Sniping at Uncle Sam’s Iraq war aims
CLINT EASTWOOD’S 2014 film American Sniper was so rabidly patriotic it felt like being punched by the Statue of Liberty.
Doug Liman’s The Wall is the antidote; a tense, taut, 90-minute thriller, set in 2007, about a U.S. soldier being terrorised by a brilliant Iraqi sniper, in which valid questions are also raised about the morality of invading someone else’s country.
Dwain Worrell’s screenplay hands a sizeable challenge to Aaron TaylorJohnson, who, as wounded soldier Sgt Isaac, is on screen from start to finish.
For a short while, Isaac has company in the mighty form of Sgt Matthews (played by U.S. wrestler John Cena). But soon he is alone, sheltering behind a tumbledown wall that, his tormentor tells him, used to be part of a village school.
The Iraqi marksman, an English teacher in civilian life, has made contact over Isaac’s radio. Their dialogue, plus Isaac’s useful tendency to talk to himself, helps us over the obstacles posed by a film that is effectively a one-man show.
Taylor-Johnson gives a bravura performance, and Liman keeps the tension crackling throughout. This film might not thrive at the U.S. box office, but it deserves to be seen.
SADLY, I can’t say the same for 47 Metres Down, a daft survival thriller about two American sisters (both gorgeous, naturally) who, on holiday in Mexico, go cage-diving in the hope of seeing Great White sharks. And, boy, do they ever. When the boat’s winching apparatus fails, the cage plunges to the ocean floor, placing comely Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt) in what might gently be termed a spot of bother. One has never even been diving before. And we know how far down they are.
‘Kate, I’m scared,’ says Lisa, ‘what if the sharks come?’
It’s dialogue that might have been written by a child, but it’s a fair point all the same. Great Whites are indeed circling. The sisters’ oxygen tanks are emptying. Yet still they find time for a chat about their relationship.
Last year’s The Shallows put Blake Lively in similar peril, albeit on top of the Mexican waves rather than beneath them. The message seems to be that if you’re a beautiful American woman in Mexico, for heaven’s sake don’t go anywhere near the water.