Is Bigelow Our Best Action Director?

When news of the horrific snubbing of Kathryn Bigelow by The Academy came down, we immediately looked around for ways to provide her some solace. Should we do a “Hurt Locker” live blog? How about a “Point Break” stage play? Once we realized both of those had already been done, we decided to investigate other accolades, ones that didn’t rhyme with “Mest Girector Jominee.” Hmmm, we thought, what about the title of “Best Action Director”? Does that fit a woman who is clearly at the top of her game? Let’s go that route!

A point in Kat-Big’s favor is that the action genre is in a state of shambles. Sure, there are plenty of comic book films you could label as “action,” or young adult novel adaptations that have moments of action embedded within. But purely visceral heart-thumping cinema? It is hard to find these days, and the pushers of pulsating moments of peril are at all an all-time low. Which means the title of “Best action director” is wide open! Here are the contenders for Bigelow’s rightful crown:

J.J. Abrams
Pros: “MI3? and “Star Trek” are worthy adversaries.
Cons: “Super 8?. There aren’t any decent action films starring children this side of “Goonies”.
Overall Action Rating: Eight out of 10. Abrams is legit.

Michael Bay
Pros: “The Rock,” “Bad Boys,” and “Armageddon” formed an action triumvirate the likes of which the world had never seen.
Cons: “The Island,” “Transformers,” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” formed an action triumvirate the world would prefer to forget.
Overall Action Rating: Seven out of 10. Which Michael Bay can we expect these days? The one that’s phoned in the past decade? Or the one that’s bringing a stripped-down “Pain and Gain” to theaters, hoping to reclaim his title?

Peter Berg
Pros: “The Kingdom” is underrated! “The Rundown” is underrated! “Battleship” and “Hancock” are … oh, okay, I now see the problem with his candidacy.
Cons: Our culture may never come back from the scourge that was “Battleship”. The Mayans didn’t get us, but Berg’s alien robots from the sea did irreparable damage.
Overall Action Rating: Five out of 10. He once was glorious, but it’s been five years. What have you done for us lately, Peter?

James Cameron
Pros: “True Lies” and “Terminator 2? may be the best action films we talk about all day.
Cons: “Avatar” had more sermonizing than action, and Cameron only makes one film every six years. That’s not enough action for us action junkies.
Overall Action Rating: Five out of 10. He used to be the king, but he abdicated the throne. Also, James Cameron does what James Cameron does because he’s James Cameron. Man, that clip never gets old.

Joe Carnahan
Pros: “The A-Team” and “Smokin’ Aces” remind us of a simpler time, when action films used to crush it.
Cons: “The Grey” didn’t have nearly enough wolf-y action. It was all full of feelings!
Overall Action Rating: Eight of 10. I still believe in the Carnahan, I still believe.

Rob Cohen
Pros: Ooooh, “xXx” and “The Fast and the Furious.”
Cons: “Stealth” and “Alex Cross”? Why must every action director take a hard turn toward mediocrity?
Overall Action Rating: Five out of 10, but we hope he makes it back.

Jon Favreau
Pros: “Iron Man” and “Iron Man 2? are the strongest bullet points on his resume.
Cons: Then you have “Cowboys & Aliens” – not the strongest bullet point on any resume.
Overall Action Rating: A solid six out of 10. His case would be augmented by a huge action film, and luckily he’s working on “Jersey Boys”.

Paul Greengrass
Pros: His contributions to the “Bourne” franchise were sizable, and his framing of action scenes is quite strong.
Cons: “Green Zone” was a huge letdown, wasn’t it?
Overall Action Rating: Only four out of 10. It’s starting to seem as though he just inherited a great franchise and maintained the quality.

Justin Lin
Pros: “Fast Five,” “Fast and Furious,” and “Tokyo Drift”. This may be the best action series going, topping “Transformers” and “Die Hard”.
Cons: “Annapolis” is almost worth watching to to see the the lows James Franco can hit on screen.
Overall Action Rating: Seven out of 10. If Lin shows ability outside the “Fast and Furious” franchise he’d be eligible for to top slot. But as the last one made $626 million worldwide, he’ll have plenty of financial incentives to just keep cranking those titles out.

McG
Pros: There was a time we thought “Charlie’s Angels” heralded a bright new star on the action scene.
Cons: Everything else, especially the mess that was “Terminator: Salvation”. Also, he should have to go by his real name, at least until they let me go by “McDuck”.
Overall Action Rating: Two out of 10. The ship be sinking.

Christopher Nolan
Pros: “Inception” was a taut thriller, and “The Dark Knight” is the best superhero film that ever was.
Cons: Superhero films have a hint of surrealism which true action films avoid. Action is about real “life and death” situations, and a guy in a cape takes you out of that place. Think “Cliffhanger” vs. “Superman” and you’ve got the disconnect.
Overall Action Rating: Six out of 10, but only because he doesn’t really fit in the genre, though he could if he felt the need.

Guy Ritchie
Pros: “Snatch” is amazing. Have you watched “Snatch” lately?
Cons: “Sherlock Holmes 2? confirmed a few of our deeply held fears about Ritchie, namely that he might be addicted to slow motion.
Overall Action Rating: Seven out of 10. The man gave us the original and well conceived “Sherlock Holmes” plus the aforementioned “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels”. That’s heap of action.

Ridley Scott
Pros: “Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down” are probably his strongest entries into the record.
Cons: Well, he’s really more of a sci-fi fellow.
Overall Action Rating: Six out of 10, but only because he doesn’t particularly care about being a better action director.

Quentin Tarantino
Pros: “Kill Bill” had some exceptional fight scenes, remember that one in the garden?
Cons: Tarantino loves tension, but the “action” genre feels a little bit beneath him, as he simply adores complex story arcs.
Overall Action Rating: Three out of 10. Quentin doesn’t make action films, he makes dramas that have some wild and crazy scenes within.

Paul Verhoeven
Pros: He directed the original “Total Recall,” the good one, plus “Robocop”. He’s also got “Starship Troopers” to his resume if you’re feeling particularly generous.
Cons: “Showgirls” and “Basic Instinct” are reason enough to exercise complete veto power here.
Overall Action Rating: Four out of 10, especially because he’s largely abandoned stateside filmmaking and broad action films.

Len Wiseman
Pros: “Underworld!” “Live Free or Die Hard!” This guy is a shoe-in.
Cons: The “Total Recall” remake. Ugh, see what we mean by the whole “action genre in shambles” take?
Overall Action Rating: Three out of 10. He’s rebooting “The Mummy,” a formally proud franchise that was recently reduced to rubble.

And finally we get to it. She may be on the outs with The Academy, but is she strong enough to take out the rest of these interlopers?

Kathryn Bigelow
Pros: “Point Break,” and the “The Hurt Locker” form her pedigree.
Cons: Technically, as a Best Director winner, she’s above the label. But “Zero Dark Thirty” has the best action scenes of the year, and she’s managed to fuse drama with action to create an entirely new style of film.
Overall Action Rating: Nine out of 10, and the crown!

You’ll finally get a chance to see “Zero Dark Thirty” this weekend, here’s hoping you come down on the same side!

Categories: Features

Tags: j.j. abrams, james cameron, kathryn bigelow, mcg, michael bay, Peter Berg, rob cohen, Zero Dark Thirty, Zero Dark Thirty

Interview: The Whistleblower Director Larysa Kondracki

Christine Champ | e-mail

Not too long ago Christine traded in her "real job" for an "imaginary" job (as in I imagine I have health insurance), that let her do what she did best full-time: write. Film.com lets her write about ... more

Christine Champ June 23, 2011

We discussed the B word (“Bosnian sex trafficking”, okay so it’s three words) with The Whistleblower director Larysa Kondracki. Her debut feature, with an envious cast that includes Rachel Weisz and Vanessa Redgrave, tells the true story of Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska cop who finds more than a fast and fat paycheck when she accepts a contract as a U.N. peacekeeper in Bosnia—i.e. a sex trafficking ring that stretches beyond the locals to the peacekeepers themselves and beyond.

Christine Champ: So this is your first feature, why did you choose sex trafficking as the topic?

Larysa Kondracki: Well I’m Ukranian-Canadian so it was a topic that people were talking about in my community. It was sort of before the phrase sex trafficking was popular, and it was just unbelievably interesting and compelling. When I found Kathy’s story well … it’s just something that grips you and you gotta do it.

CC: How did you discover Kathryn’s story?

LK: I had read a book called “The Natashas” by Victor Malarek, a Canadian reporter. He talked about the U.N.’s involvement in this in it, and sort of sex trafficking and what it is . It was a great book and in it there was this part about Kathy and it was just a small part, but I found it very interesting. I Googled her and the press was huge. She’d just won her tribunal. It was mostly in Europe though. I found her email in a chat room and I wrote her a letter, and the next day she wrote me back. She had just won so apparently she’d had some interest from European countries but she wasn’t able to entertain them. Within a few weeks I wrote a letter to the Ukranian Canadians. My mother distributed it forcefully and we had 30,000 dollars and Eilis [co-writer Eilis Kirwan] and I spent two years based in Dublin while Kathy was in Amsterdam. We spent two years traveling all over Eastern Europe meeting everyone from high level diplomats to underground NGOs that were hiding, and really getting a sense of the world and writing the whole time.

CC: So Kathy was directly involved with the writing of the script?

LK: Oh yeah she was always very available.

CC: This seems like the sort of topic you often see in documentaries, why did you decide to make it a drama?

LK: I guess I just don’t know how to make a documentary. I was at film school at Columbia and films like Monster, High Art, Boys Don’t Cry, were coming out and it just seemed very much in the now at the time. It was very possible… with last year’s films like Black Swan, Winter’s Bone, even King’s Speech I think we’re getting out of that five-year period where, and to be fair I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else, we were going through– I don’t like to call it the war on terror–that issue and economic decline and people needed to get away. But you look at Tree of Life which did really well this weekend, so I think people are hungry for good stories again.

CC: What do you think is the advantage (if any) of making it a drama vs. a documentary?

LK: I love documentaries you know and I think especially now they’re getting very compelling. I personally don’t know how to do that…I think what’s really interesting to people is that Kathy was an ordinary woman she doesn’t have a skill set that none of us can possess. And especially through a performance like Rachel’s which was so great, it’s a very relatable character and so possibly through a drama instead of a doc you’re able to experience what she goes through and that’s sort of part of the fun. I call it fun [laughs].

CC: How did you manage to cast such notable actors like Weisz and Redgrave, especially in your first film?

LK: At the end of the day the answer really comes down to the story. The script got out there… it circulated with agents. I thought Weisz was incredible. She was our first choice. At the time we gave it to her but she was pregnant and she couldn’t really go there, but she kept checking in. There where different permutations of the film throughout the years but then when finally we decided to make it a Canadian-German co-production the timing was great–Rachel was available. But in terms of all the other actors as well it was our first script but I think it was the story probably more than the script that –I don’t like to take credit for things. I suppose that’s encouraging: if you have a good product people will read it and actresses want to play good roles. And there’s such a dearth of good characters, or there were for so long that now suddenly it’s like “of course I want to play this, these are true complex people” … you haven’t played that before. And I think Rachel does a good job of not–you could go over the top–but it’s really the steely determination, that’s one o the reasons we thought she could be great. You can’t really pinpoint her. She’s someone that I think always goes for something different which is great and getting Vanessa–she’s amazing.

CC: Sex trafficking seems to be a hot topic lately. It was even the subject of another SIFF drama As If I’m not there. What did you hope audiences would take a away from your film?

LK: It’s still going on today if you look at the Congo, Liberia, the Middle East, Afghanistan especially–so yeah it’s not over. I think what’s cool about when I talk to people is they really don’t know how it’s going to end … so I guess the issue is that you want people to walk out and go “what did I just see?” and “what are we going to do about it?”. They’re totally different films but I think what Philadelphia did for AIDs by humanizing it and for the gay community people going “oh well he’s a nice man you know Tom Hanks” and suddenly if Tom Hanks can be gay and have AIDs maybe that’s something we can talk about… But he was so amazing in that film that you relate to it and I remember specifically a lot of people that would be homophobic went to see it and minds got changed. I think that’s the same thing here where you think sex trafficking is something that happens on a TV show like a Law and Order episode …it’s such a more relevant issue than we think. And there’s the issue of sex trafficking but there’s also the issue of large organizations with no accountability. Look at the banking system. I think it’s a microcosm for a lot and we knew that. You should see one of the early drafts it was like 900 pages that just didn’t end and people were like “focus, focus, focus” on the story of this one woman. I’m excited to see what happens in August and I hope it gets received well and not just as a film. That was I guess the point: make a good movie that then gets people talking as opposed to talking at people for two hours .

CC: It really makes you wonder about the effectiveness of U.N. peacekeepers especially when they’re outsourced. That could be a whole other movie.

LK: What’s interesting is people always say “how’d you find the story?”, and I’m like “it’s called the internet” . We haven’t really said anything that isn’t readily available for you but I think that’s what’s fascinating. I love when you see a movie even just Social Network or something, you wanna read the book you want to read the article, you want to go home and read everything, and I think there’s a lot to learn here.

CC: Are you working on any new films?

LK: We have a couple of things going they’re a little different in tone. One’s an adaptation of a book called “Burning Rainbow Farm” by Dean Kuipers. It’s an amazing book about these two dudes in love– they weren’t gay–but they had a farm in Michigan and the government tried to take it away from them because they had some dope on it. Really a kind of Thelma and Louise tone, great characters and a kind of sense of ownership of land—a very kind of iconic Butch Cassidy type of film. Then the other one is about a group of dentists and doctors that smuggled art out of the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. They were dentists for the Canadian national hockey team so they were smuggling during the Canada and Soviet big hockey summits sort of like Ocean’s Eleven meets The Lives of Others. It’s fun.

CC: So you’re attracted to true stories. Have you written any purely fictional scripts?

LK: Oh yeah I have done that too. I have a good one about a spelling bee. It’s a coming of age comedy . I guess I get so impatient about shooting films. So if there’s something great out there I’m ready to go. I like being towards the end of a script and getting ready to shoot more than sitting at home and writing… maybe I just don’t have enough of an imagination [laughs].

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Interview: The Whistleblower Director Larysa Kondracki

We discussed the B word (“Bosnian sex trafficking”, okay so it’s three words) with The Whistleblower director Larysa Kondracki. Her debut feature, with an envious cast that includes Rachel Weisz and Vanessa Redgrave, tells the true story of Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska cop who finds more than a fast and fat paycheck when she accepts a contract as a U.N. peacekeeper in Bosnia—i.e. a sex trafficking ring that stretches beyond the locals to the peacekeepers themselves and beyond.

Christine Champ: So this is your first feature, why did you choose sex trafficking as the topic?

Larysa Kondracki: Well I’m Ukranian-Canadian so it was a topic that people were talking about in my community. It was sort of before the phrase sex trafficking was popular, and it was just unbelievably interesting and compelling. When I found Kathy’s story well … it’s just something that grips you and you gotta do it.

CC: How did you discover Kathryn’s story?

LK: I had read a book called “The Natashas” by Victor Malarek, a Canadian reporter. He talked about the U.N.’s involvement in this in it, and sort of sex trafficking and what it is . It was a great book and in it there was this part about Kathy and it was just a small part, but I found it very interesting. I Googled her and the press was huge. She’d just won her tribunal. It was mostly in Europe though. I found her email in a chat room and I wrote her a letter, and the next day she wrote me back. She had just won so apparently she’d had some interest from European countries but she wasn’t able to entertain them. Within a few weeks I wrote a letter to the Ukranian Canadians. My mother distributed it forcefully and we had 30,000 dollars and Eilis [co-writer Eilis Kirwan] and I spent two years based in Dublin while Kathy was in Amsterdam. We spent two years traveling all over Eastern Europe meeting everyone from high level diplomats to underground NGOs that were hiding, and really getting a sense of the world and writing the whole time.

CC: So Kathy was directly involved with the writing of the script?

LK: Oh yeah she was always very available.

CC: This seems like the sort of topic you often see in documentaries, why did you decide to make it a drama?

LK: I guess I just don’t know how to make a documentary. I was at film school at Columbia and films like Monster, High Art, Boys Don’t Cry, were coming out and it just seemed very much in the now at the time. It was very possible… with last year’s films like Black Swan, Winter’s Bone, even King’s Speech I think we’re getting out of that five-year period where, and to be fair I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else, we were going through– I don’t like to call it the war on terror–that issue and economic decline and people needed to get away. But you look at Tree of Life which did really well this weekend, so I think people are hungry for good stories again.

CC: What do you think is the advantage (if any) of making it a drama vs. a documentary?

LK: I love documentaries you know and I think especially now they’re getting very compelling. I personally don’t know how to do that…I think what’s really interesting to people is that Kathy was an ordinary woman she doesn’t have a skill set that none of us can possess. And especially through a performance like Rachel’s which was so great, it’s a very relatable character and so possibly through a drama instead of a doc you’re able to experience what she goes through and that’s sort of part of the fun. I call it fun [laughs].

CC: How did you manage to cast such notable actors like Weisz and Redgrave, especially in your first film?

LK: At the end of the day the answer really comes down to the story. The script got out there… it circulated with agents. I thought Weisz was incredible. She was our first choice. At the time we gave it to her but she was pregnant and she couldn’t really go there, but she kept checking in. There where different permutations of the film throughout the years but then when finally we decided to make it a Canadian-German co-production the timing was great–Rachel was available. But in terms of all the other actors as well it was our first script but I think it was the story probably more than the script that –I don’t like to take credit for things. I suppose that’s encouraging: if you have a good product people will read it and actresses want to play good roles. And there’s such a dearth of good characters, or there were for so long that now suddenly it’s like “of course I want to play this, these are true complex people” … you haven’t played that before. And I think Rachel does a good job of not–you could go over the top–but it’s really the steely determination, that’s one o the reasons we thought she could be great. You can’t really pinpoint her. She’s someone that I think always goes for something different which is great and getting Vanessa–she’s amazing.

CC: Sex trafficking seems to be a hot topic lately. It was even the subject of another SIFF drama As If I’m not there. What did you hope audiences would take a away from your film?

LK: It’s still going on today if you look at the Congo, Liberia, the Middle East, Afghanistan especially–so yeah it’s not over. I think what’s cool about when I talk to people is they really don’t know how it’s going to end … so I guess the issue is that you want people to walk out and go “what did I just see?” and “what are we going to do about it?”. They’re totally different films but I think what Philadelphia did for AIDs by humanizing it and for the gay community people going “oh well he’s a nice man you know Tom Hanks” and suddenly if Tom Hanks can be gay and have AIDs maybe that’s something we can talk about… But he was so amazing in that film that you relate to it and I remember specifically a lot of people that would be homophobic went to see it and minds got changed. I think that’s the same thing here where you think sex trafficking is something that happens on a TV show like a Law and Order episode …it’s such a more relevant issue than we think. And there’s the issue of sex trafficking but there’s also the issue of large organizations with no accountability. Look at the banking system. I think it’s a microcosm for a lot and we knew that. You should see one of the early drafts it was like 900 pages that just didn’t end and people were like “focus, focus, focus” on the story of this one woman. I’m excited to see what happens in August and I hope it gets received well and not just as a film. That was I guess the point: make a good movie that then gets people talking as opposed to talking at people for two hours .

CC: It really makes you wonder about the effectiveness of U.N. peacekeepers especially when they’re outsourced. That could be a whole other movie.

LK: What’s interesting is people always say “how’d you find the story?”, and I’m like “it’s called the internet” . We haven’t really said anything that isn’t readily available for you but I think that’s what’s fascinating. I love when you see a movie even just Social Network or something, you wanna read the book you want to read the article, you want to go home and read everything, and I think there’s a lot to learn here.

CC: Are you working on any new films?

LK: We have a couple of things going they’re a little different in tone. One’s an adaptation of a book called “Burning Rainbow Farm” by Dean Kuipers. It’s an amazing book about these two dudes in love– they weren’t gay–but they had a farm in Michigan and the government tried to take it away from them because they had some dope on it. Really a kind of Thelma and Louise tone, great characters and a kind of sense of ownership of land—a very kind of iconic Butch Cassidy type of film. Then the other one is about a group of dentists and doctors that smuggled art out of the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. They were dentists for the Canadian national hockey team so they were smuggling during the Canada and Soviet big hockey summits sort of like Ocean’s Eleven meets The Lives of Others. It’s fun.

CC: So you’re attracted to true stories. Have you written any purely fictional scripts?

LK: Oh yeah I have done that too. I have a good one about a spelling bee. It’s a coming of age comedy . I guess I get so impatient about shooting films. So if there’s something great out there I’m ready to go. I like being towards the end of a script and getting ready to shoot more than sitting at home and writing… maybe I just don’t have enough of an imagination [laughs].