Director: David Ayer, 15, 111min
Stars: Christian Bale, Freddy Rodríguez, Eva Longoria
On general release
Christian Bale is magnificent in this hard-boiled drama — a mad, bad and dangerous antihero who tries our patience and our sympathies to the very limit. Bale plays Jim David, a Gulf War veteran who hasn’t been able to shake the pumped-up machismo that is a prerequisite to staying alive and unafraid in the desert. He’s plagued by nightmares of death but clings to the dream of a new life with his long- suffering Mexican girlfriend Marta (Tammy Trull). He is hoping for the offer of a job with the LA Police Department, but in the meantime he’s content to cruise around South Central looking for trouble and good times in equal measure, with his best buddy Mike (the excellent Rodríguez) in tow. Mike’s girlfriend Sylvia (Longoria) makes no secret of her disapproval.
It’s a terrific piece of writing from the Training Day screenwriter David Ayer, who also directs this dysfunctional buddy movie set on the meanest of streets. He sketches the pressure-cooker neighbourhood from memory — he was raised in South Central LA. It is a backdrop of dope deals and gangland rivalry, booby- trapped with simmering grudges, that Jim and Mike choose for their playground. It’s hard to know whether it is the treacherous streets or Jim’s troubled mind that will boil over first.
While Bale’s erratic man in meltdown is the racing heart of the movie, Rodríguez provides the conscience. Through Mike’s eyes we learn that Jim is not the man he was before he went to war. Mike’s creeping unease undermines the riotous good times they share. The threat of disaster hangs over the film like the Los Angeles smog. But to his credit, Ayer keeps us guessing until the very end about how the fates of these friends and their loved ones will unfold.