Incendiary (2008)

Incendiary (2008)

A kind of British version of 9/11 that is interesting for its vision of a London-based terrorist disaster, but which is overwrought, sentimental, and sensational. It tries to temper this by making the heroine moodily (deeply) unhappy in her adultery (or unhappy enough to be adulterous), and by having the resulting relationship take on surprising seriousness.

And this is where the movie has some interest. I'm not sure Michelle William's role as the mother and bereaved is exceptional any more than Ewan McGregor is as the interloper playboy turned sensitive (and who has a really minor role). Both seem like functionary clichés. It's a serious movie overall, and increasingly sad. But it's loaded with tricks to make it catchy, including the whole unconvincing second half where an investigation takes place against unlikely odds.

The music is overbearing (drippy strings and piano), and the manipulations almost cheap (stuffed animals, pictures and movies of loved ones), almost like a quickie made-for-TV affair. Which is too bad because there are other aspects that are moving. It's a good idea to have the British visit this and try to empathize through a movie this way.

A giveaway to its motivations (and those of the director Sharon Maguire) is a voice-over at the end, as a baby is being born, that is a direct plea to Osama Bin Laden to stop training people to be violent killers. We all wish that would be so. So if this movie is just for Osama, fine. For the rest of us, it's nearly unbearably trite and shameless.

Fmovies: Incredibly slow. Long periods when they didn't find dialogue so filled it with repetitive monotonous piano music. A plot with a good centre but too many twists or 'devices' to be believable. Because of the tenuous plot, characters are more difficult to relate to or care about. Too many themes / subjects.

So I didn't like it much ! I thought the above was a succinct review but now IMDb is making me write 10 lines, which is ironically similar to how I feel about the film actually given all the long slow panoramic shots over music while the actors look sad or longingly or suchlike. So yes this paragraph is just for that end, sorry everyone, but this review is less time than the film, so it's of some value. Ha !

If you like me saw the poster (and the IMDb genre listing for that matter) and thought that this was a drama-thriller, let me tell you that it's not.

Although there are some slight moments of suspense this is solely a drama film about grief.

They do throw in some other elements to it as well, some that works better than others but the true essence of the story is a woman grief after a great tragedy in her life.

It tackles the subject-matter rather delicate for the most part and it does feel rather realistic for the more part.

It's rather depressing though, but I suppose that is the point.

Michelle Williams impresses by the sole fact she's able to sustain a British London accent throughout the movie and not once ever slip into a American one, which is extremely rare with American actors doing films in foreign English speaking countries but she had it down to perfection from beginning to end.

She also pulls a good performance over all as well.

So yeah not a feel-good movie that's for sure but it sustained my interested reasonably well, even though I don't know if I'd watch it again.

Incendiary fmovies. This cod mockney melodrama from the director of Bridget Jones Diary fails at every level. It's clearly a film involving working class characters made by middle class people with both characters and plot lacking any authenticity and credibility whatsoever. In fact, the basic premise of Bridget Jones is transposed to this disastrous attempt at making a serious drama. Instead of writing a diary she writes letters to Osama Bin Laden. Instead of getting caught in a love triangle between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant she gets caught in a love triangle with two equally wet englishmen, uncomfortably played by Ewan MacGregor and Matthew Macfadayen, and all this, after her poor husband and son have been blown to bits in an unconvincing attack on Arsenal football stadium whilst she was shagging the local taloid newspaper reporter! The mawkish sentimentality that ensues is unbearable. In a preposterous celebration of London's blitz spirit, the faces of the victims are printed on the side of WWII air balloons which float above the city in every shot. And Michelle Williams, who miraculously found her sons toy rabbit in the ruins of the football stadium, clutches it to her chest in almost every scene. I find it hard to believe that this ill conceived script ever made it past treatment stage, particularly when so many established UK film companies like CH4 were involved in its development and finance. I find it equally hard to believe that the film was selected to screen at prestigious festivals like Sundance.This film is a worrying indictment of the failings of a the British film industry.

Having knocked us all out in 2004 in LAND OF PLENTY by Wim Wenders, here Michelle Williams proves that she is truly supernatural. She gives one of the most gut-wrenching performances ever seen on the screen. And for a Montana gal who had to brush the sagebrush pollen out of her hair before joining polite company, stow her lasso, and pretend to be civilised, how did she manage to master the accent and rhythms and patterns of speech, dress, and mannerisms of those real savages, the gals in those short tart's skirts who live in tower blocks in East London and are married to men who support Arsenal Football Club? (Ugh! Football! Makes me sick! And singing about a football club, how oafish can you get?) It all goes to show that Williams, like good wine, travels well, even though in this case it was from planet to planet. This film is so brilliantly written and directed by Sharon Maguire (formerly a television documentary film maker) that the combination of Maguire and Williams sets the cinema on fire and thereby justifies the film's title admirably. Excellent support is had from Ewan McGregor and Matthew MacFadyen as the two male leads, but all eyes are on Williams. The production values of this film are very high, and it is easy to be convinced that the big terrorist attack on Wembley Stadium has really happened, as the attack and the aftermath are all so real. However, this is not a film about terrorism, which is merely the backdrop, in the sense that world wars and civil wars have been for so many films in the past, from GONE WITH THE WIND to FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS to MRS. MINIVER. This is a film about people, but especially about Michelle Williams. Only a woman could have directed this. In fact, one is tempted to say that all films with terrorism backgrounds should be directed by women, because they are not tempted as men are to dwell on all the violence for its own sake. With a woman at the helm, this film becomes a people film, but a man would have strayed, taken more interest in guns and corpses and explosions (little boys going bang bang sometimes never grow up, especially when they have a budget and a cameraman handed to them). As a study of searing grief and despair, Williams has our hearts in her mouth, but don't worry, it isn't really a downer, it is simply so spellbinding looking at her and seeing into another dimension. She seems to be a tiny little thing, and it is almost inconceivable that such a small package can carry such a huge explosive power. This film really is an instant contemporary classic.

A young beautiful woman (Michelle Williams) is trapped in an empty marriage tucked away in an ugly apartment block in London. Her pride and joy in her grey existence is her 4-year-old son. One day, as the two of them are at the football match, she seduces a slick journalist Jasper (Ewan McGregor) in the local pub. As fate would have it, they are locked in a lovers embrace, with the football match raging on behind them on TV, when the stadium going up in flames with a series of explosions. Her husband and son are both killed in the terrorist attack, leaving her broken and alone.

If you are now thinking that a film about the aftermath of a major terrorist attack from the director of Brigit Jones' Diary sounds like a recipe for disaster, then you are partly right. But it is not bad for the reason you might think. The film is, for the most part, an emotional roller- coaster - you could be crying your way through most of it. But not because of her grieving for her lost family. The bombs are just the beginning - she still has to endure a full load of unlikely events in the hour to come. She understandably loses it along the way as the story becomes so over-dramatised that it is just ridiculous (especially when you run the story back in your head afterwards).

Towards the end she enters a phase of grief hallucination and reconciliation with life. As the movie is neither funny nor exciting, this should have been the route to take all along. Concentrating on the mourning of the young mother, and perhaps even throwing in some guilt towards her semi-estranged husband. Her husband is just gone with his death. He is not missed nor is there any regret for his disappearance. Even for a semi-estranged husband this sounds a little harsh - she did worry about him, after all, so she must have felt something. It is also curious that they have no family, or friends who drop by to comfort her. A lonely marriage must have pushed them into some kind of a social circle, or a hobby, or at least the occasional phone call with their mothers. Was their life really that lonely.

The movie is clearly intended as a pamphlet against terrorism, by showing the human cost at the level of ordinary people. It also takes the time to "explain" the resilience of London in a voice-over. It is a little desperate to save a movie through nationalism, but can actually be fit in here, although it could have been better prepared, by, for instance, by making her a more integral part of London. This is no masterpiece, nor an entertainment jewel, and can easily be missed altogether. A pity, because it does have some potential.