Friday, September 15, 2006
Review: Right At Your Door
What would happen if terrorists exploded several dirty bombs during the rush hour of a major metropolitan area? What if you were safe at home but your wife was right in the middle of it? What if American movie makers stopped being so terrified of terrorism in this post 9/11 world and used an attack purely as a narrative backdrop? New film Right at Your Door tries to answer these questions.
Rory Cochrane plays 'Brad', newly wed and moved to Los Angeles with Lexi, played by Mary McCormack. They wake up, share some domestic scenes of coffee making, teeth brushing and small talk, then she goes off to work and he turns on the radio. Then the radio tells him there have been explosions downtown and he dashes off in his car to find her as the police attempt to quarantine the city.
He fails to find her, witnesses scenes of increasing panic and social breakdown, then heads back to his house to seal up all the windows and doors because people are being told the smoke spreading out over the suburbs contains a lethal virus. That gets us to about 30 minutes in, so I won't spoil any more of the story.
What is interesting about Brad is not his character, which is thinly sketched in the script and played well but without much individuality by Cochrane, but that he is us. He's in his late twenties/early thirties, he dresses casually, he sports a scuzzy beard, he's a musician, he listens to indie guitar rock. He's a fairly normal generation x'er, still holding on to the fashions of alternative culture but starting to settle down in the mainstream of Amercian society. He's not the suit wearing corporate schmoe. He's not the blue collar, rough but honest lunkhead. He's not a radical, rebellious type. He's not any of the other stereotypes that they put into disaster movies to represent the average American man. If the film does nothing else it is good for propagating a different kind of everyman - one that I actually meet from time to time.
But he is the everyman. The film is playing the 'what would you do?' card, and so have him be a little generic allows the audience to project on to his decisions, both when they seem reasonable and when they seem more desperate.
The film plays like Night of the Living Dead after it moves back to the house, with one small location, a sense of siege, a not entirely understood threat and a radio that he keeps on to tell him what is happening in the outside world. While that film, however, ups the sense of dread and danger, this one chooses to focus on the sadness and loss of the characters as Brad tries to deal with his safe but powerless position and his wife being out there in the toxic cloud, turning eventually into a 'how does it feel?' movie.
The film, which is obviously fairly low budget and 'indie' in style, is made well enough. Instead of going the route of most low budget movies, which is to make a high budget film only more craply, it is structured so as to put the sense of scale at the front of the movie (complete with some driving scenes and a few fx shots of the burning LA skyline), so the move to the house feels more natural and less like a cheat. The audience has already been shown what is happening in the wider world, and will accept just being told what is happening from then on (a tactic familiar to geeks from Star Trek battle scenes).
The movie is broken up into 10-15 minute sections, seperated by fades to black. This not only gives a sense of 'time moving on', which heightens the sense of doom around how long the wife has been out in the cloud, but also gives a sense of structure that first time writer/director Chris Gorak can use to paper over potential any failings in his cinematic storytelling.
Unfortunately, by ignoring the overarching story going on in the city, there's very little drama, and having the characters, especially Brad, be so reasonable, normal and everyman-y makes the emotional content, at best, only luke-warm. He cries, he feels angry, he feels lonely and so on, but he's so practical, co-operative and matter of fact about everything that it never really seems like the end of the world. Whatever happens, you get the feeling he'll go along with it. This, more than any problems with acting or direction, dilutes what should be some fairly heartbreaking scenes about accepting death towards the end.
The film is certainly watchable. It is intelligent enough, never strays from the point, never breaks its rules and doesn't outstay its welcome. The problem is that it never fulfills any of its potential. It is a movie dealing with a hot-button political issue but never explores it. It is an intimate character drama that is never all that emotional. It is a disaster movie flagrantly using a controversial topic that studiously avoids anything more controversial (or juicy) than a severed limb.
Now, the advertising in England mentions a twist several times, so I will assume they will mention it when it is released in America. One of the worst things you can do to a twist movie (beyond revealing the twist) is telling everyone to expect one, but oh well. Yes, there is a twist, it works well enough, and makes enough sense not to feel cheated. Beyond that I won't go into any more specifics. What the twist does do is reveal that the movie is structurally just another thriller, most similar to mainstream films like Panic Room, which also deals with enclosed spaces and has an episodic structure seperated by fades to black.
This shows up the lie of it pretending to be an 'indie' character piece, whose quiet drama is supposed to be relatable and realistic, when what it is actually doing is playing on your fears of terrorism to create tension. It is called Right at Your Door and the terror of the event is not the thousands of innocent people who died - these people are barely mentioned in the film - but that you yourself are in danger. Rather than focusing in on the actual tragedy, it plays up the fear-mongering spin that no-one is safe - a reactionary, selfish and distinctly neocon idea in a film who's main character and overall tone is far more liberal.
We can all argue after we've seen the film (if anyone does - none of the normal websites actually give a US release date yet) as to whether it shows up the reactionary in the seemingly liberal once a crisis turns up, or what the twist says about our fear/trust of the authorities but, as it stands, the film is slightly disingenuous underneath the surface.
Right at Your Door can be praised for finally bringing terrorism on American soil back into the mealstrom of popular culture after being an open wound too painful to even touch for too long (read me rambling on about this here). Just as a movie though, it is a solid but unremarkable effort, which always seems like the worst thing to say about a movie.
6 rolls of sellotape out of 10
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