David O'ConnellGive 'em Hell, Malone
September 6th 2011 04:21
Journeyman Australian director Russell Mulcahy’s Give em Hell, Malone (2009) is a thoroughly entertaining B-grade, hard-boiled, modern noir. A blackly comic vehicle populated with a philosophising, suitably down-on-his-luck private eye, a femme fatale (albeit with a strange accent), and a goon squad of bad guys, the film is anachronistically filtered through a time warp.
All the main players seem to exist in a bubble, the inner machinations of which are rarely pierced by the modern world remotely contextualised along its margins. Invoking the ghosts of Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane is fraught with danger should the end product not come up to scratch but Mulcahy’s film, from its frenetic and bloody pre-credits sequence, manages to merge influence with contemporary stylistics to create an enjoyable romp.
Perennial second stringer Thomas Jane is Malone who, in the opening set-piece, leaves an abandoned building littered with dozens of corpses and a much sought after briefcase in hand. It’s the film’s ‘maguffin’ of sorts – the item everyone craves, especially chief bad guy Whitmore (Gregory Harrison), who sends his most trusted offsider and former Malone playmate, the appropriately named Boulder (Ving Rhames), in pursuit.
Malone is coy about the briefcase’s contents, telling his only friend Murphy (Leland Orser) that it contains “the meaning of love”. When the luscious and mysterious Evelyn (Elsa Pataky) enters the fray, supposedly in need of help to extract her brother from Whitmore’s mitts, she’s allowed no further clues by the intrigued but cagey Malone.
The characters, thanks to the more-hit-than-miss dialogue by Mark Hosack, manage to careen off one another like concrete marbles. Malone is a guy we can all root for, and there’s a pretty decent spark between he and the tactically coiled Evelyn too. But is she a true alley waiting to reveal her cards or a viper waiting to strike?
Malone’s opposition are a colourful bunch. As usual, the towering Rhames manages to intimidate every time his mouth moves, whilst Doug Hutchison is deftly set into the mix as Matchsticks, a twisted, self-deformed little creep with a very unhealthy fondness for the fire. Then there's ruthless Asian hitgirl Mauler (Chris Yen) who gets a couple of decent scenes before a lame farewell.
Slick yet obviously – and skillfully - tailored to conform with its less than A-grade budget, Give ‘em Hell, Malone is one of Mulcahy’s more guiltily pleasurable films in years even if the acting is no great shakes, especially from the beautiful but mediocre Pataky. The action is constantly evolving and the chain-link of close-ups and cutaways provides an impression of vigor even when lapses into cliché threaten to downgrade its worthiness. In short, solid B-grade fare.
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Thomas Jane is so comfortable in this universe that he smooths out much of ebbs and flows tone.