The Money Maker

Frank Lucas was the John D. Rockefeller of heroin, a self-made magnate who took over a patch of 1970s Harlem and turned it into his own private drug kingdom. In other curcumstances, in an other business, Lucas would have been a Forbes poster boy, an exemplar of entrepreneurial capitalism. In Ridley Scott’s sprawling, fascinating American Gangster, Denzel Washington plays Lucas as a forward-thinking corporate animal who saw his chance and took it.

As the movie opens, Lucas was driver and minder to local don Bumpy Johnson, who bemoans the state of the American economy as he dies in his arms in a shop full of fridges. With a huckster’s shrewd eye and a marketeer’s gut instinct, Lucas expands his new empire. Using a cousin’s military connections, Lucas flew his product into the US hidden in the coffins of dead American GI’s, a steady train of smuggling opportunities arising from America’s disastrous Viet Nam war. Before putting his operation in place, Lucas flew to Hanoi to strike a deal with a local supplier, an arrangement that eventually saw thousands of kilos of heroin land in his Harlem factory, where his staff of cutters and baggers ran an efficient 24-hour production line for Blue Magic heroin, which had twice the potency of street smack and half the price of his rivals product. In a warped sense, Lucas’ trade was as much tied up with the fortunes of the war as any of the other pillars of the US military/industrial complex, the Haliburton of heroin. In every sense, he was making a killing.

Although he never matches the cunning or threat of Training Day, Washington comes very close as Lucas, a cold-hearted killer wrapped in an anonymous suit and tie. Blessed with almost supernatural observational skills, the kingpin rarely raises his voice and never utters an idle threat. Quickly and coolly, he removes those who disrespect or oppose him; as the film opens, he sets fire to a man tied to a chair and later shoots a mouthy rival on the street in broad daylight. At the same time, we see him buy a country mansion for his widowed mother and installing his five brothers as trusted lieutenants in his business. They are given covers; a dry-cleaners, a mechanics workshop, while handling Lucas’ vast distribution network and collecting his money. After meeting in a nightclub, Lucas marries a South American beauty queen (played by Lymari Nadal), and installs her in an uptown penthouse. Just at the point were Lucas has everything he ever dreamed of, a dangerous expression of contentment falls across Washington’s face. His wife buys him a grey chinchilla coat. Against his better judgement, he wears it on a night out, with a matching derby hat, taking his head out of his ledgers long enough to have someone come along and cut it off.

That someone was Richie Roberts, played by Scott’s favourite male lead, Russell Crowe. Roberts was a small-time New Jersey detective who gained a bad reputation as an untrustworthy good guy when he handed in a cache of laundered money that was destined to line the pockets of his fellow policemen. Without a friend on the force, the honest Roberts is assigned the job of establishing a high-level anti-drugs task force, working with a small team from an abandoned schoolroom to find out who is shipping high-grade heroin into New York. At the same time, Roberts discovers a cadre of corrupt NY police detectives, led by the sneering Trupo (Josh Brolin), who are leaning on Lucas’ trade, and casually threaten Roberts for daring to stand in their way.

These two real-life characters, deftly bonded in Steve Zaillian’s blistering script, play out against a backdrop of a decaying city; the fascinating police procedural balanced with long sections of keen-eyed social and political observation. It is an engrossing story, epic in scale and sensational in detail, but smoothly and powerfully told. Scott reins in his more bombastic tendencies to tremendous effect, allowing his talented leads to connect the points of the narrative, only showing his flashier side in a deafening, electrifying late-act shoot-out. That is where we would expect the story to end, but Scott has Lucas and Ritchie confront one another across a table in a dank prison cell for a long, frank conversation that could have made a film in itself; two heavyweights slugging it out to the final bell and one of the finest closing shots of the year.

Emile Hirsch & Into The Wild

Emile Hirsch is a name you might not have heard before. The 23 year old Californian has only made a handful of movies and barring his debut in teen sex comedy The Girl Next Door, none of them have enjoyed popular success. There’s a chance too that his new film, Into The Wild, where he plays the real-life American hermit Christopher McCandless, might pass you by at the Cineplex. But it really shouldn’t, it is an astonishing performance and is the film that will make Hirsch’s name.

Directed by Sean Penn, who adapted John Krakauer’s best-selling book, the free-wheeling, poetic road movie introduces us to the idealistic McCandless as he graduates from university and prepares for law school. His demanding parents (played by William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden) are trapped in an unhappy marriage, staying together for the sake of their business. Shortly after the ceremony, McCandless gives his life savings to a charity, packs a few clothes into his car and hits the road, not telling anyone where he is going. Inspired by Jack Kerouac, Jack London and the woodsman stories of David Henry Thoreau, McCandless plans to travel across the continent of America, north to Alaska, seeking adventure. On the way, he meets a series of fascinating people, who shape his life and his attitudes and who he in turn inspires.

Towards the end of the film, Hirsch as McCandless has spent a season alone in the Alaskan wilderness, without much food. Penn had his young star lose almost 30 pounds for this section of the film, and as he wanders into the London hotel room, he doesn’t look like he’s put much of it back on. Although his face is open and fresh, Hirsch is a small-framed young man, lost in a blue suit jacket, loose white t-shirt and frayed, baggy jeans. His shoulders rattle as he coughs loudly and asks me for a cigarette, which he smokes slowly and carefully while gulping down a sugary, milky coffee. Before we start into the questions, he tells me he has gotten used to silence since he spent eight months touring America with Penn, shooting the film. Consequently, Hirsch hums and haws a lot, leaving long gaps between my asking a question and answering it, but there is no reticence or hostility in these pauses, just a quiet consideration and a desire to be precisely understood.

After making complimentary noises about the film, which left a deep impression with me, I ask Hirsch how he prepared for such a difficult role. “For a commitment like this part”, he says, slowly, “you have to fall in love with the material. You have to be moved in a real way by the story, otherwise as much as you want to commit, and play the character, whoever it is, you just won’t be able to. It’s like being in love. If you’re not really in love, it will show on your face.”

“You know what I mean, right?” No, I reply. Tell me. Hirsch squirms slightly in his chair, flicking his floppy dark fringe from his eyes. “See, I loved Christopher McCandless’ story so much, just the idea of going on a spiritual quest, that I wanted to do him justice. That was the hardest part.” Unusually, the young actor didn’t audition for the role, he was offered the part by Penn before the director had finished his script. “Sean saw a movie I had made called Lords of Dogtown (about the origins of skateboarding culture in LA) and he really liked that. I think he saw a physicality in my performance there, and thought to himself that I would be able to handle the rough stuff in this story. So he got in touch and we got together and we talked and he gave me his copy of Krakauer’s book. Reading it was a life-changing experience. Seriously, I stayed up all night that night, devouring it”. I ask him for his first impression of McCandless and Hirsch smiles. “I was thinking practically, you know? Like, there’s so much in this story, there are a lot of places to go and people to meet. I thought the whole thing would be such an experience. It awoke this spirit of adventure in me. I suddenly developed these itchy feet.”

Over the next four months, Hirsch and Penn would get together every couple of weeks and talk about McCandless and his quest. “We’d have dinner with Sean’s family or go drinking or just hang out at his house. I think what he was trying to do was get a sense of me as a person, and he’s very careful about that. The first thing he told me was, ‘I know you can act this part, but what I’m looking for is a commitment’. He told me he wanted to be sure that I was mature enough to be able to handle what needs to be done for this role, between the action stuff, the weight loss, the mental preparation. All of that. So I went away and made my considerations, then a while later Sean called me up and said he’d just finished the script and would I come up to San Francisco right then and there, to read it. ‘If you like it’, he said, ‘the part is yours’. I was on a plane a couple of hours later and a couple of hours after that I was sitting at his kitchen table reading the pages and that was it”. I tell Hirsch that my impression of Penn is that he would be the ideal man to take an epic, trans-continental adventure with and the young actor’s face light up. “Right on!”, he replies, lifting himself out of his seat. “Penn is a real man. He’s got a fire in his gut and he’s full of ideas and questions and answers. He’s got so much energy and passion. When we were shooting, if a scene called for a hole in the ground, say, Sean would grab a shovel and start digging. He’s a natural born leader, and when we set out on this adventure, an adventure that took eight months in total, we needed that”.

Into The Wild is as much about family and society as it is about the search for identity and philosophical truth. I ask Hirsch what he thinks an audience might take away from the film? He sighs a very big sigh and there is a long pause, twenty seconds or more. Finally he says, with a laugh, “I have no idea”. It's my turn to be quiet now, so I wait for Hirsch to speak again. “Hopefully an audience would come away with the same feelings that I had. This was an ordinary guy who was also extraordinary. McCandless asked himself the big questions: Why are we here? What are we doing? What makes a life worth living? These are not new questions, but nobody has really ever answered them satisfactorily. Look at the pile of books he brought with him, when he didn’t even bring a map. Look at Thoreau, who I also read before I set off. In ‘Walden’, Thoreau says “I went into the woods not to escape life, but to discover that I had a life worth living”. Those are valid questions, and they’re not ones you can answer two minutes after you walk out of the film. Hopefully, in the movie there is something that can help people. Not ‘help’ as in ‘self-help book’, but that there’s something in there that will excite people about life and remind them that they are alive in the world.”

I ask Hirsch if he was conscious at the time that he was making the movie that he was making a statement about the individual’s place in this huge American society. “Absolutely”, he says. “For me, McCandless was on a search for truth, if that’s not too simple a word. He wasn’t a hermit or someone who hated life. He was looking to define those core American values – like liberty and freedom and independence. Who knows where those values are today, but that’s what McCandless was looking for. Whether we like it or not, we are all in a rat-race, constantly rushing around concerned with getting the next thing done. The idea that you can just put that all away, and go and live a simple life as a human being, not worried about where you have to go, what you have to do, how you have to speak or dress or behave, that is an exhilarating notion.” Like when McCandless burns the last of his money and walks off into the Arizona desert? “Right! Isn’t that an exciting idea?”

Into The Wild is Hirsch’s third biopic in a row. I ask him if it is a conscious choice, to play real people, and the actor rapidly nods his head. “There is something about real-life people I find more interesting, you know? The idea that there was a reality there gives me as an actor something concrete to hold on to. Chris McCandless was not an ordinary guy. He was a complicated person, who got along so well with all of the various people he met on the road, but at the same time closed himself off from his family, or from people he thought were getting too close. He wanted multiple things, he could be social and anti-social. In the end, and this is the saddest part, he wasn’t able to satisfy any of them.”

And what about the actor himself? What changed in his mind, after making the film? “Well, even though there’s a crew around, I enjoyed being pretty much alone a lot of the time”. He launches into a little sing-song rap, out of nowhere. “The sensation of the isolation is not alienation in our nation”. He takes another gulp of coffee and sits back in his chair. “Up there in Alaska, that was totally freeing, man. I felt fulfilled and I felt content. I had a constant state of well-being. I never felt alone, exactly, because nature was there all around me. Looking out from the bus at Mt Denali, the highest peak in North America, as the sun rises was a wonderful thing. It was just constant sensation, the whole day long. I don’t want to sound hippy-trippy, but it does make you feel at one with the universe when you’re in a place like that for any length of time."

As soon as he wrapped Into The Wild, after what he calls “the best year of my life”, it was back to the business of making movies and the lead role in the Wachowski Brother’s Speed Racer, a live-action version of the classic Japanese kid’s cartoon. Quite a change of pace, according to Hirsch. “Well, it was weird, that’s what it was. Such a polar opposite, to go from the outdoors and the wilderness to this cutting edge technological wonderland of special effects and green screens and all the creature comforts that come with a big-budget movie. At the same time, those extremes were very engaging. It’s a fast, fun movie, but The Wachowski’s have added this very serious dramatic backbone that I could really get my teeth into."

Our time almost up, Hirsch stands as I stand and walks me out of the room. We talk in asides about a subject I didn’t really want to bring up, for fear of a jinx, next year’s Oscars. Into The Wild and Hirsch in particular are already being tipped by the internet nabobs for nominations in January. “Aw, man, don’t”, he says. “It’ll be cool, obviously but I don’t want to think too much about that. I am hoping that I’m not the kind of person who cares about that and nothing else, you know? Titles and honours are irrelevant, according to McCandless, so there would be a certain guilty irony there, if it happens.”

“If”, he repeats, opening the door and shaking my hand. “Big if...”

Gilding The Lily

Almost ten years on from his first iteration, director Shekhar Kapur and star Cate Blanchett revisit the Virgin Queen for this sumptuously mounted, but indiscriminately told period epic, which sees Elizabeth I battle the invading Spanish for control of her realm.

The Golden Age opens in 1585 as Roman Catholic Spain, personified in the tottering Philip II (Jordi Molla), constructs a vast fleet of warships to wage war on the Protestant England and make his daughter, the Infanta Isabella, the new queen. Back in England, Elizabeth is receiving suitors for her hand in marriage, a parade of potential consorts arranged by her devoted advisor Francis Walsingham (the returning Geoffrey Rush). Older now, and still childless, without a match her throne will pass to her next of kin, Mary, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton), who is being held in a remote prison. Enter Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), returned from the New World with a cargo of potatoes, tobacco and looted Spanish gold. Elizabeth soon falls for Raleigh’s swarthy charms and his tales of adventure, so asks her favourite lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish), to keep an eye on him. But the two fall in love and start a dangerous affair, risking the displeasure of Her Majesty. Meanwhile, a cabal of Jesuit priests in Madrid are conspiring with the mad, syphillitc Phillip and the imprisoned Mary to assassinate the Queen and restore England to Catholicism, in a plot they call the ‘The English Enterprise’. Walsingham, having discovered clues to the scheme from his brother, warns Elizabeth of the danger but she refuses to force her subjects to renounce their religion. Instead, she prepares for war, even as she realises England’s forces are not prepared to face the overwhelming Armada.

The Golden Age is worth seeing for one reason; the riveting performance from Cate Blanchett in a role many actresses have played down the years but none have owned quite so completely. She is simply electric; a forceful, concentrated woman devoted to her position and determined in her duty. Sadly, the film fails the performance. For the first hour, Kapur keeps a tight hold on his multi-stranded story but this control dissolves in the second half as costume, photography and stunt work replace intrigue and historical fact. Elizabeth eventually transforms into a cross between Braveheart and Joan Crawford, rousing her troops from a white stallion while grieving over her lost love in a series of slit-eyed, jealous rants. Opposite her, Owen is a vacuum, a tousle-haired pirate sprung whole from the pages of a Barbara Cartland bodice ripper. Later, his unstoppable derring-do lands him on the deck of a digitally generated frigate, battling the Spanish in a lengthy, underwhelming tempest of bluster and bravado.

Kapur’s unrestrained film brings new meaning to the term ‘costume drama’, in that it is for long sections a drama about costumes. Every variation of ruff and bustle is wheeled out for Blanchett to twirl around in, or in a bewildering late sequence, have the camera twirl around her. The film is simply smothered by splendour, to the point where the characters and their histories cease to matter. Given the director's cavalier disregard for factual accuracy, we can look forward to a third iteration, ten years down the line, when Good Queen Bess arrives in Ireland around about 1590 with a big bag of sweets for everyone to share.