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As Catholics, we know vengeance is wrong (especially if it involves killing people!), but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a good revenge film every now and then. Movie characters don’t have to be perfect, so we can still appreciate what these stories get right without condoning vengeance in the real world. In fact, I'd even say there’s something deeply satisfying about seeing despicable criminals get their comeuppance, so it should come as no surprise that I've had my eye on the upcoming revenge film The Amateur for a while. I thought it looked like a great new spin on a longstanding cinematic template, and when I got the chance to catch an early screening of the movie, I couldn’t say no.
The Amateur was directed by James Hawes, and it stars Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Caitríona Balfe, Jon Bernthal, Holt McCallany, Julianne Nicholson, Danny Sapani, and Laurence Fishburne. In the film, Charlie Heller is a tech genius who works for the CIA. He’s much more of a behind-the-scenes guy than a field agent, but that changes when his wife, Sarah, is tragically killed in a terrorist attack. He wants his superiors to go after the people who perpetrated the attack, but despite their assurances, they seem reluctant to take any action. Eventually, Charlie decides to use his unique skills to avenge his wife’s death as only a “nerdy fellow who works on computers” (to quote the trailer) can, and he blackmails his boss into letting him do it. Unsurprisingly, Charlie’s insubordination doesn’t go over too well, so he now has to deal with two problems: the people he’s going after and the people he works for. As you might be able to guess from that plot synopsis, The Amateur isn’t your typical revenge flick. Sure, it has a few bursts of action every now and then, but for the majority of its runtime, this movie plays more like a drama than anything else. In fact, the script goes out of its way to tell us that Charlie is no John Wick, so if you’re expecting a nonstop whirlwind of guns, car chases, and hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Instead, this film is a cerebral thriller that relies primarily on its characters and the sly cat-and-mouse games they play, and it knocks it out of the park on both fronts. Let’s start with the characters. This entire cast is excellent, but hands down, the best of the bunch is Rami Malek. He plays Charlie, and he totally nails the entire gamut of this guy’s emotions. For example, when The Amateur begins, you can tell that he genuinely loves his wife. It’s on his face and in his voice whenever she’s around, so you just know the woman’s death is going to hit him like a ton of bricks. And when the inevitable happens, Malek doesn’t miss a beat. Charlie isn’t the most emotional guy around, but Malek finds a way to effectively portray the character’s grief without the typical sobbing and screaming you often see in these situations. It’s a great performance that makes the injustice of Sarah’s death almost palpable, so when Charlie decides to go after the people who killed her, you’re completely on board. You want them to get the comeuppance they deserve, and thankfully, Charlie’s unorthodox methods are an absolute blast. The filmmakers come up with a number of truly inventive ways to use the character’s considerable brainpower, and in a genre often driven by brute force, this more intellectual approach to on-screen vengeance is a breath of fresh air. It’ll keep you on the edge of your seat just like more common revenge tactics, but it’ll engage your mind way more than these movies typically do. It adds a great new wrinkle to this time-honored cinematic template, but it’s only half the story. The other half is the CIA’s hunt for its rogue agent, and that side of the film is just as engaging. Granted, it doesn’t have the emotional pull of Charlie’s quest, but it makes up for that by adding some action to its brainy thrills. We get an automotive getaway amid heavy fire, a foot race in a crowded part of town, and even a fun fight involving Laurence Fishburne’s character, so this movie just about has it all. My only knock on it is that the story is a bit thematically confused. See, Charlie’s conflict with the higher-ups at the CIA highlights the bedrock ethical principle that good ends don’t justify evil means, but that’s an odd point for a revenge film to make. Cinematic vengeance seekers openly flaunt that moral maxim, so unless a movie like The Amateur is trying to subvert the entire revenge blueprint (which this one isn’t), it shouldn’t draw attention to the deficiencies in its protagonist’s moral compass. Instead, these films should just focus on what their main characters get right (namely, that evil people shouldn't get away with their crimes), but The Amateur tries to have its cake and eat it too. I guess there’s some noble intent in that, but I don’t think it ultimately works. Like I said before, it just comes across as a bit thematically confused. Thankfully though, that one flaw doesn’t ruin the entire experience. The Amateur is still a riveting, well-acted adventure that puts a more cerebral spin on the typical vengeance template, so if you like seeing heinous criminals get the punishment they deserve, I think you’re going to enjoy this movie just as much as I did.
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Every once in a while, a movie comes out whose genre can only be described with a phrase you never thought you’d hear, and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is one of those films. It’s a Persian-language vampire western, and if you ask me, that alone is enough to make it worth a watch. However, if you’ve ever seen this unique piece of genre cinema, you know its unprecedented classification isn’t the only thing it has going for it.
The vampire in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night primarily stalks men who abuse and mistreat women, so in hardcore horror circles, the movie is renowned for its pro-woman message. But what’s not so well known is that this film isn’t just about abuse in general. The story homes in on a particular (and particularly heinous) form of exploitation that doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it deserves, so let’s dive into this modern arthouse classic and see what important lessons we can learn from it. The Truth About Trafficking Let’s start by taking a close look at the vampire’s first victim, a drug dealer named Saeed. From the moment we meet this character, it’s clear that he’s a terrible person, but when A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night first introduces him, we don’t realize how evil he truly is. As the story goes on, we quickly find out that Saeed doesn’t just sell drugs. He also sells women. More specifically, he pimps a thirty-year-old woman named Atti, but you might not catch the extent of her exploitation right away. Atti isn’t chained to a bed and drugged out of her mind like the trafficking victims in Taken. She appears free to leave Saeed’s employ whenever she wants, but if you know anything about real-world sex trafficking, you know the truth is much more diabolical. See, this monstrous crime involves more than just kidnapping women and physically restraining them so they can’t leave. The legal definition of sex trafficking is “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age.” And when we understand Saeed and Atti’s relationship through that lens, it’s clear that their “business” relationship is far from consensual. Early on in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, we see these two characters in a car together after Atti’s “shift,” and almost everything Saeed does just screams sex trafficking. He takes all the money Atti made that night, and when she asks for her cut, he makes her perform a sex act on him first, beginning with sucking his finger (that admittedly odd detail will become important later on). Then, once she’s done, he still doesn’t give Atti her fair share of the profits. He says she’s “light” (in other words, she didn’t make enough money that night), and to shut her up, he throws the poor woman out of the car and yells, “Next time, you focus on your job. Understand? And quit your crying, hag!” It’s just one scene, but it’s enough to establish Saeed as a legit sex trafficker. For one, sexual demands and irrational fits of violent rage are typical of traffickers, and more importantly, the man’s horrible treatment of Atti fits the legal definition of the crime. At its core, this definition involves three elements–force, fraud, and coercion–and all three are present in this one scene. We see force when Saeed throws the woman out of the car, and when he yells at her to focus on her job, that’s coercion (the implication being that he’ll hurt her again if she doesn’t). Finally, refusing to give Atti her cut because she’s supposedly “light” is fraud, so this is about as clear-cut as it gets. Saeed is more than just an abusive employer. He’s a sex trafficker, so when the vampire kills him, she’s not simply feeding her inhuman thirst. She’s meting out some much-needed justice to this heinous criminal. Protecting an Exploited Woman And in case there’s any doubt about the bloodsucker’s motives, let’s look at a couple of scenes that hammer the point home. For starters, the creature watches Saeed and Atti’s car conversation from a distance, and almost immediately afterwards, she finds Saeed and lets him bring her back to his apartment. The cold-hearted pimp clearly thinks he’s going to have sex with this strange woman, and at first, the vampire plays along. She sucks his finger just like Atti did, but that’s where the game ends. Instead of ramping up the sensuality, she bites the guy’s finger off, and then she kills him. On the surface, this might seem like just another fun horror scene, but if we dig a bit deeper, we can see that it’s actually much more important than that. It’s no coincidence that the vampire starts the encounter the same way Atti did in the previous scene. She’s intentionally mirroring that interaction but reversing the power dynamics, so Saeed’s death is not-so-subtle payback for all the abuse he’s doled out to Atti. Later on in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, there’s a moment when Atti and the vampire meet face to face, but it doesn’t play out the way you might expect. If this were a more typical bloodsucker, she probably wouldn’t think twice about feasting on Atti’s blood just like she did with Saeed. But that’s not what happens. Instead, the creature makes a comment about the emotional scars Saeed’s abuse has left on the poor woman, and then she gives Atti a bunch of jewelry to make up for the money the pimp refused to pay her earlier in the film. Again, it’s clear that this vampire remembers Saeed and Atti’s conversation in the car, and she’s doing what she can to right the wrongs Saeed has inflicted on the woman. The Other Half of the Problem Last but not least, we have to talk about a scene that tackles the problem of sex trafficking from the other side. See, the people who sell women are only half of the problem. The other half are the men who pay to have sex with trafficked women (sometimes without even realizing the women are being trafficked!), and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has something to say about them as well. We don’t get to see too many of Atti’s “clients,” but the one we do meet gets his just desserts. He’s a severe heroin addict named Hossein, and he interacts with Atti twice in the movie. Both times, the vampire lies close at hand, watching and protecting the vulnerable woman, and the second time, she makes her deadly presence felt. Hossein buys some time with Atti (like many sex trafficking victims, she’s so emotionally and psychologically scarred she finds it hard to leave the life even after her pimp dies), and at first, he just wants the woman to do a sensual dance for him. But as you might be able to guess, he soon demands more than that. He tells Atti to do heroin with him, and when she refuses, he holds her down and forcibly injects her with the drug. To be fair, that’s not the normal abuse trafficked women tend to experience, but the scene is filmed in such a way that it initially looks like Hossein is going to rape the poor woman. It’s a horrific moment that makes for a nearly perfect allegory for the forced sexual encounters trafficking victims have to endure day in and day out, so it’s no surprise that the vampire swoops in and kills Hossein almost immediately after he sticks the needle in. She’s clearly looking out for Atti, and she seems to have a special concern for the various ways this poor woman is abused and exploited as a victim of sex trafficking. Fighting the Good Fight Once we understand all that, it becomes clear that A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night isn’t just about the mistreatment of women in general. It’s about sex trafficking, a crime that overwhelmingly targets women and girls, and as Catholics, we can’t turn a blind eye to this heinous sin. Granted, most of us will never rescue a trafficking victim or lead a raid on an underground trafficking ring, but we all have a role to play in this fight. We can all help build up a culture that recognizes the dignity of women and refuses to reduce them to objects for men’s selfish pleasure, and if every Catholic in the world did their part, buying and selling women wouldn’t just be illegal. It would be unthinkable. Death of a Unicorn has been on my to-watch list from the moment I first got wind of it. Even before I knew what the movie was about, the name alone caught my attention, and when I learned it was a horror comedy, that sealed the deal for me. I’m a huge horror fan, and I love it when filmmakers mix their scares with laughs, so I just had to check this film out. I bought a ticket for opening weekend as soon as I got the chance, and now that I’ve finally seen the movie, I’m happy to report that it’s pretty fun.
Death of a Unicorn was written and directed by Alex Scharfman, and it stars Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, and Richard E. Grant. In the film, Elliot is a widower struggling to connect with his teenage daughter, Ridley. He hopes their upcoming trip to his boss’s estate will give them a chance to reconnect a bit, but he ends up getting a lot more than he bargained for. On the drive to the estate, they hit a baby unicorn with their car, and since they’re more or less in the middle of nowhere, they bring the carcass with them. When they arrive, Elliot’s boss and his family perform experiments on the creature in hopes of capitalizing on its magical abilities, and not long after they begin, the unicorn’s parents arrive and wreak bloody havoc in search of their child. Like a lot of horror comedies, Death of a Unicorn doesn’t blend its two genres quite as seamlessly as I would’ve liked. It almost feels like two movies fused together, and unfortunately, only one of them fully works. Let’s begin with the comedy. Most obviously, Paul Rudd plays Elliot, and he’s…well, he’s Paul Rudd. He basically just rehashes the same schtick we’ve seen him do a million times before, and in my opinion, it never gets old. Even when the guy isn’t cracking jokes, he exudes an irresistible charm that makes his character instantly likable, and of course, when he goes for laughs, he gets them. Granted, I wouldn’t quite say he had me in stitches, but he elicited a number of audible chuckles from me throughout the film. In contrast, Elliot’s boss and his family feel like worn-out cliches. They’re the kind of arrogant, greedy people satirized in just about every “eat the rich” story ever made, and unlike Paul Rudd’s typical routine, these stereotypes got old a long time ago. To be fair, they have a couple of funny moments here and there, but on the whole, when this family takes center stage, the film really drags. There was even a time in the first half when I thought they were going to ruin the entire experience, but thankfully, Death of a Unicorn finds its footing again at around the midway point. The tone quickly shifts from mostly comedy to mostly horror, and to my surprise, the movie ends up being a real blast. You might not love it if you’re not a huge fan of creature features, but if you enjoy this brand of terror, you’re going to have a great time seeing these unicorns rip through their (mostly) helpless victims. Writer/director Alex Scharfman absolutely nails the tension, suspense, and action that monster movie fans crave, and he imbues the kills with the kind of gore you’d expect to see from creatures that literally have razor-sharp blades sticking out of their heads. On top of that great fun, the second half of Death of a Unicorn also has some genuine emotional and thematic substance. For starters, Elliot’s boss and his family clearly don’t care who or what they have to hurt to put more money in their pockets, so the unicorn attacks carry a sense of justice you don’t always get in this subgenre. What’s more, this ordeal finally allows Elliot and Ridley to reconnect, and their dynamic is genuinely touching. In particular, seeing Ridley go from angsty teen to loving daughter will almost certainly warm your heart, and that’s largely due to Jenna Ortega’s great performance. Ortega totally nails every emotional beat her character experiences, so even though Ridley’s journey doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, you’ll still be right there with her every step of the way. My one knock on the second half of Death of a Unicorn is the visual effects. The unicorns are brought to life with a mix of practical effects and CGI, and when the monsters are digital, they don’t look great. It almost feels like they were rendered with VFX software from 2015, so when you see these creatures in all their “glory” (and I use that term very loosely), it’s painfully obvious that they were made in a computer. That being said, I don't quite think the CGI unicorns are distractingly bad. They definitely don’t add to the experience the way, say, the apes in the recent Planet of the Apes films do, but as long as you know to temper your expectations, you shouldn’t have any problem suspending disbelief when these monsters appear on screen. All in all, I had a pretty good time with Death of a Unicorn. Sure, this isn’t a great movie, and it’s not going to end up on my top-ten list come December, but it’s a fun creature feature with some effective comedy and just enough thematic substance to elevate it above its lesser cinematic peers. I probably wouldn't recommend the film to non-horror fans, but if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I suggest giving it a watch. |
Jp Nunezis a longtime film buff and theology nerd with master's degrees in theology and philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville. His favorite movie genres are horror, superheroes, and giant monsters. Archives
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