Nathalie Emmanuel

The Killer

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Nathalie Emmanuel with the Eiffel Tower in the background

John Woo never feels fully in control of The Killer, the remake of his own film from 1989, an accusation you could never have levelled at the original. Flipping the gender of the assassin, and switching from Hong Kong to Paris both seem like sound ideas, not least because in some quarters the increasingly close relationship between the assassin and his cop pursuer in the original seemed a bit too close to homosexual. No chance of that now. Omar Sy is in the cop role, and of all the many actors in this strangely off thriller, Sy probably comes out of it least shortchanged. There are two familiar tales here. First the “a … Read more

Arthur the King

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Arthur and Michael

If it’s nothing else, Arthur the King is a solid introduction to adventure racing, an arduous mix of running, climbing, biking and kayaking in inhospitable climates over hundreds of miles. One race takes days. It’s not for the faint hearted. Unlike this movie, which is pre-chewed meat for the softest of constitutions, a fictional retelling of the story of Swedish adventure racer Mikael Lindnord, his mid-race encounter with a street dog and their mutual stagger together towards some kind of salvation. The original story took place in Ecuador, but Simon Cellan Jones’s film relocates the action to the Dominican Republic, where Mikael, now renamed Michael and played by Mark Wahlberg in another doughty-plugger … Read more