Jeremy Renner – Bitch Flicks

America: The Great Hustle (and Jennifer Lawrence)

Added on is the fact that American Hustle is less about the hustle and more about the American dream; each character portrays ambition and insecurities in the quest for more: a better community, more money, security, power, fame, recognition, leading to that great American end, excess.

The Fabulous Five: Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner

Written by Rachel Redfern

Go and see American Hustle, the latest from director David O. Russell. Go and see it not just for the fantastically eclectic seventies soundtrack, but for the amazing acting by Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, and for surprise roles from Louis C.K. and Robert De Niro. Go especially for Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams in brilliantly funny and evocative character studies.

I didn’t grow up in the 70s, but perhaps that’s why Russell’s larger than life film about the FBI ABSCAM sting is infinitely more interesting and more colorful than your average con film. Added on is the fact that American Hustle is less about the hustle and more about the American dream; each character portrays ambition and insecurities in the quest for more: a better community, more money, security, power, fame, recognition, leading to that great American end, excess.

In a film where everyone is ridiculous and almost a caricature, there is no true hero or protagonist, and the women of American Hustle are no exception; their big hair and red nails reveal a character just as selfish and flawed as any male counterpart. And the fact that the film exposes the deep insecurities and physical vanities of its male cast is an amazing reversal; in fact, they hold perhaps a larger role than female vanities–the opening sequence of the film featured three minutes of Bale’s morning hair routine, with his combover as the star, ending in one of the most amazing introductions to a character I’ve ever seen.

Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams gave brilliant performances; while the film doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, within the context of the plot, the female interactions cover material relevant to the characters, so it makes sense. And in their few interactions, the two women were volatile and terse, and captivatingly emotional.

Jennifer Lawrence was especially fantastic, at turns both hilarious and sad, a vain, silly woman on the surface, depressed and angry and confused at the core. It’s especially impressive since Lawrence just emerged from a very different role for The Hunger Games, and here showcases her skills as the best kind of actress and comedienne: sad hiding behind funny. Some are calling Adams and Lawrence’s performances Oscar-winning, and I’m inclined to agree; in fact, the entire cast was fantastic. While I find Christian Bale in some serious need of anger management, the man is a chameleon, becoming startlingly physically different for each role. And I’ve been a fan of Bradley Cooper since his Alias days, but this is his first film role that I found especially powerful, even more so than Silver Linings Playbook. Obviously Lawrence and Bradley have found a fantastic director in David O. Russell, and hopefully this collaborative pairing will continue.

In American Hustle, Cooper, more than anyone, embodies the prime theme of the film, the need for more, and in that endeavor, becomes erratic, sexy, lustful, arrogant, angry.

Adams and Cooper’s interactions are built on a sickening chemistry that becomes more and more messed up as the film progresses; in the spirit of not spoiling the film, I’ll stop there,; but in one scene, Cooper loses control in front of Adams, and becomes terrifying and dangerous in just a few moments, with Adams attempting to calm him and keep herself safe.

While the film is a little heavy handed in its use of the “something rotten is necessary to make something even more beautiful” metaphor, the focus on re-invention, survival, power, ambition, vanity and mostly, wanting a better life, are what take this con movie to the next level: an expose of the black comedy that is the American life.

Go see the film, and listen for the amazing soundtrack and its fabulous augmentation of the characters and watch for all that was bad and good of 70s fashion.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqP09uPR8c”]

Bitch Slapped: Female Violence in ‘Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters’

Written by: Rachel Redfern

Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

Watching the trailer for this year’s latest fairy tale redux, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters it, wasn’t a difficult thing to judge the film as a clichéd action movie with a bad plot and a ridiculous title: we were not wrong to do so. However, the large amount of female characters makes it at least an interesting movie to review. While the world of Hansel and Gretel does feature men, few of the main characters are and in an interesting twist for an action movie, female characters outnumber the male ones. The movie even passes the Bechdel test ironically.

So, here’s a quick breakdown of the film, which probably isn’t necessary except for the sake of a well-organized essay. Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) are siblings who are led out into the forest by their parents where they are promptly abandoned. Hansel and Gretel kill the evil witch who tries to eat Hansel and become famous witch hunters, until they end up in a town where multiple children have been taken by a trio of witches to be used for an evil ritual. Violence and one-liners ensue and Hansel and Gretel come to understand themselves and their own history better.

The film plays out like a video game: it’s violence graphic and exaggerated. Personally, I haven’t seen this many heads blown off of bodies since an ill-fated viewing of Rambo IV (2008). People are ripped to shreds, brutally beaten, squished to death, explode and any number of implausible and gory ways to die.

Jeremy Renner taking part in an improbable action scene

But again, despite Hansel and his overwhelming hatred of witches (of which there seem to be only women—no evil warlocks in this franchise), the only other men featured are a simple mayor, an abusive sheriff (Peter Stormare), a pleasant troll and an overzealous fan of Hansel and Gretel’s work (Thomas Mann).

Gemma Arterton is the other side of the bad-ass Hansel and Gretel team, starring as an appropriately aggressive Gretel. I like a spunky heroine and while Hansel does have to save her towards the end of the movie, she does drive home the final killing blow, so overall I suppose there was great equality in their violent slaughter of the witches.

On to the point, I am not opposed to female villains: I support equal-opportunity in my evil masterminds and if you’re going to have a lot of classic male villains (Lex Luther in Superman, Scar from The Lion King, Batman’s Joker), there should also be some equally evil females running around (Ursula in The Little Mermaid, the Borg Queen from Star Trek, Poison Ivy for Batman).

However, in this respect Hansel and Gretel is over the top, just as it is in pretty much every other way. But it is interesting, the violence committed by these female villains and against them is jarring and explicit, however, the filmmakers obviously did everything that they could to distance the witches from being thought of as women. Physically every witch is monstrous, with scaly skin and pointed teeth, unrecognizable as women for the most part.

So not only do they not look like women, they don’t act like maternal loving women, again making it hard to identify with them and I suppose on some level, making it easier to stomach the horrific amount of beating they all seem to receive. There are dozens of evil female witches running around dragging children from their beds in order to sacrifice them for immortality and literally consume them.

Famke Janssen as her monstrous self in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

There is one woman though who isn’t the same as the rest of the witches; Famke Janssen (X-Men) is a grand-witch and therefore able to change her appearance. She can appear as a normal human woman or can shift into her more natural, monstrous self. Interestingly enough, at one point of the movie she is, of course, being beaten up by Hansel and to try and stop him from strangling her she shifts into her beautiful human self and begins to beg Hansel for mercy. Hansel knows that she is still evil and that the beauty is just an act and so finishes her off. The moment is almost meta, as if the filmmaker was acknowledging the fact that had the women been human-looking, such gratuitously violent acts against them would have perhaps been unacceptable to audiences.

There are good witches in the film however, maternal loving women who are healers and sacrifice for their children, and are of course, physically beautiful. Though this doesn’t prevent them from getting the shit beat out of them either, just in a more socially acceptable way and one where there is swift retribution from one of the nice males in the film.

One thing that was interesting though, the film is based off the classic fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel in which Hansel and Gretel are abandoned in the forest because their evil stepmother doesn’t want to take care of them anymore. However, in this film version, Hansel and Gretel hate their mother (no stepmother) for abandoning them, only to realize later in the film that the only reason she abandoned them was to save them. It was a moment of explanation for a character who’s been demonized as a bad mother for years, but instead of playing into that, the film actually gave her a reason and a cause, humanizing her for once.

For the most part the whole film is a travesty of plot and character and feminism; it’s one redeeming feature being the amazing soundtrack, but I suppose that at the end of the day, the movie is at least honest since it never pretended to be anything other than what it was: a clichéd Hollywood action movie.

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

Strong Boy/Smart Girl: Another Hollywood Trope in ‘The Bourne Legacy’

Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz in The Bourne Legacy

The division of labor exists with impunity in the fine world of the Hollywood action movie, a genre that I do occasionally enjoy. Hollywood’s latest action film, The Bourne Legacy, is a continuation of the atmospheric, amnesiac thriller that originally starred Matt Damon. The new version with Jeremy Renner (Hurt Locker) doesn’t stick Renner in as the next Jason Bourne (thank goodness—this is not Batman or James Bond), but adds a new super assassin for us to chase throughout the world, while riding some rickety mode of transportation.

Renner jumps off of buildings, waterfalls, climbs mountains, wrestles wolves and basically does everything that would ever make you feel self-conscious about your own athleticism; He is offset by Rachel Weisz as the brilliant scientist who knows everything about anatomy, psychology, biology, but can’t really throw a punch.

Enter in the standard action movie plot and character trope: A very strong, good-looking guy with mad survival skills is thrown together, by some mutual need, with a beautiful and intelligent, slightly nervous smart girl who has perfect hair. These two will originally struggle with mistrust and some playful bickering before realizing their mutual respect and lust and getting together, thereby becoming the perfect team of strong boy and smart girl.

Some examples to help illustrate my point: The Saint, Batman Begins, Superman and feel free to just queue up the James Bond music as that’s the plot for every single Bond movie ever made (although, to be fair, in a Bond movie one of the girls will turn out to be an evil kickass).

Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue in The Saint

I can think of exceptions to this rule, but in those cases it’s usually the sort of the guy who holds all the chips: Spiderman (let’s be honest MJ was never particularly bright) but Peter Parker is brilliant and strong, Ironman (nothing wrong with Pepper Potts, she’s pretty much a layer of good, uptight, responsibility—girl style), yet Tony Stark is, of course, a genius and strong (though he has a weak heart so I suppose that equals the field or something).

The point is not to make you hate your favorite action movies and neither is this trope all-encompassing; there are dozens of exceptions and variations of the boy/girl thrown together action plot. Rather, the point is a much more fundamental question I’ve been considering lately: inequality in romantic relationships. Now, I’m not complaining about making women smart in movies, I think it’s great. I mean no one wants to see that annoying chick in The Princess Bride, Buttercup, who does absolutely nothing the whole movie but look nice. Female characters who are smart (or who perhaps represent the tough girl switch where the girl is strong and the boy is smart like in How to Train your Dragon) are interesting and (somewhat) multi-dimensional, but why does it have to be divided so transparently even?

Contradictions in character are what make characters relate-able and engaging. Again, this is not a campaign for bringing back Buttercup or making women completely smart and tough all the time in all the movies, because well, that’s just not good film-making since film is about people and everyone is different. What I’d just like to see is some variation, less of an oh-so-obvious split down the middle….perhaps, fewer tropes and more people? Specifically, I’d like to see some variation in the portrayal of women in action movies. It’s a great genre, full of adrenalin and good times, why can’t women reflect that while still being original?

Having people be so completely well matched is unrealistic. And not that a super assassin (who just also happens to be super trustworthy and great boyfriend material) running all over the world with a sexy scientist is a realistic situation, but the people in that situation are supposed to be realistic-like, as is their relationship. Why must it be that either the two characters hang there in completely balance to each other, ‘I’m smart, I contribute” and “I’m strong, I contribute” or one is at the top carrying everything, while the other lags along at the bottom just brushing their hair and making us sad?

I’ve read a few things that suggest that some people believe that heroines have overwhelmingly ascended to the top of the action movie pile; that they’re so cool that mean can’t keep up anymore. Please, just look at this year’s action movie selection to realize that’s not true. But what is true is that a lot of characters in mainstream action movies are still falling short of accurate character portrayals and stepping outside of the plot box.

Now, granted, did I enjoy the movie? Yes. Could it have been better? Yes. Are there examples of interesting, more human based characters in action movies? Yes, (I actually think the original Bourne movies do a great job of that). Does Hollywood need to do a little better in it’s portrayal of women and actually give them a unique personality? YES.