45 Years
15, 95 mins
Any number of things might suddenly arise from the past to test a long-married couple’s relationship, but the event that serves that purpose in this British film is a doozy. Tom Courtenay’s Geoff, a comfortable pensioner in Norfolk, receives a letter telling him that the body of his first love, who fell down a crevasse while they were hiking in Switzerland in 1962, has been found preserved in the ice. His response to this news reveals how much the dead woman still means to him, and leaves his shocked wife, Kate (Charlotte Rampling), wondering if she has spent all the years of their marriage as a second-best option. And we know exactly how many years that is because the couple are in the thick of preparations for a big party to celebrate their 45th anniversary. In the domestic drama that unfolds, Andrew Haigh’s film focuses on restrained conversations and subdued turmoil, and the actors are impeccably subtle, but it’s hard to buy into this sensitive craftsmanship while all the contrived business about the anniversary party and the troublesome Swiss glacier keeps intruding. At the end, though, comes a perfect scene — beautifully played by Rampling — that tips the balance and makes the film emphatically worth seeing.
Barely Lethal
12A, 96 mins
Starring Hailee Steinfeld as a girl trained as a combat-ready secret agent, but unprepared for the trials of high school, Kyle Newman’s teen comedy tries to put a bit of Kick-Ass into Clueless (though not as violently as Kick-Ass 2 did with its own high-school storyline). The premise — that the ordeals of adolescent life are tougher than a special-ops mission — is fair enough as a message of reassurance for young viewers, but such a cartoonish movie is hardly likely to provide much comfort. The priority should have been jokes, yet the ones the film offers are thinly spread and forgettable.
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Hitman: Agent 47
15, 96 mins
I don’t know anything about the Hitman series of video games, but I’m willing to bet that the mere fact of their being games — the mere fact that they give you some sort of involvement in what goes on — makes them more fun than the experience of passively watching this movie spin-off. The action sequences in Aleksander Bach’s film are OK in a sub-John Woo sort of way, but everything else — every line of dialogue; every unconvincing glower from Rupert Friend as the cold-hearted antihero — is head-achingly boring.
