This Year's NASA-Approved Oscarbait Is Arrival!

The Good: Decent performances, Good concept, Moments of realism, Sound editing/effects
The Bad: Pacing, Some forced character aspects, Soundtrack
The Basics: Arrival is a high-concept science fiction film that works hard to get where it is going and, in the process, makes an ambitious movie that is mostly satisfying.


For the last three years, Oscar Pandering Season has included a serious contender for some of the big awards that is preoccupied with space travel. This year, the niche is being filled by a movie that explores what might happen if extraterrestrials came to Earth - and it has been some time since a film like that has been a contender. The film is called Arrival and while it has science fiction elements in the form of alien ships coming to Earth, it is skewed definitely toward being a character drama.

Arrival is reminiscent of the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Darmok" (reviewed here!), where the principle adversary is language. The mood of Arrival is ponderous and cerebral, which helped get Interstellar (reviewed here!) an Oscar nod, but makes for a slow film that takes a lot of faith for the viewer to invest in. And the faith the viewer puts in is largely rewarded, though the journey is not as exciting as the previous space-related films that have been contenders.

Opening with Dr. Louise Banks experiencing loss as her daughter's brief life is cut short, Banks finds herself teaching on the day alien ships start hovering around the Earth. Twelve ships appear on Earth and shortly thereafter, Dr. Banks is approached by Colonel Weber, who brings her an audio file that he needs translated. The audio file contains an interrogation by U.S. personnel and indecipherable answers from the visiting extraterrestrials. Banks is hired by the U.S. government to try to figure out why the aliens have come to Earth by deciphering their language. Banks is paired with theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly to decipher the alien language and give the aliens mathematical problems to build an understanding of their technological levels.

Banks quickly learns that oral communication between humans and the heptapods is impossible, but that written communication has some chance for success. Communicating with teams in other nations who are working on deciphering the same linguistic problems, Banks and Donnelly quickly learn that worldwide tensions are on the rise when multiple teams reach the conclusion that one of the words that the aliens are using at multiple sites is "weapons." Banks continues to be plagued by visions of her daughter while she works with the hectapods, while tensions within the military rise over what some extremists believe is an impending threat. After an attack on the Montana ship, Donnelly recognizes that some of the symbols the aliens are writing with relate to time. Reopening communications with the heptapods allows Banks to try to understand both the aliens and what is happening with her, but when the Chinese prepare to attack one of the ships over China (fearing that they will attack, not knowing Donnelly's time theory), Banks must figure out how to convince the Chinese to back down.

Arrival is one of the rare films where the payoff is worthwhile, though the process to get there is not overly engaging. While the mystery surrounding Banks and her daughter is not incredible, the mechanism by which Banks works to save the world with the Chinese General is pretty incredible. The highbrow nature of the temporal concepts raised in Arrival are generally accessible, especially in a world where multiverse theory has been made commonplace through television shows and movies based on comic book sources. While the essential military conflict might be a subplot that comes in fairly late in the story, Arrival resolves it in an intriguing and well-conceived way.

The temporal mystery surrounding Hannah, however, guts the Dr. Banks character in many ways. At the outset of Arrival, Banks is standoffish and inaccessible as a character. That makes some sense if she is suffering the loss of her daughter. But the emotional ramifications of Banks losing a romantic relationship and a daughter working backwards in time is presented in a far less compelling or interesting way. As a result, much of Amy Adams's performance is good for the moments of the character working, but not particularly good for the moments where she is portraying a human being.

In a similar fashion, Arrival has incredible sound effects and sound editing, but a terrible soundtrack. The alien ships and the aliens use sound waves to repulse themselves above the ground and to communicate, so each time one of the alien "shells" is on screen, there is a booming sound that vibrates through the viewer. The sound effect is cool and the heptapod's language is similar. Arrival employs a dramatic soundtrack, too, though, and that blends poorly with the sound effects for the alien speech and the ship sounds. In many ways, Arrival might have worked better to contrast the sound effects with the stark reality of no musical accompaniment to make it resonate better.

Jeremy Renner is fine as Dr. Donnelly, though his romantic subplot with Adams's Banks is painfully generic. Forest Whitaker is equally good as Colonel Weber, though the character is presented as a pretty generic military officer, without much in the way of depth and shading.

Arrival realistically paints the potential of an alien encounter and the inherent difficulties with humans attempting to understand them. The film gets very right the human instinct to leap to a worst-case scenario and leap to military action, but the resolution is a refreshing change from the action adventure blockbuster science fiction films, which tend to prioritize violence over reasoning. In that way, Arrival is very successful; but for coming together in a fully entertaining, well-rounded, well-conceived way, Arrival is more average than exceptional.

For other movies currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Doctor Strange
Oasis: Supersonic
The Accountant
Cardboard Boxer
The Whole Truth

6/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Light And Dark Fight The Drug War In Sicario.

The Good: Performances, Pacing, Direction
The Bad: Very basic story, Lighter on character motivations than some
The Basics: Sicario is tense and clever, even if it is comparatively simple for the two stories it attempts to tell.


With how many films are released each year, it is unsurprising that there are some films I just do not get around to seeing when they are released - regardless of my intent to watch them. Last year, one of the few films to slip between the cracks that I actually wanted to see (the same cannot be said of all of the Best Picture nominees that I had to watch!) was Sicario. I knew almost nothing about Sicario, save that it had an amazing cast (Victor Garber can get me to watch just about anything!) and that the film was a crime drama centered around the drug trade.

As Sicario starts to ramp up, there is a sense that the film might simply become a rehash of Traffic (reviewed here!). Smartly, Sicario keeps the scope much tighter; it is a film where various law enforcement agents and agencies work together to smoke out the boss of a major drug kingpin. So, while there is a feeling that the film is sweeping in scope because it travels around and involves large groups of people working together, the plot is remarkably simple.

Opening in Chandler, Arizona, an FBI SWAT Team led by Kate Mercer raids a cartel house looking for hostages and, when she is shot at, it opens a hole in the wall, which reveals corpses stored there. Forty-two bodies are discovered inside the house before an agent inadvertently sets off a bomb, killing two agents. Mercer connects the house to Manuel Diaz, a major cartel leader working within the United States. Following the incident, Mercer is recruited by the Department Of Justice to join a team to get to Diaz and the cartel for which he works. The first operation she is a part of has Mercer feeling very much left out of the loop and questioning the legality of the mission as it crosses the border from El Paso, Texas to Juarez, Mexico. The mission is an extraction, an extradition that Mercer is wary of and witnesses (from a distance) the violent reaction on the streets of Juarez to.

Guillermo, the man extracted, reveals the existence of a secret tunnel between the U.S. and Mexico. Mercer, Graver, Alejandro, and Mercer's partner Reggie, bust one of Manuel Diaz's money launderers, which leaves Mercer jaded because (while exposing Diaz's methods, there is not strong, legal, evidence of a crime committed) the task force will not act upon it; they continue to focus on flushing out Diaz's superior in the cartel. Disillusioned, Mercer and Reggie go out to a bar, where Mercer hooks up with Ted . . . only to discover that he is one of Diaz's men in law enforcement in the U.S. Alejandro uses Ted as an opportunity to clean house of the corrupt police officers. When Diaz is recalled, Mercer learns that she has been used as legal cover for the CIA (which cannot operate on U.S. soil without another agency with legal authority attached to the operation), but she soldiers on, determined to find out how far back she was a pawn for Graver.

While Sicario is instantly graphic and intense, the impressive aspect of the film is its attention to detail. While Mercer is being recruited to the elite team, she is asked about having a husband and children. While it is easy to view the scene - which contains a group of white men sitting in judgment of Mercer - as something sexist or invasive, director Denis Villeneuve and actor Josh Brolin (who plays Graver, the interrogator) find just the right balance to make those who are familiar with crime dramas recognize it as a risk assessment inquiry. Sicario executes a number of the details like that incredibly well.

Emily Blunt is just the right performer to play Mercer. While she is established right away in the film as badass and efficient, Mercer gets into a situation where she is dramatically over her head. Blunt is able to make the audience empathize immediately with Mercer by playing the fish out of water. Blunt, like the audience, is along for the ride on the first big mission, but the way Blunt uses her facial expressions makes the viewer believe they have a kindred spirit. It is the way Blunt keeps her eyes constantly scanning that lends credibility to Mercer; she is aware of consequences and law that most of the audience is not. It is not easy to portray internal conflict on screen, but Blunt makes it look effortless and instantly gets the viewer to invest in Kate Mercer.

In a similar fashion, Victor Garber's very minimal role in Sicario belays a much more hefty character. Garber's role of Jennings from the Department Of Justice, might seem to exist in Sicario to both recruit Mercer and provide a legal justification for the operations that follow, but Garber plays Jennings with a quiet intelligence that lends authority to the supporting part. Benecio Del Toro might have a more substantive role in Sicario, but Garber steals the scenes he is in.

It is hard to pull off a film where the protagonist is, ostensibly, a dupe, but Sicario manages to do almost all it sets out to very well. Mercer is surrounded by people who are used to keeping secrets, so there are a number of moments of pure exposition needed to inform the viewer what is actually going on. Instead of using cheesy voiceovers or inorganic monologues, Sicario immerses the viewer in the situation and then explains and justifies as needed. Fortunately, Mercer is frequently asking "what the hell is going on" so the viewer is able to watch Sicario and feel like they are going exactly at pace with someone who appears vastly more knowledgeable in the situation.

Sicario is essentially a pair of character studies of Mercer and Alejandro. Mercer is an incredibly straightforward character with a clear moral core and series of goals. Alejandro, by contrast, is a mysterious character and watching his story unfold is much of the meat of Sicario. Despite Alejandro's motivation being handed to the viewer by Graver, the last half of the film makes him a compelling character who makes the latter half of Sicario gripping. Benicio Del Toro is well-cast as Alejandro, though he plays the quiet, mysterious role in the first half in a way that telegraphs his potentially ruthless abilities.

Like Traffic, Sicario makes a moral case alongside decidedly immoral actions. There is the obligatory acknowledgement that the war on drugs is an abject failure and that a significant problem with fighting against the illegal drug trade is that demand for the product exists in the United States. But the meat of Sicario is the interplay between Mercer and Alejandro and while it is slow in getting there, the payoff is generally satisfying.

The result is a crime drama that is engaging to watch and smartly explores the complexity of a fight that has created as many monsters as it has eliminated.

For other works with Emily Blunt, please visit my reviews of:
Edge Of Tomorrow
Looper
The Five-Year Engagement
The Adjustment Bureau
Salmon Fishing In The Yemen
Charlie Wilson’s War
Dan In Real Life
The Devil Wears Prada

7/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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