The snow kept me away from the cinema for quite a while. As such I’ve been a little late in seeing The Road and Daybreakers, but going back into the warm, dark womb of the movies was refreshing after a bit of a break. And thankfully my wit has not been dulled. In case you were wondering.
The Road
Having not read the book, I now wish I had. I imagine that it’s quite a bit better than this deliberately numbing journey into the death of the American dream. Though there are some striking images formed with CGI tricks, I can’t help feeling that they would have been all the more powerful if I had been forced to conjure them myself in my own head, based on nothing more than the author’s words.
Morality seems to play a significant part in The Road, and it is admirably presented as the confused, mutable force that it is in real life. However, it was difficult to reconcile the simplified ‘good guys vs. bad guys’ motif with the complexities of the themes of sacrifice and suicide which clung to the father-son relationship of the main characters.
Viggo Mortensen holds the film together, though Charlize Theron deserves kudos for her portrayal of his eerily detached wife. Oh, and there is also the best cameo from an actor who was in The Wire that you’ll see all year, but I won’t spoil it by revealing who it is.
The Road skims over some fairly important themes and events whilst repeatedly beating you over the head with others, and it will not be to everyone’s tastes. I appreciated The Road, though it is impossible to say that I ‘enjoyed’ it, because that would suggest a level of sadism that is surely unhealthy. If you want to revel in the fall of man, check it out. And given the number of apocalypse scenarios which are being played out on the silver screen at the moment, that group will include most of you.
Daybreakers
There aren’t many films that can be described as both ‘soppy’ and ‘graphically violent’, but Daybreakers is one of them. If you like your apocalypse scenarios to be explained to you, skip The Road and see this. Vampires are to blame here, and the main side effect seems to be that Chrysler cars with funny hubcaps have become incredibly popular. If you are willing to ignore the clash of the American accents with the Australian landscape, the cliché-ridden script and the flawed plot, then Daybreakers is actually quite a fun ride. And I’ll explain why.
There is a lot of blood in Daybreakers. Vampires explode, limbs are severed, heads roll and giblets fill the screen from time to time. Despite the moments of CGI-aided carnage, some of the effects feel quite low-fi, and the creatures look like something Sam Raimi would have come up with in the 80s.
After having to sit through New Moon, it’s nice to see a Vampire movie that has more bleeding throats than it does bleeding hearts. Daybreakers is pleasantly rubbish, and the incredibly dramatic orchestral soundtrack seems zanily out of place in the near-future world it portrays, with its cyberpunk pretentions and Matrix-esque themes.
So, two flawed but worthy films, two reviews, one article and not a footnote in sight.
Jack
1 month, 4 weeks ago
I like as well that unlike Twilight, there is some consequence to being a vampire.The only problem for a Twilight vampire is that they twinkle in sun light. Otherwise there is nothing negative about them, except having to listen to Kristen Stewart sigh every couple of seconds and push her hair behind her massive ears