Captured, not thrilled
quite manage to deliver the thrills.
Kiwi director Toa Fraser has certainly followed a varied career path. His debut No. 2 charmed audiences and provided the launchpad for a distinctly British bit of oddball, Dean Spanley, before he leapt into the arena of dramatised ballet with Giselle.
But local audiences raved about the panache of The Dead Lands ,a groundbreaking, Maori language, martial-arts movie set in pre-colonial NZ. And now he is steering a real-life British hostage drama, peopled with stalwarts of their local acting scene (Jamie Bell, Tim Pigott-Smith, Mark Strong) and familiar Kiwi faces (Matt Sunderland, Colin Moy, and a host of recognisable extras).
Fraser clearly knows how to make a genre movie, and you really can’t fault the acting, cinematography or the Sicario-inspired drone as the soundtrack heralds moments of tension. We see the hostage situation from several points of view, with the police and armed forces’ command just doors down from the Embassy, and news reporter Kate Adie at the front gate, rooted to her spot for the duration of events.
Adie’s part in the siege’s reporting has gone down in history, and even if Abbie Cornish’s impersonation feels irritatingly mannered at times, Fraser would have been in greater trouble if he’d cut the one female character out of the picture entirely.
The period is nicely captured through dim lighting, decor and the omnipresent moustaches on the SAS team, who are itching to get in on the action. It’s the scenes where the hired guns perform dummy runs through sack-clothed walls and practise their craft that provide the highest levels of excitement.
But until the final act, 6 Days is mostly just informative and wellexecuted, but lacking the requisite exhilaration that such life-and-death situations usually deliver. – Sarah Watt