IN FEAR
Cast: Alice Englert, Iain De Caestecker, Allen Leech
Director: Jeremy Lovering
Running Time: 85 min.
They’ve only known each other for two weeks, but Tom and Lucy agree to head off to a music festival where they plan to meet up with friends, and spend some time developing their new relationship.
However, once in the pub, as Lucy sits on the loo, someone peers at her through a hole in the surroundings. Once they’re off in the car, Tom mentions that he’d had a slight altercation in the bar whilst Lucy was ‘freshening up’, with a local - due to a spilled pint, which he managed to smooth over by purchasing him another drink and offering an apology. He then reveals to Lucy that he has booked a room for the night at a lovely out of the way romantic hotel, and that they'll drive to the festival the following morning. All they have to do is wait for an escort vehicle to show them the way, as the directions and roads are tricky.
All the pre-determined ingredients are now in place, plus we have the title as an additional clue, so bring on the scary bits. And so they come, and as sure as the directions are misplaced, the car will run out of petrol and strange apparitions will emerge to block their journey.
Almost inevitably therefore, the hapless pair find themselves lost in an endless mire of murky and muddy back roads, misdirected by signs that have them going around in circles, before the sudden appearance of a mysterious person, whom they accidentally run over on the road. He recovers, but stumbles bleeding to his feet, pleading with Tom and Lucy to "just get the hell out of here!" as he piles into the back of their trusty vehicle.
Iain De Caestecker (Tom), Alice Englert (Lucy), and Allan Leech (the damaged third party, Max) all give good performances, but the sheer inevitability and predictability of material like this is hackneyed to the point of irritance.
The laziness of the writing – single likeable female, out of her comfort zone, vulnerable and frightened, inept incompetent partner who predictably disappears to heighten the tension – then chuck in a psychopath with no backstory – and the scares-by-rote formula – all add up to nothing more than an affront to an intelligent audience.
Cast: Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones, Dianna Agron, John D'Leo, Domenick Lombardozzi
Director: Luc Besson
Running time: 111 mins
Luc Besson’s culture-clash comedy offers the notion that any transgression, even something as minor as showing up late to an appointment and displaying an attitude, is punishable by a vicious beating and/or death. "The Family" is a well-pitched satire on domesticity and conformity taken to murderous extremes, whilst coming close to being a full-on endorsement of vigilante justice and enforcing social niceties through the business end of tennis rackets and baseball bats.Adapted from Tonino Benacquista’s comic novel Malavita by director Luc Besson and Michael Caleo, The Family casts the now more or less perpetually self-parodying Robert De Niro as Giovanni Manzoni, a powerful, feared mobster who is forced to go into hiding in France under the US’ Witness Protection programme after testifying against a fellow mobster. On the move with him are his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), daughter Belle (Dianna Agron), and son Warren (John D’Leo). The family has managed to remain underground for years in Europe, despite finding inconspicuousness a near-impossibility due to the entire foursome’s predilection for dishing out extreme suffering to all who stray inconveniently into their respective paths whilst screaming profanities as they go.
The film starts off with the family trudging wearily to a small village in Normandy. The displaced quartet responds to the never-ending gauntlet of slights and insults that greet them in their new home, by responding in varying degrees of extremity with arson, assault, battery and indeed murder.
Then Giovanni discovers an old typewriter and begins key-bashing out his memoirs, much to the chagrin of his dutiful WitProProg supervisor, ably portrayed by the permanently disgruntled Tommy Lee Jones. Gio assumes the pose of a writer and adopts the new monicker of Fred, whilst the rest of his family participate in various felonious endeavours.
When the local grocer insults Maggie upon her search for peanut butter, she responds by creating an explosion in his shop, as you do. When a spotty ginger French teenager directs a lascivious gleam at daughter Belle, she beats him viciously with a tennis racket. The more calculating, less violent but smart-as-a-whip Warren, quickly takes over his high school’s criminal underworld. He’s so sussed and on the ball however, that he doesn’t need to resort to violence, whereas his less astute dad prefers vicious assaults as a first, rather than last, resort. There are, however, despite the ongoing violence, a few moments here which will elicit some laughter.
The best by far is a sequence near the end in which Fred (as an ‘acclaimed writer’) is invited by a clumsy chap in charge of the local film society to discuss an American classic. They had planned to screen and discuss the Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin/Shirley MacLaine vehicle “Some Come Running” – but due to a technical hitch, they end up unknowingly screening something much more appropriate to the circumstances. I won’t ruin for you what that film turns out to be, but I’m sure by then you’ll be in a position to hazard an educated guess.
