Movie Review

Actor Saoirse Ronan gives Oscar-quality performance in The Outrun

Saoirse Ronan in The Outrun.

Photo by Yunus Roy Imer/courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

In Hollywood, there are two levels of being an A-lister, with occasional overlap between the two. There are the movie stars who can be counted on time and again to deliver at the box office, and there are the actors who put on Oscar-level performances in nearly every film they’re in. Saoirse Ronan resides firmly in the latter category, which she proves yet again in The Outrun.

The first time we see Rona (Ronan), she is drunk in a pub in London, so far gone that she has to be thrown out by security. In quick succession, she is shown with a severe black eye while giving a police report, and then working on her family farm on Scotland’s Orkney Islands, accompanied by text stating simply “117 days.” With a modicum of storytelling, it’s readily apparent that Rona is an alcoholic, and that the film will spend time with her at various stages of her tumultuous life.

The “present” of the film is her time on the Orkney Islands, with Rona helping her dad, Andrew (Stephen Dillane), run the farm, putting up with her overtly religious mom, Annie (Saskia Reeves), and doing her level best to stay sober. The fact that the 29-year-old has no clue what to do with her life and that she’s still pining over her old boyfriend, Daynin (Paapa Essiedu), doesn’t exactly help her predicament.

Directed by Nora Fingscheidt and adapted by Fingscheidt and Amy Liptrot from Liptrot’s memoir of the same name, the film treads familiar ground seen in other movies about alcoholism, with the biggest difference being the setting. The harsh beauty of the landscape where she spends most of her time seems to be a metaphor for her life, a place that can be unforgiving but also capable of the occasional positive surprise.

Fingscheidt eschews a straightforward narrative in favor of one that offers glimpses of Rona’s life throughout her drunkenness and sobriety. While she is able to keep Rona’s story legible for most of the film, there are times when the back-and-forth takes extra effort to understand. A clever marker the film uses to help viewers track time is Rona’s changing hair color, which is bright blue when she’s in her drinking phase in London, with only blue tips remaining during her time of recovery.

The film contains other elements to try to enhance the central story, some of which are more successful than others. Rona recounts various Scottish legends through voiceover, most notably one about selkies, shapeshifters that can change between seal and human form. The idea is interesting, but the connection between the legend and Rona is not strong. A subplot involving her dad’s lifelong mental health issues hits a bit harder, although it rightly is not explored all that much.

Ronan is, as always, an acting force. When an actor plays an alcoholic, it can be easy for them to fall into clichés, but Ronan manages to avoid most of them. Her skills have always been in the smaller, quieter moments anyway, and it’s when her character has to delve into self-reflection that she shines the most. Dillane and Reeves are veteran actors who complement Ronan well, and Essiedu does nicely in a role that is chopped up.

The Outrun - named for a certain part of the landscape on Rona’s family farm - doesn’t necessarily have a lot of new things to say about the states of addiction or soberness, but the personal story is compelling enough to hold interest. And with Ronan in the lead, moviegoers are in good hands, as her performance proves to be award-worthy once again.

---

The Outrun opens in theaters on October 4.

movies film

Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

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.

movies film