From London:
Reviews of "Dirty Pretty Things," "28 Days Later" and "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life"

By Esther Iverem
SeeingBlack.com Editor and Film Critic

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Dirty Pretty Things

Part immigrant saga, part love story and part thriller, "Dirty Pretty Things" is a seamless portrait of the civilized West as soul-less and spiritually barren. In London's world of illegal immigrants, where a Nigerian named Okwe lives, human beings, especially the dark others, have been reduced to fleshy cogs in society's money-making machine. They give their labor, their bodies and their minds but are officially non-existent. Here, much of the action happens in the dark and the daylight is cold.

This is an immigrant story told through the eyes of director Stephen Frears ("Remains of the Day," "Dangerous Liaisons") and writer Steve Knight that is not sentimental or sparing. Once again, Frears commits himself to exploring the moral and emotional texture of lives. "Dirty Pretty Things" is so unwavering in its bleak focus that, even when it makes us laugh, it is an uneasy laugh. The life of Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is tightly confined. He is razor sharp and is a trained doctor but, in London, he drives a cab during the day, works a hotel front desk all night and chews potent leaves to stay awake. A maid at the hotel, Senay (Audrey Tatou), who is from Turkey, is allowing him to rent the couch in her tiny flat. Both are subject to deportation at any time and are therefore subject to the evil intentions of those who treat them like cornered animals. As the story unfolds, both Okwe and Senay must decide what they will do, and not do, to survive.

In this story, not only does the West show its ugly backside to immigrants, it also shows its ignorance. There is a hooker Juliette (Sophie Okonedo), who, despite her dark racial mix, and keeps asking Okwe questions as if there is no drop of Africa in her veins. She wants to know if he comes from a place with lions. Has he ever seen a lion? She is oblivious to the fact that he comes from a place where some people have more self-respect than she has. She is definitely not making any connection between their dark skins.

With Juliette, however, we dark beings are once again presented on screen with the contrast of the dark whore with the light (can pass for White) virginal woman in the person of Senay. Okwe adores Senay, even though she is slow to acknowledge any feelings for him. She eventually admits that she does have love for him but, in this netherworld of immigrants, mutual love does not guarantee a happy ending.

Frears makes sardonic comments here about affairs of the heart and, indeed, about the loss of heart, as well as loss of spirit. In their place, he presents the corrupted body with its various diseases, fluids and deep wounds. He presents people who do not really "exist" in society and who can easily disappear into back alleys and inside hotel rooms. He presents a coldness but, for those who haven't given up, the possibility for warmth and the warm sun.

28 Days Later

Move over Jada. (Sorry)

There is another fierce Black chick battling those evil nasty-nasties and she's appearing in one of the better edge-of-your-seat flicks to hit U.S. screens this summer. It's called "28 Days Later," it's from London and it's flying under the radar of Hollywood's big budget slam-and-bam action movies.

Consider it a warning from across the pond, to match the many current warnings here about the dangers of weird science, especially if coupled with military madness. Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakes about a month after being in a coma from an accident on his bike. He leaves the empty hospital and walks the streets of a deserted London in total shock. It is only when he happens upon a church filled with corpses that he realizes that has awakened to a nightmare. It is also shortly after this that he meets Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris), seemingly the only other survivors of a deadly virus that has transformed those infected into savage beasts, wiped out much of the British population and spurred evacuation of all those lucky enough to escape.

Selena, more than any other film role that I've seen, is a remarkable vision of a post-apocalyptic Black warrior. With a bandana on her head and a long machete at the ready in her hand, she could just as well be a fierce escaped African of any quilombo in Brazil, maroon colony in Jamaica or the U.S., or settlement of cimarrones in Cuba. But in "28 Days Later," she is the last woman standing in these times (wearing the requisite sharp, long leather coat). At the same time, she is an embodiment of the first woman standing, an original Eve trying to survive.

Harris is a remarkable newcomer to the screen. She looks great. She does not render Selena as a cardboard or comic book heroine. Anyone who has to slice the heads off carnivorous attackers should be expected to be at least a little hard but Harris (and the script by Alex Garland) does not make Selena into a super Sapphire or any neck-rolling stereotype. Serena is written and rendered as tough and smart, but also as tender and able to cry and smile. She is also caught in London's racial-sexual politics through the eyes of these White filmmakers and it interesting to watch as her character unfolds. Like the story told in Zadie Smith's White Teeth, (Harris starred in the television adaptation) "28 Days Later" tells the story of a London where Black folks, most especially Black men with White women and, to a lesser extent, the left-alone Black women with White men, do melt into the melting pot.

The director/producer team of Danny Boyle and Andrew Macdonald ("Trainspotting," "A Life Less Ordinary") are smart enough to craft this production so that it takes big advantage of suspense and the fear of the sudden attack (usually in the dark, in the basement, in a tunnel, you know the drill). The low-tech, grainy feel of many of the opening scenes do look a little cheesy but they also put us in the mindset that we are watching something true unfold on television news. At the very start, we literally are watching TV scenes, of repeated and barbaric incidents of violence from humans inflicted on other humans. The film asks us in a horribly believable way, to visualize a world where barbarism and rage is distilled into a virus that could kill us all and, yet, where there can be innocence, sweetness and survival.

(First published July 18, 2003)

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
(OK. We know she's not really from London)

At heart, Lara Croft is an old-fashioned adventure hero—wealthy, White, privileged, well-educated and daring in weak world that is, after all, hers to conquer. In "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life," she is not more obnoxious than, say, James Bond or Indiana Jones but just a lot less believable and a lot more hokey. She is not unbelievable because she is a woman. Her girl status is only a footnote anyway. Her screen appeal is that she is just as rough, heartless and ruthless as any man, and that she is able to kick a man's butt—and she does kick much butt.

But, sadly, even Croft's curled lip toughness has the air of a rich girl trying too hard. Star Angelina Jolie pulls such a steel curtain across her emotions, and the script gives Croft such little humanity, that she might as well be that blond robot that kicks Arnold Schwarzenegger around on "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines." It is only toward the end, in a key scene, that you sense any emotion sloshing around beneath the curtain and, by then, the viewer might be too numb to care.

Like the first movie in this series, in which Jolie plays the only child of a slain expert in antiquities, there are heady and very silly moments of action. My favorite is when Croft punches a shark in the mouth and then jacks the shark, holding onto the big fin for a ride near the water's surface. See, if someone had punctured James Bond's air tank as goes the story line here, he would have had a little gadget that instantly generated more oxygen and another gadget that propelled him through the water to safety. (And we all would sit in the dark and say "Oooohhh!) Lara Croft needs to refinance that mansion and buy some better toys.

Usually in these flicks ("The Mummy" etc.) the tombs, burial places and history of some dark developing nation is ripe for plunder and destruction. This time, Croft sets her site on ruins left by Alexander the Great off the coast of Greece. She is in the search for a golden orb that, little does she know, tells the location of world's "cradle of life," (Africa, of course) and Pandora's Box. She must find and then secure the box before an evil bio-terrorist gets his hands on it.

Of course the locations remain dark and exotic for the British heroine. China, Hong Kong, Tanzania and Kenya. And, like in most of these flicks, the dark masses serve as a convenient backdrop of expendable villains or helpful sidekicks. Djimon Hounsou makes a brief appearance as one of Croft's helpers but does not fall into the trap of being a noble savage. These type of movies always acknowledge regions other than Europe as places of antiquity, and even as the birth of humanity, but then, in one fell swoop, make Whites into masters of the universe who ultimately decide history.

(First Published July 24, 2003)

Lara Croft makes it herstory but it is still the same old tale.

Reviews of Dirty Pretty Things and 28 Days Later first appeared on www.bet.com.

— August 15, 2003

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