FILM REVIEW: THE REEF

Pinnacle Films
Now Showing in limited release

Every summer I vow to go swimming and every summer, Channel 10 screens Steven Spielberg's seminal 1975 film, Jaws. I can't help but watch: summer swimming plans cancelled. New Australian film The Reef is no Jaws, but it successfully trades on our primal fear of the deep blue sea and its dorsal finned, meat-eating inhabitants.

The Reef sees a group of four friends – Luke (Damian Walshe-Howling), buddy Matt (Gyton Grantley) and his girlfriend Suzie (Adrienne Pickering), and Matt's sister, and Luke's ex-girlfriend, Kate (Zoe Naylor) – and a fifth, deckhand Warren (Kieran Darcy-Smith), set sail north to deliver the sail boat they're piloting.

But once out at sea, the boat is up-ended and the five have to make the decision: stay on the upturned boat and hope it doesn't sink or swim some 12 miles to where Luke believes there is land. Warren knows what lies beneath and steadfastly decides to stay on the boat; the others reluctantly agree to try their luck in the water. So begins a horror films of sorts, where one by one the swimmers are picked off by a white pointer shark.

Andrew Traucki's blue water thriller is effectively suspenseful and all the more impressive given the undoubted financial and logistical restraints imposed. I can't be sure but I believe that it is an actual shark which appears in the film, perhaps shot separately from the actors but almost seamlessly edited into the shot; Traucki wouldn't have had the luxury of a mechanical shark as Spielberg did.

Traucki also doesn't devote as much time to developing character as in the 1975 film. But despite the clunky opening, which could have scuttled the film before it even set sail, The Reef manages to draw you in once it becomes a question of sink or swim.

And you may just find yourself screaming (in your head) “Swim. Swim faster. It's right behind you!” Lucky for me summer's over, so I now have another six months to work up the courage to go swimming again.

FILM REVIEW: THE COMPANY MEN

Madman Films
Now Showing

Coming so soon after Inside Job, the Oscar-winning documentary about the avarice and arrogance of Wall Street, it's a little too much to expect us to feel sorry for the corporate suits losing their jobs as a result of the economic downturn in The Company Men.

Not that all of those men in John Wells' film are as bad or as at fault as those corporate cowboys who brought about the Global Financial Crisis and, as Inside Job director Charles Ferguson reminded us during his Oscars acceptance speech, got off scott-free.

GTX, a shipping manufacturer, is in trouble but rather than forgo building their new headquarters or dip into shareholder profits, the board decides to shed thousands of jobs. One of those jobs is held by Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), a top salesman with a six-figure salary. When he's unceremoniously retrenched, he wades through his anger before deciding not to cut back on the lifestyle he, and his family, have become accustomed to; a new, high paying corporate job is surely just around the corner.

Another GTX employee, Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper), who has been with the company since its inception, is cut during a second round of dismissals. He doesn't know anything but work, and with two daughters attending college, and fast approaching retirement age, his options are severely limited and his choices more severe.

Long time friend and GTX board member, Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones), would be in the same boat if he didn't have the luxury of cashing in his GTX stock when his superior, and oldest friend, GTX owner James Salinger (Craig T Nelson), lets him go too. Gene is the closest thing the GTX board has to a conscience, one of the first things to go when the financial going gets tough.

It's hard to sympathise with someone's whose idea of sacrifice is to sell their Porshce and cancel their golf club membership. Bobby believes that looking successful is key to his being successful once more and is reluctant to recognise their situation. That's one of the reasons he turns down a job offer from builder brother-in-law, Jack (Kevin Costner).

As a study of men forced to re-evaluate their lives, The Company Men is a solid drama. But Wells' decision to use the GFC as the catalyst for this drama, and have the suits nearer the centre of that financial shit storm as his protagonists, lessened the impact for me. I'm not saying that those money men further down the corporate ladder are unworthy of sympathy or empathy, but I find their 'plights' harder to engage with . Try walking in the shoes of Ree Dolly, the heroine of Winter's Bone, and then get back to me.

FILM REVIEW: RANGO

Paramount Pictures
Now Showing

It's not easy being green, a famous amphibian once sang. Well try being a chameleon with an identity crisis, Kermit. Rango, the eponymous hero of director Gore Verbinski's first foray into animation, has his lack of self brought into sharp focus when he falls from his fishbowl existence and into the unforgiving desert outside of Las Vegas.

This search for self – as well as for water – drives the narrative of this animated feature which is both thankfully not in 3D and also skews towards a slightly older audience. Indeed, the under-5 set may find Rango's constant battle with death too much to take; the first being his ejection from his owner's car, the next at the talons of an eagle, before arriving in the town of Dirt where death shadows his every move.

It's here in Dirt where Rango (the name the chameleon adopts in the spur of the moment) re-invents himself as a gunslinging hero and the man best suited to restore law and order to the dust bowl town, and discover what has happened to the town's water supply. It's also here where the film makes the largest of its nods to other films: Roman Polanski's Chinatown.

And there are numerous references to Westerns – classic and spaghetti – which Rango basically is. Most of these references are aimed at the parents who will accompany the kids to see Rango, as well as the more film literate teenager. So, too, is the film's darker tone and Rango's existential quest for self. “Who am I”, the reptile is constantly asking himself, usually in whispered voiceover.

Johnny Depp was an excellent choice to voice Rango, no doubt Verbinski, who directed Depp in the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, was aware of the actor's inner lizard. But Depp's voice work never takes you out of the film. Nor does his fellow actors, most of whom – Isla Fisher, Bill Nighy, Alfred Molina, Abigail Breslin – I failed to recognise, although Ned Beatty, as the town's Mayor, is unmistakable; perhaps because it comes so soon after his voicing of the villainous bear, Lotso, in Toy Story 3.

But the most impressive element of Rango is the animation. It's high praise indeed to say that the scenery and images - the desert, the saloon, the water when it comes - are as life-like as animation gets. And the characters? You've never seen an animated cast like them. Beginning with Rango himself, they're a motley crew of the aesthetically challenged rarely seen in family films.

In a year slated for animated sequels (Cars 2, Kung Fu Panda 2, Happy Feet 2), and franchise spin-offs (Shrek's Puss-in-Boots is stepping out on his own), Rango could prove to be an original in more ways than one, and not just the saviour of Dirt.

FILM REVIEW: THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

Universal Pictures

Now Showing

Matt Damon on the run in New York city is nothing new; that's how he capped off his tenure in the Bourne films. But this time he's being pursued not by agents of the US government but by those of the Lord. Actually, he goes by the moniker of The Chairman, amongst others (Frank Sinatra? Aslan?), and runs his operation like a hands-on public service, albeit far more efficient and far better tailored.

Yes, the Lord would seem to have a penchant for TV's Mad Men; his agents dressed in snazzy suits and not-so-inconspicuous trilby hats. He also has that show's John Slattery as one of his top men, Richardson. It's his, and others', job to make sure the world runs according to a preordained plan, a plan that is jeopardized when Damon's political hot shot, New York congressman David Norris, goes off the map and falls for Elise, a contemporary ballet dancer.

As Elise is played by Brit actress Emily Blunt, you can hardly blame the guy. Norris heeds Richardson's warnings at first – that neither will be happy if they remain together – somewhat compensated by the promise of great things to come should he go it alone. But as Norris would know, no one is getting the keys to the White House without a First Lady; the US voters are not about to elect an unmarried man. They may have gone black in 2008, but they're not about to go 'pink' any time soon.

But what is power without love? Norris decides he can't live without Elise and Heaven, or The Bureau, be damned! Damon and Blunt have a wonderful, easy going chemistry but the silly goings-on around them lessen rather than heighten the impact of an impossible love. I could have done with a lot more of their courtship and a little less of the men in suits and their god-bothering.

I'm not overly familiar with the work of Philip K. Dick, upon whose short story The Adjustment Bureau is based, other than being aware that his work was the basis of Blade Runner, one of the seminal sci-fi films of all time. Fighting fate and destiny, and whether or not our future's are indeed preordained, were at the centre of Minority Report, another Dick adaptation, but there's very little sci accompanying the fi in The Adjustment Bureau.

I don't know if debuting director, George Nolfi, who penned Ocean's 12 and co-penned The Bourne Ultimatum, has changed the elements of Dick's original story, toning down the sci-fi elements and upping the celestial? Either way, it won't be just fans of Philip K. Dick who are disappointed by The Adjustment Bureau. Fans of Matt Damon won't be too pleased either, especially as it comes so soon in the wake of Hereafter. I suggest they go catch True Grit for a second (or third) time.