Movie review: Mindhorn
Nov. 15th, 2017 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kestrellMindhorn
Dir. Sean Foley, 2016)
I am going to be totally honest with you up front: Alexx and I almost died laughing watching this movie, for reasons which will become clear, but I'm pretty certain we saw a different version of the movie than most people will experience, so this isn't so much a review as a demonstration of how stories can metamorphosize from being the story the writer sets out to tell and into something unexpected and personal on the part of the individual experiencing that story.
The movie features Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barratt, who was also a co-writer), a washed-up British actor who starred in a once popular but now forgotten '80s detective TV show. When the police call him in to help them catch a murderer who is obsessed with his old show, Thorncroft sees a PR opportunity and a way to revive his career.
However, once he returns to the Isle of Man, which is the scene of the murder and also the location where his old TV show was filmed, Thorncroft experiences one humiliation after another as he is confronted with all the people he screwed over while he was a star.
Okay, that part is kind of funny in a Hot Fuzz sort of way, but it is predictible and conforms to expectations.
What I wasn't expecting was that the suspected murderer turns out to be a goofy but adorable fan who has internalized Thorncroft's old show and sees himself as a sidekick assisting Mindhorn in pursuit of truth and justice.
And his superhero persona is named The Kestrel.
Aww-awk!
That is the battle cry of the Kestrel.
Yes, I know, it made me twitch the first few times I heard it, too.
There's also a silly costume and much ludicrous arm flapping accompanying every Aww-awk!
But really, Russell Tobey, the actor who plays the Kestrel, manages to infuse the character with a lot of fanboy faith that his hero really is brave and noble, and so Thorncroft finds himself awk-wardly (sorry--no, not really) attempting, for the first time in his life, to live up to someone else's expectations.
And, somehow, every repetition of Aww-awk! became funnier and funnier.
Until the Kestrel got shot.
Then things wrap up pretty quickly with the bad guys being caught and Thorncroft and his former love reconciling and the credits beginning to roll.
But the Kestrel was still dead.
Full of righteous indignation, I delivered my rant re Old yeller Syndrome (why does the animal always have to die??).
Credits continue to roll, accompanied by mini-epilogues for each major character, and news headlines proclaimed that the Kestrel had been found alive after all.
And you know why he didn't die? Because the Kestrel was the real hero of the movie.
So, in a fit of Kestrel pride, I called out "Kestrel, I salute you! Aww-awk!"
And that's the part where Alexx almost died because he was laughing too hard to breathe.
(That's one of my trickster superpowers, btw.)
And that's one of the things I love about movies, and books, and any other medium for telling a story: other people can review the book or movie that they experience, but no one can really judge, or even predict, the story that you will create from your own experiences, and sometimes those unexpectedly personal stories that speak to you seem like the best ones.
Dir. Sean Foley, 2016)
I am going to be totally honest with you up front: Alexx and I almost died laughing watching this movie, for reasons which will become clear, but I'm pretty certain we saw a different version of the movie than most people will experience, so this isn't so much a review as a demonstration of how stories can metamorphosize from being the story the writer sets out to tell and into something unexpected and personal on the part of the individual experiencing that story.
The movie features Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barratt, who was also a co-writer), a washed-up British actor who starred in a once popular but now forgotten '80s detective TV show. When the police call him in to help them catch a murderer who is obsessed with his old show, Thorncroft sees a PR opportunity and a way to revive his career.
However, once he returns to the Isle of Man, which is the scene of the murder and also the location where his old TV show was filmed, Thorncroft experiences one humiliation after another as he is confronted with all the people he screwed over while he was a star.
Okay, that part is kind of funny in a Hot Fuzz sort of way, but it is predictible and conforms to expectations.
What I wasn't expecting was that the suspected murderer turns out to be a goofy but adorable fan who has internalized Thorncroft's old show and sees himself as a sidekick assisting Mindhorn in pursuit of truth and justice.
And his superhero persona is named The Kestrel.
Aww-awk!
That is the battle cry of the Kestrel.
Yes, I know, it made me twitch the first few times I heard it, too.
There's also a silly costume and much ludicrous arm flapping accompanying every Aww-awk!
But really, Russell Tobey, the actor who plays the Kestrel, manages to infuse the character with a lot of fanboy faith that his hero really is brave and noble, and so Thorncroft finds himself awk-wardly (sorry--no, not really) attempting, for the first time in his life, to live up to someone else's expectations.
And, somehow, every repetition of Aww-awk! became funnier and funnier.
Until the Kestrel got shot.
Then things wrap up pretty quickly with the bad guys being caught and Thorncroft and his former love reconciling and the credits beginning to roll.
But the Kestrel was still dead.
Full of righteous indignation, I delivered my rant re Old yeller Syndrome (why does the animal always have to die??).
Credits continue to roll, accompanied by mini-epilogues for each major character, and news headlines proclaimed that the Kestrel had been found alive after all.
And you know why he didn't die? Because the Kestrel was the real hero of the movie.
So, in a fit of Kestrel pride, I called out "Kestrel, I salute you! Aww-awk!"
And that's the part where Alexx almost died because he was laughing too hard to breathe.
(That's one of my trickster superpowers, btw.)
And that's one of the things I love about movies, and books, and any other medium for telling a story: other people can review the book or movie that they experience, but no one can really judge, or even predict, the story that you will create from your own experiences, and sometimes those unexpectedly personal stories that speak to you seem like the best ones.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-17 11:07 pm (UTC)I'm glad this movie pushed the hilarity buttons for you. I have a very soft spot for Russell Tovey: he's a lovely actor and his ears are even bigger than Obama's (or my father's, or really, Dumbo's). British actors seem to come in a much-closer-to-reality spectrum of body types.