A14 O THEGLOBEANDMAIL| FRIDAY,MARCH6,
FILMFRIDAY REVIEWS | OPINION| PUZZLES | WEATHER
| NEWSY
eah, it’s not good. Writer/
director Ricky Tollman has
turned the true story of
Rob Ford’s crack video into a
fakecris du coeurfor millennials.
The scandals of the late Toronto
mayor are now just background;
the plot focuses on the tribula-
tions of three twentysomethings
itching to break into journalism
and politics, but disheartened
that there’s no room for them.
Or perhaps they are quietly, day-
to-day running journalism and
politics, yet getting no credit for
it. The movie wants to have it
both ways, but proves neither.
And that’s only one of its prob-
lems.
The story should be simple:
Bram (Ben Platt), a cub reporter
at The Record, a fictional Toron-
to newspaper, is sick of writing
listicals like “Best Brunch in the
City.”Oneday–isitayearinto
his tenure? The chronology of
the film is so unclear, I couldn’t
tell – he answers the phone and
gets a tip that Ford (Damian Le-
wis, unrecognizable in ill-con-
structed prosthetics) is palling
around with drug dealers. We fol-
low Bram’s start-stop efforts to
get the story.
Meanwhile, over at City Hall,
smart political aides Kamal (Me-
na Massoud) and Ashley (Nina
Dobrev) are trying to keep the
mayor’s office functioning de-
spite their increasingly unstable
boss. But how loyal should they
be to a job that requires lies and
sanctions abuse?
For a movie about writers and
spin doctors, however, the story-
telling here is way off. Scenes
that should be quick are
stretched thin; scenes that
should dive deep stay shallow.
Over and over again, Tollman
builds the action toward a mo-
ment, and then cuts away before
the moment comes, killing his
own momentum. None of this
adds suspense. It adds frustra-
tion. In mid-film, a flashback
structure is introduced – to serve
one scene, it turns out, the cli-
mactic one. But the chosen cli-
max, a job interview, is so mis-
judged, it elicits snorts of deri-
sion.If Tollman’s point here is that
this generation deserves more
respect, he should have crafted
characters that earn some. Bram,
we’re told, won the big prize at a
prestigious journalism school. So
why doesn’t he know the first
thing about how to report a sto-
ry? We’re told he’s a good writer,
but we see only haplessness. In-
stead of rooting for him, we’re
infuriated by him at every turn.
On top of that, Tollman gets
journalism itself spectacularly
wrong. Bram’s editor David
(Scott Speedman) has zero news
instincts, and he offers Bram no
guidance – which he certainly
would, if only to protect his own
backside. David’s boss Judith
(Jennifer Ehle) actively discour-
ages hot stories at the news
meeting. (As if!) And physically,
The Record appears to be built
on a wormhole in time, because
its printing plant is on site. (Hel-
lo, 1980s.)
The City Hall characters fare
slightly better, once you get past
the teeth-grinder of an opening
scene, where they swill beers
during a late-night strategy ses-
sion.
The dialogue sounds like bad
homework from a class called
You, Too, Can Be Aaron Sorkin:
“It is my turn to speak.” “Now I
will counter what you said.” “YetI disagree with you both!”
Massoud creates some genu-
ine empathy for Kamal (which,
in one of the film’s few nice tou-
ches, Ford pronounces as Cam-
el), a child of immigrants who’s
living the Canadian dream, al-
beit by enabling an anti-immi-
grant mayor. The best scene be-
longs to Dobrev, when Ford sex-
ually harasses Ashley (based on
real-life allegations that led to
Ford’s appalling remark, “I’ve got
more than enough to eat at
home”). The scene works not on-
ly because we feel how frighten-
ing and humiliating sexual ha-
rassment is, but also because it’s
the only scene that’s credibly
written, well paced and builds to
a proper crescendo.
As for Lewis’s Ford, the less
said the better. Normally a fine
actor, he’s played great charac-
ters all over Peak TV, from his
breakthrough inBand of Brothers
to Brody inHomeland, Henry VIII
inWolf Halland Bobby Axelrod
inBillions. But here, he speaks in
a Hoser accent from – well, from
the days that newspaper printing
plants were on site. And apol-
ogies to the makeup depart-
ment, but his prosthetics are
dreadful.
Ford had a small, roundish
head; Lewis looks like he’s wear-
ing a pink cement block on his
neck. You are never unaware of
his makeup; it doesn’t recede,
the way Gary Oldman’s eventu-
ally did when he played Winston
Churchill inDarkest Hour.You
cannot look at Lewis and see
“Ford.” You see only “Latex.” (Or
Mike Myers as Fat Bastard inAus-
tin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged
Me.)
Buried beneath that much
plastic, Lewis can’t serve even
the basic demands of the script:
His face can’t slacken when he’s
stoned, for example, or tighten
with anger. He can convey only
two things: “sweaty” and “lum-
bering.”
Ford’s story could not be time-
lier – the #MeToo movement
has kick-started an examination
of the culture of complicity
around all types of abusers of
power. It should have made a
riveting movie. But like Lewis’s
makeup, its good intentions got
buried under layers of dreck.Run This Townopens March 6.DamianLewisstarsasRobFordinRunThisTown,buthisfatsuitisanimpedimenttohiscraft.Hisfacecan’t
slackenwhenhe’sstoned,ortightenwithanger.Hecanconveyonlytwothings:‘sweaty’and‘lumbering.’
Youcan’tfightcityhall
Foramoviethatcentres
onwritersandspin
doctors,thestorytelling
hereiswayoff,andthe
lesssaidaboutLewis’s
Ford,thebetter
JOHANNA
SCHNELLER
OPINIONRunThisTown
CLASSIFICATION:R;93MINUTES
Writtenanddirectedby
RickyTollman
StarringBenPlatt,MenaMassoud,
NinaDobrevandDamianLewis
★ Scenesthatshouldbe
quickarestretchedthin;
scenesthatshoulddive
deepstayshallow.I
t is a very good time to be Netflix. Sure, the streaming
giant is carrying billions of dollars in debt, faces new ri-
vals armed with more fully stocked intellectual-property
arsenals and lower price points, and possesses an Oscar
trophy case that remains sparsely populated. But with the
coronavirus spooking the global film industry in new and ter-
rifying ways every day, it is not hard to imagine that just that
many more moviegoers will decide to avoid the multiplex
this year, and wait out the outbreak by bingeingLove Is Blind.
COVID-19 may not be Netflix’s ultimate saviour, but it just
might kill the traditional movie business as we know it.
First, the obvious: Of course the coronavirus situation is a
serious one that should not be discussed lightly. And any im-
pact that the outbreak might have on any industry – from
education to hospitality to travel to entertainment – cannot
eclipse the threat that it poses to health and safety, with more
than 3,000 people already dead. But as Hollywood goes, so
goes the rest of the world; the ripple effects of a film-festival
cancellation, a movie premiere-date delay or a dip in box-
office sales are huge in both economic and cultural terms,
and deserve discussion. The traditional theatrical market has
had a target on its back for years now – thanks to the advent
of streaming and the paucity of genuine studio-pipeline in-
genuity – and a public-health scare could be a potentially fa-
tal blow to an already vulnerable industry.
Already, COVID-19 has shocked the film business in un-
expected and unprecedented ways. In January, China can-
celled several high-profile film releases, even though the Lu-
nar New Year holiday is the country’s biggest and most profit-
able time period for new releases. (In a move that would have
seemed preposterous just a year earlier, the Chinese distrib-
utor of the likely blockbusterLost in Russiaannounced that
the film would be available online for free instead; it received
600-million views in three days.)
A month later, Disney revealed
that it would not release its live-
action version ofMulanin China
on March 27, the same date that it
was scheduled to open interna-
tionally (a new China release has
yet to be set).
From there, it has been one
shock after another, culminating
with this week’s announcement
thatNo Time to Die, the new James
Bond film starring Daniel Craig,
would abandon its early April global release in favour of a
debut later this fall. While the move might initially seem like
fodder for a few good-but-bad jokes – “So, when is the best
time to die, then, Mr. Bond?” – the development marks the
first major Hollywood movie to shift its release over the virus.
And it will likely not be the last.
Already, there are questions as to whether the virus might
also mean the cancellations of such major film events as the
SXSW festival in Austin next week, the industry-crucial Cine-
maCon gathering in Las Vegas at the end of March (where the
major U.S. studios come to unveil their glitzy 2020-21 offer-
ings for members of the National Association of Theatre
Owners), and the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in May. If
those organizations decide to take a step back this year, it’s
not hard to imagine the Venice, Telluride or Toronto film fes-
tivals cancelling, too. In other words: The entire industry
would sit 2020 out. Productions would lose critical word-of-
mouth, deals wouldn’t be made. Films would fall or be swal-
lowed into a void.
And then there is the anxiety-inducing day-to-day reality
that producers and movie-theatre operators already face. To-
tal movie theatre admissions fell almost 5 per cent in 2019
compared with the year before, with North American box of-
fice down 4 per cent. Although there was a boom at the in-
ternational box office last year – receipts hit an all-time high
of US$42.5-billion – that figure will surely take a hit if China
continues to shutter its multiplex doors and other countries
follow suit.
Not helping matters is that 2020 was already looking like
something of a fallow year in terms of sure-fire hits. If Holly-
wood is counting on the comic-book boom to see it through
this year, for instance, there may be a rude awakening: There
are only two Marvel movies scheduled for this year, both of
them (Black WidowandThe Eternals) not carrying nearly the
levels of anticipation that arrived with 2019’s triple threat of
Captain Marvel,Avengers: EndgameandSpider-Man: Far from
Home. One of Warner’s two DC titles for 2020, meanwhile, has
already disappointed (Birds of Prey).
And if James Bond continues to sit on the sidelines – and,
say, the producers of the newFast & Furiousmovie also decide
that this spring is not the optimal time for an international
publicity blitz – then things will look far more dire than any
studio risk-management analyst may have expected back in
the heady days of, well, three months ago.
So fire up your Netflix queue now – the service may be
encountering a spike in user traffic very soon.FromJamesBond
tobust:Howthe
coronavirusmight
changethefilmbusiness
BARRY
HERTZSCREENTIMEThenewJamesBondfilmNoTimetoDie,starringDanielCraig,
isabandoningitsearlyreleaseinAprilinfavourofadebutin
thefall.ThismarksthefirstmajorHollywoodfilmtoadjust
itsreleaseoverthevirus.Therippleeffectsof
afilm-festival
cancellation,amovie
premiere-datedelay
oradipinbox-office
salesarehugein
botheconomic
andculturalterms.F
ilmmaker Michael Winter-
bottom has a knack for
choosing the storytelling
mode that best suits his material
–inGreed’s case, it’s a rhizomatic
structure as complex as the
sprawling economic shell game it
explains. As it follows the ex-
ploits of self-made retail billio-
naire Sir Richard McCreadie
(Steve Coogan) leading up to his
Gladiator-themed birthday party,
the satire dissects the way layers
of glamour, capitalism, vanity
and celebrity interconnect and
maintain the fast-fashion
supply-chain’s garment worker
exploitation.
The main framing device is a
countdown, with flashback biog-
raphy, semi-documentary scenes,
industry facts and financial con-
cept explainers, all folded in with
dryly clever comedic elements.
Greed’s antihero is known as
“Rich” to his intimates and his
surname earns him the moniker
“greedy McCreadie.”It’s not subtle stuff, but then,
investigative journalism, cen-
sure, documentary exposés and
empathy haven’t worked so far to
cure our rapacious fast-fashion
appetite – so why not a movie?
A movie as polemic, to be sure,
but the structural gambit works
and it’s far more entertaining
than you’d expect from the sub-
ject matter.
And it brings about a great mo-
ment of schadenfreude through a
literal riff on the concept of the
invisible hand of the market.
As Gordon Gekko would say,
Greedis good.SpecialtoTheGlobeandMailGreedopensMarch6.Therichseamoffastfashion
NATHALIEATKINSON
REVIEWGreed
CLASSIFICATION:14A;104MINS
Writtenanddirectedby
MichaelWinterbottom
StarringSteveCoogan,
IslaFisherandDavidMitchell
★★★