Journeyman - review

Paddy Considine follows up his incredible debut feature Tyrannosaur with a film that cements his position as one of the best British writer-director-actors in the business. A true triple threat.

Born from his love of boxing, Journeyman is the story of Matty Burton, a middleweight champion who faces a brash, young upstart for the title but will find that his biggest fight will come outside the ring.

He suffers a debilitating brain injury brought on by a vicious blow to the head and is faced with the task of rebuilding his health, his life and his relationship with his wife and daughter.

Rocky III this is not.

It certainly does not fit the format of your standard boxing movie. Yes, there is the scenes of the press conference where Burton verbally spars off against "The Future" Andre Bryte, deflecting jabs left and right about how the match will be "life changing". Then there is the fight which is deliberately shot in a different style to the likes of Raging Bull and Rocky.

But following the fight, there is no "training for a rematch", there are montages but they are of Matty's rehab as he trains for one goal and one goal alone. Winning his wife back.

The heart of the film is the relationship between Matty and his wife Emma played by Jodie Whittaker.

Considine proved with Tyrannosaur that he can write and direct incredible performances for woman with Olivia Colman, and he has done it again here.

Whittaker gives an award-worthy performance here and goes toe-to-toe every step of the way as she tries to find her husband in the man who stands before her.

Their relationship takes some very difficult, shocking turns along the way and the audiences allegiances may shift between the two fighters more than a Russian crowd siding with Balboa vs Drago.

It builds towards the final rounds which features two of the most heartbreaking and moving scenes that will leave audiences in tears after delivering some devastating gut punches.

Journeyman is a real contender for the title of Best British Film of 2018 and may well be standing tall at the end of the year thanks to two genuine knockout performances.

4 stars

The Expendables 3 - review

The Expendables line up features John Rambo, Rocky Balboa, The Terminator, Conan, John Matrix, Ivan Drago, Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Martin Riggs, Mad Max, El Mariachi, Blade and, err, Frasier Crane.

What do the action stars made famous by playing these characters have in common?

Sadly it is that in terms of modern day box office, they are expendable.

None of them have been able to generate a box office hit on their own in quite some time and even with their powers combined they still can't generate that much of an audience.

Much of the "plot" of The Expendables 3 can be seen as a reaction to Hollywood's treatment of the action genre (it begins with rescuing Wesley Snipes from prison for "tax evasion", Stallone decides his team is "getting too old for this shit" and replaces them with a bunch of new kids).

The problem with the film is that instead of rallying against the changes, it embraces them.

The first two films were not very good but at least they were unashamed in their attempts to bring back the hardcore, ultra-violent action films of the Eighties and early Nineties where you would kill a man in cold blood then throw out a cool one-liner.

Here the cast recycle and shoehorn in tenuous links to old catchphrases (Arnie shouts "Get to da choppa!") and the (financial) decision to cut the film for a 12A/PG-13 has completely neutered the action sequences.

Back in 1985, at the climax of Commando Arnold Schwarzenegger single-handedly dispatches 81 people in typically bloody Eighties fashion.

During the final shoot out in The Expendables 3, this body count is probably eclipsed but due to the lack of blood and injury detail instead of being an exciting coherent fight scene is turned into a spectacle that is as ridiculous as the scene in Hot Shots Part Deux where a shoot-out keeps a running total of it exceeding the body count from various movies.

This is compounded by an issue that has been growing ever since the first film and this involves minor *spoilers*.

The biggest irony of The Expendables group is that despite the name, none of them have actually been "expended". No wonder the group is so old, Stallone has never had to replace anybody. Even if someone is shot and injured, the audience fully expects them to turn up at the end to share drinks with the crew. There is just no tension or suspense in the fight scenes.

Recent films like The Raid, The Raid 2 and Snowpiercer have show that it is possibly to make quality (if not commercially successful) R-Rated action movies and the action flows so much better when you are not having to cut out blood or breaking limbs every two seconds.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks and Stallone should have known better than to try and reinvent the franchise wheel. Terrible as an action film but worth seeing if only for the moment when Stallone managed to say "I Am The Hague" with a straight face... then again it could just have been the effects of Botox.

2 stars

Grudge Match - review

We've all had those arguments as film fans where we discuss who would win in a fight: an Alien or a Predator, Superman or Incredible Hulk, etc.

In most cases (AVP aside), these debates remain an unquantifiable fantasy yet the makers of Grudge Match have decided to answer the question that not many film fans would have been asking... who would win in a fight between an old Rocky Balboa and an old Jake La Motta?

That's right. Grudge Match is Rocky versus Raging Bull.

The result? Raging Bullshit!

To quote the tagline from that other cinematic showdown Alien vs Predator, "Whoever wins. We lose."

Before we can shout "Sly, get in the ring already. Bobby De Niro's waiting" and find out who wins, you have to first sit through 100 minutes of badly CGI'd young versions of Sly and Bob, lots of jokes about old people, poor spoofs on the training montages, desperate reconnections with old girlfriends and a son who calls himself BJ.

Yes, that is correct. A guy named Bradley James (played by Jon Berthnal) actively calls himself BJ. Cue lots of jokes and sniggering plus an inability to take the character seriously.

The fight footage is not bad, with it looking like both actors did a fair amount of the actual work, which saves it from a technical knock out but if this was a proper boxing match, someone would have thrown in the towel by now.

2 stars