[yasr_overall_rating]
A man looks to find a way to escape the criminal ways of his outlaw family.
I love The Chemical Brothers. Though their output has been patchy since the early 2000s, there’s no denying that the electronic duo’s first two albums – “Exit Planet Dust” and “Dig Your Own Hole” – redefined the genre for generations to come. Paying tribute to 1960s psychedelia, hip-hop, big beat and techno, those albums merged the past with the future, a wicked synthesis that since then endured decades of mutations and reinterpretations.
Director Adam Smith seems to share my passion for the two musicians. He beautifully captured their 2012 performance at the Fuji Rock Festival in the concert doc “Don’t Think”: all neon lights, hallucinatory visuals, thumping beats and a wildly ecstatic crowd. Smith brought you so close to the actual experience, it made you want to step through celluloid and join the party.
He must have seen Joe Wright’s “Hannah,” a flawed film, bolstered by the Chemical Brother’s scaled-back, minimalist, cold soundtrack – and figured, “Hey, I could use their trademark sound, a hybrid of a reimagined, fading past and a meditation on the future, for my newest crime drama, ‘Trespass Against Us’!” Unfortunately, as was the case with “Hannah,” the film does not live up to the wondrous sounds complementing it, and the alleged effect of the soundtrack reflecting the film’s themes of redemption and renewal gets lost in the turkey – sorry – murky plot and visuals. What could have potentially been an enduring cinematic meditation of past fusing with future – or, at the very least, a great showcase for two stellar actors ends up a mildly diverting, neither-here-nor-there experience. Kudos for trying though.
It starts off effectively enough. Chad Cutler (Michael Fassbender) chases a bunny down a field in his Subaru (this scene struck me as a particularly effective product placement, the car revving and swerving through the grass in a most picturesque fashion), letting his son control the wheel. A bunch of thugs guffaw away. The bunny escapes.
We meet Chad’s father, Colby Cutler (Brendan Gleeson), along with the rest of Colby’s trailer park commune/clan – hoodlums delegated to a remote patch of the forest, committing crimes and generally causing ruckus. Chad’s wife, Kelly (Lyndsey Marshal), urges him to get away from his antagonizing father (“you can’t stand up to your dad, that’s your problem”). Chad considers buying a pigeon farm (my guess is due to his affinity with the stray bird – he spends his twilights gazing longingly into the distance, pigeon on his shoulder), and relocating to a safer community with his wife and child.
However, he’s in too deep. A cop, P.C. Lovage (Rory Kinnear), is on his trail – even going as far as kidnapping Chad’s kids to attempt to blackmail Kelly. Colby’s grip is tightening. “Dogs can only play with cats so long, before the dog gets scratched,” he foreshadows, sending Chad on another job, which lands him on the national news. This, in turn, leads to a violent raid of the commune, Chad’s children getting kicked out of school, the pigeon farm dream dissipating, and – wait for it – the final straw: the inability to buy a puppy… No matter how hard he tries, Chad cannot escape his past. The final scene, involving a tree, verges on laugh-out-loud ridiculous. “You have to stand up to them, or they will trespass against us”, after all.
Smith’s directorial grip is assured, but his storytelling skills could use honing, his subjects deeper probing. He is quite capable when it comes to shaping a gripping or funny sequence: the gang taunting the completely useless coppers in a yellow car (Chad possesses the driving proficiency of Michael Schumacher); the robbing of a mansion and consequent chase through the woods – oh, and a canine execution; the hilarious little detour involving a gas station attendant; the double-interrogation sequence between the two Cutlers… When it comes to putting those sequences together and making the whole resonate, the director flounders.
“Trespass Against Us” doesn’t add up to much, the plot itself as thin as the walls of the Cutlers’ trailers. Themes of absolution, loyalty, accepting change, father-son relationships – and that whole “one last job” chestnut – have all been explored before, more incisively. Smith fails to infuse his debut feature with a gritty mysticism, a-la Ben Wheatley, or give it an epic, almost-Biblical scope – what the Coens do best. It’s neither a gritty crime flick, nor an existential rumination on what it truly means to lead that off-the-grid lifestyle. “Dad, is the world really flat?” Chad’s son asks towards the end. Despite the occasional beacon of hope, this film certainly is, the gifted cinematographer Eduard Grau’s oppressively grey visuals not helping matters.
Gleeson is wonderful, per usual, pure seething menace and smarmy charm, a hideous monster that manages to also be likable. “No swearing?” he bellows. “What’s that about? It’s a God’s given right to swear!” Whether he spouts nonsense about the Earth being flat or waxes poetic on out-there evolution theories, Gleeson is pure magic. Fassbender seems a bit lost, a bit too sophisticated, but perhaps that’s the point – for him to stand out in this pack of rats. Their chemistry together is searing hot, making one wish the entire film revolved around those two actors, simply talking.
A24’s stellar run of incredible features (“Moonlight,” “The Lobster,” “Room,” “Green Room,” “Ex Machina,” “20th Century Women,” “Amy,” “Under the Skin,” just to name a few) takes a little stumble, but one can’t fault the acquisitions team for picking up this film: a classy cast, a compelling concept, a director on the rise… It just doesn’t quite gel. While it will certainly hold your attention, it won’t trespass against you either (whatever that means) – and you will surely want it to.
The score, however, is stellar.
Now available on Video On Demand
