DVD REVIEWS
WILD TALES
(out of 4) Livin’ la vida loca, while also enduring it, is the wickedly satiric aim of Argentine filmmaker Damian Szifron’s portmanteau of six distinct sketches.
Each story individually provokes laughs, shocks and thoughts, but the jolts come more from witnessing the often unbelievably violent lengths people will go to in order to settle grievances big and small.
Produced by Spain’s Pedro Almodovar, a director whose own films frequently approach social meltdowns in a slapstick vein, Wild Tales addresses societal inequality and injustice. Manic absurdity and situational yuks are the tragicomic glue that binds everything together.
Certain tales are crazier and more interesting than others, but the whole package is watchable and eminently entertaining. As the opening credits allude, humans can be animals too — merciless and savage beasts that go for the throat.
Extras include a making-of featurette and Szifron’s Q&A session following a screening at TIFF 2014. Peter Howell RUN ALL NIGHT
(out of 4) Liam Neeson is Jimmy “The Gravedigger” Conlon, a Brooklyn mob hit man, in this abundantly acted yet underachieving film by Jaume Collet-Serra, who previously directed Neeson in Non-Stop and Unknown.
Chronically broke and bottled, Jimmy is indulged by his career partner Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris), a former drug lord who is trying to go straight — or at least a little bit straighter than he used to be.
Both men have adult sons, played by Joel Kinnaman and Boyd Holbrook, and here the late Paul Newman’s observation from Road to Perdition comes to mind: “Sons are put on this Earth to trouble their fathers.”
It’s a situation ripe for trouble and the two families tragically collide.
Yet these fine actors are ill-served by a film that doesn’t know which way it’s going. For a film called Run All Night, there are an awful lot of detours and dead ends.
Extras include deleted scenes and making-of featurettes. PH