Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This is a David vs Goliath courtroom drama loosely based on an actual legal case.   The issue with any such film is its inherent predictability, because we know David is going to win, or why else make the film? As we saw with ‘Erin Brockovich’ this problem is not insuperable. But in that instance David (in the form of Julia Roberts) was easy to root for, and Goliath, the company that was giving people cancer, was easy to hate, whereas in this case it’s a little less clear cut. Admittedly the little guy here, Jerry (played by Tommy Lee Jones) is sympathetic, as a 75-year old owner of a small funeral business, but the injustice done to him doesn’t seem that compelling. Due to financial problems Jerry made a verbal agreement with Mr Loewen, CEO of the Loewen Group, to sell part of his business. But then Mr Loewen didn’t back up the verbal agreement by signing a written contract, probably because he was banking on Jerry having to file for bankruptcy so that his business could be bought...

I   was wanting to watch an undemanding action film to take my mind off a toothache I was suffering from, and this unnecessary addition to the Bourne franchise was made to order. It has the familiar formula: Jason (Matt Damon) is simply trying to find out more about his past, but the CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones, at his most gnarly) is so worried that Jason will release incriminating info about the CIA's latest blackop projects that he will stop at nothing to have him killed. The film has two new major characters.  There is Alicia Vikander as Heather Lee, the CIA head of Cyber Ops, an ambiguous figure who ends up helping Jason for her own reasons.  And there is 'the Asset', a CIA assassin who blames Jason for being captured and tortured in Syria (played by Vincent Cassel). There's also a subplot which ends up not adding a great deal, wasting Riz Ahmed as a Mark Zuckerberg-type character. The main plot is kicked off by Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) hacking i...

This film scores a measly 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, yet Clay Keller (the creator of the wonderful Screen Drafts podcast) rates it one of the best action films of the 1990s.  Who's right? Well, it's a little from column A and a little from column B. The critics were a bit harsh, maybe because inevitably they were comparing it with its predecessor 'The Fugitive'.  On the other hand it barely passes muster as a way of whiling away a couple of hours. To describe it as a sequel to the aforementioned Harrison Ford blockbuster is misleading since its only connection is the presence again of Tommy Lee Jones as US Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard. We should be thankful for that since he is the best thing in this film.  It's a pleasure again to see him barking orders at his team. The main difference between the two films is that the former had a fugitive hero we could easily identify with and root for, a civilian wrongly accused of a terrible crime, whereas here Wesley Snipes is a gov...

Do I know who killed JFK? No. Do I care who killed JFK? Not really. Did this 3-hour potential snooze fest hold my attention?  Hell, yeah! Specifically I was intrigued by the extraordinary story of Jim Garrison. He was just a DA, in New Orleans, but he took it upon himself and his team to try to get to the bottom of what really happened in Dallas on 22 November 1963. On the way we meet an array of curious characters brought to life by the likes of Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci (crazy guy, crazy hairpiece), Kevin Bacon, Donald Sutherland, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, and Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald. Holding it all together is Kevin Costner in a towering performance as Garrison.  I'm not sure how he didn’t get an Oscar nomination whilst Tommy Lee Jones (sporting the most ridiculous hair) did. His lengthy summing up to the jury at the conclusion of the film is a tour-de-force which I would like to believe is close to the actual summing-up. Which does raise the nagging question t...

On paper, the story presented here might seem a bit thin but all those involved manage to make this an entertaining and involving film, even if I had the nagging feeling throughout that right from the get-go young Mark Sway would be far safer telling the authorities what he knows rather than keeping it a secret. The emotional heart of the story is the spiky but ultimately moving relationship between Mark and his lawyer Reggie Love, and their  parting at the end did have me tearing up a little. The former is played remarkably well by Brad Renfrew.  Apparently his real life prior to this film was not that far removed from that of Mark. Sadly he died of an overdose at the age of 25. Susan Sarandon is totally believable as Reggie, a woman trying to make her way in a man’s world whilst having to cope with the loss of custody of her children some time in the past. Elsewhere both the villains and the representatives of the law are a bit cartoonish at times but Tommy Lee Jones as the ...