FILM - Tribeca 2006: Day 1

Three films and four hours of work later: Day 1 Riccio.

--- Day Break

Not just based on a true story, but grittily filmed and as painstakingly real as a true story, “Day Break” is a powerful Iranian film about Islamic law. At first, we enter this world through a fictional documentary, watching two prisoners on death row prepare for execution. They take a medical exam, they write out their wills, and then they walk into a large room, where they meet the families of those they have wronged. According to the law, only the next of kin can sentence a murder to death, and if they choose retribution over forgiveness, they must carry out the execution themselves. The odd case of Mansour, then, is that this is his third time to the execution chamber . . . and the third time that the family has not appeared. Mansour is now a victim of the system, and when he learns that he must wait another forty days without knowing if he is to be forgiven or killed, his in-between status becomes a torture that uses his memories and visits from his wife and family as the implement.

The whole film is powerfully acted, and, due to the camera’s close presence and early establishment of routine, unflinchingly real. When Mansour returns to the prison, still awaiting his fate, “Day Break” drops the nicety of a documentary and goes inside his head, using flashbacks to make us sympathize with his anguish. Killer or not, nobody deserves the agonizing torture of not knowing. Within these 84 minutes, director Hamid Rahmanian even manages to widen the scope to Mansour’s family, and the effect shows that going eye for an eye will not only leave the world blind, but emotionally dead.

I can’t speak for the authenticity of the film, but even simply as a psychoanalytical commentary on life, “Day Break” is extremely effective. The stark, sometimes grainy images are haunting, and the prison walls of this story are inescapable. It hardly matters: this is the film to see.

--- The Elephant King

Oh, what a difference a little change of pace can make. Seth Grossman’s story of two brothers who are polar opposites is nothing new, but his location, Thailand, makes it an immersive film. If images of elephants walking through city slums and drug-fueled jaunts through the local color don’t amuse you, Jonno Roberts, who plays the manic brother, Jake, is just as fascinating. He hits so many notes at once that his every step is a discordant symphony, and he’s a polarizing presence onscreen: things light up around him. This is a lucky find for Grossman’s script, which tends to dull things down, especially given its by-the-books approach to the cathartic final act. (You can tell this by the way Ellen Burstyn, who graces this film as Jake and Oliver’s mother, sleepwalks through her all-too-few scenes.)

As a distraction technique, shooting exotic locations is equally effective. The audience seems to forget that Jake is a con artist who fixes kickboxing fights, even when his crimes turn on him, and it’s not likely that you’ll care how haphazardly all the side-plots are discarded, like the cheap Thailand hookers Grossman loves to depict. No, we’re stuck watching Jonno Roberts traipse through Thailand like some latter-day Hunter S. Thompson in Vegas, and it’s a wild, wild ride. To Grossman’s credit, it ultimately goes somewhere creative, and given how easy it would be simply to stick with the scenery, it’s a bold choice. Beautiful and bold (but rarely both at once), “The Elephant King” is a testament to shooting on location: the real mystique will always overpower the artificial.

--- The Promise

Beauty is one thing; quality is another. Kaige Chen’s new film, “The Promise,” is China’s most expensive film ever, but you can’t buy happiness, and you can’t buy a good movie either, especially with a lackluster plot. No matter how magnificently exotic the sets are, they all come across as artificially as the characters, for there is nothing propping them up. There’s just some threadbare “promise,” one that has already been broken by Chen—that of a good film.

The introduction is jibber-jabber (for lack of a better word): for all the talk of Gods on earth, there’s only one who shows up (she gets the worst FX treatment), and she doesn’t even fight. For an epic Chinese swords-and-sorcery film, this dearth of jaw-dropping martial arts and exquisitely shot romance is inexcusable. If anything, all the effects merely clutter up the fighting sequences and love scenes: it obscures the action.

There are some interesting, if stereotypical, characters, including a slave (who is actually more than a slave), a brave general (who is actually not so brave), a beautiful princess (who is actually cursed), a mystical assassin (who is actually a nice guy), and a ruthless tyrant (who is actually . . . well, he’s actually badass). If only there were something to make all these stock characters tick. Instead, they just pose for the camera, in the lush and relentlessly awesome set, and do exactly as directed. There’s no spirit in the fighting, in the acting, or even (really) in the cinematography, which is ultimately just a lot of bloated cash rendered into sundry special effects on screen.

“The Promise” is a technical exercise, the result of cash sweeping away a director. Rather than putting together a powerful film, he shows off all that he can do, and it’s unsatisfying and far from epic. Looks are deceptive, especially if all you get is looks. (Nor are all the scenes beautiful: a stampede of bulls early in the film is sure to win the Razzie for worst CG; that, or what appears to be a “cage match” between two rivals.)