No.69 MAR/APR ’17 £6 vk.com/stopthepress FRESH MAGAZINES EVERYDAY 04 LEAD REVIEW DIRECTED BY STARRING RELEASED f you type the words ‘golden hour-and-a-half’ into your favourite movies themselves and their curative, restorative powers. They can drag internet search engine, the results yielded will direct you to us through the mill emotionally, right to the cusp of cardiac meltdown, nostalgic ’90s digital radio stations, betting websites, and a but there’s always safety and security glimmering in the middle distance. swimming pool in Southport called Splash World. It’s a term It’s no coincidence that Free Fire runs for exactly 90 minutes. And you’d dropped in Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, a film about how human be hard pressed not to chalk up the time spent watching this delectably beings will sacrifice their own lives before either being proven wrong, violent criminal caper movie as anything but golden. or apologising. Sharlto Copley’s jabbering South African yuppie capo, Vern, is worried that he’s losing too much blood, having been clipped by Ben Wheatley is a rare bird in UK film. He’s a director making the films bullets at various points on his body. Armie Hammer’s Ord, a turtleneck he wants to make, the way he wants to make them. He keeps a toe in sporting, perma-baked gangland facilitator, assures his charge that the arthouse but with an eye on the mainstream. He has no discernible everything will be fine. The rule of the Golden Hour-and-a-half means style, adapting as the material demands. Collecting all his films together, that an ample window remains for him to seek medical attention. from 2009’s dazzling single-set debut, Down Terrace, to date, he’s proven himself as a filmmaker who can put his hand to anything that comes But there is no Golden Hour-and-a-half. Ord is inventing it to put a muzzle down the chute. A theme that runs through his films is the dissolution of on Vern, or perhaps he is adapting the Golden Hour which, according confidence. He chips away at the certainties of life, making simple things to the very same search mentioned above, is an actual thing that exists. complex. His cinema is an obstructive act. He strips away the possibilities Used here, it isn’t a hollow reference to medicine, but a brief nod to for happiness like so much mildewed woodchip wallpaper. 08 LEAD REVIEW This new one is like a cracked circus mirror reflection of Wheatley’s previous, High-Rise. Where that film is sprawling and surreal, anarchic and misanthropic, this one is strict and structured, immaculately “THE BALLETIC CLICHÉ planned down to the frame and sporting a dopey grin throughout. High-Rise jolts off in random tangents and rejects conventional OF THE GUNFIGHT IS MUTED closure (or, to be frank, conventional anything), whereas Free Fire is a celebration of how images connect together. They make for a nice IN FAVOUR OF EMPHASISING double feature – both about mixed groups of people who are stuck in a building and, despite their desires to do so, just can’t seem to get up ITS ABSURD SQUALOR. and leave. You could see them both as descendents of Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, The Exterminating Angel, itself about bourgeois party guests THE ACTION MAN STAPLE psychologically imprisoned in a dining room. Something is drawing them back. It could be pride. It could be fear. Who knows? OF TAKING NUMEROUS BODY SHOTS AND STILL It’s an invigorating work, mainly because Wheatley never once draws attention to his own exemplary craftsmanship. It’s perhaps his least BEING ABLE TO SPRINT, stylised film, but also his most fun. Co-written with regular partner in crime and ellusive cine-spectre, Amy Jump, the film trades in ROLL AND ENGAGE IN a salty Boston vernacular and a mean line in mic-drop putdowns. It centres on a bungled arms deal in a dilapidated, dockside factory. PHYSICAL COMBAT, IS AN On Team A is what appears to be two, double-hard IRA gun runners: - Chris (Cillian Murphy) and Frank (Michael Smiley). Cutting the fam ABSOLUTE NO NO.” in for some action, Frank foolishly invites along his gangly junkie nephew, Stevo (Sam Riley), for some grunt work. Team B, meanwhile, is comprised of Vern (“Vern and learn, baby!”), his nervy disco hulk wingman, Martin (Babou Ceesay), and ready-to-please underling 010 LEAD REVIEW Harry (Jack Reynor). Armie Hammer’s Ord is present on diplomatic in favour of emphasising its absurd squalor. The action man staple duties, and so is Brie Larson’s Justine, who may or may not hold all of taking numerous body shots and still being able to sprint, roll and the cards despite appearing as the innocent bystander at this macho engage in physical combat, is an absolute no-no. These characters gun/dick measuring contest. sustain injuries which duly decimate their abilities. Not that the film would resort to anything as cheap, but this is a nail-biting chess game It would be very easy to dismiss the film as a feature-length shoot out, where there are only pawns in play. but the devil is very much in the detail. Vern is fixated with the loot, Chris and Frank need those guns. Just as everything is set for sign-off, Free Fire also takes on meaning through its refusal to preach, or shots are fired and the possibility of an amicable settlement flies out make attempts to manufacture some wider significance for itself. of the window and into the sea. Though the story of double, triple and It’s mischievous and nihilistic, but elemental enough that it invites quadruple crossings is simplicity itself (and as old as the hills), Free Fire deeper reading. It presents the architecture of a breakdown while couldn’t be more complex, as it marshals the action from various vantages embracing individuality. It’s about diplomacy, the nature of discourse and monitors every bullet as it pings and ricochets from the giant steel and the impossibility of total agreement. Even when there are parties pillars holding up the roof. One thing that’s extremely satisfying about involved looking solely at the long game, there will always be small, the film is that Wheatley never cops out and shows a bird’s-eye view of the unidentified reasons why things can fall apart spectacularly. There will factory floor, to give a basic sense of where characters are in relation to always be winners and losers, whichever way you slice it. DAVID JENKINS one another. It would ruin the fun, and the sense that the viewer is placed right there, in the shit, with the rest of these reprobate unfortunates. ANTICIPATION. Hot, cold, mad or bad – a new Ben Instead he conveys the spacial specifications of the room the hard way, Wheatley movie is an occasion to savour. through pans, dollies, tilts and tracks. A symphony of bullet sounds fills the soundtrack. Hearing a slightly different tone of ‘pfff!’, ‘tak!’, ENJOYMENT. More fun than ‘dwang-ang-ang!’ evokes a shiver of delight, like an opportunity to a hopped-up helicopter joy ride. collect all the different noises. Wheatley makes you feel how far one person is away from another, and gives a strong sense of how far away IN RETROSPECT. Finally, a film that is as enjoyable they are from any exits. The balletic cliché of the gunfight is muted to watch as it presumably was to make. LEAD REVIEW 011 14 – 21 GENTLE BEN LWLies heads down to the English seaside town of Brighton to shoot the breeze with Free Fire director Ben Wheatley. 22 THE WORLD’S TOUGHEST BEN WHEATLEY QUIZ Adam Nayman, author of ‘Ben Wheatley: Chaos and Confusion’, devises some bastard-hard BW multiple choices. 24 – 27 GRAND LARSONY 9GVGNNVJGUVQT[QHJQY$TKG.CTUQPYCUƂPCNN[CDNGVQYCXGIQQFD[GVQ second-tier archetype roles to become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. 28 – 29 POLYGRAPH TEST 1 SHARLTO COPLEY 6JG5QWVJ#HTKECPCEVQTRTQXKFGUCEJCTCEVGTRTQƂNGQH#TOKG*COOGT 30 – 31 POLYGRAPH TEST 2 ARMIE HAMMER 6JG#OGTKECPNGCFKPIOCPRTQXKFGUCEJCTCEVGTRTQƂNGQH,CEM4G[PQT 32 – 33 POLYGRAPH TEST 3 JACK REYNOR 6JG+TKUJWRUVCTVRTQXKFGUCEJCTCEVGTRTQƂNGQH5JCTNVQ%QRNG[ 36 – 38 CALL TO ACTION Who remembers ‘Action’, the most gratuitously violent MKFUoEQOKEUVTKRGXGTOCFG!9GFQe 40 – 43 GUN-FU HUSTLE +PRTCKUGQH*QPI-QPIOCGUVTQ,QJP9QQCTEJKVGEV of the time-honoured bullet ballet. 44 – 45 THREADS #1 #PGYHCUJKQPEQNWOPNQQMKPICVOQXKGUVJTQWIJVJGRTKUOQHENQVJKPI This issue’s focus: the wide-collared shirt. INTERVIEW BY t’s set in Boston, Massachusetts and boasts a former HQ of the region’s only daily newspaper. Or maybe multinational cast, but Free Fire marks a homecoming it’s because, after a long day shooting in (and shooting up) of sorts for British writer/director Ben Wheatley. said warehouse, the cast and crew would hang out in one -«iVwV>Þ]̽ÃÌ iwÀÃÌVV>ÃÃViÓääÌ >Ì i >à of Brighton’s many traditional taverns, sinking a few suds shot a feature in his adopted hometown of Brighton, and soaking up the local culture. >Û}«ÀiÛÕÃÞwi` iv>ÃÌvÀHigh-Rise]- ivwi` When LWLies spent an afternoon with Wheatley in for Kill List, across Derbyshire, North Yorkshire and the Brighton – visiting the Free Fire set, sifting through crates Lake District for Sightseers]>`>wi` }>`vÀ of second-hand vinyl and grabbing a quick drink at the A Field in England. He moved down from London a little pub where Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, Jack Reynor ÛiÀÓäÞi>ÀÃ>}Ì>ÌÌi`ÕÛiÀÃÌÞ]>`̽ÃLii à and co bonded – it struck us that this place is as much base, along with his screenwriting partner and wife, Amy an extension of Wheatley as he is of it.