Reviews

A fascinating film (almost as good as Man On Wire by the same producer).

It tells how a Frenchman bizarrely managed to fool a Texan family, the Spanish authorities, and the FBI, that he was their missing 16-year-old son - even though he was aged 23, looked nothing like their son, and had a French accent! Only a local private investigator saw through it.

As well as being gripping, it's pretty funny as well - at various points the whole audience laughed at the apparent stupidity of the family (who for example had little concept of foreign countries).

However, the film doesn't tie up all the loose ends, and leaves a strong hint that the family may have known more about the deception than they let on...

On the plus side this film is set in beautiful locations, well shot, and gives a fairly realistic impression (from a tourist's viewpoint) of visiting an Indian city. The thing I enjoyed about it most was reminding me of a trip I made to India myself.

On the minus side, I found the script was weak in various ways: the humour is so gentle as to be barely perceptible. The characters (partly because there are quite a few) are sketched pretty thinly, such that you couldn't really care much what happens to them.

And the events are predictable and clicheed: a elderly East Ender starts out racist but eventually she's turned around. The hotel is going to be sold and knocked down, but shortly afterwards it's saved. The young manager wants to marry a girl who his mother disapproves of, but a few minutes later she relents. These events are trotted out in a perfunctory fashion; nothing is surprising or interesting.

And while undoubtedly it has a star-studded cast, this isn't exactly Shakespearean material to work with, so you could hardly call the performances memorable. It's like the London Symphony Orchestra playing a jingle.

So a humdrum, mildly entertaining, instantly forgettable throwaway film. But don't take my word for it - watch the trailer; like most trailers it includes the 'best bits', and if you don't find it particularly hilarious/compelling, the same will probably go for the film.

Film about a neo-Nazi skinhead whose prison experiences convert him into a clean-cut all-American good boy, accompanied by soaring music. He then tries to convert his neo-Nazi skinhead younger brother, but it all goes horribly wrong.

There's a notable (and somewhat extreme) scene in which said skinhead has a violent row with his mother's Jewish boyfriend over the family dinner table.

However the film is slightly marred by its worthy, preachy & at times overwrought tone. This is borne out by the fact that it actually ends with a cutesy moral about loving thy neighbour. (Just in case we were too thick to get the point.)

To misquote somebody, no film ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the public. And this film is no exception. For in case you should not notice that it is about race, it is laid on with a trowel. Virtually every scene, every conversation, turns clumsily into a racial issue. Forget subtlety, it doesn't pay.

Examples: Scene 1: two cars have a minor collision. The drivers immediately begin trading racial insults. One (Chinese) accuses the other of being a typical 'Mexican driver'. The other driver (Hispanic) says because the first is Asian she's too short to see above the steering wheel.

Scene 2: two innocuous-looking young men (black) feel insulted when a wealthy woman (white) avoids them on the pavement. However - our assumptions are challenged - because the black men then pull out guns and rob the woman and her husband. When the couple get home, they have a loud, embarrassing (and implausible) argument because the man who's right there changing the locks is black, and the woman says he'll make copies of the keys so his 'homies' can burgle the house.

Scene 3: a man (Iranian) is in a gun-shop buying a gun, but the shop owner (white) insults him, saying that he's plotting jihad, and has him thrown out of the shop.

After a few minutes of this I thought it might tone down a bit, but no. It gets worse.

Two policeman (white) stop a couple (black) in a car for no good reason. One of the policeman gropes the black woman, which her husband feels powerless to stop. When they get home she upbraids him for Uncle Tom-like behaviour. The other policeman, horrified at his partner's racist behaviour, reports him to his superior; however the superior (black) doesn't believe him.

A man (white) goes to a health insurance office to ask a woman (black) to pay for his father to see a different doctor. When she declines, he accuses her of having got her job through preferential treatment of blacks.

Two men (black) are driving along arguing about the use of the word 'n**ger' in songs. They accidentally knock over a pedestrian. They look under the car and, seeing that he's Chinese, discuss whether to pull him out from under the car or just drive on.

And so on. White on black racism, black on Chinese racism, Chinese on Hispanic racism - almost every single scene (I'm not kidding) rapidly turns out to be a crude set-up for another racial issue with guaranteed shock-value. Conversations suddenly degrade into racial insults in a way that (though I don't live in Los Angeles) I've never, ever seen happen in real life.

In the second half of the film, it all goes a bit topsy-turvy, as new racial situations turn good guys bad and vice versa. The groping policeman (white) heroically rescues his female victim (black) from a burning car. The other, non-racist, policeman (white) gives a lift to a man (black), then, fearing attack, shoots his innocent passenger dead. Etc. etc. Hey, we may be dumb, but now you're really messing with our heads! Good films seem like reality, but much of this film felt so contrived it was more like watching a formula unwinding. About the only thing it lacked was a big red sign in the cinema saying RACIAL ISSUE, flashing on and off every 30 seconds.