squelcho

I'll admit to enjoying Wes Anderson's oblique sense of humour, plotless movement from A to B via an array of arcane symbols, and deadpan dialogue.

Is it art or artifice? Who cares? It looks good, sounds good, and leaves me feeling warm and fuzzy. The Phoenician Scheme mocks the underhand mechanics of capitalism, which is always deserving of a good shoeing.

As a huge fan of Guy Maddin's abstract surrealism, I find Anderson's narrative wibbling hilarious. And colourful.

There's no need to grow a beard to performatively stroke while watching these absurdist jollies. They exist merely to amuse the senses, and ocassionally trigger a belly laugh or surreptitious cackle. That'll do for now.

We live in frequently horrific times, so a spot of lurid escapism is more than welcome.

I can't help but feel a bit happier after watching any of Anderson, Maddin, or Jeunet's farcical adventures, because they dare to throw some wild imagination into their comedic craftsmanship.

I realise that John Woo is an iconic director, mainly because of his run of funky HK triad gunslinger movies, but whoever put this remake together skimped on the screenwriting, and the script. The direction is ok, but with the nagging feeling that the hourly rate there was also well shy of inspirational.

Every cliched character and trite line of dialogue feels disconnected, existing in isolation, awaiting their brief memetime on Tik Tok and Youtube.

Even the action felt kinda perfunctory, like a cheap sequel filmed in a hurry by an inferior production crew, with no sense of pride in their accomplishments. "Two more flash-cut car chases, an MMA ruck in a public space, a slow-mo bullet time shootout, and we're done, chaps".

What it resembles, more than anything, is a low-budget 80s Eurocrime actioner, with a mismatched Euro-cast, and a script straight out of Babelfish, tarted up in post to look vaguely modern. Unfortunately, it ends up looking like a badly animated storyboard.