OH NO – THEY’VE SQUASHED SPIDEY!
An inspiring hero and electrifying villains . . . but this Spider-man is overwhelmed by special effects
to the rescue, of course. But a superhero’s work is never done. Even once he sees off Electro, Spider-Man must contend with the Green Goblin, into whom his old school pal Harry Osborn ( Dane DeHaan) has metamorphosed, ending up with a serious attitude problem and awfully bad teeth.
That is another modern American nightmare. Turning into a villain is bad enough, but a villain beyond orthodontic help, now that’s enough to traumatise a nation.
There are plenty of stirring moments in The Amazing Spider- Man 2, but it is not quite the sum of its parts. Garfield has proper star wattage, and gets able support, almost too able in the case of DeHaan, who rudely steals the scenes he’s in much as he did in the recent picture about t he pre - f ame Beat poets, Kill Your Darlings.
But the narrative drifts, and those extravagant effects, paradoxically, make the film eminently forgettable, or at least indistinguishable from every other CGI-heavy assault on our senses.
AT ENTIRELY the other end of the cinematic spectrum is Locke, which amounts to one man driving his car after dark and nothing else.
Far from there being any special effects, there is scarcely any physical action at all, beyond a middle-aged father- of-two called Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) gripping his steeringwheel, glancing in his rear-view mirror, and making and taking hands-free phone calls.
It is those phone calls which let us into his life, the life of a likeable if intense man who at the start of his journey from the Midlands to London is both contentedly married a nd highly respected as a construction director on one of Europe’s biggest building projects.
Indeed, it is the eve of arguably the most important day of his career, with thousands of tons of concrete about to be poured into the foundations of a building that will eventually stand 55 storeys high and, at sunset, will cast a shadow a mile long.
That is nothing, however, compared with the shadow cast over Ivan’s entire existence by an uncharacteristic but catastrophic error of judgment seven months earlier, which explains why he is driving very quickly away from the c onstruction site and must painstakingly explain to his less able right-hand man, Donal, how to cope in his absence.
Ivan had a drunken one-nightstand with a needy colleague called Bethan, while on a job the year before in Croydon.
Bethan got pregnant, insisted on keeping the baby as her ‘last chance of happiness’ and now she is in labour, two months prematurely.
Ivan has not yet told his wi f e, Katrina.
He hopes that he can save his marriage while also doing the right thing by Bethan. But as he whizzes down the M6, insofar as anyone can whizz down the M6, his conflicting obligations — to Bethan, to his family, to his American- owned company, and to his own sense of self-esteem, which owes a lot to his dead father — are all illuminated no less than the road ahead.
THIS unfolds in real time, which is risky on the part of writer- director Steven Knight (who unveiled his talent for dialogue with Dirty Pretty Things ten years ago).
It is riskier still to point a camera at a man’s face and very little else, bar occasional shots of the road and, inevitably, the back of an Eddie Stobart lorry.
But Hardy, for some reason giving his character a mellifluous Welsh accent, also gives a captivating performance. To say that Olivia Colman as Bethan and Ruth Wilson as Katrina phone in t hei r performances is for once not meant as a criticism. They, and everyone else whose voice fills his car, do a fine job.
This is Hardy’s stage, though. His and Knight’s. The latter might perhaps be accused of labouring the imagery — the construction expert who can’t stop the cornerstones of his life crumbling — but actually it doesn’t matter.
This is a terrific film, a clever thriller woven out of a largely ordinary set of circumstances, and beautifully shot despite the self-imposed visual constraints. It should appeal to anyone who has ever had to juggle work commitments with a private life, if not, I hope, as stressfully as this.