Tag: Woody Harrelson

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Disney has hit the mother lode with the Star Wars franchise and is wasting no opportunity to deliver to its huge, hungry fan market further films to fill in between the ‘official’ trilogy episodes eight and nine. This one takes the character of Han Solo, owner and pilot of legendary spaceship The Millennium Falcon and goes back to maybe 10 years before the events of the very first Star Wars film (aka Episode IV: A New Hope, George Lucas, 1977). The script is by veteran Lawrence Kasdan (most notably co-screenwriter on The Empire Strikes Back, Irvin Kershner, 1980) and one of his sons Jonathan; on the evidence of Solo: A Star Wars Story they appear two very safe pairs of hands.

I always had the feeling that George Lucas had lucked out casting the then largely unknown Harrison Ford as Han Solo in the first film. Perhaps Star Wars would still have been the monster hit it was with another actor in the part, but in his first major role Ford lit up the screen every time he came on. Much the same thing happened when Disney bought him back into the series for fan favourite Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J.Abrams, 2015). So the challenge for Solo is to find an actor who can bring to the teenage Han Solo something on a par with what Ford brought to the adult version of the character. Imitating Ford would probably be a mistake. Alden Ehrenreich turns out to be a good choice. His performance effortlessly includes mannerisms which are pure Harrison Ford so you can believe the one onscreen actor will grow into the other later on. Yet Ehrenreich is smoother and less wisecrack-ey. But, the important thing is, it works.

Speaking of imitation, something I personally hate is when a Star Wars film slavishly copies parts of earlier Star Wars films (or even one of the films more or less in its entirety). This really isn’t a charge that for the most part can be levelled at Solo which plays out as a series of unique set pieces: an urban speeder chase, an attempted escape from a planet which is a prison in all but name, an Imperial training base where Solo meets the wookie Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo, here playing a younger version of the character he played in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson, 2017), a raid on a (sort of) monorail train winding its way through mountains along snowy ridges, the gambling den of Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino) where The Millennium Falcon changes hands in a card game, a daring sortie to Kessel to plunder an unstable, explosive substance and a race against time to get that substance to a processing plant before it blows up and takes the Falcon with it.

In between all that comes cross and double cross involving Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke), the girl Solo left behind when he escaped the initial planet who in the interim has done “things you couldn’t possibly understand”, intergalactic criminal player Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and crime lord mastermind Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). There are muddy rumours about a mysterious organisation known as the Crimson Dawn and – in a calculated imitation of Disney’s equally lucrative, rival Avengers franchise – talk of a gangster on the planet Tatooine putting together a crew to do a job both of which will presumably furnish material for the inevitable second and third Solo films. The Crimson Dawn trilogy, perhaps?

The gambling den scenes involve a degree of cheating on the part of Calrissian and in a later confrontation a clever countermove against his underhand methods by Solo. But as with whatever went on with Qi’ra which we never saw, there’s a feeling that what’s actually made it onto the screen isn’t that dirty. Enjoyable and entertaining? Yes. Dirty? Not particularly.

Two other characters fare rather better in terms of whether or not the film is a genuinely dirty vision.

Beckett’s sidekick Val is played with great presence and energy by a terrific Thandie Newton, continuing the franchise’s push for ethnic diversity within its cast. As with John Boyega in Disney’s first Star Wars film The Force Awakens (2015), it’s good to see a black actor take centre stage in a Star Wars outing and the fact that it’s a woman is a definite dirty plus. Newton plays the character as a no nonsense, hardbitten type as effective as Beckett.

Equally if not more worthy of special mention is Phoebe Waller-Bridge for mocapping and voicing Calrissian’s co-pilot and droid with attitude L3-37. She’s far, far removed from the cuddly R2-D2 and subservient English butler-type C-3PO droid and robot of Episode IV, constantly arguing with Calrissian and poking her nose in where it isn’t wanted to speak up about Droid Rights. It’s as if C-3PO changed sex and became a rampant feminist. L3-37’s not perfect either – occasionally someone has to give had a bang on the head to get her circuits to function correctly, but she always comes through in a crisis. The character, and Waller-Bridge’s visually arresting physicality of movement and vocal argumentativeness, is arguably the dirtiest thing in the film and surely destined to become a major element in Millennium Falcon mythology.

The proceedings overall start at breakneck pace and never really let up, with the screen constantly full of amazing visuals and astonishing characters. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that the director holding it all together (after the original directors were fired) and doing a fabulous job is Hollywood veteran Ron Howard who prior to this surprised us all with compelling motor racing biopic Rush (2013) and memorable documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years (2017). If he seems less interested in dirt and subversiveness than in delivering the package Disney and the audience want, to his credit a few dirty elements still sneak into the movie. Meanwhile, Disney currently seem to have the magic touch with the Star Wars movies and their serious presence in the blockbuster stakes looks set to continue for quite a while, dirty or not…

Solo: A Star Wars Story is out in the UK on Thursday, May 24th. Watch the film trailer below:

Lost in London

Posted on by victorfraga

When you go to the cinema you don’t expect to see live acting, do you? You would go to the theatre instead, wouldn’t you? Surely this is what distinguishes the very nature of the two art media. Well, Woody Harrelson is here prove you wrong. In the evening of January 19th earlier this year, the famous actor decided to make his first picture in real time and broadcast it live to 550 theatres in the US and the UK. Oh, and he’s also the lead in the film. Plus the film is based on real events that took place in 2002. Rest assured, Lost in London is like nothing else you’ve seen before.

Woody Harrelson’s debut takes autobiography to a whole new level. Would you reenact the most embarrassing night in your life ever, when you got drunk, damaged a cab, got chased by the police and finally got arrested while your wife and your kids waited for you at your hotel room so you could take them to the set of a Harry Potter movie in the morning? Well, Woody Harrelson did. And it’s remarkable that he is able to laugh at himself. This is self-deprecating comedy taken to an extreme. Not everyone has such ability. Don’t expect Tom Cruise to be doing the same any time soon! So we should congratulate Harrelson.

Harrelson argues with a disabled man, in the making of Lost in London.

Lost in London is also an major achievement from a technological perspective. It’s certainly not the first film to be made entirely in one take. Hitchcock famously flirted with the idea in Rope (1948), although the absence of digital film prevented him from accomplishing this. Fifty-four years later the Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov finally did it in the superb Russian Ark. It took him two failed attempts before the final take was made. Then the German action movie Victoria (Sebastien Schipper) repeated the achievement last year, thereby inspiring Harrelson to try it too – click here for our exclusive review of Victoria. But there is a remarkable difference: Harrelson did it live to 550 cinemas in the UK and the US. He did rehearse beforehand, but he could not afford to stop halfway through and start all over again, like Sokurov did twice.

The film has, however, a few shortcomings. Despite being a very personal endeavour, the cinema and self-references are a little bit excessive, and the humour becomes a little trite after a while. And the acting (even Woody Harrelson’s) is sometimes a little wooden (no pun intended) – probably to blame on the pressure of doing it live in front of a moving camera. It’s also a very macho, testosterone-fueled movie, and there is a subliminal message at the end that would Tammy Wynette ecstatic with joy: Harrelson’s wife Laura sticks with her spouse despite all of his wrongdoing: having sex with three women and going to jail. She did definitely stand by her man!!!

Lost in London is showing in cinemas across London and the UK from Friday, May 5th. Sadly you won’t be seeing this in real time. You wouldn’t expect poor ol’ Woody to reenact his past every day for weeks, would you? If you want real-time action, go to theatre instead. Or just walk down the streets of London at night.