Film Review: The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn

'Plucky Belgian journalist seeks lost treasure with drunken seaman in swashbuckling adventure'. While this might sound like a salacious advert pulled from the naughty section of Craigslist, I can assure you that it is the plot for a new film involving one of the most recognisable childhood heros of a generation. That film of course is Steven Spielberg's incarnation of The Adventures of Tintin.

Tintin has a particularly unique effect on its audience, as is faithful to creator Hergé's male detective who possesses as much childlike wonder and naivety as he does the real-world acumen and perspicacity of an adult. And yet he has no discernable age. This is because Tintin, voiced by Jamie Bell, is a blank slate onto which we project ourselves; inoffensive and vacuously presentable, yet reacting to extraordinary situations in ways we might imagine should such events befall us. Tintin consequently appeals to the whole spectrum of ages watching it.

This is a theme which extends throughout the film, set in locations which, for example, may or may not be Paris, at a time which could be anywhere from the 1920s to the 1960s. It poses a strange paradox, almost like a dream in that Hergé's creation is both so rich in details, palpable to the senses and instantly recognisable, yet equally blank and unfurnished to the point where Tintin's setting is there and nowhere at the same time. But this is the magic trick, to create a vessel for our own imaginations.

To describe The Adventures Of Tintin as an endless, 'action packed' roller coaster would be a gross understatement in what is literally scene after scene of action set pieces. Admittedly everything looks mighty impressive in glorious CGI and everything is incredibly well choreographed, but it does get old and leaves our human protagonists disappointingly bare-boned. Nonetheless it will no doubt delight children, however to say the film is childish in its themes would also be a misjudgement. Perhaps surprisingly for a PG film, death is alluded to throughout as is the very real sense that bullets actually mean business. While gore is never visible, invariably scenes involving guns or sword-play end with some glimpse of fatality.

Moreover, take one Captain Archibald Haddock (Serkis), a drunken sailor from whom most of the film's humour stems from. We have here a man who thinks it prudent to stop off in the ship's galley and load up on bottles of whiskey while a bunch of goons with guns chase him and Tintin. Yes, stumbling about in a drunken stupor doing stupid things is funny, but Haddock's situation is so pathetic that it's almost pitiful. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but while it's all fun and games to restart a a piston engine by belching alcoholic fumes into it, it is perhaps not so funny when your alcoholism continuously endangers you and your friend's lives. Throughout, I was never quite sure what message Tintin was sending to children. Was it a warning to the dangers of alcohol? Or was it more an advertisement, as if to say 'hey, getting drunk is pretty fucking funny!'. Unfortunately despite the best efforts of our Captain, The Adventures Of Tintin is never outright hilarious. Sure I grinned, but it never evoked so much as a bawdy laugh from yours truly.

Tintin is nonetheless a true Spielberg film, sporting elements of Indy (and even shades of the Uncharted videogames) with the heart to match. Like with most of Spielberg's films this implores you to invest in Hergé's ensorcelling world, dazzlingly realised in gorgeous CGI. For the kid in all of us this is a high-spirited effort which has the capacity to delight. However, it is also somewhat disappointing that there isn't much fat to chew on here. A break for pause to catch one's breath would have been most welcome in places, but overall this is a fairly spunky and charming tale which is capriciously realised.

Film Review: The Eagle

Romans. The Americans of their day, sporting a vast Empire across the known world. It perhaps only fitting then to give all the Romans in The Eagle an American accent. It's hardly subtle in its deliberate allegory, similar to that when Hollywood casts Brits in roles of villains as some sort of parallel with the American Revolution, but it is annoying in the sense that it detracts from the 'period feel' of ancient Rome. Certainly, I found it difficult to get that distracting little voice out of my head which was screaming throughout the film "Yanks!". But then I suppose we couldn't have Americans playing the oppressed peoples of the British Isles under Rome's yoke. That would have been too ridiculous...

When Marcus Flavius Aquila (Tatum), a young centurion bent on restoring his family's honour after his father lead an ill-fated expedition of the Ninth Legion, is permanently incapacitated within a day of his first command, he finds himself milling away his days around his Uncle's (Sutherland) villa after an honourable discharge. After saving a British slave named Esca (Bell) from death in a gladiatorial arena, the two form a bond and embark on a mission to retrieve his father's Ninth Legion standard, a golden eagle rumoured to be in the possession of a vicious tribe north of Hadrian's Wall.

The Eagle is based on a 1954 novel by by Rosemary Sutcliff called The Eagle of the Ninth. Part fact, part fiction, it is based around the myth surrounding the Legio IX Hispana, a Roman legion which was rumoured to have been destroyed by Caledonian tribes in AD 117. Since its publication however new historical evidence has come to light that the Ninth Legion was not in fact destroyed in Scotland, with records showing that elements of the Ninth were actually posted along the Rhine after AD 117. Further, the actual golden eagle upon which the story is based, housed in a museum in Reading, is not that of a Legion's standard but that of a Jupiter statue in the forum of the Roman town. As such, as a 'historical epic', The Eagle suffers from the advances made in historical study, making the film less fact and more fiction.

The Eagle starts off with a bang as the fresh faced Aquila faces an assault on his new command in the opening minutes. We are introduced to Roman fighting tactics such as the 'tortoise' in brutal fashion, with the shaky, gritty, close-up action shots we've come to expect from films set in the ancient world. It sets a good tone for an exhilarating film and the action scenes do indeed remain consistent throughout. But the problem is the bits in between which feel disjointed from the action scenes. Essentially, The Eagle amounts to a mismatched buddy movie. It follows the formula where two people who couldn't be any different from one another are thrown together for whatever reason, and, over a series of events, are able to bond and surmount those differences where by the end the two will have developed a bemusing friendship. Sure, this is the end result of The Eagle, but it is the 'how' which is missing as the film sort of stumbles along. We are treated to bits where the two bond, but the developing friendship is never actually transmitted. As such Esca's actions appear particularly odd and the whole relationship becomes a sympathetic fallacy. Director Kevin Macdonald does interestingly try to create a juxtaposition of scenery with Roman occupied Southern Britain bathed in sunlight, covered in vine leaves with the harsh, barren, windswept highlands of the North in an attempt to show the contrast between civilization and barbary. However, you can't help but smirk if you've ever experienced the tenuous British summer.

Historically inaccurate, made all the more jarring by American accents, and bogged down by a plot based around a peculiarly dysfunctional, robotic relationship, this film is substantially less epic than the trailers would have you believe. Unfortunately, The Eagle never really finds flight.