Movie Nation

James McAvoy has played the odd scoundrel, here and there. Think of his break-out turn in “The Last King of Scotland,” his fanatical cop in “Welcome to the Punch” or wily con man in the art world turn in “Trance.”
But in “Filth,” his latest, he’s bad. Very bad.
“You get a chance, as an actor, to explore a side of yourself that you’ve never tapped into, to do things you’ve never done before, so there’s an educational payoff there,” he says. “It’s nice to surprise yourself, and that means you can surprise the audience as well.”
He plays a Scottish cop, Bruce Robertson — a sleazy, corrupt hedonist who never met a drink or a drug he didn’t want, never saw a comely female suspect or the willing wife of a friend or colleague he wouldn’t bed.
“Filth,” based on an Irvine “Trainspotting” Welsh novel, is the sort of film “You’ll be scraping this film out from under your fingernails for weeks,” critic Dave Calhoun wrote in Timeout London, praising the Scottish McAvoy’s “possessed…sheer caution-to-the-wind energy” in the leading role.
Bad boy Bruce is earning the 35 year-McAvoy some of his best notices ever. But the actor admits that he’s the sort of character that can spill over into an actor’s after-hours persona, and seep into other performances — say, McAvoy’s duties as the young Professor Charles Xavier in the long-running X-Men franchise.

“In the new (“X-Men: Days of Future Past”) film, Charles is weirdly, insanely like Bruce Robertson in ‘Filth.’ He’s a cornered animal, spiteful, fearful, full of hate and anger. That’s not the Xavier we know. He has to work through that to become the sort of man who can help the X-Men win the day. It’s quite nice to be able to do that in this movie with all these externals — epic effects, action-based conflict. But there’s still this reflective side that lets us see this guy’s broken heart. That’s an interesting journey for a character to take.”
The lower-budget/limited release “Filth” is rolling into theaters as the blockbuster “X-Men: Days of Future Past” comes out (May 23), with the one threatening to utterly overwhelm any attention for the other. But as much as McAvoy declares his pleasure at “redefining Charles Xavier, not just back-engineering him from the Patrick Stewart performances,” his most fervent hope is that film buffs find the little film based on “the best script I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading,” “Filth.” Because Bruce Robertson is a narrator with a demonic wit and a character with demonic demons.
This “working class, alcoholic drug-addicted Scottish policeman with mental health problems” could have easily been a “boring, kitchen-sink realistic, wise and informational movie,” McAvoy says. But writer-director Jon S. Baird has tapped into the “surreal, colorful, dynamic and funny” side of the novel, giving McAvoy an unforgettable character to play. Think of Robert Carlyle’s Begbie or Jonny Lee Miller’s Sick Boy from “Trainspotting.” Bruce Robertson would be a boon companion to either of them.
“We all have moments where we feel inferior to those around us. That’s one of the major things that drives Bruce. He’s this larger than life personality, sure. He’s all bluster, nobody’s better than him, and so forth. But that’s all in response to the fact that he’s got a raging inferiority complex and that he’s terrified that everybody around him is better than him. They’ll see he’s weak and take him down, you know?
“We’ve all felt like that, in times, in our lives. We don’t let them prevail, but we can’t help but have those feelings. We master that fear. His fear has mastered him, and it’s created this person who is constantly projecting this fake version of himself — all-powerful, content, confident — when actually he’s anything but that.”
After taking the character home with him during filming — “My wife was a bit shocked, and then perplexed by the guy I was while I was playing Bruce.” — and maybe bringing some of his darkness to “Days of Future Past” — “I was constantly apologizing to the other members of the cast, even though they were probably up for a little abuse.” — McAvoy was ready to leave the depravity behind. To cleanse the palate, he signed up for another potential blockbuster. Will he give the world a new mad scientist spin in the new “Frankenstein”?
“Finally! A Dr. Frankenstein with a SCOTS accent! The way he was meant to be played! The characterization that cinema audiences have been waiting for, for GENERATIONS.”
He laughs and admits that might be a tad too daring.
“Victor Von Frankenstein is English in it. He’s not from the Continent. He’s English, since the whole story is set in London, this time round. So I do my posh English accent. Alas.”

So as I said in my review, “Godzilla” is very kid friendly. It plays to me like a lot of the “Godzilla’s our friend” kid-friendly movies in this long running franchise,a “Godzilla vs. Mothra” sort of outing, without any laughs, intentional or otherwise. Those Godzilla Fiat commercials have more wit.

The violence isn’t graphic or bloody, also kid-friendly.

And a kid-friendly rating should give it a hand at the box office, exposing it to a wider audience. Will the fanboys, who prefer dark R-rated essays in ultra-violence, line up? One audience often means you sacrifice another in getting it.

Box Office Guru says $68 million, a pretty healthy opening, but not in the “Spider-Man” ballpark. Not at all.

Reviews, which were of the fanboys wetting their pants variety on Monday, have cooled off considerably by week’s end. Still well into positive territory, but my hate mail has tapered off. Reviews won’t hurt it.

Box Office Mojo says $70, and that it will “crush” numbers like the $338 million “World War Z” made overseas.

I think it could get easily into the $70s. It’s on nearly 4,000 screens, in 3D.

But it’s an inferior movie and for that reason alone I figure it won’t do nearly as well next weekend, though worldwide, you never know.

“Million Dollar Arm” is two hours of your life Jon Hamm will never, ever give back. Disney is banking on this sticking around after doing low-teens this weekend. That may be a stretch.

I see it doing maybe $12 this weekend. Weak reviews won’t help. Guru says $14, Mojo echoes that.

“Spider-Man” should plummet into the low $teens, “Neighbors” should hold in the $25-30 million range.

In his latest film, “A Night in Old Mexico,” Robert Duvall rages, as the poet
put it, “against the dying of the light.”
As Red, a crusty old rancher who has lost his land, who has no close family
left and is headed for a retirement community, Duvall cusses, complains and
lassos the grandson he’s never met (Jeremy Irvine) for one last romp across the
border. He’s still got “pleasures to go,” he insists. Those include driving,
drinking, dancing and raising a little hell in Old Mexico.
Not unlike the actor himself.
“Yeah, we’ve got a little in common,” he laughs. “But my ‘pleasures to go’
these days are work, tango and riding. </P>
“I love gettin’ the girl, a YOUNG woman, one last time. Mighty pretty,
wonderful actress (Angie Cepeda, playing a stripper/singer that tags along with
the boys).”
He gets to speak some of the tastiest, funniest dialogue of his long career,
and trot out a few vintage pick-up lines.
“Better an old man’s darlin’ than a young man’s slave,'” Duvall recites. “I
love that.”
He even got to see a part of Texas he’d never visited.
“Brownsville…That was another good reason to make this one, just to see
more of the country. Supposed to be the most corrupt town in Texas. Haha. That’s
saying something, right? But I don’t know, I don’t know.”
He chuckles. At 83, the Oscar winning screen legend takes his jokes and his
delights where he can find them. Some are at home, in Virginia’s horse country,
with his gorgeous tango-dancing Argentine wife, Luciana Pedraza, his co-star in
2002’s “Assassination Tango.”
“I still tango. A man’s got to have his hobbies.”
Other pleasures from having a busy year in front of the camera. “A Night in
Old Mexico” is the first film he’s in this year.
“We’ve been trying to get this movie made for thirty years, ever since
‘Lonesome Dove.’ Red is sort of descended from Gus McRae from ‘Lonesome Dove,’ I
figure. Same screenwriter (William D. Wittliff adapted Larry McMurty’s novel for
the TV mini-series). He kept at it, the whole time we were trying to get this
made, polishing the script and polishing it. Some great lines in that thing,
great lines.
“I brought in a little to it — improvising. Not much, though. It’s that
good. ‘Am I right, or Amarillo?'”
With a Spanish director and Spanish crew, they had 23 days to shoot “Old
Mexico”, which Duvall confesses is “Kind of an old fashioned story, except for
maybe the language in it…Love the idea of this last hurrah kind of tale. This
guy’s all Texas, that’s for sure. A little of that Texas swagger, that sense of
self-reliance. A little hell-raiser. Go out with your boots on, all that.”
Duvall’s screen appearances have been further apart in recent years, but the
reviews are as glowing as ever, with Variety opining that he is “perfectly cast
as a robustly cantankerous” Texan on a cantina bender south of the border.>
Duvall has “The Judge”, co-starring Robert Downey Jr. coming in the fall,
which is about the time he’ll start production on another film, a movie that
will have him on horseback.

“Oh, I still ride,” he says. “But when I do, it’s got to be a horse that’s
pretty much bomb proof. I have one a fellow down the road lets me ride who’s
bomb proof. I can ride, but I don’t need any surprises. No sir. Not from the
horse, not at my age.”

Nothing opening wide this weekend has taken a critical beating. “Godzilla,” despite being kid-friendly and PG-13, which the fanboys usually turn up their noses at (darker and more violent tends to be their taste), is winning generous reviews — overly generous, say I, but I’m an outlier on this one — for director Gareth Edwards. I thought the low-budget creator of “Monsters” got lost with all that money and all those actors he wastes. The only actor who makes an impression is Bryan Cranston, and he chews more scenery than the big lizard.

Curious to see what kind of business “Godzilla” stirs up. Should be big, with that kid-friendly rating.

“Million Dollar Arm” is not a promising start to Jon Hamm’s career as a big screen leading man. He’s cool and rather dull in the part, which is kind of what was asked for. But you’d kind of hope the “Mad Man”, who can be funny, would have brought something more engrossing to the table. This ain’t “Jerry Maguire.” He doesn’t seem to get that. Weak to mixed reviews for the Indo-American fish out of water comedy.

Most critics agree that Robert Duvall is better than the movie that surrounds him in “A Night in Old Mexico.” How much better is where we disagree. Weaker notices for that one.

“Chinese Puzzle” is the third film in the French series of romances that began with “L’Auberge Espagnole.” Cute film, heartfelt, foreigners in New York. That sort of thing. Decent to good reviews for that one.

The Nigerian epic “Half of a Yellow Sun” is pretty good, if not as epic as one might have hoped. Decent overall reviews, but no more. “Epic”, when it concerns Nigeria’s bloody 1960s civil war over the separation of Biafra from the state, costs a lot more money than this Thandie Newton/Chewitel Ejiofor drama had available. Very educational, for those who want a better understanding of the tribalism that still leads to kidnappings, power struggles and the like in the oil-rich nation.

He dazzled in “Leon: The Professional” and “Ronin,” was in the LAST “Godzilla” and assorted French films and Hollywood ventures in France (“Flyboys,” for instance).

Jean Reno co-stars in the French comedy “Le Chef,” which is earning a U.S. release just as Jon Favreau’s “Chef” hits theaters here. So we’ll talk about food and the French relationship to it, and his own.

But what would you ask Jean Reno if you had the chance? I’m looking for other promising directions to take the conversation. Got a thought? Post it as a comment below, and thanks for the help.

Jon Hamm plays the straight man to a trio of young Indian actors and
Oscar-winning curmudgeon Alan Arkin in “Million Dollar Arm,” a comically thin
“true story” of a sports agent trying to turn Indian cricket bowlers into Major
League Baseball pitchers.
J.B. Bernstein (Hamm) is just another shark in the sea of LA sports agents,
better at keeping up appearances than attracting or hanging on to talent. But he
may have to give up his swank house, his Porsche, his office and his partner
(Aasif Mandvi) if he can’t hurl a Hail Mary pass that will save them all.
Channel surfing one night, he has a brain storm. Those guys who hurl cricket
balls at the wicket in India look just enough like pitchers that maybe they can
be taught America’s National Pastime.
J.B. pitches a billionaire sponsor on the idea of cracking the Indian market
— holding tryouts, all over India, televising it as an “India’s Got Talent”
show, only for baseball. All he needs is one or two prospects, one “Million
Dollar Arm,” and with a bit of coaching, maybe he can get baseball’s first
Indian star signed to a major league team.
So J.B. drags a retired, cranky scout (Alan Arkin) and a radar gun to India,
and they both sweat and steam and learn how things work — or don’t work — in
the chaotic capitalism of India.
A cricket bowler must keep his arm straight, unbent. That’s why they sprint
as they throw the ball, to achieve velocity. It’s a totally different motion
from pitching a baseball.
That’s why Arkin brings exactly what you’d expect to the grizzled Ray. Ray
dozes through this dubious hunt. He doesn’t even open his eyes at the various
regional tryouts.
“I can HEAR it.”
Hear what? The thump of ball into mitt. Ray is the skeptic who needs to be
convinced, finally, by a few live arms, that the whole enterprise isn’t a fool’s
errand.
“You know what they call that?” he growls, at the sound of something over 80,
85 miles per hour. “Juice!”
Director Craig Gillespie (“Lars and the Real Girl”) goes out of his way not
to offend in the Indian scenes, courting the Indian market the way J.B.
envisions baseball reaching out to the Subcontinent. But comedy is meant to
offend, so that’s a problem. And once three Indian lads come home to live with
J.B. and train with a college coach (Bill Paxton), the strain of not being
patronizing shows.
Suraj Sharma and Madhur Mittal play the best prospects, and a funny,
diminutive actor named Pitobash plays Amit, brought along as translator. The
culture clash in India gives way to the REAL fish out of water stories as the
lads gawk at empty American opulence, from J.B.’s sports car to his luxurious
home to the sweet, gorgeous med student (Lake Bell) renting his guest
cottage.
As in “Jerry Maguire,” the callous, eyes-on-the-dollar-prize agent has to
learn responsibility and compassion (from the med student), to understand that
“this game is supposed to be fun” and figure out their Eastern ways.
“That’s our shrine, Mr. J.B., sir,” Amit explains when J.B. bristles at the
candles, icons and incense. “Where do you pray, Mr. J.B., sir?”
Hamm plays J.B. too buttoned down to make him interesting. Even when things
go badly, the guy keeps it together — admirable in a human being, or agent, bad
for comedy. Arkin is barely in the film. And the Indian guys are never more than
cute borderline caricatures.
And dawdling along as it does, “Million Dollar Arm” rarely shows us the
“juice,” a baseball comedy that is as tentative as a base on balls.

MPAA Rating: PG for mild language and some suggestive content
Cast: Jon Hamm, Lake Bell, Alan Arkin, Aasif Mandvi
Credits: Directed by Craig Gillespie, screenplay by Thomas McCarthy. A Walt
Disney release.
Running time: 2:04

Let’s see if we remember how this goes.
“With a purposeful grimace and a terrible scowl, he pulls the spitting high-tension wires down.”
And soon enough, “Oh no, there’s go Tokyo.” Well, not this time. It’s “Oh no, there goes (San) Francisco.”
“Godzilla” belches back to life in a new Warner Brothers film that harks back to the kid-friendlier versions of these Japanese “Kaiju” (big monster) movies. It suggests that in  an increasingly radioactive world menaced by radiation-eating beasties, the return of the almost cuddly “King of the Monsters” may be the least of our troubles.
The opening credits cleverly revisit the 1940s and ’50s atomic testing that awakened Godzilla once. Gareth Edwards’ film then jumps to the late ’90s, where mysterious goings on in mining operations in the Philippines and near nuclear plants in Japan hint that something bad is about to go down.
Bryan Cranston is an American engineer working with his wife (Juliette Binoche) when a tragic accident means their little boy Ford will grow up without a mom.
Years later, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Kick-Ass”) is a Navy bomb disposal expert, and Dad’s still hanging around the ruins of that Japanese reactor, a wild-eyed loon determined to get to the bottom of a cover-up. Something is awakening. Call it a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism). And call in the military.
Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) has been following developments all these years. He knows what’s up. He’s seen the Toho movies. He’s heard the Blue Oyster Cult song.
Visual effects master turned director Gareth Edwards impressed Hollywood with his low-budget version of this sort of story,”Monsters.” Given a huge budget and hours to tell the tale, he delivers a lumbering movie that’s as bloated as this new roly-poly version of the Big Guy, whom we only see in all his glory in the later acts.
Cranston blubbers with emotion — “Something KILLED my wife, and I have a RIGHT to know!” He chews more scenery than the lizard. Taylor-Johnson doesn’t break a sweat or make any impression as beasts try to keep him from making it home to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and child in San Francisco. Watanabe runs through a panoply of “stricken” looks as he sees the menace, understands it and fails to convince the Admiral (David Strathairn) in charge that the natural world needs “order” and perhaps the giant lizard “will restore it.”
Sally Hawkins was wastefully cast to simply stand behind Watanabe as Dr. Serizawa makes another “What fresh hell is this?” face.
The effects are decent — warships tossed about like bathtub toys, trains trashed and torched, nuclear missiles munched. The movie’s never less than competent. But the fatigue of over-familiarity curses this franchise like few others. We’ve seen Japanese men in monster suits. We’ve seen digital kaiju, and gigantic robot-armored soldiers fighting them (“Pacific Rim”).
So in a tale this timeworn and a film this devoid of humor, with only a few moments of humanity, with tension frittered away by the tedious repetition of the fights, anybody who has ever seen “Godzilla” in any incarnation can be forgiven for asking the obvious.
“What else have you got?”

(Read Roger Moore’s interview with Ken Watanabe here).

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for intense sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, David Strathairn
Credits: Directed by Gareth Edwards, written Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham, based the Toho Studios “Godzilla” movies. A Warner Brothers release.
Running time: 2:03

There was a time when we felt safe assuming the course of our lives would be predictable — courtship in our teens and 20s — we’d align ourselves with a career, marriage and kids by our 30s– “settle down” by 40.
But maybe that’s changing, evolving right before our eyes.
That’s the larger subtext of “Chinese Puzzle,” the new French film, third in a series (we can’t really call it a “trilogy”) featuring those randy, open-minded Europeans of “L’auberge Espagnole” (“The Spanish Inn”).
Back in 2002, Xavier (Romain Duris) had his eyes opened by the diverse peers whose lives he got mixed up in while studying in Barcelona. By the time “Russian Doll” (2005) rolled around, Xavier had become a writer, just not the one he wanted to be, and catching up with his friends (Audrey Tautou, Cecile De France and Kelly Reilly among them) just reminded him of how unsettled life still was.
“Chinese Puzzle” captures this coterie as they hit 40. They’ve dug through the nesting “Russian Dolls” and settled down. With kids.
Xavier is now 40, a novelist struggling with his latest book. He’s married to Wendy (Kelly Reilly). They have two kids. He thinks they’re happy.
But just as his editor warns him that “Happiness is a disaster in fiction,” Wendy abruptly wants out. She’s taking the kids and moving to New York. A bit of mulling that separation from his children, realizing that he has a friend in New York already — Isabelle (Cecile De France) — makes Xavier pack up his laptop and narrate himself to The Big Apple.
“Pinned to the ground,” Xavier observes (in French, with English subtitles), “you see that New York’s obsession is the sky.”
Writer-director Cedric Klapisch revels in the uncivilized cacophony of New York, the vast array of cultures (Latino, Hasidic, Chinese) and subcultures (aged rockers) Xavier encounters as he tries to find an apartment.
The funny fish-out-of-water stuff comes from Xavier’s experience with a comically cut-rate New York lawyer, haggling over custody, figuring out whether to make his stay Green Card legal or on the down low. Xavier fantasizes himself a French Renaissance man, bickering with Hegel, but reality is kiddie play dates in the park, feuding with his ex over schools and school uniforms and trying to do the sperm donor thing for his lesbian pal Isabelle and keep her wandering eye a secret from her significant other, Hu (Sandrine Holt).
The “Puzzle” here is the interconnected lives and inter-woven cultures Xavier comes to understand living in Chinatown, trying to trick the Immigration and Naturalization Service and wondering what might have been as Martine (Audrey Tautou) comes to visit.
There’s nothing new in “Puzzle,” no new situations and only a few truly novel observations about New York, America, sperm donorship or turning 40. That makes the movie a bit of a drag at close to two hours. Some situations feel forced and arbitrary. “Let’s find an excuse to bring Martine into the story.” And the ending has a whiff of “How I Met Your Mother” cheating about it.
But what holds our interest and holds the story together is this winning cast in these familiar, lovable (somewhat) roles. A dozen years on and this exercise in globe-trotting, in “We’re growing older, but not up” reminds us that what’s true in life is just as true in casting movies — pick your friends carefully enough and they’ll entertain you for a lifetime.
　
　
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, nudity and language
Cast: Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou, Cecile De France, Kelly Reilly
Credits: Written and directed by Cedric Klapisch. A Cohen Media release.
Running time: 1:57

Robert Duvall may be 83, but he’s still up to playing a real Texas hell raiser on the screen. He can hold his own with bad hombres. He’s still got thoughts that he could “get the girl.” Not bad for an old man.
“Who’re you callin’ old man?”
That’s his mantra in “A Night in Old Mexico,” an amiable Duvall star vehicle in the “Hud’ meets ‘Blood Simple'” mold, a rough and tumble romp South of the Border.
He plays Red, a foul-mouthed, abusive old coot who is estranged from his only family, has lost his land but not lost his desire “for some singin’ and some dancin’.”
Bellowing and boozing, he uses the excuse of a visit from the grandson he never knew (Jeremy Irvine) to ditch his caregiver, flee the trailer park where he’s to retire to, take his ancient Cadillac and hightail it for Mexico.
The kid, Gally, has notions of taking up the rodeo. But being a slicker and a Yankee, to boot, he’s picked the wrong hat and cowboy duds that look like Nashville’s idea of a cowboy. He has a lot to learn.
“Am I right, or Amarillo?” the old man taunts him.
Meanwhile, a drug deal has gone wrong and the killers who pulled it off try to catch a ride with Red and Gally. That’s a notion the wily old man tires of in an instant. The problem? They left their stash of cash in the car. The bad guys are after Red and Gally. A badder guy, hired by the drug lord, is after them all, and the cash.
And the trail follows the old man and the boy as they cross the border, take up with a stripper who wants to be a singer (Angie Cepeda) and generally stir things up.
The melodramatic plot does nothing to spoil one’s enjoyment of Duvall’s performance here. Red is pushy, delusionally certain of his charms, quick to anger and quicker to tell tall tales of his mythic past.
“The older they get,” the kid learns, “the better they were when they were young.”
Duvall makes us believe that Red believes that he’s up for anything, that he has a shot with a woman one fourth his age.
“Better an ol’man’s darlin’ than a young man’s slave.”
Director Emilio Aragon, working from a William D. Wittliff (“Barbarosa,” “Legends of the Fall”) script, creates a vivid milieu of honky tonks and brothels where Jerry Jeff Walker singing “I Like My Women Just a Tad on the Trashy Side” is on the jukebox. Director and writer give the kid a more complete coming-of-age story arc, from tin horn to man, but wisely keep the focus on Duvall. Every insult, every gripe, every threat out of Red’s mouth is quotable.
“Watch it like it’s your own,” he growls to some Mexicans who park his car, “but ‘member it ain’t.”
Red is the very embodiment of the poet’s description of one who will “not go gently” into the coming night. “A Night in Old Mexico” suggests Red’s credo could be Duvall’s, and filmgoers are all the richer for it.
“I ain’t done yet. I got a few pleasures to go.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity, adult situations
Cast: Robert Duvall, Jeremy Irvine, Angie Cepeda, Joaquin Cosio
Credits: Directed by Tom. A Phase 4 Film release.
Running time: 1:41

The sweep of recent African history is the backdrop for “Half of a Yellow Sun,” a romantic epic set in the decade after the independence of Nigeria. Tribal conflicts, the lingering effects of colonialism which forced disparate tribes together under one national flag, the cynicism of the ruling classes, the naivete of academia, all play out as Nigeria celebrates its freedom from British rule only to descend into civil war.
Thandie Newton and Anika Noni Rose play Olanna and Kainene, aloof, haughty and beautiful sisters, daughters of the ruling class who figure they can go their own way now that the yoke of British oppression has been lifted off their shoulders.
Not that they’ve been oppressed. Not personally. In 1960 Lagos, they wear the high fashion and sport the posh accents of the Brits. Like African Kardashians, they are giving “our fellow Nigerians something to aspire to.”
Kainene may pretend to rebuff the advances of a white academic (Joseph Mawle), this “modern day explorer of the Dark Continent.” But she’s curious, and figures she deserves no less than someone from her class, even a white man.
Olanna is smitten with the impeccable taste — French wines, Western furniture and cars — and fiery rhetoric of Odenigbo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), whom her sister dismisses as “your revolutionary lover.”
Odenigbo has a job at a provincial college and Olanna goes there to live with him and teach. But his traditional, village mother (Onyeka Onwenu) doesn’t approve.
“There is a WITCH in my son’s house!” She’s not being metaphorical, either. She thinks the city woman in designer dresses has bewitched her son.
But they all soon have bigger problems than the soap operas that make up their love lives. “Half of a Yellow Sun” is the symbol on the flag of Biafra, a breakaway state that fought a civil war for its independence from newly oil-rich Nigeria in the years after British rule. Odenigbo is the classic academic idealist, trumpeting the reasons for independence at wine-besotted gatherings with his colleagues.
“The only authentic identity for an African, is his tribe!”
He’s like those Spanish Civil War fans of an earlier generation. He blames the British for all his new country’s ills, insists “There won’t be a war,” and then there is.
Biyi Bandele’s film, based on the Chimamanda Ngozi novel, immerses us in the refugee’s plight in such wars — fleeing the front lines as the fighting closes in, witnessing the savagery of tribe-on-tribe (Igbo vs. Fulani) genocide, and getting by with the help of a loyal servant, simple servant (John Boyega ).
It’s a conceit of such stories — think of this as an African “Gone With the Wind” — that the female characters are more intuitive, expecting the worst from the politicians, instantly realizing when their man is cheating.
It’s a bit of a muddle and a touch too soap operatic. But Newton, Rose and Ejiofor give their characters and this story just enough pathos to make the history lessons sink in.
Whatever virtues that the novel lost making the transition to the screen, “Half of a Yellow Sun” has the authentic feel of history as it instructs us on the ways tribal prejudices were converted into class prejudices and how a Biafra, and more recently, a Rwanda can still happen on a map where the boundaries were drawn, long ago, by European rulers playing empire games with a continent.
　
　
　
MPAA Rating: R for some violence and sexual content
　
Cast: Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anika Noni Rose, Joseph Mawle
Credits: Written and directed by Biyi Bandele, based on the Chimamanda Ngozi novel.
A Monterey Media release.
Running time: 1:51