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REVIEWS


Comrade Kim Goes Flying Reviewed by Allen Hunter


The cheery spirit of Stalinist-era propaganda films is alive and flourishing in Comrade Kim Goes Flying, a fluffy, feel- good valentine to a little working-class girl with impossible dreams. The film’s unique status as the first Western- financed fiction feature made entirely in North Korea should attract the curiosity of some festival programmers. The retro sensibility, garish production design and simplistic plotting are unlikely to attract wider international audiences unless the film finds a niche as a high-camp object of derision. Comrade Kim (Han) is just the Stakhanovite-style worker


The Company You Keep Reviewed by Lee Marshall


GALA


There is nothing wrong with an old-fashioned political thriller. But Robert Redford’s story of a former 1970s radical left activist who is unmasked by a keen young reporter could do with being a little more old-fashioned in one respect. A director like Sidney Lumet knew that however good your characters and however telling the social and ethical issues you raise, if you ain’t got tension, you ain’t got a thriller — and it is in this department that The Company You Keep mostly fails to deliver. Apart from that one — rather serious — flaw, this is a rea-


sonably well-crafted package that lets Redford and Shia LaBeouf show their acting abilities and marshals a gallery of veteran US thespians, from Nick Nolte through Chris Cooper to Susan Sarandon, whose entries we half expect to be greeted with canned applause. Based on the novel of the same name by Neil Gordon, the


film sets up its premise through archival footage of early- 1970s TV news reports on attacks carried out by the Weather Underground, aka the Weathermen, the clandestine radical US group spawned by the anti-Vietnam protestmovements. We learn that several Weathermen who killed a security guard in a Michigan bank heist are still on the run 30 years later (this fictional heist was possibly inspired by the 1981 Brink’s rob- bery, in which members of the group were involved). When one of those on the wanted list, Sharon Solarz


(Sarandon), is apprehended, keen and arrogant young Albany reporter Ben Shepard (LaBeouf ) sets out on an investigative trail that leads him to upstanding Albany lawyer Jim Grant (Redford), a widower who lives alone with his young daughter Isabel (Jackie Evancho, a child singer discovered on America’s Got Talent). When Ben reveals Jim Grant’s former identity as Nick


Sloan, one of the activists wanted for the bank heist, Nick goes on the run, leaving Isabel with his brother (Cooper) and setting off across the US. His mission, it soon becomes clear, has much to do with Mimi (Christie), his former lover and fellow activist. Ben sets off in hot pursuit to get the story he feels will make his career, despite the reluctance of his boss (Tucci) and the hostility of the FBI team that is tracking Sloan’s movements across state lines. Redford gives a genially authentic performance, but he is


getting a little old for foot chases, and his character is too laid-back to communicate much sense of danger (it does not help that his main mode of disguise consists of pulling his baseball cap further down). LaBeouf pays his way as a cal- lous reporter more interested in the buzz of the big story than the human cost of those he exposes, but this is hardly a career-best performance.


n 10 Screen International at Toronto September 8, 2012


US-Can. 2012. 125mins Director Robert Redford Production companies Voltage Pictures, Wildwood Enterprises, Brightlight Pictures International sales Voltage Pictures, www. voltagepictures.com Producers Nicolas Chartier, Robert Redford, Bill Holderman Executive producers Craig J Flores, Shawn Williamson Screenplay Lem Dobbs, based on the novel by Neil Gordon Cinematography Adriano Goldman Editor Mark Day Production designer Laurence Bennett Music Cliff Martinez Main cast Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Sam Elliott, Brendan Gleeson, Terrence Howard, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick, Brit Marling, Stanley Tucci, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Susan Sarandon, Jackie Evancho


that Stalin might have admired. A coal miner in a small rural village, she is dedicated to her work and renowned for exceeding her quotas. She has dreamed of being an acrobat since her childhood but put such foolish hopes aside after the death of her mother. Assigned to a construction site in Pyongyang for a year,


she is thrilled at the opportunity to see the big city and visit a circus, where she meets trapeze artist Ri Su-yon. Encour- aged to audition, she is publicly humiliated but leaves deter- mined to conquer her fear of heights and prove to arrogant but seemingly irresistible Pak Jang-phil (Pak) that even coal- miners can master the high-wire trapeze. In some respects, Comrade Kim is no more corny than


anything Hollywood might have devised for Ruby Keeler or Deanna Durbin in the 1930s — Kim even pretends to have a twin sister at one point. There are even times when it seems to acknowledge its own ridiculousness when Kim challenges Pak to a cement-mixing context or arm-wrestles with factory workers. It might have worked as a tongue-in-cheek spoof with a hint of Tears Of The Black Tiger but it is hard to take seriously at face value. The latter stages of the film are more engaging as Kim


undertakes a gruelling training schedule to chase her dream. Suddenly, we are in the familiar comfort zone of underdog territory defined by Billy Elliot and countless Rocky films. The production notes reveal the performers are circus acro- bats who have never previously acted and that may explain why the scenes focusing on the trapeze routines and acts of physical derring-do easily carry the most conviction. Generally, the performances veer towards the enthusiastic


and eager-to-please, with Han Jong-sim all wide-eyed smiles and plucky determination as Kim. Comrade Kim does afford the odd lush, picture-postcard


glimpse of the notoriously secretive North Korea, but it is not flamboyant enough to work as a candy-coloured satire (a musical number or two might have helped) and it is not charming enough to succeed on its own modest terms as a heartwarming fairy-tale.


CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA


Bel-N Kor-UK. 2012. 83mins Directors Anja Daelemans, Nicholas Bonner, Kim Gwang-hun Production company/ international sales Another Dimension Of An Idea, anja@ anotherdimension.be Directors Anja Daelemans, Nicholas Bonner, Ryom Mi-hwa Screenplay Sin Myong Sik, Kim Chol Cinematography Hwang Jin-sok Editors Alain Dessauvage, Kim Yun-sim, Gao Bing, Ren Jia Production designer Kim won-song Music Ham Chol, Frederik Van de Moortel Main cast Kim Chol, Han Jong-sim, Pak Chung-guk, Ri Yong-ho, Kim Son-nam


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