SUNDANCE 2015: Capone's take on the Michael Fassbender Western SLOW WEST and Ryan Reynolds in MISSISSIPPI GRIND!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago. I still have a few titles left to review from the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Here are a couple of great ones that I caught while I was in Park City, both of which just happen to feature the great Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn. Enjoy…


SLOW WEST
I’ll admit to being a little shocked to see writer-director John Maclean’s name attached to this smart, enjoyable Western set in 19th century American (but shot entirely in New Zealand). Maclean was/is a member of The Beta Band, and has done a couple of the group’s music videos as well as some short films. But SLOW WEST marks his impressive feature debut that offers something of a twist on the TRUE GRIT formula, pairing Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender), a seasoned, ragged outlaw, with Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a dandy of a 16-year-old lad who is foolishly propelled across the American frontier by the power of love

It’s difficult not to spot flashes of young, spaghetti-Western-era Clint Eastwood in Fassbender’s rugged, yet charming performance, and it made me think that no other actor really took up Eastwood’s cowboy mantle once he gave it up. But Fassbender has what it takes in terms of a slow-burn, unsuspecting potential for sudden violence, and he uses to beautifully here. Smit-McPhee is absolutely perfect as the naive young man from Scotland chasing the woman he loves, Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius), who is hiding out in America with her father John (Rory McCann, best known stateside as The Hound from “Game of Thrones”). The pair were involved in an accidental killing overseas, which means there’s a massive dead-or-alive bounty on their heads. What Cavendish doesn’t fully realize is that he is blindly leading many a bounty hunter right to the Ross homestead, including Silas.

The most dangerous among these hunters is Payne (the great Ben Mendelsohn, most recently seen in EXODUS and BLACK SEA), who leads a large and vicious gang that had no interest in taking the Ross family alive. As the film progresses and Silas and Cavendish get closer to Rose, a series of flashbacks shows us the true nature of the boy’s connection (or lack there of) to Rose, who certainly had an affection for the lad but never returned his full-on love for her.

Much of the movie has the pair going from place to place, meeting new people—some dangerous, some not—like a Western road movie that is amusingly lacking in free-flowing conversation. Silas would rather not talk at all (which is ironic considering he acts as our narrator), while Cavendish fancies himself a wordsmith in need of a release. They are a terrific acting match, with Fassbender being quick to action, while Smit-McPhee performs as the classic reactor.

The final showdown at the Ross property is a shocking, violent and occasionally just plain bizarre affair that does not play out the way you think it will, and it’s a testament to Maclean’s screenplay that he finds a new twist on the age-old Western shootout scenario. SLOW WEST is perfectly paced, elegantly shot (by cinematographer Robbie Ryan) work that is not afraid to get wickedly dark with its killings or its humor. Every performance is measured to perfection, and shows us a side of these actors we haven’t yet been privy to. And in a movie landscape in which Westerns are an endangered species, it’s good to see someone try one out for size and get nearly every beat just right. The film has a distributor (A24), so hopefully you’ll be seeing it before the year is out.


MISSISSIPPI GRIND
When Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn first exploded onto my radar in 2010’s ANIMAL KINGDOM, he just became one of those faces I always looked for. Thankfully, so did casting directors, especially in the U.S., who landed him roles in films like THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, A PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, KILLING THEM SOFTLY, last year’s sadly overlooked STARRED UP, and more recently in EXODUS and BLACK SEA. He’s very often cast as the unstable villain or some variety of flat-out asshole, but in his latest film, MISSISSIPPI GRIND, he plays a far more complex and layered role as Gerry, a degenerate gambler desperate to get his life back on track.

Gerry owes money all over Dubuque, Iowa (you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Alfre Woodard as a sinister loan shark, threatening bodily harm upon Gerry), mostly from being an unlucky poker player. But that’s the key to Gerry and those like him—to them, things like luck and fate are concrete things that directly influence they way they play. Chance doesn’t exist to them; skill is important, but not a critical as a streak or a good-luck charm. At one of these poker games, Gerry meets a younger, charming player named Curtis (Ryan Reynolds), who later pops up at the same bar as Gerry (something that Gerry believes is an absolute “sign” that they were meant to work together). The two concoct a plan to gamble their way down the Mississippi to a big poker tournament in New Orleans, with Curtis putting up the money and Gerry playing.

And as you might suspect, MISSISSIPPI GRIND turns into a part gambling film, part road movie with our heroes making detours and stops along the way that take them to visit old dancer friends of Curtis (played by Sienna Miller and Analeigh Tipton), as well as Gerry’s ex-wife (Robin Weigert). As is often the case in the lives of men for whom winning isn’t nearly as interesting as the risk of losing, the journey doesn’t quite turn out how they expect. Even in their finest moments when things are looking up, both men hold in their eyes a look of quiet desperation, of parts of their lives that have simply been lost to this disease. And as the film moves along, we begin to discover what some of those lost pieces are and see the type of behavior that drove them away.

Co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (SUGAR, HALF NELSON) don’t believe in half-assed character studies. They go so far into the terrifying depths of their characters that a part of you wants to turn away from making us so uncomfortable. We’ve seen Reynolds try variations of this charismatic loser before, but usually for comic effect. In MISSISSIPPI GRIND, it feels like part of a long con that he’s playing on himself—if he acts and looks the part, maybe one day he’ll actually be that slick, confident players.

But the breakout performance comes from Mendelsohn, who really hasn’t been given a leading role like this in an American film, and he simultaneously destroys and resuscitates your faith in humanity in his performance. One of the biggest debates I got into at Sundance about any film concerned Gerry’s nature: is he an asshole trying to be better, or is he a decent guy who is forced to be an asshole sometimes because of his addiction? Mendelsohn is so good here, you can’t tell, and it ultimately doesn’t matter.

By far one of the strongest offerings I saw at Sundance this year, MISSISSIPPI GRIND is a work that isn’t in a hurry to get where its going. But every turn it takes adds value and dimension to its characters, and that’s what’s most important. As much as I enjoyed the recent remake of THE GAMBLER, when set up against this film, there’s no contest (hell, even screenwriter James Toback pops up in a nice cameo here). GRIND isn’t concerned with how cool Gerry and Curtis are; it just wants us to peek into their souls enough to know they are suffering and lonely guys. More importantly, their friendship turns into something real, and when given the opportunity to cross each other, there’s a genuine conflict about doing so. It’s rare that a film dives so deep into what makes its characters tick, but it seems to be something that directors Fleck and Boden do time and time again with a kind of nuance that is praiseworthy.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter