Tomorrow, When the War Began

Red Dawn? Red Schmawn!

(2010) Action (Freestyle) Caitlin Stasey, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Lincoln Lewis, Deniz Akdeniz, Phoebe Tonkin , Chris Pang, Ashleigh Cummings, Andrew Ryan, Colin Friels, Don Halpert, Olivia Pigeot, Stephen Bourke, Kelly Butler, Julia Yon, Dane Carson, Matthew Dale, Gary Quay, Michael Camilleri, Masa Yamaguchi, Andy Trieu, Yolandi Franken. Directed by Stuart Beattie

I have to admit that not that long ago Australia was producing some of the best action and adventure movies in the world. Of late they seem to be better at horror films but that doesn’t mean they’re not putting out some entries in the former category.

Ellie (Stasey) is a teenage girl living in a rural Australian community. She’s pretty much an ordinary girl, maybe a little bit precocious. She wants to go on a camping trip to a nearby isolated valley locally known as Hell but her parents won’t let her go unless it’s in a group, so she wrangles her bestie Corrie (Hurd-Wood), Corrie’s boyfriend Kevin (Lewis), Ellie’s next-door neighbor Homer (Akdeniz), the son of the owners of the local Thai restaurant (and a guy Ellie’s been crushing on) Lee (Pang), and her friends Robyn (Cummings) and Fiona (Tonkin).

They take off in the Land Rover of Ellie’s parents and spend an idyllic day in Hell. That night though, Ellie notices the sky filled with military planes. This is a little disconcerting to Ellie but she doesn’t put two and two together right away. It is only after they go home to find their town deserted and all power shut off that they begin to get worried. From a hilltop later that evening they notice the only places with lights on are the hospital and the local stadium. When they investigate the stadium they find that all the townspeople are being held there by a military group of a foreign nation, the insignias unrecognizable to Ellie although most of the soldiers look Asian.

Unfortunately, one of them is detected and now the army is after them. They hide out in the home of local stoner Chris (Ryan) who is so baked that he isn’t aware that anything is wrong. However they do discover that the invading force is moving in their supplies and personnel over a single bridge. And Ellie knows that bridge has got to go – and the only people who have a shot at getting it done are her and her friends. But can a bunch of party-hearty teens stand up to a highly trained military force?

This is based loosely on the first of John Marsden’s young adult series Tomorrow. A big hit over in Oz and to a lesser extent over here, it seemed like a natural fit for the Aussie film market and indeed it was. However, it never really connected with the global market and plans to film the second book in the series have stalled, at least for the time being.

Director Beattie made his mark initially as a screenwriter for such films as Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Collateral, Derailed and 30 Days of Night (he’s also writing and directing the upcoming I, Frankenstein). This is his first time in the director’s chair and he actually doesn’t do too bad a job. This is an action-heavy film with sequences that include helicopter and fighter jet battles, dune buggy chases and of course gun fights. There isn’t anything that is going to rewrite the action movie manual here but there is certainly nothing that disgraces the filmmakers either.

The young cast has a lot of pressure on their hands and the results are fairly mixed. Partially because their characters aren’t given a lot of development time other than for the very basics, they don’t come off as fully formed personalities in most cases. Methinks that they were hoping to do more of that in the sequels that were planned from the get-go.

Still, the movie moves at a very heady clip and you aren’t really allowed to catch your breath for very long which is crucial for a good action movie. While the plot borrows perhaps too liberally from Red Dawn, this is certainly a different take on that type of film, being a little bit more specific to a single event and less about the arc of the characters over the course of the war although the full series of books is more in that vein. It’s not a bad movie although it got virtually no play over on this side of the Pacific but that is perhaps due to the distributors not quite knowing what to do with an Aussie movie that feels more like a Hollywood film, but when compared to Hollywood action movies might come off as a bit rougher around the edges than what cognoscenti here are used to.

WHY RENT THIS: Well-paced. Some fine action sequences.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Déjà vu plot. Not terribly well-acted.

FAMILY VALUES: There is some violence as well as more than a few situations involving peril to teens, not to mention some implied drug use and sexuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This was the highest grossing Australian film of 2010.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $16.5M on a $26M production budget.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Red Dawn

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Brake

The Patriot

Mel Gibson leads the charge against the Brits, disappointed he can’t paint his face blue here.

(2000) Historical Drama (Columbia) Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, Jason Isaacs, Joely Richardson, Chris Cooper, Tcheky Karyo, Rene Auberjonois, Lisa Brenner, Tom Wilkinson, Donal Logue, Leon Rippy, Adam Baldwin, Jay Arlen Jones, Logan Lerman, Mika Boorem. Directed by Roland Emmerich

 

We often bandy about the term “patriotic” to imply our loyalty to our country. In reality, that has come to mean standing whenever the national anthem is played and making sure to cast our votes in each and every election. Most of us don’t even do that. There was a time, however, when being a patriot was dangerous; a man’s home, family and life were the collateral for his ideals.

Benjamin Martin (Gibson) has plenty of collateral. Although he mourns his recently deceased wife, he has seven wonderful children, a prosperous farm and as a hero of the French and Indian War, the respect and admiration of his community. However, the clouds of war brew on the horizon. The colonies of Massachusetts and Virginia are in full revolt against a tyrannical English king, and are soliciting support from the other colonies, many of whom have already given it. Martin’s South Carolina still debates the issue, but despite an impassioned plea by Martin to attempt other solutions (followed by a dire, Cassandra-esque warning that the war would be fought in the streets of their hometowns to be witnessed by their children), South Carolina chooses to fight for freedom. Martin chooses not to, but his passionate son Gabriel (Ledger) enlists in the Continental Army against his father’s wishes.

Two years pass. Lord Cornwallis (Wilkinson) has taken Charleston and as Martin predicted, the fighting is getting close to home. Following a skirmish in which Gabriel participates just outside the Martin farm, Martin and his household tend to the wounded on both sides. Into this scene of compassion canters the despicable Col. Tavington (Isaacs), who orders the wounded Colonials shot, Gabriel arrested and hung as a spy (for carrying dispatches on his person), the house torched and the livestock killed. In the ensuing pandemonium, Martin’s second-oldest son Thomas is shot before the horrified gaze of his family by Tavington, who sneers “Stupid boy!” in his best Snidely Whiplash fashion, and then gallops off, leaving Thomas to die in his father’s arms.

The despicable colonel forgets one of life’s basic rules (or at least one of the basic rules of 90s movies); don’t mess with Mel Gibson (you’d think the Brits would have learned that after Braveheart). He and his two remaining sons carry off a daring rescue of Gabriel, whereupon the elder Martin enlists himself and takes charge of a South Carolina militia whose job is to occupy Cornwallis and keep him from marching north to finish off George Washington. The militiamen do this at great cost, as Tavington carries out atrocity after atrocity.

This isn’t going to play very well in England, as the English here are portrayed as either sadistic, vain, arrogant and/or somewhat stupid. That’s OK, though; this is really our story, although ironically it’s being told by Roland Emmerich, the German director of Independence Day and Godzilla.

The battle scenes are terrifying, as armies get nose to nose and muzzle to muzzle, firing at point blank range at each other, standing in a line and praying that the volley of musket fire will pass them by, all the while cannonshot take the arms, legs and heads off of hapless soldiers in the front ranks. The violence and brutality are excessive at times, but the carnage is necessary to place in context the bravery of farmers, untrained in war, standing in the face of devastating British muskets firing with deadly accuracy into their ranks. Gibson is solid, though his performance is less compelling than in Braveheart, to which this will inevitably be compared. Here, he is a rough-hewn man with a dangerous temper boiling beneath the surface. Ledger is terrific – this was the performance that established him in Hollywood after success in his native Australia.

The Patriot is a bit over-the-top in places, and a bit predictable in others, leading to a half-star penalty. Be warned; this is a gut-wrenching, emotional movie. Da Queen rated it five hankies and there was a lot of snuffling going on in the packed theater in which we saw “The Patriot.” Da Queen was red-eyed hours after the movie was over.

The Patriot reminds us of the sacrifices that were made to give this country life. Men gave of life and limb, watched sons, fathers, brothers and friends perish, left their homes and families to exist in brutal conditions with the Continental army, and often watched their life’s work go up in smoke. Too often, we forget the commitment that created the liberty we cherish. That’s just the first step in losing it.

WHY RENT THIS: Intense battle sequences. Gibson is at his best here. Ledger makes a big splash in his debut.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Turns the Redcoats into Storm Troopers. Fudges on the facts.

FAMILY MATTERS: There’s a good deal of war violence here, some of it quite graphic.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The house used as Aunt Charlotte’s (Richardson) plantation was the same one used as the residence of Forrest Gump. Benjamin Martin has seven children, the same number Mel Gibson had at the time of filming.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: There is a featurette on the real people these fictional characters were based on and the lengths the movie went to for historical accuracy in terms of uniforms and so on (it’s a shame they couldn’t have been more accurate in terms in more important places).

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $215.3M on a $110M production budget; the movie broke even in it’s theatrical release.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Braveheart

FINAL RATING: 8/10

NEXT:Magic Mike