The Avengers

I was buzzing to see The Avengers when it was released last year, but I think I had quite a bit of work to do at the time and never got round to seeing it. When it was released on DVD I kept trying to find a price that was cheap enough that I could justify it. When I eventually bought it (for £5 in Sainsbury’s) I decided to keep it for the day after my exams finished, just as a little treat. Now that they have finished I have finally seen it, and I loved it.

I am a massive fan of superhero films, and love most of the Marvel characters. Recently, Iron Man has been a big favourite, and I was very excited to see how some of the other characters turned out. I was however a little bit tentative. Normally when a film has a large number of main characters they start to detract from the film a little bit. If this happens then what could have been a phenomenon turns into a bitter disappointment (remember Spiderman 3?). The Avengers deals with this problem very well. There are 7 characters featured on the majority of the promotional posters, and the film balances them out equally. There are a couple of stories going on with each character, but these are all given an appropriate amount of screen time, and instead of the film being all about one character, there is no character who plays an obviously major role to the detriment of another.

The plot is a fairly straightforward ‘bad guy wants to destroy the world as we know it’ sort of thing, but it is made to be original and so it works. Complete with an extraterrestrial threat to the freedom of humanity and an unusual source of power that the bad guy has obviously stolen to help his plot to subjugate the Earth, The Avengers has a fresh feel to it, despite the plot being a little bit old.

Now there are obviously too many main characters for me to talk about all of them in depth. Suffice to say that they are all excellent. Those actors whose characters have already had a film have not changed their style in the slightest. For example Robert Downey Jr. is every bit the same Tony Stark that previously appeared in Iron Man and Iron Man 2. Chris Evans makes Captain America a little bit different in this, but I suppose that he was frozen after the Second World War and so the world he wakes up in will be completely different to him. The Hulk/Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) is different compared to the one in the previous film, but that is only to be expected given that this is a different actor. Chris Hemsworth does very well as Thor as well. This was my first experience of Thor and I thought that his character was very enjoyable to watch. The interesting responsibility that he feels as a result of his adopted brother being the one to wreak the damage is an interesting twist and plays out very well on screen. Jeremy Renner is absolutely wonderful as Hawkeye and given that he has nothing to build on with this character. His is a character whose story plays out during the film, with twists and turns along the way. I wasn’t sure whether he was good or bad for a bit, and Renner does very well when he falls on both sides of this fence. Scarlett Johansson is fantastic as Black Widow and never feels like anything less than one of the group. Her character is one that could be quite easily forgotten about but both she and the writers do very well to make her an equal member of the team. Finally, Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury does a magnificent job of being the glue between all the characters. Before this film he had appeared in a number of the ‘prequels’ without a major role. However, here his part is much bigger and his character becomes one of the few things tying the group together. He is, as ever, magnificent to watch in action.

Another aspect of The Avengers that I really enjoyed was the special effects. With many ‘blockbuster’ films today there is a slight tendency for directors to spend most of the budget on special effects that really don’t add anything to the film. Equally, as Michael Bay shows us, sometimes special effects can actually damage a film more than enhance it. With The Avengers, Joss Whedon does a fantastic job of getting the balance just right. The special effects are not overpowering and completely work in the context of the film, rather than being there to grab the attention of the people finding clips for the trailer. The weird alien ship monster things (if you’ve seen the film you will know what I mean) are fantastically well designed, and the effects around each of the superheroes are fantastic – particularly the way that Bruce Banner changes into The Hulk. The effects for this film are so impressive that it was nominated for an Academy Award, understandably losing out the Life of Pi. It is a very impressive example of how special effects can be used well in modern action films.

If you don’t like superhero films then you should not watch The Avengers. Also, I wouldn’t advise it until you’ve seen at least one of the prequel films because otherwise you might find yourself a bit lost about who all the characters are. However, if you do decide to watch it, then you will find yourself enjoying a fantastic film that keeps you entertained pretty much from the first minute to the last. Also, after the film ends, watch out because there are two post-credit scenes. Definitely one for the action superhero fan to enjoy. 

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker is Kathryn Bigelow’s Academy Award winning masterpiece which follows a bomb disposal team in Iraq. It is a fantastically engaging film which you almost can’t help but get involved with, and as such you end up with a magnificent appreciation of the film afterwards.

The film follows one bomb disposal team and we are initially introduced during an attempt to deactivate a bomb. Bigelow immediately conveys that the three members of the team are incredibly close. The initial bomb disposal scene is incredibly tense, but this is just a sign of things to come. I was watching this with my flatmates, and we all remarked at how tense we were feeling at this first scene alone. Little were we to know that this would not be confined to the first scene, and that for the majority of the film we were still very tense. You cannot help but feel like you are there with the three guys throughout the film, and when the lead character finds a series of bombs arranged in a circle around him there was an amazing sense of fear flowing through me.

Jeremy Renner stars as Sergeant William James who is the new team leader of the bomb disposal unit. Throughout the film I found myself worrying about this character. While I rarely got the sense that he was likely to be killed there is a dangerous element to him. He is pointed out throughout the film to be an adrenaline junkie, and this is conveyed expertly by Renner. He starts off as being a thoroughly dislikable character, and with the progression of the film I wouldn't say that he becomes more likeable, but I found myself sympathising with him more and more. The scene where he is back at home and looking for cereal is one of the most poignant pieces of filmmaking I have seen in a while, and perfectly reflected how mundane everyday life is after a tour in Iraq.

Both Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty (the other two members of the bomb disposal team) work perfectly with Renner to create the unit. Bigelow is on record as stating that the unknown nature of the actors leads to a level of uncertainty in the film, and this is evident throughout The Hurt Locker (Time’s Up: Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker by Nick Dawson – filmmakermagazine.com). There is no sense of knowing what an actor will do, or how they will react because you have never seen them before. The emotion and engagement that the audience feels towards the three characters (particularly Mackie and Geraghty) is an obvious parallel to the intimacy of the trio, but cracks are obvious, and they are both concerned about James’ state of mind. When this climaxes in Eldridge (Geraghty) being injured and taken home, harsh words are exchanged between him and James which Mackie does nothing to console him about. However, by the end there is almost an entente between Mackie and Renner as the film takes an almost cyclic turn to leave us right back where we started. This is beautifully indicative of the ongoing nature of the Iraqi conflict, and is another piece of expert filmmaking.

Another thing about The Hurt Locker is how authentic it is. While it wasn't filmed in Iraq, the whole thing was shot in Jordan, very close to the Iraqi border, and the cast and crew all experienced life in the Middle East. From the heat to the illnesses to the tension on set which is conveyed to the screen this film is as authentic as safety allows, and this is excellent. When you consider some of the films that The Hurt Locker beat to Best Picture in the year that it was released this should give you some idea of how good it is. I mean Avatar isn't a ‘great’ film in my opinion, but it is the highest grossing film of all-time, and it didn't win Best Picture because The Hurt Locker did. Inglorious Basterds, District 9 and Up are other examples of films nominated for Best Picture that lost out to The Hurt Locker. Bigelow also won Best Director, but if you've already seen it, this is not hard to see why.

There is so much more to say about the Hurt Locker, but to fit it all in would make for very long and tedious reading. There are some very memorable characters, from the little boy ‘Beckham’ who plays such a big part in the later scenes of the film to the surprise appearance from Ralph Fiennes who always manages to brighten my day. There are a lot of parallels to Zero Dark Thirty in The Hurt Locker, and they both have incredible cinematography behind them. Kathryn Bigelow’s footprint on both movies is unmistakable, from the casting of relative unknowns to the reflection of the war in the scenes that follow from the action.

There is little doubt in my mind that The Hurt Locker will be remembered for a long time to come. It is without a shadow of a doubt one of the best films I have seen in a while and I can only encourage you to watch it if you haven’t already.