Film reviews: Guardians Of The Galaxy, Lady Macbeth and The Promise

Guardians Of The Galaxy: Volume 2 (12A, 140mins)

Director: James Gunn

Stars: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Michael Rooker

Needless to say, the movie was a smash, Pratt is now a huge star and mixtapes became cool again; a Sony Walkman is Peter Quill’s (Pratt) prized connection to a lost childhood on Earth.

How to maintain the scrappy charm and freshness of the original when the rule of thumb for most successful sequels is “more”? More money, more set-pieces, more stars. Everything Guardians itself so endearingly resisted, albeit within the confines of a superhero movie (no one is claiming it was an experimental art movie).

The first thing to be said, albeit a tad reluctantly, is that writer-director James Gunn doesn’t quite pull off the perfect sequel with Guardians Of The Galaxy: Volume 2. Some of the set-pieces are superfluous and lack suspense, quite a bit of the humour feels forced and a big “emotional” ending doesn’t feel earned. There also isn’t enough plot to sustain the 140-minute running time. 

Nevertheless, Gunn knows where the charm of the original lay – in its characters and cast and their anarchic spirit – and it’s here that the picture delivers, with another nostalgic rock soundtrack and heaps of 1970s and 1980s pop culture gags. 

All of this is captured brilliantly in the opening sequence, arguably the best bit of the film, which sees the gang tackle a vast, whale-like alien creature while Groot – now shrunken to twig-size – boogies in the foreground to ELO’s Mr Blue Sky. 

It culminates with Dave Bautista’s bone-headed Drax diving head first into the beast to cut it open from the inside. His plan doesn’t work but beefcake Drax emerges to be one of the delights of the film, a specialist in amusingly rude repartee. 

The outlaw status of the Guardians is swiftly established as Rocket the raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) double crosses the very civilisation, the Sovereigns, the group are defending from the alien creature, prompting a pursuit across the universe in which the Guardians are chased by dozens of drone spaceships. 

It’s exhilarating and fun and kicks off fractious in-fighting and bad-mouthing between the group that continues right through to the end. If the original was a space opera, the sequel is more like a soap opera with complicated and angry familial relationships determining the action.

At the heart of the story is the mystery and confusion over “Star-Lord” Quill’s heritage. Born of a human mother but mysterious “spaceman” father, and raised in the latter’s absence by the blue-skinned outcast Yondu (Michael Rooker), Quill is desperate to find out who he really is. 

Kurt Russell is perfectly cast as a narcissistic god-like hero, the aptly-named Ego, whose announcement that he is Quill’s father prompts a gooey reunion that can only spell trouble: “I’ve finally found my family,” burbles Quill, rather upsetting his substitute family of inter-galactic freaks. 

Quill’s crush, the green-skinned Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is involved in a domestic crisis of her own with vengeful sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) who has some heavy unresolved issues from their childhood. 

Gunn doesn’t always keep us compelled by these personal issues but the jaunty soundtrack and delightful interventions of the scene-stealing Groot (once again voiced by Vin Diesel) keep us entertained, while the visuals are reliably vibrant and stunning. 

Lady Macbeth (18, 89mins) 

Director: William Oldroyd

Stars: Florence Pugh, Cosmo Jarvis

The violence lurking behind polite Victorian society explodes powerfully to the surface in Lady Macbeth, a kind of bonnet-ripping revenge thriller inspired by Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk District, the 1865 novel by Nikolai Leskov. 

Featuring a star-making turn from 19-year-old Florence Pugh as Katherine, it charts her progression from cowed newlywed into a sexually charged adulteress. Married to a sadistic Northern squire (Paul Hilton) her lust is awakened by macho groom Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis).

Directed with spare intensity by William Oldroyd, it’s a picture as icily controlled as its heroine is wild and unpredictable. 

VERDICT: 4/5

The Promise (12A, 124mins)

Director: Terry George

Stars: Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac

Not since Alan Parker’s Midnight Express has Turkey received such a bad press at the movies. The Promise is a large-scale historical drama about the Armenian Genocide when more than a million Armenians in Turkey were wiped out during the First World War, an atrocity that Turkey refuses to officially acknowledge to this day. 

Directed by Terry George, who made the powerful Hotel Rwanda, it’s a long-overdue and timely story of war, persecution and displacement. It is set in the maelstrom of 1915, when the Ottoman authorities use the war – in which they supported Germany – as an excuse to “relocate” Armenian Christians from their homelands in southern Turkey. 

Why the minority is so resented is never properly explored, as historical detail takes a back seat to a rather predictable love triangle involving an Armenian medical student (Oscar Isaac), a boorish American journalist (Christian Bale) and a fetching Armenian artist, Ana (Charlotte Le Bon). 

Yet the cast and production values keep you watching even as the plotting loses its grip.

VERDICT: 3/5