A Hologram For The King
Cast: Tom Hanks, Alexander Black, Sarita Choudhury, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Tracey Fairaway, Jane Perry, Tom Skerritt, Ben Whishaw
Writer/Director: Tom Tykwer
97 mins
The presence of an actor of the standing of Tom Hanks (who worked with director Tykwer on “Cloud Atlas”) usually garners some initial interest in whatever project he chooses, but the sheer sense of strangeness of this choice is quite bizarre. Rather than being engaging or even interesting, “A Hologram For The King,” while reasonably attractive visually, ends up feeling bizarre, surreal and oddly off-putting.
Alan Clay (Hanks), is an ageing salesman for a hi-tech Boston company. He is assigned to go to Jedda, Saudi Arabia, in the hope of clinching a deal to provide a holographic communications system for a planned city of the future that is gradually emerging in the desert. Clay’s life up until then, as we learn in a quite preposterous dreamlike prologue set to the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime,” has backfired on him. Heading for financial ruin, gone is his house, he can’t meet the costs of the college tuition fees for his daughter, and his critical wife (Jane Perry) has left him. In addition he is haunted by his role in turning an iconic American company (Schwinn) for whom he works, over to a conglomerate and sending many of its jobs abroad.
The assignment in Jedda offers him what may be his last professional chance, but he and his team are housed in a remote desert location, miles from the main city - in a huge tent — a place with no air conditioning and irregular wi-fi service, which threatens the company’s whole demonstration. When Clay goes to the nearby building for help, he gets the bureaucratic runaround and the king’s expected visit for the company’s presentation is constantly being delayed. Alan repeatedly oversleeps, leading him to miss the bus out to the so-called Metropolis of Industry and Trade, and to hire a driver named Yousef (Alexander Black), a semi-westernised chap with a curious sense of humour and with whom Alan bonds. Added to all of this utter befuddlement, an enormous cyst has appeared on Clay’s back, which he attempts to stab into submission, landing him in the care of Zahra (Sarita Choudhury), a female doctor. Naturally he is attracted to her, and she to him, despite a glaring lack of chemistry (physical and emotional) and all the cultural obstacles.
The whole thing has a rambling, clumsy quality to it and the viewer is likely to feel as lost and unfocussed as Clay is, and just about as frustrated, watching him jump through what seems to be an endless series of random hoops. The film is stiff, sometimes didactic and utterly fails to meld the jarringly different tones into any form of cohesive whole. Worse still is the ludicrously manufactured happy ending – and even Hanks’ affability can’t make it even remotely credible. Twyker’s coolly artificial, oddly dispassionate style, which initially impresses with its surface elegance, is ultimately as arid as the desert location and as divorced from reality as the digital representation of the title.
Money Monster
Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Caitriona Balfe, Jack O'Connell, Giancarlo Esposito, Dominic West, Lenny Venito
Director: Jodie Foster
1hr 35 mins
The line-up for this film is packed with proven film talent – from George Clooney through Jack O’Connell to Julia Roberts, and directed by Jodie Foster. Why then, is it such a howler of a mess? Foster’s last outing at the helm was the under-rated Mel Gibson vehicle The Beaver so she has experience of working with egotistical actor/directors (as here with Clooney) – but what is offered up this time, is little more than an very ill-thought out lecture on the perils of stock market dabbling.
Rather than succeeding as an attempt at being a social/political drama, it ends up with no bite, direction, nor indeed, anything even resembling a proper script – and if I hear one more utterance of that clichéd, ubiquitous, bastardised, singularised expression ‘do the math’ (it turns up seven times here) from an American actor’s lips (and that even includes a mention in a desperately wrong-footed choice by the normally astute English O’Connell) – my rag will be lost, never again to be found.
Now, to what is put forward as a narrative. Lee Gates (Clooney) is an obnoxious financial TV personality with embarrassing pantomime showmanship which may be intended to pour satire on American finance channels. However, throughout the film, it is clearly apparent that Clooney is intensely uncomfortable with his choice of production and role. The tv director Patty (Roberts) looks on from the control booth, with obvious hints of an undercooked relationship between the pair. Then, on-set strolls a growling, misanthropic sociopath (Jack O'Connell) who breezes in with no ID nor any security checks, dressed as a down-at-heel baddie, packing both a gun and a suicide vest – as you do. He is raging - having foolishly invested 60 grand on a loser stock share - inspired by a tv tip from Gates. Apart from being an individual as thick as ten short planks and who wouldn’t know the difference between overnight premiums, commodities and a hole in his sock, his fury is so intense that he insists upon setting up a tense hostage scenario until the CEO of Ibex (Dominic Cooper, reactivating his accent and dismayed countenance from tv's ‘The Affair’) apologises personally to him for the contrivance.
The script is utterly abysmal, relying on ill-conceived expositions to bring things back on track and the ludicrous presumption that every human being in possession of a mobile/cell phone is a stocks and shares transaction obsessive and participant. Throughout all this nonsense, Clooney hams it up beyond control, Roberts bites her lip as a helpless onlooker and O'Connell tears around wafting a gun like an aberrant child in dire need of more raspberry juice on his ice cream cone. Bizarrely the ‘action’ then hits the streets of New York and becomes even more ludicrous and puerile. The entire enterprise is a catastrophe from start to finish, and all the more shocking, considering the calibre of those involved.
