Maryland

When I review this one, I think of Tony Scott's MAN ON FIRE - it self a remake of an Elie Chouraqui's film starring Scott Glenn - and of course the coming soon Florent Emilio Siri's ELYAS, starring Roschdy Zem in a seemingly EQUALIZER or JOHN WICK like character. A former special forces soldier become a bodyguard for a wealthy family and who will have to face many dangers towards this same family - beautiful wife and - or - kid. But the movie I review now is only a bit action oriented, however not that much, it is more focused on the psychological matter, character relationship study. But it is directed by a woman, with a great dose of sensitivity, evoking the post war traumatic disorder. Unlike what the Florent Emilio Siri's film trailer suggests. ELYAS - which I will comment, don't worry - will be far more focused on the action packed stuff, as was his famous NID DE GUEPES. So, this very movie MARYLAND is a hell of a film, especially from a woman director. A wonderful little gem, offering a terrific performance from Mathias Schoendaerts. Excellent action sequences, especially a very brutal, bloody one. It was shot in Saint Jean Cap ferrat - south of France, French riviera - a town where you have hundreds of huge, gigantic billionaires villas and castles, fancy mansions mostly owned by Russian oligarchs and other wealthy, very very wealthy, businessmen whose "affairs" are far from being so legal...If you know what I mean. So, watching this movie reminds me my vacation site, and I am not a very wealthy business man !!!!

I think I was expecting more of an action thriller, but this movie was turned down to three.

A guy name Vincent is hired to protect a woman and her son from bad guys looking harm her.

Some action does happen in the movie, but it was very quiet and uneventful. A bit of a a shame cause I wanted to like the movie. It was very inventive in its scale.

I think the real problem is that I'm not getting any personality from the main characters. I went to go see because Matthias Schoenaerts was the main character. I liked this guy in other movies, but he seemed dull heading up his own flick.

I wanted to see the laid out plan work out, but I was not getting enough energy.

http://cinemagardens.com

French cinema has come a long way and is close to overtaking Asian cinema as my favourite world cinema. This has all the right ingredients for the type of thriller I personally enjoy the most. Suspense? Plenty. Intense? Sure. Psychologically stimulating? Ehhh. This was an intriguing concoction to mix PTSD psychology with a home invasion flick. It's just a shame the former wasn't explored to its maximum potential. Don't get me wrong, the utilisation of hallucinogenic imagery and delusional paranoia is well executed. In fact, it's what powers the narrative. The story itself is completely forgettable, bland and undeveloped. However, the attention to our protagonist is what truly captivates. Matthias Schoenaerts was the perfect casting choice for Vincent. His brute physicality and cold exterior unleashes plenty of inner torment for the character. You can tell through Schoenaerts' facial expressions that our character is brimming with determination and conflict. A superbly strong performance. Diane Kruger was also good and definitely held her own. The cinematography was incredibly seductive. The usage of slow motion, dark shadows and shades of purple really enhanced the experience. The contemporary sound design also highlighted the scenes of PTSD, which I appreciate. Alice Winocour's direction felt fresh, in particular the "over-the-shoulder" camera shots where we see what Vincent might (or might not...) be seeing. Including such intimacy really draws you into the narrative, especially the dialogue is minimal. It's a piece of visual storytelling, which in turn makes the plot less intricate and ambiguous. Whilst it does not necessarily work constantly, I was entranced by this and really enjoyed it. Some more attention to the story would've made it that much better, but it's worth a watch.

Disorder (2015)

Alice Winocour's thriller set in upper class France is filled with anxiety, and is filmed very smartly to increase that stress without resorting to pyrotechnics. Quietly, especially because of the edgy psychological performance by Matthias Schoenaerts, we feel the anxiety of an ex-soldier fighting PTSD and still doing private high brow security work.

The setting is interesting but the plot is thin. This can work for the film, which depends on lots of quiet moments to punch up the drama when it occurs. The direction is really good, with some simple strategies at play. Example—when our main character, who is guarding someone off in the distance, is sensing danger, his eyes flit around, he stiffens up and walks and look, but the one thing the camera doesn't do is show us the person he's protecting. In the dark, we worry, and we don't know if the danger is real or if he's just too high strung.

Seeing the inside of a high level security detail is nice, and it's handled with good realism. The whole movie, in fact, depends on a simple believability that typical Hollywood versions would ramp up, and it works.

The big downside here is the writing. There isn't enough to the overall plot after all (and Schoenaerts can't do everything). And some of the dialog is unlikely or a big out off kilter. Sucked into the mis-en-scene, you can go with it, at least until the long stretch at the end in the house, when you do wish it hadn't trapped itself into a series of well worn ideas.

The last several seconds of the movie do show that the director/writer is capable of more than you'll find here. It might be unexplained, but it leaves at least still immersed as you leave the film's finely rendered world.

I was not sure what to expect with this. But I was definitely intrigued with the two leads, Matthias Schnoenarts and Diane Kruger.

I like a lot of the films that they star in. So it will be interesting to see what their chemistry is on screen.

The premise was definitely one I do not see that often. Also, the story that director and writer Alice Winocaur had put onto screen got me invested. But despite me still finding it reasonably enjoyable, I felt that we have a missed opportunity here.

One thing is for sure, Schoenaerts was great as our main character. A bit like Tom Hardy, most of his success comes from the physical part of the performance. You can really see the killer instinct in his character and his charisma definitely carries this film well. I was feeling his characters problems and I was rooting for him to overcome them. I think without Schoenarts, this could have been something quite boring. The rest of the cast were not that memorable, even Kruger.

For the few action scenes that were on screen, they were really well constructed. You could really feel the hits being taken. The score was fascinating and surprisingly atmospheric. The style felt different, but managed to fit in well with the film. However, there were some moments where I felt the moment to use that score felt unnecessary or badly timed.

Like I said before, there are problems with it. While it may feel slow for the most part, you can feel the tension throughout. You do feel that something does not feel right and we get some well executed action scenes. But I think in the end, the lack of drama and thrills may make people impatient as they know this could go down more interesting routes. I don't get a lot of the slow no-dialogue moments that we seem to see with most of European cinema. It's not often that style gets me totally invested. I was not a fan of the camera-work as well. There was a lot of shaky moments that I felt were unnecessary, and it made me struggle to see what was going on. This negative is a bit of nit pick. But I felt there were too many times when they were reminding us of our main characters anxiety problems. That just seemed to signal to me that they have little more to show and just lingered on that particular part.

For what looked like an interesting premise, for me it did not manage to make the most of it. But don't worry, it still remains to be a solidly delivered thriller with an amazing lead by Schoenarts. The way they portrayed his characters problems on screen was quite clever. I also liked it did not have that cliché feeling at all, and that might be the reason that I remained interested. Despite its problems, I will still recommend this. Winocour should be proud of this. I will definitely check out the rest of her work.

Rating: 7/10