Buno Nunez, Sergi Lopez
“SIRAT” MY RATING: B+(AMC Town Center)
114 minutes | MPAA rating: R
A survival drama that verges on the surreal, Oliver Laxe’s “Sirat” unfolds with a matter-of-factness that lulls us before pelting us with one devastating event after another.
It starts out a bit like a documentary. In the North African desert a crew of scuzzy-looking nomads unload and set up a massive wall of speakers. Apparently they’re part of a network producing illegal raves.
Before long dozens of cars and busses have pulled up and unloaded hundreds of doped wraiths dancing to the seductive, incessant electronic music.
Sticking out like a sore thumb among these gyrating hipsters is Luis (Sergi Lopez), a pudgy middle-aged Spaniard accompanied by his young son Esteban (Bruno Nunez). Louis has been hitting the rave circuit in a weathered micro-bus in search of his runaway daughter, whom he hopes will be found at one of these outlawed gatherings.
When the event is raided by military units of the local government (apparently some sort of civil war recently has been waged in the area), Luis and Esteban make a run for it with a group of ravers living out of a converted bus. The goal is to elude the authorities and, hopefully, make the trek through the desert to the next designated party spot.
What unfolds in Laxe and Santiago Fillol’s screenplay is a slow-burning death trip. There are moments of grace as Luis and son are more-or-less adopted by these goofy but weirdly compelling wanderers. (They’re played by Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Richard Bellamy, Toni Javier and Jade Oukid…and each of them has some physical or personality tic that makes them memorable).
But the desert is not a friendly place. Heat, wind, rough terrain and lack of water make for misery. Not to mention the land mines left over from the recent conflict.
The film’s title may give a hint as to where Laxe is going with this. In Muslim eschatology “sirat” is a bridge spanning hell while connecting this world to paradise. The righteous may pass unscathed, but sinners fall to a flaming punishment.
There’s no point in giving away the yarn’s devastating plot developments. Let’s just say that Lopez (he was the chief villain in Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labywrinth”) is haunting as a Job-like Everyman being put through one horror after another.
Alan Ritchson
“WAR MACHINE” My rating: C (Netflix)
106 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Movies don’t get much sillier than “War Machine,” a fascist wet-dream mated to a “War of the Worlds” actioner.
Alan Ritchson, the bulked-up leading man of Netflix’s “Jack Reacher” series, stars as 81, a candidate for the U.S. Army Rangers.
He’s called 81 because in this grueling training participants are expected to use a number rather than their actual names.
81 is a silent, brooding giant determined to become a Ranger to honor his brother who died in Afghanistan. He speaks only when spoken to, and often not even then. But he runs harder, moves faster and lifts more than any of the other candidates.
The first half hour of Patrick Hughes’ film depicts the training, overseen by a couple of brusque NCO’s (Dennis Quaid, Esai Morales). The episode so reeks of percolating testosterone that I found myself wondering if this was supposed to be a celebration of American macho or a satire of it. (Kinda like “Starship Troopers” in that regard.)
Finally our man and a few finalist candidates go out on their “Death March,” a war-playing exercise in the remote Rockies of Colorado. Since this is for training only, they haul all the usual equipment save for live ammunition.
Well, wouldn’t you know it…out there in the woods they stumble upon an alien war machine, apparently the vanguard of an invasion of Earth. This otherworldly bit of merchandise looks suspiciously like a Transformer toy.
Anyway, our guy has to stay alive, get his injured buddies back to safety and save the planet…without ammo for his gun.
Frankly you have to wonder about an alien race that can navigate across the galaxy but crash lands in one of the most remote and unpopulated places in the Lower 48. And despite all the technology, the war machine is a crappy shot. Must have been trained by storm troopers from “Star Wars.”
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 