Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Copernicus' review of Guy Ritchie's REVOLVER. That strange bugger is sitting 4 feet in front of me right now as I type this, watching old black and white strip teases while hunched over the lap of another man, the infamous "Ro-Ro". Copernicus wants to pass along a comment for those curious about his TIDELAND review, saying that when he said "third failure" for Terry Gilliam he was not talking about FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, a film he loves, but the doomed production of DON QUIXOTE. That is all! Enjoy his review of REVOLVER!
Ahh, what a treat to be back in Austin, after an incredible whirlwind of a week at the Toronto FIlm Festival. It is great to see the old gang, and Quentin is as entertaining as ever. Man, is there anything better than drinking beer and watching an Italian revenge movie with old friends? During my brief daytime sober periods I'll try to get some of my reviews from Toronto finished. Here is REVOLVER.
Revolver is explosive, stylish, smart, frustrating, simultaneously derivative yet shockingly original. I've never seen anything quite like it, so at the very least it can't be dismissed as simply another gangster caper. Unfortunately, its originality may be its undoing -- Ritchie challenges the audience to such an extent that he will probably lose the mainstream, but generate an obsessive cult following. The plot twists around Jake Green (Jason Statham), as he navigates an intricate web of cons, sometimes the perpetrator, sometimes the victim. His ostensible opponent is Macha (Ray Liotta), a crime boss who killed his sister-in-law, but other shady characters revolve in and out as obstacles to his quest to be the last man standing with the bag of loot. Among this cabal of cashbag contenders are two mysterious cons, Avi and Zach, played by Andre 3000, and Vincent "Big Pussy" Pastore, and the minions of shadowy crime lord Sam Gold, a puppet-master as legendary as Keyser Soze himself.
On the surface, REVOLVER has everything you might expect from Guy Ritchie at the peak of his game – colorful characters, well-edited heist sequences, relentless experimentation, and the beautiful coming together of bullets and people. There is one masterful sequence intercut between a simultaneous gunfight in a room, a standoff under the table, and a getaway outside. Anime is also cut into another caper sequence, which works not only to give the scene an edge, but to underscore that our perceptions of reality are inherently untrustworthy.
The movie plays like a mental chess game between con artists as each tries to not only con the others, but to get inside the mind of his opponent and plant seeds of doubt about his own ability. This causes near (or full-on) insanity in several characters as they succumb to the pressure and paranoia.
Two quotes are repeated though the film, and are essential to the theme:
"The only way to improve is to play a better opponent"
-- Fundamentals of Chess
"The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look"
-- Julius Caesar
So as an audience we are forced to ask ourselves repeatedly, "Who is playing whom?" As some of the characters start to lose it, we even have to ask if we can trust some of the images we are seeing.
The acting is top-notch. Andre 3000 shows that he has the charisma and talent as an actor to match his musical genius. And as his partner, Vincent Pastore, plays a role that is not much of a stretch for him, but he shows he is just as solid as he ever was in the Sopranos. Ray Liotta is a bit over-the-top, but that is the way his character was written. Jason Statham plays the bad-ass lead perfectly.
REVOLVER starts fast and never slows its pace to let the audience recover from the nearly endless series of right-angle turns and feints in the plot. Some of the plot twists are fairly obvious, some are cheap, but some that you think are coming never materialize. The net effect is that you are kept in a state of semi-bewilderment and suspense. This is a movie that lazy audiences will hate, and even the most attentive viewers won't get everything on the first viewing. There is no final reveal -- nothing is explained in the end. At the gala screening I attended the movie ended with a bang and the curtains immediately closed – there were no end credits. This was a masterstroke, sowing confusion, anger, and surprise throughout the audience. As my mind raced to try to sort out all of the dangling loose ends, my first thought was that this was a mistake – surely the last reel was missing, or the film broke. This literally and figuratively leaves the audience in the dark, exasperated by a jumble of seemingly contradictory facts, in the same state that most of the characters in the film are in. After the obligatory standing ovation, the audience filed out as silently as if it had been a holocaust movie. No one wanted to be the first to say, "I didn't get it," and yet no one understood what the hell they had just seen. That is so meta, and so fucking cool – bringing the audience into the same confused and paranoid mindset as the characters by simply confounding their expectations.
But toying with your audience is like playing with fire. Most people react very badly when you leave them in a state of confusion. This seems to imply that they ought to "get it," and they have a hard time reconciling the fact that they didn't understand everything. People tend to become very defensive about this and then start to hate the movie, projecting their anger at the director. I think one of the interpretations of the line "The greatest enemy will hide in the place you least expect it," is your own mind. And, "The only way to improve is to play a better opponent," means that you can only have self-improvement if you admit that you don't know everything, and try to learn from others.
I do not mean to imply that everyone that didn't like the movie "didn't get it," or just don't like the movie because they are uncomfortable with uncertainty. Some will find the events implausible, some will thing all of the facts don't hang together, and some will find Guy Ritchie's approach annoying.
I love how reviewers are dodging the question of whether or not they understood the movie. The Toronto Film Festival review summed it up best saying, "It will keep you guessing until the end credits roll." There are no end credits. I'll be the first to say that I don't have all of the answers. I am pretty sure about my answer to the overarching mystery, but I'd have to see it for a second time to test it. This is the perfect movie to discuss with your friends, because a group of people can piece together details and test theories much more easily. I can't wait until more people see it, and I can't wait to get it on DVD.
