A Christmas Gift From Bob

Rated: PGA Christmas Gift From Bob

Directed by: Charles Martin Smith

Written and Executive Produced by: Garry Jenkins

Produced by: Adam Rolston, Tracy Jarvis, Steve Jarvis, Andrew Boswell and Sunny Vohra

Starring: Luke Treadaway, Bob the Cat, Kristina Tonteri-Young, Phaldut Sharma.

Based on the autobiographical books about James Bowen and a stray cat (Bob) that befriended him on the streets of London, A Christmas Gift From Bob is the sequel to the international Indie film, A Street Cat Named Bob”

While James was homeless and addicted to heroin, the cat’s relentless affection and companionship eventually inspired James to make a go of life.

And the third book of the series, A Gift From Bob documents one of the last Christmases James and his ginger cat spent together before they became famous.

Based on this moment in time, the film opens on a glamorous premiere, launching the first book, following James (Luke Treadaway returning in his role) and Bob (starring as himself) curled around his shoulder, James wondering why he’s there.

He’s meant to write a second book – it’s expected soon and he has no idea where or how to start.

How do you continue a story of redemption once you’re off the streets?  What comes next, except wondering how to keep paying the bills and have food in the fridge?

And what happens when Animal Welfare start investigating, asking questions about James’ ability to care for his friend and companion: the cat who saved his life?

It’s all a little bit inspirational because through hardship there’s growth.

And a hell of a lot of light cheese filled with those aw, moments.  But it’s good cheese, well, absolutely pushing the Bob-the-cat: it’s from Bob, this song is about Bob, this is a card… from Bob…

Cue sweet soundtrack on repeat.

But it’s a Christmas card from Bob as he sits there on his blanket, next to James as he hands out those cards to the other characters in the story, the busker and his cat creating a community of people through their support of the pair.

It’s a movie about what Christmas means to people and how hard it can be for people who have lost their loved ones or have nothing or no one to celebrate, so the film pulls those heart strings, giving those clichéd moments meaning like, what goes around comes around.  And stronger together.

Because like Bea (Kristina Tonteri-Young ) constant friend and supporter of James says: Christmas isn’t a season, it’s feeling.

Bob has now passed.  So it’s kinda sweet to see him there on the screen for everyone to share.

Here’s what James had to say: ”Bob saved my life. It’s as simple as that. He gave me so much more than companionship. With him at my side, I found a direction and purpose that I’d been missing. The success we achieved together through our books and films was miraculous. He’s met thousands of people, touched millions of lives. There’s never been a cat like him. And never will again. I feel like the light has gone out in my life. I will never forget him.”

Lassie Come Home

Rated: PGLassie Come Home

Directed by: Hanno Olderdissen

Screenplay: Jane Ainscough

Produced by: Henning Ferber

Starring: Niko Marischka, Bella Bading, Sebastian Bezzel, Anna Maria Mühe, Matthias Habich.

When I think of Lassie, I think of a dog who knew too much. Way too much. Previous Lassies would bail up the villains, almost before they’d managed to commit the crime. Whereas Florian Maurer’s Lassie, possibly due to her intensely close bond with the boy, shares many of the personality traits of her 12 year old partner in crime.

Lassie is both a mischievous bundle of fur and an exceptional athlete with her go button stuck on high. She never walks when she can run but, mostly, Lassie careens around as if powered by a secret jet pack. So, it is not surprising when the landlady’s bag of groceries is knocked flying as Lassie tears down a narrow staircase or she leaves an elegant trail of paw prints when she bounds across some freshly painted road markings. It is this overflowing exuberance that sees her banished from the apartment where her human family have recently taken up residence.

With the landlady waving the lease and refusing to budge, her family must find Lassie a new home. At least temporarily. Fortunately they are friendly with Graf von Sprengel, the dog-loving owner of a grand country manor. Flo and Lassie are desolate at their separation, even though they will be living within in walking distance of each other. That is, until Graf needs to travel to an island in the North Sea to sell his summer home.

It’s from here that Lassie races off. When one of the hired hands attempts to mistreat her, Lassie sees her chance to bolt. It is the beginning of a series of adventures for both dog and boy as they vainly try to reunite. And, since she’s the only one with a phone so they can follow Lassie’s progress as it is captured and posted on social media, Graf’s 12 year old granddaughter Cilla joins the chase too.

As a dog of many talents, Lassie is well equipped for such an odyssey. It turns out that she is not only an expert at hitching rides and stowing away, but she’s a sausage snavelling fiend and an accomplished circus performer. And in true Lassie style, she can sniff out friend from foe at 20 paces.

As the film has been dubbed from the original German, there is in some places a slight disjunction between the emotion a character is displaying and the shape of their words, but this is a minor consideration. Not only is the cinematography gorgeous and the scenery stunning, the film has been well cast: from Flo and Cilla who are more like real children and not the overly earnest characters of previous generations to Bandit the Scottish Collie who plays his starring role with aplomb.

Rather than a dog who knows too much, Lassie is a headstrong creature with her own methods of solving problems. Since she doesn’t bite, Lassie frequently achieves her ends with some well-timed barking. A lot of barking. Lassie is still very much a super dog, but in a more doggy way.

With the focus of this film on friendship, and no awkward lectures on doing the right thing, I could just sit back and enjoy the pandemonium.

Ip Man: Kung Fu Master

Rated: MA15+IP MAN KUNG FU MASTER

Directed by: Li Liming

Produced by: Kai Pictures/Palm Entertainment

Starring: Dennis To, Yuan Li Ruo Xin, Michael Wong.

Mandarin with subtitles

‘It’s not important when you die, but how to live,’ says San Ye (Michael Wong), an honourable mobster who will deal in anything.  But opium.

San Ye believes in the Axes – a gang of axe wielding martial artists.  Ip Man (Dennis To) is a police captain.  He believes in the law.

But when the Japanese start smuggling opium through the docks of Foshan, the Axes and the Law make unlikely allies.

The story gets way more complicated than just a drug smuggling feud.

There’re double crosses, triple crosses, with each rapid shift of scene spliced with another story so a Kung Fu fight cuts to a game of checkers, the game pieces like the black hats wielding axes. Or a misunderstanding leading to more Kung Fu fighting cutting to Ip Man’s wife having a baby (named Chun, of course).

Then there’s the classic comic character, the drunken uncle, who’s really a master in disguise and willing to fight.  When bribed with the promise to pay for his wine for two years.

And that’s before the introduction of the Masked Man.

Based on the legendary teacher of Bruce Lee, Ip Man, there’s many other previous instalments of Ip Man movies out there:  Ip Man (2008), Ip Man 2 (2010), Ip Man 3 (2015), the spin-off Master Z: Ip Man Legacy (2018) and another sequel Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019).  The above directed by Wilson Yip and starring Donnie Yen.

This is the third time Dennis To plays the role of Ip Man, after 2010’s Ip Man: The Legend is born (directed by Herman Yau), and 2018’s Kung Fu League (directed by Jeff Lau).

So it’s a popular character, Ip Chun, the son of Ip Man, praising Dennis To as the most accurate portrayal of his father.

And there’s a lot of action here as the film dives from one thought to the next, keeping up the pace.

What wasn’t successful was the change in emotional tone.

The drama in, Ip Man: Kung Fu Master relies heavily on a cheesy soundtrack, at one point the lyrics part of the scene, so there’s this superficial skating over every opportunity for depth in the relationships just to get to the next part of the story as quickly as possible.  But that pace doesn’t stop the story going to those tearful goodbyes at the train station or a sacrifice for family.  And that’s OK because the film isn’t about the drama, the theme is more about Kung Fu versus Karate.  Or is it?

The only foundation of the story is the honour of Ip Man and the setting up of those action, martial art scenes.

Although emotionally transparent, some of those action scenes were shot with vision, the camera shot from above to see the patterns of fighters running like water down a drain.  A little like the emotional content of the film.

But if you can stomach the cheesy attempt at drama and the patriotic tone of good (Chinese) versus bad (Japanese), there’s some fun twists in the story that keeps the action entertaining.

Honest Thief

Rated: MHonest Thief

Written and Directed by: Mark Williams

Produced by: Mark Williams, Myles Nestel, Tai Duncan, Craig Chapman and Jonah Loop

Production Designer: Tom Lisowski

Editor: Michael P Shawver

Music by: Mark Isham

Starring: Liam Neeson, Kate Walsh, Jeffrey Donovan, Jai Courtney, Anthony Ramos, Robert Patrick and Jasmine Cephas Jones.

‘I met a woman.’

Honest Thief is a classic formula that plays-out like a movie I felt like I’d seen before.

Set in Boston (including that Boston accent and typical dirty cops), the In-And-Out Bandit, AKA Tom Carter (Liam Neeson) has been robbing banks without leaving a trace (hence the nickname and yes, he doesn’t like it either) for eight years.

Until he meets Annie (Kate Walsh – the actress from Grey’s Anatomy.  She looks nothing like Dr. Addison Montgomery here as Annie and that’s OK.  She’s well-cast).

It’s a real meet-cute, setting the tone of the film – a romantic crime drama set to the gravitas of Liam Neeson’s deep-bass voice.

Tom wants to the do the right thing.  To build his relationship with Annie on an honest foundation (see the title), and be an, ‘Honest Thief’.

After twelve bank robberies over seven states and nine million in cash, Tom wants to turn himself in.

‘He met a woman,’ Agent Meyers (Jeffrey Donovan) explains.

‘Poor guy,’ replies Agent Baker (Robert Patrick).

The robber-turned-soft romantic overtones of this film are somewhat offset by the humour of this Agent Baker, desperately trying not to be bitter after being left with a dog (instead of a house) after his divorce.

And we get some dirty cop crime thrown in with some explosive action.

Writer and director Mark Williams (A Family Man (2016)) states, “It has the action, the thrills, car chases, guns going off, things exploding. But at the heart of it, it’s a love story, and to me that’s the most important thing.”

So, Honest Thief isn’t one of those shoot-em-up action flicks, or crime thriller.

This is more Tom proving he’s the In-And-Out bandit – an excuse to show some strategy in the film – then after being double-crossed by dirty cops, proving he might be a robber, but he’s no killer.

At one point Tom’s asked, ‘What do you want?’

‘To prove my innocence.’

Because as stated above, he’s met a woman.

It’s just not that exciting.

But the addition of Robert Patrick as Agent Baker (Robert Patrick) and his increasing affection for his fluffy companion, Tassy lifted the tone and added that extra bit of humour.

‘Poor guy.’

Hilarious.

Body Swap

Rated: not rated in AustraliaBody Swap

Directed by: Timothy Morton                

Written by: Jimmy Kustes

Produced by: Jimmy Kustes

Starring: Ella Jordan, Jimmy Kustes, Gunner Willis, Joseph Tino, Kayte Giralt, Erica Manni.

‘Pump the brakes lady. I don’t swap bodies every day.’

When Casey (Jimmy Kustes) an unemployed video gamer and highly-evolved couch potato takes the company motto to ‘be yourself’ to heart during an interview, he not only blows any chance he might have had to get the job, but the interviewer (Ella Jordan) is so incensed at his bare-faced honesty that she tries to feed his résumé to the paper shredder. As the pair jostle, Casey’s drink spills and the device short circuits, knocking them both out.

On regaining consciousness, each discovers that they have swapped into the last body in the world they would choose to live in.

Even worse, it’s a critical time in C.J.s career, she has been tasked with steering a billion dollar merger for her firm and her boss has made it clear that she is to do nothing that might jeopardise the process. Under the circumstances, C.J. feels as if she has no choice but to let the job applicant reject appear in her place while she navigates a body that can keep an M&M hidden under its boobs.

This is a gentle comedy rather than a roll around on the floor romp but, for me, there was great delight in delving into the meta-levels of this thoughtful offering. Throughout the film, interview footage of a more relaxed and socially adept C.J. and Casey, as they sit sprawled across a couch discussing the intimate mechanics of body swapping, is inserted into the flow of the narrative as if the whole thing were actually a documentary.

With this meta-level intrusion serving as an ongoing reminder, I was very conscious that each character was at once themselves inside another’s body, at the same time as they were attempting to take on the identity of the other, while never being able to fully shrug off the traits of the person they had once been.

Such a kaleidoscope of competing agendas kept my mind in a whirl. In a good way.

When C.J. and Casey swap bodies, they step into lives so far apart on the career and social spectrum that they might have been living in separate universes. Ostensibly the film is about what the two can learn about themselves on their paths to becoming less dysfunctional human beings, but this is also where this movie so nicely defies convention. Despite the strangeness of the situation, each finds themselves in an unexpectedly powerful position in their new life. C.J. knows exactly how to shower Casey’s girlfriend with romance, that is until she runs into mechanical problems, while Casey has been longing for an opportunity to unleash his gamer superpowers onto the real world and it doesn’t take him long to see the huge potential in his new corporate role as well as the possibilities of life as a lesbian.

While this indie flic might demand some effort on the part of the audience, much of the humour lies in the subtleties, there are some deliciously absurd moments with two thoroughly amusing and likable leads.

Deerskin

Rated: MA15+Deerskin

Directed and Written by: Quentin Dupieux

Photography, Editing: Quentin Dupieux

Art and Set Direction: Joan Le Boru

Sound: Guillaume Le Braz, Alexis Place, Gadou Naudin, Cyril Holtz

Starring: Jean Dujardin, Adele Haenel

French with English subtitles

‘I swear never to wear a jacket as long as I live.’

Deerskin first introduces Georges (Jean Dujardin) wearing a green jacket with three plastic buttons.  He parks on the wrong side of the petrol bowser.  And looking at his reflection in the car window he frowns at what he sees.  Then he flushes the jacket in the public toilet.

Yep, Georges is losing it.

The music flares.

And I think to myself, I already like this movie.

The film is character driven and continues to follow Georges.  But there’s another character in this movie.  A jacket.  We meet the beast.  The new jacket: 100% Deerskin.

The way the film flashes to a live deer in the wilderness seals it somehow.  Just how cool the jacket is.  But It’s not. It’s made from the skin of this beautiful innocent animal (see previous flash to said deer in the wilderness).  And, it’s got… fringes.  But Georges LOVES it: ‘Style de tueur (Killer style),’ he says, looking in the mirror.

It just makes me grin.

After that Georges keeps driving.

‘You’re no-where Georges.  You no longer exist.’  That’s what his ex-wife tells him, over the phone.

Georges ends up in the bar of a small village, where he meets the barmaid, Denise (Adele Haenel).  She’s been burnt by love too.  But Georges is a brand-new man in his deerskin jacket.  He tells Denise he’s a film maker.

It makes sense to say he’s a film maker.  He’s been recording film all day, so it’s kinda the same.  ‘No it’s not,’ says the jacket.

Instead of getting to know an available woman, Georges gets to know the jacket as his relationship with this 100% deerskin jacket becomes the subject of Georges’ movie to be.

Killer style indeed.

Director and writer Quentin Dupieux says, ‘I wanted to film insanity.’

And Georges has lost it.  But wow, he’s really enthusiastic about it.

The way Georges insanity is shown is somehow shocking and hilarious.

It’s the same dark humour used in, The Lobster, but less confronting even though there’s more killing…  And this whole jacket business is just so ticklish.

Jean Dujardin (who plays Georges in the film) explains it’s Quentin’s use of space that creates the comedy, ‘It’s in those moments of hesitation that the comedy and drama blend. You’re right on the borderline. All those scenes, for example, in which Georges demands money, or can’t pay. Quentin takes the time to stretch out the sense of malaise, to allow for some lingering doubt. Is Georges going to turn violent? Weep? Laugh? You never know what will happen. Time stands still for a moment, and those little agonies make me want to die laughing.’

Then there’s Georges dream in life – for him, it’s all about wearing this deerskin jacket.  To be the only person wearing… a jacket.  It doesn’t make sense.  But from the perspective of Georges, as he makes a film about his dream, it kinda does.

The character Denise gets it.  She reckons the jacket is like a shell to protect the wearer from the outside world.

I think it’s because Georges hates who he used to be, wearing that green blazer with the three plastic buttons.

Or perhaps Deerskin is just a weirdo movie that’s put together in a way that somehow makes sense.

Whether you analyse the layers or not, I was thoroughly absorbed and entertained from start to finish.

Like Denise says, ‘I’m into it.’

The Vigil

Rated: MA15+The Vigil

Directed and Written by: Keith Thomas

Produced by: J. D. Lifshitz & Raphael Margules of BoulderLight Pictures and Adam Margules

Cinematographer: Zach Kuperstein

Score: Micael Yezerski

Starring: Dave Davis, Menashe Lustig, Malky Goldman, Lynn Cohen, Fred Melamed, Ronald Cohen, Nati Rabinowitz, Moshe Lobel, Efraim Miller, Lea Kalisch and Ethan Stone.

The Vigil has the style of a classic horror, of creaking floorboards and shadows hiding in the dark combined with a different style of story: a Jewish shomer or watchman of the dead, haunted by a monster awakened in a forest during the Holocaust.

Recently moving to ‘Boro’ Park, Brooklyn (a Hasidic community), Yakov (Dave Davis) is adapting to his new life in America.  Having just lost his faith and struggling – having to choose between buying medication or food – the leader of a support group for Jews adapting to their new life says, ‘What matters is that we’re moving forward.’

And underneath all the shadows and monsters, moving forward is the driving theme of the film.

When Yakov is offered the job of shomer, he weighs up his hesitation to return to a life he wants to leave behind versus the offer of money he desperately needs to pay his bills.

All he has to do is sit for five hours and wait for morning.

It only takes fifteen minutes for him to believe he’s losing his mind.

Set over one night, most of The Vigil is set in the house of recently deceased Rubin Lutvak and his wife.  A known recluse, Mr Lutvak was the only surviving member of his family after the Second World War.

It’s all dark and creepy and goes down that path of history and memory so there’s a complete story behind the monster haunting, damned to look back at the past.

Writer and director Keith Thomas has a background as a novelist (The Clarity (2018) and Dahlia Black (2019)) as well as a screenwriter, and he’s taken time to round out the backstory so The Vigil becomes a horror movie, with a difference.

There’s a feeling that this is a unique storyline because the supernatural of the horror is based on Jewish culture and mysticism.  Where four hundred dollars for five hours of time becomes the price of the shomer’s soul, as he becomes haunted by a monster that feeds on the memories of the broken.

And there’s some scares here, I yelped at one point, after being left on the edge with moments where Yakov thinks he can see something, there in the shadows, so I look, not knowing if the mind is playing tricks or if there’s actually something there.

Dave Davis as Yakov is well-cast, believable in his nonchalance and questioning of his sanity.

And the thumping and scratching, the sharp intake of breath and winding soundtrack adds that extra tension, even more during the silence, the pause, the waiting.

The only drawback for me was the portrayal of the monster, those claws not quite convincing.  Not quite as scary as those shadows used to build the suspense.

But overall, The Vigil is worth a watch.

The Wretched

Rated: MA15+The Wretched

Written and Directed by: The Pierce Brothers (Brett Pierce, Drew Pierce)

Produced by: Chang Tseng, Ed Polgardy

Music Composed by: Devin Burrows

Starring: John-Paul Howard, Piper Curda, Zarah Mahler, Azie Tesfai, Kevin Bigley, Blane Crockarell, Jamison Jones.

‘Can’t be lost if we don’t know where we’re going in the first place.’

Opening 35 years ago to a teen girl going to a house to babysit, it’s all pop music and the 80s.  Until she walks down the stairs to the basement…

Fast forward to five days ago and we meet 17-year-old Ben (John-Paul Howard) on his way to visit his dad (Jamison Jones).

Ben’s got a broken arm, his parents are getting divorced and the local kids are mean.  Except Mallory (Piper Curda) – she has a crush.

It’s all a bit teen, even to the spying on the next-door neighbours when they’re about to get it on.

But horrors and teen dramas can be a good mix if the right characters get killed off and the monster’s scary enough.

Enter, the Dark Mother.  A monster of the forest that feeds on the ‘forgotten’, AKA: eats kids.

‘Mum’s acting weird,’ says young next-door neighbour Dillon (Blane Crockarell).

And quite rightly so as the Dark Mother takes possession, creaking, stinking, her flesh rotting, her whispers making ears bleed.

I just didn’t find this Dark Mother particularly scary.

There’s an overreliance on the soundtrack with no real back story to this monster.

The Pierce Brothers (Brett Pierce, Drew Pierce) were inspired by Roald Dahl’s The Witches and the experience of living through their parents’ divorce.  “We cobbled together our favorite aspects of Black Annis, an English legend, and the Boo Hag of the Appalachian Mountains and fused it with our own creepy concepts.”

But the idea behind the monster doesn’t translate.  Adding some history into the film would have given the Dark Mother more meaning, giving the scares more meat.  Instead, she’s a mystery in the film, where all Ben can figure is that it exists.

But it’s not all bad.

The story itself has some twists, and the pacing of the drama is just right.

The dad character adds a playful tone to the otherwise taking-life-way-too-seriously son, Ben:

‘The TV doesn’t have a HDMI port,’ says Ben.

The Dad replies, ‘Did you plug it in?’

Yet there’s no circling back to that 35 years ago beginning of the film, so why start there?

The film lived out its own journey of, can’t be lost if it doesn’t know where it’s going…

All the symbolism was there but then the narrative got too caught up in the teen drama so the drama was better executed than the horror of the dark monster.

Certainly not the worst horror I’ve seen but the few moments of, OK, that just happened, didn’t lift the tension to any genuine scares.

Monos

Rated: MA 15+Monos

Directed by: Alejandro Landes

Written by: Alexis Dos Santos, Alejandro Landes

Starring: Julianne Nicholson, Moises Arias, Sofia Buenaventura, Julian Giraldo, Karen Quintero, Laura Castrillón, Deiby Rueda, Sneider Castro, Paul Cubides.

Monos has been hailed as Lord of the Flies meets Apocalypse Now and with so many obvious parallels I couldn’t help but wonder if this would be a film I had already seen.

As Monos opens, the camera swoops in on a remote outpost atop a mountain, where a band of war orphans shelter in an abandoned bunker. From a distance the terrain is visually arresting and close-up the environment alternates between a muddy and wind-whipped wasteland overhung by great, boiling clouds and a private Shangri-La for the group of underage guerrillas. That is, until the encroaching conflict pushes the squad and their hostage down into the cover of the jungle below.

While Apocalypse Now also tracks an expedition into the tangled depths of the jungle, the primordial setting a mirror to the battle-ravaged psyche of a U.S. colonel gone rogue, Alejandro Landes’s film goes even deeper, beneath the skin to where the blood fizzes and thrums. In the swarming wilderness, birdlike tongue clicks identify the group to itself and a lone giggle rises up into the indifferent skies. With the ever-present helicopter rotors pulsing overhead, echoing both Apocalypse Now and the strains of a thumping heart, Mica Levi’s music score builds into a vast and panoramic soundscape that is at the same time utterly intimate.

Landes’s camera, too, continues this dance between near and far. On one level, telling the story in the traditional way with characters and dialogue and, on another, the soaring camerawork abstracting the experience. Unlike the two earlier films, each viewed through the prism of a single character, Monos is seen through the eyes of its several victims. While this approach does invoke the visceral experience, it also opens up a psychological distance that may not be to everyone’s taste. At the same time, this cinematic distancing also tilts the focus of the film ever so slightly.

Where Lord of the Flies and Apocalypse Now tell intensely human stories that arise from the social and political context of their times, Monos more directly addresses the context. At the outset, these child soldiers playing blind man’s bluff, indulging in communal pashing sessions and so gleefully spraying the slopes around them with machine gun fire enjoy an almost unfettered degree of freedom, but underlying it all are the unspoken fears that come with the threat of adult punishments and all-to-real consequences.

It is a culture shaped by its paramilitary status, but it is also a society populated by those young enough not to have preconceived notions of what a society should be. While the stories told by the two earlier films have emerged from highly organised social structures that they implicitly critique, there is no sense here that these teenagers have ever known a safe haven beyond their earliest years.

As the war encircles them, their micro-society does not so much fall apart as an already harsh regime mutates, morphing into an entity where those that wield the power will do absolutely anything to preserve their fiefdom and those on the receiving end will, equally, risk everything to get out.

Monos is both lyrical and shocking, an experience felt at the level of tissue and bone, and a story playing out, somewhere. Now.

Burden

Rated: MBurden

Directed by: Andrew Heckler

Written by: Andrew Heckler

Produced by: Robbie Brenner, Bill Kenwright

Starring: Garrett Hedlund, Forest Whitaker, Tom Wilkinson, Andrea Riseborough, Tess Harper, Crystal Fox, Usher.

‘Perfect love drives out fear.’

Hitting a sledgehammer through a pane of glass introduces Mike Burden (Garrett Hedlund).  He’s having fun with his mates; he’s teaching kids to be nice.  He’s a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

Based on a true story, Burden shows Mike as he tries to see past his loyalty to the KKK and the father figure who raised him: leader of the KKK, Tom Griffin (Tom Wilkinson).

The film follows Mike as he begins to see past hate and resentment when he meets single mum, Judy (Andrea Riseborough) and how her young son doesn’t see colour, his best mate black and the son of an old high-school friend Clarence (Usher Raymond): someone Mike says to a KKK member he can talk to but wouldn’t sit and eat dinner with.

Set in 1996, tension rises in the small town of Laurens, South Carolina when the Klan opens up, The Redneck KKK Museum.

The black community led by Reverend Kennedy (Forest Whitaker) protests against the glorifying of the KKK’s hateful past.

What the film shows and what writer and director, Andrew Heckler has captured is not just a right and wrong side, or a good versus evil – there’s family and community in the Klan and in the flock of Reverend Kennedy.

The film makes the point of how important family is in the Klan, and how kind.  And how hateful.

From the Klan there’s talk of protection and heritage, then there’s the Reverend talking of love thy neighbour, rebuke evil and the fire of love.

With Forest Whitaker you always know there’s going to be some authentic sincerity – used well here as the Reverend navigates his very human feelings of hate for those who lynched his uncle versus his love of God, to want to rise up to lift others.

Love is what saves Mike – from the increasing violence and threat of murder.  It’s his love of Judy and seeing the world through the innocent eyes of her son.  And it’s the embrace of acceptance and understanding from a man he once would have killed because of the colour of his skin.

I admit, I was bracing myself before watching this film, feeling oversensitive with all the protests and racial tension in the world.  I find the violence in true stories harder to watch.  But Burden is more drama than horror or crime.

This is a film about the individual, about Mike letting go of that American Dream.  And if you don’t get it then it’s got to be someone’s fault.

About needing someone, ‘to step on to feel better.’

By turning away from resentment, Mike becomes free.

And at the moment, any message of Be Kind is very welcome.

Be kind peeps.

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