For this movie, I collabed with the Baker to talk about a character we liked and the film as a whole.
His character:
There are so many intriguing characters to write about from this movie like the slowly developing dementia afflicted arms dealing dad called Dick Mcmahon to the French spy called jones played by Edi Gathegi (who would make a good bond if you ask me) to the CIA man Treat Morrison played by Ben Affleck and finally the character I’m going to talk about which is Elena Mcmahon; the survivor of breast cancer mom who is also a journalist played by Anne Hathaway.
I like the character of Elena Mcmahon basically because I’m a fan of Anne Hathaway right from when I saw her in the movie princess diaries. This role is far from the happy role princess diaries was and is kind of edgy and all grown up; she even smokes. The character was well executed and I like the fashion touch with the scarf which I assume gives her a sense of comfort since the breast removal. For a journalist I felt she trusted treat a little too fast, a man appearing in your time of need? And she slept with him too, but like jones said she trusted her country a little too much. Why she ran away from jones when her journalist friend was on the phone hinting a French spy might be working the same story too, I would never understand, he proved enough times that he was a friend. I’ve been wondering about the situation she was put in by her dad, seems harmless and he has been doing it for a while so I guess we can’t fault her for going in her dad’s place.
His thoughts about the film:
The movie has potential, all the characters played their roles perfectly which makes me assume it’s either the director did not direct properly or the script was just weak. Many moving parts with no closure, I don’t think we got to see bob and what his role in all of this was really or was this just a way of creating suspense? I didn’t like the fact she had to die, looked like it could have been prevented and was just done to make the movie edgy.
My character :
Elena McMahon who is played by Anne Hathaway. She plays the role of a former war journalist who's returned back to the US, somewhat jaded by the mundane sort of reporting from stonewalled politicians she cannot get answers from. Her investigative war reporting team (if I can call it that) is being disbanded by the higher powers who can feel the pressure mounting from her questioning, and she's unhappy to be asked to cover the Reagan campaigns instead.
Elena lives a complicated life. One thing is cemented though about her character, which is that she's not someone who is afraid of life. She's a breast cancer survivor, a single mother of a daughter in a boarding school and only daughter to a criminally minded father who finds himself in a complex mess which provides an opening for the work she actually craves for.
This film is based off a book written by Joan Didion in 1996 which I have not read. Elena here has discovered that the US government have been using cocaine money to send some weapons to Nicaragua. The film does not explain further about the historical significance of this region and what it all means, but you can tell from the reaction Elena has that whatever is going on there is illegal and she is very interested in getting to the bottom of reporting it.
As mentioned earlier, she finds this opportunity in her father's shady deals because he knows a guy who knows some guy and well these weapons are his merch and we know vaguely that he's been scammed and now Elena has to fix this and other things like she's always done.
This is how she finds herself in a whirlwind of very high paced events in Costa Rica, with various involvements with people she can't seem to trust as she continously finds herself targeted and finally murdered.
I think Anne Hathaway really gave the bad gal feel to this film. I liked her brutality, her blazing on in the face of death, and the fear of abduction. Her character was strong and level headed, only to fall for a man in the night, a man who she decided to trust and who finally shot her. I was half expecting the end but when it came, I still found it difficult to process.
I'll leave off with the iconic quote from her
'Some real things have happened lately. First, I wanted to know who. Who chose money over life? Steel and lead over blood and spirit? Who was it overlooked... the living? Who let distance and basic difference decide whose man was left behind bleeding out, and whose men medevac'd to safety? Who the war pig? Who the profiteer? Who the cold heart? The vapid soul?'
My thoughts about the film as a whole :
Pretty disjointed. I can see from online reviews that I'm not alone. I did not get the background of the film until I'd checked so that's something that the film pompously assumed. It definitely had a target audience in mind which I find a little offensive.
I did not understand the partitioning of people into good and bad. I mainly saw 'good', so I constantly found myself thinking that the film had made a mistake anytime they'd try to amend my initial impressions to show characters for who they really were in the film.
I just felt too many stories were running parallelly and then diverged into their own worlds of loose ends.