Hellion (5/10): Watchable despite lacking originality and subtlety.

“What are you troublemakers up to?

Based on Kat Candler’s own short film, Hellion is a movie that tries to explore the life of a thirteen year old boy named Jacob (Josh Wiggins) who has recently lost his mother, and to make things worse his father (Aaron Paul) has been emotionally absent while drowning himself in booze. It is no surprise that Jacob has been expressing his rebellion by participating in several acts of vandalism along with his neighborhood friends. When word gets out that his little brother, Wes (Deke Garner), is being dragged into this lifestyle, CPS places him in the care of their Aunt Pam (Juliette Lewis). Hollis loves his children, but he is still hurting for the loss of their mother and when he realizes that he is also losing his children he tries to change, but the focus of the film is on Jacob who thinks he can make things right by winning a local dirt bike competition. This is a coming of age film that tries to portray the family dynamics in an authentic way, but it never fully avoids the genre cliches. Hellion lacks some subtlety, but it benefits from a strong lead performance from Josh Wiggins. Besides directing, Candler wrote the screenplay for this film in which she has no intention of shining a light on the innocence of this kid, but rather portraying him as a victim of his circumstance due to the neglect of his father. Somehow the film failed to connect with me and I wouldn’t recommend it over other brilliant coming of age films. Clocking at just under 100 minutes the pacing of the film does seem to be a problem as well and many scenes could’ve been cut out of the movie. We are repeatedly batted over the head with Jacob’s rebellious behavior and it got a bit tiresome after a while. The soundtrack consists of mostly heavy metal tracks which both Jacob and his father like to indulge in while at home. The story takes place in a small southern Texas town which is gorgeously captured by Brett Pawlak’s shaky cameras. Unfortunately everything that Hellion tries to say has been said before in other better films.

What Hellion has going for it are the strong performances. Josh Wiggins is outstanding as the lead character in the film. It is hard to get a good performance from young teen actors at times, but Wiggins is a natural and he delivers an authentic portrayal of a troubled teen who is struggling to understand why the world has turned its back on him. Deke Garner plays his younger brother in a subtle manner. He is mostly a sponge that tries to absorb what the people around him say to him. Garner had worked with Candler in the short which this film is based on. Imagine if Aaron Paul’s character from Breaking Bad would’ve been rehabilitated after finding a lovely wife and having two children with her. Later he loses his wife and falls in despair all over again, but instead of drowning his sorrows in drugs he does so with booze. Paul is playing this character full of anger once again who doesn’t seem to know how to raise his children on his own. It was refreshing to see Juliette Lewis playing a normal role and trying to be a good role model for her nephews. This is Josh Wiggins movie and he elevates the material in such a way that he makes this a watchable experience despite lacking originality and subtlety.

Exodus: Gods and Kings (5/10): A disappointing Biblical adaptation from the talented Ridley Scott

“Follow me and you will be free. Stay and you will perish.”

Ridley Scott is always a director to look forward to when it comes to films. I know he has had his series of misses as of late, but with films like Alien and Blade Runner under his belt, you know his next film could become a classic. Alien is one of my favorite sci-fi films of all time and I even enjoyed Scott’s recent prequel, Prometheus, more than most audiences did. Exodus isn’t the first time Scott has tried to make an epic film because it is similar in scope to what he did with Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, and Robin Hood. Unfortunately, Exodus is the weakest of the four in my opinion. Scott has also experimented with different genres and last year’s The Counselor was proof of that. He’s even made some smaller films which I really enjoyed such as Matchstick Men which I was a huge fan of. I appreciate these smaller scale films more than when he tries to make these grandiose and epic ones. My major issue with this film revolves around the pacing because it felt so long and dull for most parts. It was as if Scott was aiming to direct an ambitious epic film and was trying to make it so grand that he got lost with the production and visuals of it and left out the actual narrative. There are several things I’d like to get out of the way before I actually review this film. First of all, if you are expecting a faithful adaptation to the Biblical story then Exodus isn’t a movie for you because Scott and the screenwriters took several liberties of their own (especially in the way Moses interacted with God and the Pharaoh). This is the second big budget film based on the Old Testament to come out last year, after Aronofsky directed Noah, which both took liberties from the original source material but in my opinion at least Aronofsky did something fresh and unique with the material, while Scott never manages to do so. Second, I don’t understand why we complaint so much about the casting of white actors and forget about the fact that the characters are all speaking in English. What is the point of casting all Egyptian and Hebrew actors and have them speak in English? At least Scott went all in and just cast famous actors without considering anything else.

It took me a while to get over the silliness of the opening sequences. On the one hand, Scott made a huge effort of recreating the Egyptian empire with huge production sets, but on the other the familiar faces of the actors kind of took me out of the film. Having John Turturro playing the Pharaoh and Sigourney Weaver his wife was difficult to visualize. I think Joel Edgerton is a great actor, but he wasn’t the right man for the role of Ramses. Christian Bale delivers as Moses and Ben Mendelssohn has the most campy scenes in the film but I think they helped to break the tedious tone of the film. Aaron Paul and Ben Kingsley are inexplicably underused. Despite the nice visuals (I don’t think they were groundbreaking), the story was poorly written and that is perhaps why some of these incredible actors didn’t have much to work with. There are some moments in the film where Moses is given some humanity, but whatever depth they tried to give the characters got lost in the visuals and the narrative. We know the story and have seen it played out several times in films before, so that is perhaps why I found some of the engaging scenes rather tedious because Scott doesn’t really do anything unique with the material. By the time the plagues take place we really don’t care for the characters and aren’t emotionally invested in them either. Yes, the scenes look great but there is nothing more there. I also expected a lot more from the parting of the Red Sea, but it simply was a forgettable scene. The only moment I felt some sort of emotion toward this dull film was with the dedication to his brother Tony during the end credits, but the film didn’t actually do anything for me. I was more emotionally engaged with the animated film The Prince of Egypt than I was with this. Skip the movie, read Exodus instead.