Stars: Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt and Amr Waked

Motion Picture Rating: 12A

Runtime: 107 minutes

 

 

There was a time, not that long ago, when I went out of my way to miss films that featured Ewan McGregor. He thoroughly annoyed me. Wooden, half-arsed acting, that peculiar grin of his and yet he still landed good roles. I didn’t understand it and instantly took a dim view of those three Star Wars episodes and the likes of Big Fish and The Island. However, I am altering my position and this film is a part of the process that started with The Ghost and then included Beginners and Perfect Sense (both reviewed here on SSR). McGregor is winning me over.

In this film McGregor nicely inhabits the role of an old before his time government fisheries expert. As Dr Alfred Jones he wears natty shirt, tie and cardigan combinations and is stiff and off-hand with his colleagues. At home he has a sober, but passionless and faltering marriage. McGregor retains his natural Scottish accent for the role and layers on a rather dour and sarcastic personality to great effect (all rather Gordon Brown). Dr Jones’ uneventful life changes when a representative of a sheikh approaches him with a project to develop salmon fishing in the Yemen that is seized upon by a UK government spin doctor looking for positive middle eastern news. He tries to resist the sheikh’s “theoretically possible” pet project, but is forced to participate.

Along with McGregor there is the hard working, but always fresh Emily Blunt supporting the sheikh and Kristin Scott Thomas as the interfering government PR wonk. It is a nice ensemble with Amr Waked equally effective as Sheikh Muhammed. Scott Thomas channels a bit of Malcolm Tucker so her scenes have a nice touch of The Thick of It about them. Apart from the odd bit of twee spiritual twaddle coming from the sheikh, it is difficult to fault the film. It has that nice, slow and lazy Sunday afternoon feel to it and that’s not such a bad thing. McGregor and Blunt are charming together and for once director Lasse Hallstrom keeps it tight and refrains from over sentimentality.

Perfect Sense

Director: David Mackenzie

Writer: Kim Fupz Aakeson (screenplay)

Stars: Ewan McGregor, Eva Green and Lauren Tempany

Motion Picture Rating: 15

Runtime: 92 minutes

 

 

 

This is an odd little film that had a limited run in cinemas. IMDB labels it as drama / romance / sci-fi and certainly it covers those bases. The drama and the romance are delivered by way of the relationship between scientist Susan (Eva Green) and chef Michael (Ewan McGregor). This is the heart of the film. Michael is cocky, but charming and he pursues the rather severe Susan, a neighbour to his Glaswegian restaurant. They fall into bed quickly, sexual chemistry to the fore, and later they fall in love.

The sci-fi element concerns a mysterious global epidemic that shuts down human senses. At first people lose their sense of smell – severe olfactory syndrome or SOS as it is labelled – and then go taste, hearing and finally sight. In advance of losing one’s senses the affected suffer strange, but related episodes of a psychological trauma. Before losing taste people devour food feverishly and before losing hearing they scream and rant uncontrollably.

This is an art house film and as such it contains strange and clever camera shots, archival footage and it jumps back and forth in time. All of that is handled well and the film mostly looks good. Unfortunately the sound quality, certainly on my DVD, was dire and not helped by an over-bearing soundtrack and some heavy Scottish accents. It might have been on purpose, but I often found it too difficult to follow the dialogue – my own sensory challenge.

Eva Green, surely the world’s best looking scientist, improves through the film, but Ewan McGregor delivers a good performance from the first minute. Together they become a plausible couple and their relationship seems natural in what are highly abnormal times. Their descent into sensory darkness and Glasgow’s fall into anarchy become poignant and for an odd little film it managed to move me by the end. This is an interesting and touching film about love.

Haywire

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Writer: Lem Dobbs

Stars: Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor and Michael Fassbender

Motion Picture Rating: R

Runtime:  93 minutes

 

I have written before (see the Colombiana review) about the emergence of kick-ass female action leads, but with Haywire we have something extra. The director Steven Soderbergh saw Gina Carano on TV in one of her Mixed Martial Art (MMA) fights and decided then and there that she deserved her own movie. That has happened before with men such as Van Damme, Seagal and Norris, but not for a while and never with such a critically acclaimed director.

Haywire gives MMA star Carano plenty of room to demonstrate her fighting prowess. The opening scene involves her viciously trading blows with Channing Tatum and thereafter she brawls with Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor and dozens of extras. What plot there is concerns Carano’s private team of spooks and mercenaries betraying her and thus feeling her wrath. It is not a million miles away from what Tarrantino did with Kill Bill, but the look and feel is very different.

Soderbergh is trying for a 1970’s Euro spy aesthetic and as such we get washed out tones, limited dialogue and plenty of cool ‘70’s backing music. As such it does look good, but we have been here before with Soderbergh (The Limey, Out of Sight) and never has he worked with such a thin plot. His cast is solid though with Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas also in there supporting first time actress Carano. For her this is a decent effort. She fights as well as Jason Bourne, is less wooden than Seagal and Norris (who isn’t?) and also looks smoking hot in a cocktail dress.