You don't know Jack

You Don't Know Jack will be a front-runner for Golden Globes and other prizes. The Emmys went to its lead actor (Al Pacino) and writer (Adam Mazer) for their gripping portrayal of Dr Jack Kevorkian and his 1990s campaign to have doctor-assisted euthanasia legalised in the USA. The impassioned advocate of assisted suicide is an odd heroic character in American medical and legal history, a cantankerous egocentric played to irritating perfection by Pacino.

Directed by Barry Levinson, who'd worked well with Pacino in the past (And Justice For All), the HBO movie also showcases the veteran talents of Brenda Vaccaro (as Jack's sister and accomplice), Susan Sarandon (Hemlock Society activist and friend), John Goodman (long-term medical ally) and Danny Huston (invincible pro-bono defence lawyer and failed Michigan governor-candidate Geoffrey Fieger).

Kevorkian, the American-born son of Armenian refugees, was a retired pathologist in his early 60s when he began his Quixotic activism on behalf of terminally ill patients. For almost a decade, despite harassment and prosecutions by Michigan police and politicians, he conducted at least known 130 suicide procedures. The taped testimonies and appeals of his free-of-charge clients and their loved ones were Kevorkian's strongest defence. So was the fact that each patient manipulated the switch that began their lethal drug or gas procedure.

Kevorkian learned to play the angry fool and work with the media, fasting while in custody and appearing in court in 18th-century costume to face a Common Law charge filed by an obsessed local prosecutor. Although he won legal and PR battles, Kevorkian had his medical licence revoked and his activism banned.

He was determined to challenge the hypocritical set-up which allowed doctors to take comatose patients off life-support systems but forbade euthanasia for coherent patients. Finally, breaking court orders, he deliberately administered the lethal dosage to a helpless patient. Two months later, he gave the tape of that death to 60 Minutes + and was interviewed by Mike Wallace. The state could not ignore the provocation. Using tactical cunning, Michigan prosecutors dropped the charge of assisting suicide, thereby keeping the dead patient's wife and brother from being called as defence witnesses. Possibly hoping to become an imprisoned martyr, Kevorkian foolishly chose to defend himself in his fifth and final trial.

Convicted of second-degree murder, he served more than eight years in prison, and recently completed two years of parole during which he was allowed only to discuss euthanasia, not to practise or promote it. The US Supreme Court had refused to hear his appeal, denying him the platform he'd always sought.

A dramatic often melodramatic story with a charismatic lead figure, the Kevorkian saga is ideal biopic material. The HBO acting ensemble present it excellently, and Levinson's direction finely blended contrasting styles of documentary realism and Greek tragedy. Pacino's performance is commanding, the histrionics controlled, the mannerisms telling, the character flaws displayed dispassionately. Although the screenplay gilded the lily too much by gratuitously showing the social misfit's talents as an instrumentalist, composer, theatre buff and oil painter, they did help to establish the "Doctor of Death" as a very human megalomaniac.

Aftershock

The PRC's movie industry has produced many art-house favourites; its mass-market spectaculars haven't earned similar international attention. Aftershock might have done so. Let's see, after January 2011, whether China's official Oscar nominee makes it to the shortlist (in competition, among around 80 others, with Hong Kong's Echoes of the Rainbow and Taiwan's Monga). [None of them reached the longlist.]

Aftershock is the first major commercial IMAX movie made outside the US. The 2010 PRC-IMAX co-production (the first of a contracted three) dramatises the aftermath of the disastrous 1976 Tangshan earthquake and adds a contemporary reference to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. It's the top Chinese box-office grosser, quickly leaping ahead of The Founding of a Republic.

240,000 people died in Tangshan. If Hollywood had recreated the mass tragedy, the movie would have innumerable sub-plots catering to all major demographic groups, age ranges, races and sexual interests. In China, director Feng Xiaogang focuses exclusively on one mother and her young twin children, and there are moments when a viewer aches for a sub-plot or two to lighten the mood and present a few fresh faces.

This movie is a champion exploitative tear-jerker. It's a 10,000-tissue weepie in which the children's father dies in the earthquake, the distraught mother is faced with a Sophie's Choice, the son loses an arm, the daughter survives unknowingly and is adopted by married PLA soldiers in the earthquake rescue teams. The mother cannot forgive herself for having made her choice, neither can the daughter, and the audience is frequently given emotional dialogue, heart-rending situations and musical prompts all designed to squeeze its tear ducts, mercilessly.

The mother and daughter are played wonderfully well (by Xu Fan, the director' wife, and the very busy Zhang Jingchu respectively), considering that a forgivable reaction to each of their stiffly self-absorbed characters would be to scream and demand that they stop being somewhat tedious self-sacrificing egocentrics. But if they did, the screenplay would be a lot shorter and more rational.

The rest of the cast is admirable (especially Chen Diaoming as the adoptive father), as are the cinematography, special effects (directed by ubiquitous Phil Jones), costumes and subtle government propaganda (on behalf of the PLA, Tangshan and China's modernisation). Director Feng has a successful track record, progressing from Chinese TV series in the 90s to writing and directing many mainstream movie hits (Happy Funeral, World Without Thieves, If You Are the One). He also directed Banquet, produced and directed Assembly, produced Cellphone and has been a movie actor.

IMAX and his co-owned Chinese production company will be happy with him; his epic had a reported budget of less than US$25 million. Its earnings in China and international markets will more than compensate for its likely inability to obtain any wide distribution in the USA. A few scenes in Vancouver, where the bitter daughter somehow (unexplained) ends up married to a Caucasian lawyer, were probably designed to help its entry to the Canadian market, both on IMAX and regular screens.

[The excellent review by Kevin Ma in lovehkfilm.com is fiercely critical of Feng's commercial and political considerations.]

Triads, yardies & onion bhajees!

Any movie whose IMDb listing tells you that it had a budget of 900 pounds sterling has to be seen to be believed. Its title is just as incredible: Triads, Yardies and Onion Bhajees! (the 2003 movie originally carrying a sub-title, Once Upon a Time in Southall).

British (Punjabi-Indian) director Sarjit Bains' first feature is a tale of four London gangs. Like his second feature (the 2007 comedy, Cash and Curry) it was written by Manish Patel, born in a border town "between Tanzania and Zanzibar". Patel wrote the novel (The Stone Shiva) on which his screenplay is based, and also plays Singh, the lead character and champion hitman.

He works for the Asian gang ("The Holy Smokes") that controls west London from its Southall base. The actor cast as the leader of the cockney gang ("The English Firm") running the rackets in east London is Dave Courtney, a self-proclaimed gangster-turned-writer and occasional member of Patel and Bains' indie movie-making outfit.

North London is under the control of the Chinese "Triads", while the Jamaicans ("Yardies") own the south of the city. Watching them all and adding narrative links is a corrupt cop, played by Jonathan Reason, another gangster-movie specialist. Just to make sure that the goulash is juicy enough, Patel adds the real-life Heathrow Airport robbery to his criminal recipe.

The British market must be significant for such low-budget blood-and-action 18-plus gangster tales, and the frequency with which Guy Richie and other better-known British directors made them is now more explicable. They were (some still are) probably driven by commercial forces rather than personal fixations. If the gangster genre is popular, it's one that start-up movie-makers must work with if they want to make a living and a name.

As one of their dvd extras reveals with quiet pride, Patel (his own producer) and Bains (a one-man cinematography team and his own editor) made their movie in ten days using a camcorder. That 900-pounds claim can be believed. So can the movie much of the time. Its small-screen scale intensifies its mockumentary stylishness. The editing is fast (though too often frenetic), hand-held camera skips cut interestingly between faces (albeit too often too jerkily), and the soundtrack's contemporary Indian music also adds pace (and is only occasionally too loud).

Although the storyline promises a multi-ethnic criminal caper, this is primarily a tale of expatriate Indians and their west London crime syndicate. Patel's character has a girlfriend who's the sister of the Jamaican gang boss, but the key female interest is really the Indian goddess Kali, inspiring the anti-hero to single-handedly wipe out all the gangs' members.

The ageing white British actors look and sound convincing members of the criminal class; the non-white actors mostly appear too dulcet-toned and polite for their roles. They sound as if they'd been to good schools, but not to acting schools that would have taught them how to sound more credibly uncouth and villainous.

Onion Bhajees? That's how the Indian gang smuggles cocaine past sniffer dogs.