May 2017 book and film review

FILMS

KAJAKE: THE TRUE STORY (aka Kilo 2 Bravo) (2014) D- Paul Katis
A squad of British troops in Afghan stray into an unmarked minefield. It's not surprsisng it isn't marked: it was laid, not by the Taliban but the Ruskies, nearly 40 years ago. One by one, the hapless squaddies step on mines and get various bits of them blown off. The only hope is to be lifted out by helicopter, but the Taliban are out there, waiting with their rocket launcher to blow any chopper that ventures into their range out of the sky. Tricky...
          "Based on a true story" as the saying goes, this is certainly one of the most true-to-life portrayals of the Afghan War ever seen on the screen. Moving, horrific, even funny at times, the language is what you might expect from a crew of soldiers in jeopardy, and it isn't always easy to pick up the dialogue. But that only seems to add to the realism. Harrowing, but gripping stuff.

NIGHTCRAWLER (2014) D- Dan Gilroy
A young man in LA wishes to make his name photographing human tragedies as they unfold on its mean streets. Of course there's no shortage of material, gangland slayings, multi-car pile-ups and so on, but it's also a crowded market. There is a slew of professional and semi-professional film crews out there, and whoever arrives on the scene first gets to sell their footage to the network news channels. Soon our hero (Jake Gylenhaal) realizes he must leave his ethical considerations at home if he is to get to the top...
         Loosely based on the celebrated work of New York photojournalist WeeGee (though we hope the latter behaved rather better than the character in this film) we see how a young man, gifted with strong self-promotional skills over and above his prowess with a camera, gains the world but threatens to lose his soul in the dog-eat-dog world of freelance news gathering. Powerful stuff.

LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962) D- David Miller
A cowboy out of his time (Kirk Douglas) finds himself at odds with a society which has moved on without him. Fiercely individualistic, he gets into a fight with the police over some trivia and finds himself in jail. It's almost like he wants to be there, except, no, he's soon looking for a way to bust out of there. Then he does, and laid-back cop Walter Matthau is given the job of bringing him in. Thing is, he has a sort of brooding admiration for Douglas's misfit and isn't sure he wants to catch him...
            Kirk Douglas regarded this film as the one had most satisfaction being part of, yet it isn't very well known now. It's hard not to see it as a western, even though it is set around 1960, because its themes are very much from the golden days of the Old West. Terrific little movie.

For more movies, see next blog...