Blackthorn

Blackthorn requires that the viewer have at last a passing acquaintance with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  In the 1969 film, Robert Redford and Paul Newman play the titular Butch and Sundance, fun-loving outlaws whose adventures seemingly come to an end when they choose to leap into a river chasm rather than face certain capture and probable death at the hands of Bolivian federales. 

Blackthorn supposes they survived the jump, and it catches up with Cassidy much later in life.  He owns a small ranch high in the Andes and he keeps more-or-less to himself.  Change comes in the form of a letter telling him a lost love is dead, and their adult son lives on in San Francisco.  Butch resolves to cash out the ranch, travel to California and meet his son.  He resolves to reenter the world, albeit under his assumed name: James Blackthorn.

And we're off, but we're off on a different kind of adventure.  While Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a young man's adventure of fun and hope, Blackthorn is an old man's journey: one of hard choices, regrets, and character.  Blackthorn is elegaic, very much a western of the Old West, and beautiful.

Sam Shepard plays the title character as a tough and principled survivor, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaimie Lannister in HBO's "Game of Thrones") plays him in flashback.  Combined, the two performances give us a man with one foot in the present and one very firmly in the past, perhaps in a way that only a man who has run from himself can be.  Best of all, they do this in lovely continuity with the story and characters as we know them from the previous film.

The picture itself is beautiful, showcasing Bolivia's varied and rugged scenery and playing to a meditative score by Lucio Godoy, and the effect is mixed, both a classic Western adventure and a contemplation of a life nearing its twilight.  It's an effective combination, and I found myself caught up in the moment and considering the film for hours after I hit the eject button.  Blackthorn is a fine film.

V for Vendetta

I liked the filmed version of V FOR VENDETTA better than the comic. The comic felt like an overhyped revolt against Thatcherism, while the film makes the story more universal. While it gets in its digs at the Bush administration, the film feels more of piece with works like 1984, works which transcend the time in which they were created.

Here’s the setup: we’re in England, and things have gone sour. It’s roughly ten years after a political shift that ushered in an authoritarian government, but still thirty years or so before the system gets so entrenched that we’d be in the world of a 1984. Big Brother is everywhere, but the tvs still only go one way, if you will.

V4V asks the question, “What if someone rebelled before Big Brother could really get his hooks into everything?” In this case, that someone is an anonymous gent in a Guy Fawkes costume, a gent who was wronged by this regime and has taken is time, a la Edmond Dantes, to construct the perfect revenge. His plan? To move the people of England to rise up against their oppressors.

How he executes his plan, and how his actions affect those around him, I’ll leave for the viewer. Right now, I’m more concerned with how well the film executes its intentions; I’m happy to report that it does so quite well. Natalie Portman, the audience surrogate, reminds us that yes, she can actually act quite well. Hugo Weaving as the guy in the Fawkes costume, joins Willem Dafoe in the limited club of guys who can emote even when their face is hidden. John Hurt, who played Winston Smith in the filmed version of 1984, is a marvelous Big Brother, and the remainder of the supporting cast (including favorites Stephen Rea and Stephen Fry) also turns in professional work, without a single performance that pulls one out of the moment. The film looks slick, professional, and seamless. I bought everything it showed me, and I enjoyed the ride.

I picked up V4V on a whim – it was sitting right there on a counter at the library, and I knew I’d have a little free time coming up. I’m glad I did. V FOR VENDETTA turned to be pretty good.