Posts
2010, 02-19:
Review of film: “THE CRAZIES” + Q&A with star RADHA MITCHELL
Director:
Breck Eisner
Writer:
Scott Kosar
Ray Wright.
Starring:
Timothy Olyphant
Radha Mitchell
Joe Anderson
Danielle Panabaker
Christie Lynn Smith
Brett Rickaby
Preston Bailey
John Aylward
Joe Reegan
Glenn Morshower
Larry Cedar
Gregory Sporleder
Tahmus Rounds
Brett Wagner
MPAA Rating:
R for bloody violence and language.
Quotes:
“We’ll meet again.”
“Bill-- what have you DONE?!”
“You know what?-- We’re in TROUBLE!”
“… on a ‘Fool’s Errand’…”
“Is this really happening?!”
“… Just making sure…”
“… destabilize the population…”
“I’m not RIGHT, am I?”
“… exterminated everyone…”
“I will sit here and die with you.”
MY Rating:
6.5 of 10 stars (based on an advance screening of the 101-minute film).
Please Don’t Drink The Water (-- OR ELSE!…)
It’s a quiet time in Pierce County, Iowa, as a baseball game is played in the small town of Ogden Marsh (whose population is under 2000 people). All of a sudden, a man enters the outfield carrying a shotgun...
... Sheriff David Dutton (TIMOTHY OLYPHANT) recognizes the man as being a onetime drunk, & goes out to ask him in a nice way to lower his gun. The man just stares ahead catatonicly, raises the gun-- & Timothy feels compelled to shoot him (causing great upset to the man’s wife & son, which comes into play later in the film)…
… Strangely, OTHER people (like a baseball coach) soon start going into similar sort of trances, accompanied by blood flowing from their nose & then followed by horribly VIOLENT acts against others... Timothy & his deputy Russell Clank (JOE ANDERSON) grow increasingly disturbed by what is happening, & run around trying to confront the strange actions that keep breaking out…
… Timothy’s wife Judy (RADHA MITCHELL) is a doctor who herself has seen the frightening changes in a number of people, having just examined some who become mixed up in a fire at a farm involving Bill Farnum (BRETT RICKABY)…
… Since she’s pregnant, Timothy is especially protective of Radha, and becomes increasingly concerned in his inability to discover just what is CAUSING people to behave like uncontrolled maniacs, altho it seems to be connected to something concerning the water the town has been drinking…
… Instead of things improving, they go from bad to HORRENDOUS, with the sudden arrival of a mass of MILITARY people who round up the townspeople & work to force them to undergo some unexplained tests…
... They start to engage in some summary executions, and Timothy, Joe, Radha and Becca Darling (DANIELLE PANABAKER) work to escape from the soldiers & try to get somewhere safe…
… Those trying to escape keep running into people who seem to be adversely affected by the mysterious toxin, having to fight from farm to car wash to truck stop with individuals, a group of hunters, and more military people wearing gas-type masks… The confrontations are exceptionally bloody & gory, & certainly not for kids…
… Who are the military people, & what are they trying to “accomplish”?… What is the CAUSE of the sudden violence by people?… WHO will get “AWAY” at the end, & how will they accomplish it?…
… The film has a fine level of TENSION, & would be a quite fascinating “thriller” if is wasn’t so hell-bent on BEING Hell-bent: rather than focus on the environmental disaster impacting the people & the strange over-reaction by the “authorities”, it concentrates on being grotesquely GORY, massively MALIGNANT & violently VICIOUS in the actions of most of the people…
… Some audiences like that level of blood & guts being senselessly spilled; I’d rather they had the guts to NOT be so extreme, & instead concentrated on a better-developed level of more detailed storytelling…
… One friend who saw it commented he was disappointed in the way there was so little real “PLOT” inherent in the film-- but, I don’t tend to EXPECT much of that in “slasher” flicks…
... The ACTING was good by the main characters, & the tense “mood” was effective… But, it could have been so much “MORE” (& simply didn’t care to be, seemingly going for a “lower” un-common denominator)…
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REPORT on Q&A with star RADHA MITCHELL
The screening I saw was hosted by “CAPONE” from “Ain’t It Cool News”. As he commented before the film, it’s a remake of George Romero’s 1981 film & “They HAVEN’T ‘bastardized’ it in ANY way!”…
… After the film, Australian RADHA was called up for a Q&A… She’d been seen in such previous films as the sci-fi “PITCH BLACK” (2000), “FINDING NEVERLAND”, “MAN ON FIRE” & Woody Allen’s “MELINDA AND MELINDA” (all from 2004), “SILENT HILL” (2006), and two films from 2009-- “THE WAITING CITY” and “SURROGATES”…
… Hypothetically, Capone asked her about the new film we’d just seen, when a certain character stabs a woman in the neck, wouldn’t the knife be dripping with the “INFECTION” they’re all so afraid of?!…
… Radha related that they’d filmed two “ALTERNATE” endings we DIDN’T see in the film, involving people being in a Cedar Rapids cafe-- & those endings (including something happening to Timothy) were even more depressing than what we did see!…
… She told how, when she first read the script, she was in INDIA shooting another film, & -- compared to what she was then involved with --, she sort of liked the fact that there was almost no DIALOGUE to learn, instead “just running around SCREAMING!”… Capone spoke of her work in “HIGH ART” (from 1998) & some of her more recent movies…
… I was the FIRST person in the audience to ask Radha a question-- namely, what had she found the HARDEST thing to do in “THE CRAZIES”?… Being honest, she said, there WASN’T anything particularly difficult, it was “fairly INSTINCTUAL” for her, & the most “fun” for her was being able to “fight back” in the car wash scene…
… What she most remembered about the shooting they’d done in Iowa (and Georgia) was the way a lot was “very physically INTENSE-- & cold!”… To a question from the audience, she said, she ALSO had wondered why her character took so much time at pouring herself some water in the truck stop!… Her director Breck “kind of PLAYS with the audience” at times…
… Another man in the audience asked her, how many TAKES did the director tend to do in various scenes? She said, Breck is someone who LOVES to “shoot & shoot & shoot”, take after take. They shot maybe 20 takes of the big “explosion” scene-- & then he ended up using like the very first take for the film…
… At one point, Radha commented, “It’s quite HARD to look ‘freaked-out’ on CUE…” She wanted to do the film because she was interested in Breck’s “VISION” for the overall production, such as the way he wanted to combine some sort of “sophisticated” things with a surfacedly “easy-going” setting. He’d also done the film “SAHARA”, in 2005 {and, he’s announced as being set for “FLASH GORDON” in 2012}…
… “Capone” asked her some more questions… She spoke of some “ART” type films she’d enjoyed doing, & related having shot for 2 months on “THE CRAZIES”… When asked if she prefers doing “genre” movies, she said she enjoys doing a VARIETY of different types, & finds there are at times very distinct differences in what audiences might like…
… When asked about George Romero (who directed the 1981 version & who was a PRODUCER on this new version), Radha said about his reaction to this rendering, “I heard he’s quite HAPPY with it.” She added that, tho he’s listed as a Producer, she NEVER SAW him on set-- he sort of worked from “afar”…
… Radha responded to a question about her FUTURE projects that, the Australian MOVIE “THE WAITING CITY” shot in India is a “very intellectual” type film. Outside of that. “Movies appear as they appear—”, “THE CRAZIES” film “came at the right time” for her being able to do it, & she’s considering other possible projects for the future…
… When asked how it feels to watch HERSELF on the screen, Radha said, the 1st time she sees a film, she tends to “CRINGE” at her work; the 2nd time, she sort of “relaxes”, &, by the 3rd time, she thinks “it’s GREAT!”… The audience laughed in appreciation at her remark…
… Radha said, she likes playing characters that show some “complexity” to them: “I prefer something a little more COMPLEX” than the role in “THE CRAZIES”, but it was FUN to do…
… To a question from the audience asking when she “first” knew she wanted to be an actress, she said, when she was like 4 years old, she remembers commenting to a friend that she felt she’d like to go to Hollywood, since it seemed interesting to have a career in front of a camera!…
… Radha responded to another question that, she DOUBTS there would be a “sequel” to “THE CRAZIES”, the cast only signed to do this one-- but, “We’ll see”…
... The director did allow a good deal of autonomy to the actors at times, especially to Timothy, &, “I guess we all need that kind of freedom—” to help create their best work… Capone then thanked her for her appearance tonite…
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