viola davis – filmcentric

The full list of my favourite films of 2022 is here but I’m posting fuller reviews of my favourites. This big historical action epic comes from the very dependable Gina Prince-Bythewood, one of the better directors working in Hollywood, and it’s a powerful evocation of an era not much seen on screen.

Just to kick things off: I really enjoyed this movie, especially as a big screen cinematic experience. It has an old-fashioned sense of an historical epic, albeit about a little corner of African history that isn’t often represented on-screen (primarily because it doesn’t revolve around white heroes or saviours, and surely the time for patriotic stories of European conquests over tribal peoples has long since passed). But it’s curious that this African story is written by two white women; given the other talent involved I don’t think that meaningfully invalidates any positive representation the film can provide, but it might give a hint as to the way in which the film tends towards a platitudinous Hollywood liberal sense of injustice being righted, as Viola Davis leads her Agojie (the so-called “Dahomey Amazons”) as a righteous force dedicated to eradicating slavery.

Clearly there are experts in this history — of which I am not one, nor are many of the online commentators peddling the criticisms to be fair — who acknowledge that the situation was more complicated than it’s portrayed here. Just my cursory awareness of our modern online world leads me to the understanding that it’s perfectly possible for groups of women to come together to actively promote and defend patriarchal systems of oppression, fascism and hate speech. The film doesn’t deny that the Dahomeys were just as involved in slavery as their enemies, the Oyo Empire. So the feel-good roles of Davis as Nanisca, her second-in-command Izogie (the brilliant Lashana Lynch) and young recruit Nawi (an impressive Thuso Mbedu) may not quite reflect real history, but that’s fine by me because this is primarily a film and an entertainment that hopefully leads people to learn more about this historical time and context.

However, whatever your caveats, it’s undeniably a well put-together epic with the appropriate levels of heart-tugging sentiment and brutal warfare action scenes. Gina Prince-Bythewood has come a long way from Love & Basketball and that sweetly saccharine film The Secret Life of Bees with one of the Fannings in it. She made the fantastic Beyond the Lights and her recent foray into action with The Old Guard was the rare superhero film I actively enjoyed, and so she is not short of directing skill, nor is her team lacking in their ability to both capture the location and people (cinematographer Polly Morgan), or the nuances of the acting — and this in particular seems like quite a departure in the type of role Viola Davis is usually seen in, and she surely deserves some awards love for it. There may be all kinds of ways to criticise it, but I admire any film that tries to tell a bit of history we’ve not seen played out before.

CREDITS
Director Gina Prince-Bythewood; Writers Dana Stevens and Maria Bello; Cinematographer Polly Morgan; Starring Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, John Boyega; Length 135 minutes.
Seen at Light House Cuba, Wellington, Thursday 3 November 2022.

Critics directed quite a bit of derision towards this new Michael Mann film when it came out last year, and it’s certainly a very odd film in many ways. For a start, most obviously, it’s about computer hacking, a notoriously difficult thing to make visually interesting, though Mann does his best with an opening sequence tracking computer data transfers via swooping CGI shots along lit-up wires and through circuits across the world. More noticeably, he has Chris Hemsworth play our computer-hacking hero Nicholas — perhaps a suspension of disbelief too far for some — who is seen at the start locked up in prison, which can surely be the only excuse for his taut, muscled body. Then on top of this is added a bunch of fairly straightforward action scenes involving running, kicking, jumping, explosions, all the usual stuff, because basically the film quickly moves from the realm of cyber-terrorism to real-world undercover policework, as some FBI handlers are introduced (Viola Davis, most notably) and then Chinese government officials (Leehom Wang as Captain Chen, and Tang Wei as his sister Lien, also an IT specialist, and putative love interest for Nicholas). Setting all this aside — and there’s some slightly patchy pacing on the way as the story develops — it’s actually fascinating for being a mainstream big-budget Hollywood action-thriller which has a genuinely diverse cast. Sure, Bond and Bourne jetted around the world, but they don’t feel as properly international as this film does. My feeling is that opinion will shift over time to regard it rather more positively, as I think it moves the genre in an interesting direction, and there’s rarely so little of interest to most action thrillers.

CREDITS
Director Michael Mann; Writers Morgan Davis Foehl and Mann; Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh; Starring Chris Hemsworth, Wei Tang 湯唯, Leehom Wang 王力宏, Viola Davis; Length 133 minutes.
Seen at home (Blu-ray), London, Saturday 13 February 2016.