Movie Review

Resistance adds little of worth to history of films about the Holocaust

The shutdown of the movie industry during the coronavirus pandemic is leading a variety of studios to release their new movies directly to streaming/on-demand services. The first to release a new movie that had not previously been released in the theaters is IFC Films with Resistance, set amid the Nazi occupation of Europe and the Holocaust.

The hook for this film is that its main character is Marcel Marceau (Jesse Eisenberg), who was part of the French Resistance during World War II before going on to become a world-famous mime. Marceau’s original name was Marcel Mangel, a Jewish boy whose dreams of becoming a performer were interrupted when he was compelled to help shelter hundreds of children from the Nazis.

Choosing “Marceau” as a fake name to hide in plain sight, Marcel joined a group that included Emma (Clémence Poésy), Sigmund (Edgar Ramirez), and others, shepherding the children from location to location as the German forces advanced. Leading the way for the Germans was Klaus Barbie (Matthias Schweighöfer), who became known as the “Butcher of Lyon” for personally torturing prisoners.

Written and directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, the film works in fits and starts, but never settles into a proper rhythm. This lack of smoothness is established right from the start, as the film has three beginnings, focusing on multiple other characters before it even gets to Marcel. Things improve once it actually concentrates on him, but Jakubowicz consistently seems to want to explain the story instead of letting it play out organically.

He inserts text onto the screen multiple times to tell the audience exactly what is happening, a fallback device that serves to highlight a lack of visual storytelling ability. Any momentum that had been built up prior to the text appearing comes to a screeching halt. The film is supposed to play out like a thriller, and choosing to stop the story to make people read is unwise.

Still, due to the type of story that is being told, it’s difficult not to get invested in what happens to the characters. They don't come into play much, but Marcel’s mime skills come in handy at various points, especially in one tense scene late in the film. The bonds between the characters are strong, making for some highly emotional moments.

But those individual scenes can’t redeem the film as a whole. The final moment of the film had the potential to be beautiful and poignant. Instead, it’s part of a superfluous bookend that features a wholly unnecessary cameo by Ed Harris as General George S. Patton.

Eisenberg has always been a compelling performer, and he remains so here despite the film’s faults. Poésy, Ramirez, and Bella Ramsey, playing one of the rescued children, all complement him well. Schweighöfer plays the stereotypical Nazi well, although he could have dialed down the evil and still accomplished the same goal.

Filmmakers return to stories about World War II and the Holocaust time and again because there’s no more clear-cut idea of good vs. evil that has existed in human history. Resistance is a worthy story to tell, but the methods used to tell it ultimately fail to match its importance.

---

Resistance is available on iTunes, Amazon, GooglePlay/YouTube, Vudu, PlayStation, and many on-demand cable platforms.

Clémence Poésy, Jesse Eisenberg, and Bella Ramsey in Resistance.

$Cl\u00e9mence Po\u00e9sy and Jesse Eisenberg in Resistance$

Photo courtesy of IFC Films

Clémence Poésy, Jesse Eisenberg, and Bella Ramsey in Resistance.

Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

---

Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

Loading...