Sight&Sound - 05.2020

(Jacob Rumans) #1
REVIEWS

May 2020 | Sight&Sound | 71

Reviewed by Michael Atkinson
Here we have an almost conveniently
commingled matrix of redemption-movie
clichés – inspirational-sports-triumph saga +
alcoholic-saved-by-self-sacrifice soap + ageing-
star-going-unheroically-grotty. If you were to pit
the paradigms against each other, it’s obvious that
the last of the three wins by several lengths: Gavin
O’Connor’s movie does nothing as luxuriously
and lugubriously as hang on Ben Affleck’s hip –
or sit in his lap, or nuzzle up against his smelly
beard – as the actor broods and gulps more
cheap beer than a year of Homer Simpson. Is
he doing penance for Justice League (2017)? As a
lately divorced loner dousing a volcano of grief
with drink, Affleck – at his charmless, bulked-up
wariest – is the whole show, to the extent that
the nondescript high school basketball team
he is asked to coach ends up winning games for
no better reason than that he yelled at them.
In fact, O’Connor does what he can to avoid the
formula’s easy equations – so that, for example,
Affleck’s angry hero keeps drinking after the
triumphant tipping-point. But without them the
film ends up skipping plot and offering loose ends
instead: games are reduced to a montaged flurry
and an on-screen score, feelings are super-close-
ups with beer. Teary redemption is attained in
any case, finally (all movie drunks go to rehab),
and a cringing ‘Win one for the Gipper’ moment
is attempted, but the lack of connective story
tissue, of even Hoosiers-style sentimentality
and mush-minded sports triumphalism, leaves
you wondering why everyone bothered.


Finding the Way Back
USA 2019
Director: Gavin O’Connor
Certificate 15 108m 16s


US, the present. Jack Cunningham, a sullen, alcoholic
construction worker and once a high school
basketball star, is asked by his old alma mater to
coach their failing team. He accepts and whips the
self-absorbed teens into a winning team. For a brief
time, he seems to stop boozing – it is revealed that
the cause of his drinking is the recent death from
cancer of his son , which also led to the end of his
marriage. When a friend’s cancer-ridden child takes
a bad turn, Jack falls off the wagon and gets fired
as coach. After a binge, a crash and a brawl, he ends
up in rehab, and begins to heal. Inspired by him,
the team charges into a championship season.

Produced by
Gordon Gray
Jennifer Todd
Gavin O’Connor
Ravi Mehta
Written by
Brad Ingelsby
Director of
Photography
Eduard Grau
Edited by
David Rosenbloom
Production
Designer
Keith P. Cunningham
Music
Rob Simonsen
Sound Mixer
Steve Morrow
Costumes
Designed by
Cindy Evans
©Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc.
and BRON Creative
USA, Corp.
Production
Companies

A Warner
Bros. Pictures
presentation in
association with
Bron Creative
A Jennifer Todd
Pictures/Mayhem
Pictures/Film
Tribe production
A Gavin
O’Connor film
Executive
Producers
Robert J. Dohrmann
Brad Ingelsby
Kevin McCormick
Mark Ciardi
Aaron L. Gilbert
Jason Cloth
Kaitlyn Taaffe
Cronholm
Madison Ainley

Cast
Ben Affleck
Jack Cunningham
Al Madrigal
Dan

Michaela Watkins
Beth
Janina Gavankar
Angela
Glynn Turman
Doc
Brandon Wilson
Brandon Durrett
Will Ropp
Kenny Dawes
Charles Lott Jr
Chubbs Hendricks
Melvin Gregg
Marcus Parrish
Dolby Atmos
In Colour
[2.35:1]
Distributor
Warner Bros.
Pictures
International (UK)
US theatrical title
The Way Back

Credits and Synopsis

Reviewed by Philip Kemp
Directed by Craig Zobel (Z for
Zachariah, 2015), The Hunt is
the latest of many variants
on the 1932 classic The Most
Dangerous Game – humans
hunted for sport – but with a contemporary
political twist. The hunters are ‘liberal elitists’,
the hunted ‘deplorables’: racists, climate-change
deniers, rednecks, Trump-voters. This premise
got the film’s release cancelled in August,
following the mass shootings in Dayton and
El Paso, and since then word of its plot has
leaked out and been denounced on Fox News
and by Trump, who of course hasn’t seen it.
In fact the satire, though sharp, is fairly even-
handed: both ‘progressives’ and ‘reactionaries’
come in for plenty of flak. At one point some
of the ‘liberals’ take time out from their killing
spree to solemnly discuss whether addressing a
mixed-sex group as ‘guys’ is sexist. Crystal (Betty
Gilpin), smartest and most resourceful of the

hunted, gradually emerges as the lead character;
before that the film has repeatedly wrong-footed
us by appearing to offer audience-identification
figures, only to bump them off abruptly.
The film’s strength, satirical barbs aside, lies
in the ingenuity of its plotting and the vigour
and tenacity of its pacing. Identity is insidiously
fluid: neither a homely elderly couple running
a convenience store in rural Arkansas, nor a
sympathetic envoy from the US embassy are what
they seem. The phoney ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy
theory, from the 2016 US presidential election,
furnishes a key reference. Violence is graphic
and almost continuous: shootings, stabbings,
poisonings, impaling by arrows or in a pit full
of stakes, explosions by grenade and landmine.
One character has his head deliberately crushed
by a car. The mayhem climaxes with a full-on, no
holds-barred fight between Crystal and Athena
(Hilary Swank), creator and controller of the hunt.
Whatever its questionable message, The Hunt is
89 minutes of prime action entertainment.

The Hunt
USA/Japan 2019
Director: Craig Zobel
Certificate 15 89m 56s

Croatia. Twelve strangers from different parts of the
US awaken in a field, fitted with locked gags. They
locate keys for the gags, with a crate containing a pig
and assorted weapons; no sooner have they picked up
the weapons than they are fired on from the
surrounding woods. Some step on landmines. A few
get away. Three of them find a mom-and-pop
convenience store; the seemingly kindly proprietors
tell them they’re in Arkansas, before producing
automatic weapons and killing them. Crystal, another
of the hunted, enters the store and kills the
‘proprietors’. She links up with the only other survivor,
Don; they realise they have been targeted by a group
called ‘Manorgate’.
Scrambling on to a moving train, Crystal and Don
find a refugee family. Armed guards board and take
them all to a refugee camp. A car from the US embassy
arrives to pick up the American pair; en route, Crystal
realises the embassy official is another of the hunters,
and kills him. She locates the hunters’ base and kills
them all; she also shoots Don, suspecting him of
being a hunter. Arriving at the Manor she encounters
Athena, who founded and controls the hunt. They
fight; Crystal wins and kills Athena. Commandeering
the hunters’ plane, she flies home to the US.

Produced by
Jason Blum
Damon Lindelof
Written by
Nick Cuse
Damon Lindelof
Director of
Photography
Darran Tiernan
Editor
Jane Rizzo
Production Designer
Matthew Munn
Music
Nathan Barr
Production
Sound Mixer
Robert Bigelow
Costume Designer
David Tabbert
Stunt Coordinators
Hank Amos
Heidi Moneymaker
©Universal Studios
Production
Companies
Universal
Pictures presents
a Blumhouse
production

Presented in
association with
Dentsu Inc.
Executive Producers
Craig Zobel
Nick Cuse
Steven R. Molen
Couper Samuelson
Jeanette Volturno

Cast
Ike Barinholtz
Staten Island
Betty Gilpin
Crystal
Emma Roberts
Yoga Pants
Hilary Swank
Athena
Wayne Duvall
Don
Ethan Suplee
Gary
Christopher Berry
Ta r g e t
Sturgill Simpson
Vanilla Nice
Kate Nowlin
Big Red
Amy Madigan

Ma
Reed Birney
Pop
Glenn Howerton
Richard
Steve Coulter
The Doctor
Dean West
Martin
Vince Pisani
Peter
Teri Wyble
Liberty
Steve Mokate
Sergeant Dale,
firearms expert
Sylvia Grace Crim
Dead Sexy
Jason Kirkpatrick
Rannnndeeee
Macon Blair
Fauxnvoy
Dolby Digital
In Colour
[2.35:1]
Distributor
Universal Pictures
International
UK & Eire

Into the woods: Betty Gilpin

Credits and Synopsis

Available
on VOD
platforms
in the UK
Free download pdf