MONDAY GUIDE > FILM
ROBERT MOYES arts@mondaymag.com
HALLE BERRY HAS A CALLING
WONDER AT THE BLUNDER
he Call, an adrenaline-rich tale of a maiden in peril at the hands of a diabolical kidnapper, has been getting decidedly mixed reviews and I’m not sure why. It does exactly what the trailers promise: take the audience on a slick thrill ride with two stops along the way for some brief but memorable carnage. Oscar-winner Halle Berry stars as Jordan Turner, a veteran 911 operator in Los Angeles who steps away from the front lines after making a mistake that costs a teenage girl her life at the hands of a crazed abductor. The story jumps ahead six months and another girl, Casey (Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine), is grabbed from a mall and chucked into the trunk of a car. She phones 911 on her cell and Jordan, now just a trainer of recruits, takes over the call when a newbie operator panics. The plot does a clever job of building suspense as Jordan coaches Casey in ways of helping track the car she’s travelling in. The kidnapper continues to elude his pursuers, but not before Jordan recognizes his voice as that of the killer from six months ago. And so, quicker than you can say “a shot at redemption,” Jordan makes it her personal mission to save the girl and get the murderous dirtbag. Sure, this formulaic actioner owes a large debt to Silence of the Lambs. But it also throws some clever plot twists at the audience (as well as an interesting insider’s look at the world of 911). Admittedly, the “insane killer” mostly just looks like he didn’t get enough sleep the night before. On the plus side of the acting ledger, there’s a nice cameo by Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) as Good Samaritan road kill, and Berry does a great job all the way through. The plotting is plausible, even if the climax is cliched and wobbly — and a bit unsavoury. Overall, though, Call delivers a clear, undistorted entertainment message. Rating: ★★½
ometime in the future when a historian of cinema writes a book examining the phenomenon of crappy movies by good actors, he/she may well spend a chapter on The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, a woefully ill-considered and unfunny “comedy.” The movie starts with two boyhood nerd-pals who bond over magic and later become superstar Las Vegas magicians. Suddenly it’s 20 years into their career and Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) have seen both their act and their friendship go stale. The crisis comes when an upstart Criss Angelstyle performer (Jim Carrey, with scruffy beard and hair long enough to get him a job with the Allman Brothers Band) appears on the scene: this so-called “mind rapist” consistently upstages them with grotesquely masochistic stunts such as spending the night sleeping on a bed of hot coals or holding his urine for 10 days. Burt and Anton’s attempt to salvage their sputtering act fails, and the two become bitter enemies. Which leaves nearly an hour of screen time for these uninteresting characters to reconcile and relearn the “wonder” at the heart of magic. The adult Burt is a bitter, womanizing jerk and Carell makes him detestable but hardly ever funny. Buscemi, a talented but narrow-range character actor, mostly looks uncomfortable. Wonderstone also wastes the talents of James Gandolfini and Olivia Wilde; at least Alan Arkin creates genuine sentiment as the legendary magician who inspired Burt and Anton as boys. But the only reason to see this turkey is for the crazed cameo by Carrey, who performs his bizarre antics with an unnerving comic panache. M Rating: ★½
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The Call continues at the Odeon & SilverCity; The Incredible Burt Wonderstone continues at the Odeon, SilverCity, Westshore, & Empire Uni 4.
MONDAY MAGAZINE MARCH 21 - MARCH 27, 2013 mondaymag.com
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