Imperium

Title: Imperium

Director: Daniel Ragussis

Released: 2016

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Devin Druid, Pawel Szajda, Nestor Carbonell, Sam Trammell

Plot: FBI agent Nate Foster (Radcliffe) is sent undercover as a neo-Nazi when it is suspected that a white supremacist group is plotting an attack.

Review: I’m not sure if its just me but I’m sure that the career paths of both Daniel Radcliffe and Elijah Wood if put side by side would pretty much match up with both coming to the attention of the general movie going public through blockbusters before moving into more indie productions and arguably producing some of the best work of their respective careers with Elijah Wood giving us the likes of “Grand Piano” and “Maniac” after the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy while Daniel Radcliffe only continues to make the Harry Potter years seem like a distant memory as he’s matured as an actor let alone showing the same kind of ballsy role picking with films like this and “Swiss Army Man” that helped Joseph Gordon Levitt become such a darling of the indie scene.

Of course when you think of Neo-Nazi’s I’m sure that Radcliffe’s name would be way down the list of potential actors but then that was one of the main things which drew me to this film, after all this is a the kind of role which has become synonymous with the performances given by the likes of Edward Norton and Russell Crowe as well as perhaps to a lesser extent Ryan Gosling. Yet somehow Radcliffe pulls off the role playing up the lack of believability to extraordinary effect.

Based on the career of former undercover FBI agent Michael German who wrote the script with director Daniel Raguissis who makes his feature debut with this film. German over the course of his career spent time undercover with both supremacists and right-wing militants which brings some legitimacy to the always dubious “Based on real events” title card the film opens with.

When Radcliffe’s FBI agent Foster is introduced during the arrest of a terrorist suspect were he is pushed to the background of the arrest while his superiors claim the credit for his work. At the same time Foster is shown as being something of an intellectual loner as he spends his evenings drinking expensive wine, listening to Brahm’s and sharing his meals with a book. However this seemingly makes him the perfect candidate for going undercover it would seem in the eyes of Agent Zamparo (Collette) who is investigating the involvement of white supremacist groups in the theft of caesium-137 which could be turned into a dirty bomb. The fact that Foster is such an unlikely candidate for undercover work, let alone to imitate a neo-nazi is seemingly what makes him perfect for such an operation seeing how many members of these organisations share a similar upbringing as Foster.

This idea that people’s direction in life being affected by their life experiences really plays an under lying theme throughout the film, before being highlighted again at the closing. At the same time the film equally suffers from going through the usual motions of these kinds of movies as we get the initial introduction to the hotheaded agitators while the elder figure making all the big claims turns out to be far from the person they claim to be. We do however get some interesting moments scattered throughout which do bring some unique aspects to the story such as a gathering being held in a quiet suberban neighbourhood hosted by white collar family man Gerry (Trammell) were the guest all seem like regular upstanding members of society despite the fact that one of the wives has brought Swastika topped cupcakes reminding the audience that not all supremacist look the same.

The character of Gerry is another cliché aspect to the story in which we get the Neo-Nazi who can justify his love of Jewish conductors or black music and its the kind of character who turns up time and time again and perhaps its down to the enjoyable performance given by Trammell that it wasn’t such an eye rolling cliché moment here. Gerry though provides for Foster one of the few seeming safe harbours when surrounded by members of the various groups threatening to reveal his true identity, while their shared interests and similar personalities make for a genuine friendship which leaves you wondering if he’s getting too involved with the people he’s supposed to be investigating.

Crafting a tightly plotted story there is little hanging around with the plot while the tension is kept high throughout as doubt is constantly being cast on the different aspects of his story. While Radcliffe might not seem like the most intimidating actor, here it really works to his advantage with the path they choose to take with his character so that you never get the feeling of implausibility like we got when Elijah Wood tried to play a football hooligan in the dire “Green Street”.

On the downside the final act feels kind of forced and rushed and really could have done with having more time to breathe than the sudden introduction of new conspirators to the plot, while Foster rushes around to defuse a dirty bomb plot. While it does have some tense moments such as trying to pass off fake chemicals, it just all needs more time to develop especially when the journey to this point has been so great its frustrating to see such a rushed climax.

A fantastic indie thriller that approaches the Neo Nazi material in perhaps a more subtle way than the superior “American History X” or “Romper Stomper” but this is still a great indie thriller well worth checking out.

Stone

Title: Stone

Director: Sandy Harbutt
Released: 1974
Starring:  Ken Shorter, Sandy Harbutt, Helen Morse, Roger Ward, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Vincent Gill, Bindi Williams, Dewey Hungerford, Rebecca Gilling

Plot: Police officer Stone (Shorter) goes undercover with the Gravediggers, an outlaw motorcycle gang to find out who is murdering their members.

 

Review: Originally I had intended to review this movie way back when I did “Ozsploitation Month” only to get distracted by other films to the point were I’ve only now finally got around to watching it. It is also safe to say that it is also far from the biker movie I first expected going into it, as what director Harbutt gives here instead is more of a tibute to biker culture and the outlaw lifestyle than most biker movies would concern themselves, as the focus is put less on their hell raising antics and instead more on the family unit they have crafted for themselves.

Released five years before the first of the “Mad Max” films, which several the cast would also go on to appear in, this film would also have the honour of being the first Australian biker movie, which considering what gear heads Australian audiences are really makes it all the more surprising that no one made one earlier. At the same time the Ozploitation era would frequently be responsible for so many of firsts like this including giving the world Australia’s first Kung fu movie with “The Man From Hong Kong”. Sadly though despite this legacy the film has largely been forgotten and no doubt I too wouldn’t have known about it like so many films in the genre had it not been for the truly essential documentary “Not Quite Hollywood” which equally served to provide a handy watch list for the Ozploitation genre aswell as countless stories to highlight the indie film making methods being used to make them.

Opening with not only with some seriously trippy visuals as one of the bikers witnesses the assassination of a politician while on a serious acid trip, but some fun bike porn for those of you who like your motorcycles as the Gravediggers roll out on old school Kawasaki’s (according to Wikipedia) with the opening credits being made up of sudden freeze frame shots of different parts of the motorcycle as the rider prepares for a ride. From here we get to watch various members of the Gravediggers being taken off in a variety of creative ways including the old wire decapitation aswell as an incredible cliff jump. While these moments are fun they are then completely overshadowed by arguably the best scene of the whole film with a biker funeral precession complete with motorcycle and sidecar coffin and a line of bikers which never seems to end, as some four hundred bikers turned out to help with the filming of the scene.

The downside of this scene appearing so close to the start though is that the rest of the film never manages to better it, especially as the pace becomes more sedate with Stone slowly earning the trust of the Gravediggers while at the same time becoming ever more drawn into their outlaw lifestyle, which here Harbutt chooses to show as being less anarchic in nature than other biker films and instead showing the group living in an almost hippie commune style situation. Equally interesting is the fact that Stone openly admits to being a police officer from the start, rather than the film taking the more well-travelled road of him hiding his true identity and finding a way into the gang. This honesty does as a result create an almost anthropological style situation, as the bikers immediately distrust Stone due to him being a cop and hence the embodiment of everything they despise. The scenes which follow all charting the slowly increasing trust he earns from the group by participating in gang brawls and from his riding skills all the while finding himself slowly being increasingly drawn to their lifestyle the more he learns about them. This is of course only further helped by the Gravediggers being slightly deeper than your usual bikers as highlighted during the scene where they share their stories of what brought them all together, with the majority of them taking on the outlaw lifestyle due to delusion with various aspects of society, with most falling under hot topics of the period.

While Harbutt might not here be focused on the usual biker antics he does however still give us a fair few including a parking lot brawl with a rival biker gang. What is especially interesting about these scenes though is trying to figure how much of the action was planned, seeing how Harbutt recruited a number of real bikers for the film who he was also paying in beer leading unsurprisingly to a number of fights breaking out on set, with the situation only being further antagonised by Roger Ward who for some reason thought it would be a good idea to call the local Hell’s Angels chapter a bunch of poofters from the hotel balcony. Harbutt aswell was a big fan of the group being believable in their roles and insisted on the group living embracing their roles as much as possible which saw them living the biker lifestyle throughout filming, a situation which also reportedly made it far from a fun set for the female cast members many of which complaining of being objectified throughout filming.

While it might be now more overshadowed by the “Mad Max” films this is still an enjoyable movie, even if its opening fifteen minutes is misleading as to what the rest of the film will be like, especially with the earlier mentioned funeral scene but it ensures that while the tone for the majority of the film is pretty sedate that it still saves a jaw dropping surprise for the ending! True it might be a very different biker movie and more for the completest than the casual viewer, but as a curious watch the set pieces alone make it a worthwhile watch.