Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with MiraJeff who tells us of an ensemble flick with everybody from Bill Paxton to Orlando Bloom called HAVEN. The plot sounds very... involved and complicated. So, here's MiraJeff to explain to you the huge plot of HAVEN! Enjoy!
Greetings AICN, MiraJeff here with a look at the long-gestating Orlando Bloom film, Haven. Writer/Director Frank E. Flowers’ ensemble drama made the festival rounds back in 2004, but is only finding theatrical release this week. Reviews have been all over the board for this movie but personally, I’m glad to see it isn’t being given the direct-to-video release because really, it’s better than that really, although it’s certainly not anywhere near as good as Crash, the film it’s compared to in the press notes. (And yes, I loved Crash. Sue me. And please, bear with me through all the parenthesis, plural.) Like Crash, Haven is another non-linear Bob Yari production with an ensemble cast, although this film is set in the Cayman Islands, which are gorgeously shot by director of photography Michael Bernard and native Flowers.
Haven begins on Friday the 13th as a crooked American businessman named Carl (Bill Paxton) learns (via mystery fax) that the feds are onto him and his partner, the mysterious Mr. Allen (Stephen Dillane), whose son (Lee Ingleby) is best friends with Orlando Bloom’s character, providing further story linkage, as well as the film’s most awkward subplot. Anyways, Carl packs a bag for his daughter, Pippa, (Agnes Bruckner, channeling Jennie Garth) and hightails it out of the country as the feds (including Bobby Canavale) search his Miami residence for evidence of shady dealings. As soon as Carl gets to the Caymans, he has to immediately find the bank where his dirty money is hidden, since the island’s banks are closing left and right because of illegalities. Meanwhile, the flirtatious Pippa befriends an island native, Fritz (Victor Rasuk), who she finds sleeping in her new bungalow’s bed. When Pippa returns Fritz’s wallet to him later, he makes it his mission to be her personal guide on the island and show her a good time. Fritz takes Pippa to a party, but it’s not long before he’s spotted by some shady people and ditches her. When Fritz is finally caught, he wiggles off the hook by tipping the island’s gang leader Ritchie Rich (Razaaq Adoti) onto Carl, who Fritz saw with a lot of money taped to his stomach when he was picking up Pippa to go out.
The party Fritz and Pippa attend is where the first storyline intersects with the characters in the second, which takes place four months after the film’s flashbacks. This story involves one of the gang’s members, an ex-con rich kid name Hammer (a superb Anthony Mackie). Hammer is having a bad day because Shy (Orlando Bloom), the guy who is in love with his sister Andrea (Zoe Saldana), has finally reared his ugly (literally) head in public again since Hammer threw acid on his face because he thought Shy raped his sister. But when we first see Bloom and Saldana, they’re swimming in the blue-green waters of the Caribbean just off an idyllic beach shore that’s out of sight of her father’s armed boat. She looks just like a young Thandie Newton, absolutely gorgeous. His single mother is her teacher and her wealthy father (Robert Wisdom) is his boss. We also get a bit of back-story explaining Shy’s nickname, which he earned when he stopped talking for five years after his father, a fisherman, was murdered.
Unfortunately, the acid incident forever alters their relationship and while Shy chooses to hide his scarred face and shun her and his loyal sidekick Kimo (a solid Mpho Koaho), she spirals out of control, becoming a junkie whore who tells one guy to just “take me somewhere and fuck the shit out of me.” When Shy witnesses her behavior for himself in a bathroom at the party, it sets something off inside of him, and when Hammer basically tells him that he would rather his sister be a whore than live happily ever after with Shy. He’d rather see his sister waste her life on drugs than on a white, working-class island boy like Shy, who responds with an act of violence that inevitably forces him to turn his back on the only place he’s ever called home and set sail on a boat appropriately named Destiny. Although this love triangle is the heart of the film, it feels like it belongs in a different movie, or at least one that has more time to devote to the proper development of its story. Instead, lumped in with the Paxton story, it feels like a potpourri of ideas, a hodge-podge/mish-mash/whatever-you-wanna-call-it that mostly works, but stumbles at times under the weight of its own self-importance.
The acting all around was pretty impressive, especially Orlando Bloom, who wasn’t a whiny pussy for once. That doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven him for Elizabethtown yet. Elsewhere, Paxton’s character falls out of the film for long stretches of time and besides convincingly acting paranoid, he kind of sleepwalks through the role. It looks like he was saving his stronger work for Big Love, which is doing a commendable job of filling the Six Feet Under void for me. In supporting roles, Joy Bryant plays Mr. Allen’s seductive and secretive assistant and Jake Weber is a scary local sheriff who knocks some sense into the mischievous Fritz. Although the scene, which is set in a Laundromat, feels out of place, it is nonetheless effective, as Weber warns him that “if you run with assholes you come out smelling like shit.” After beating the boy with a baton, Weber snaps, calling Fritz “a white-washed wanna-be American.”
Of the rest of the cast, Mackie and Rasuk really stand out. Rasuk has come a long way since the days of Raising Victor Vargas and he makes Fritz a street-smart punk who we actually care about. He has a unique energy that really seems to capture the atmosphere of the Caymans. I forgot how much I liked him as Tony Alva in Lords of Dogtown. Even still, the best performance in Haven is Mackie’s. He’s an actor who I’ve noticed before and consider a rising star. He was Papa Doc in 8 Mile, the cocky boxer Morgan Freeman knocks out in Million Dollar Baby, a gang member with a conscience in Spike Lee’s underappreciated Sucker Free City, and most recently shined in Ryan Fleck’s Half Nelson which I saw this past weekend and thought was fantastic. There’s something about Mackie’s unexplained and unrestrained anger here that really makes his commanding performance standout. He’s certainly an actor to watch.
Flowers’ debut features some strong writing and visuals, but aside from some cool time-lapse effects, the editing is all over the place and some unnecessary flashbacks interrupt the flow of the narrative, which is more difficult than it has to be to understand. I mean, this movie isn’t rocket science folks. Overall I have to give it credit for being a stylish character piece that is rarely predictable and features a very good score. It’s fairly compelling and engrossing for the most part and Flowers seems to be a promising filmmaker with an ear for dialogue and an international eye. Haven is definitely worth the trip, if only to see Orlando Bloom looking like a young Freddy Krueger.
That’ll do it for me, folks. The Tribeca Film Festival will be opening its doors any day now, so keep your eyes peeled for fresh updates from NYC. ‘Til next time, this is MiraJeff signing off…
