Movie Reviews
1992 movie review & film summary (2024) | Roger Ebert
Count “1992” as one of those films with its heart in the right place but its execution in the wrong space. Set on April 29, 1992, the day of the Rodney King verdict, this is a surprisingly uncomplicated film, one that attempts to balance its heist-thriller elements with its combustible racial milieu. It features Tyrese Gibson as a single father named Mercer, working to protect his teenage son Antoine (Christopher Ammanuel) from the surrounding violence only to upset an ensuing robbery led by Lowell (the late Ray Liotta) and his crew. There are shootouts, a car chase, some heroics and some hard life lessons—but this film isn’t breaking new ground on either the action or socio-political front.
Director Ariel Vromen’s “1992” often plays like a significantly lesser mishmash of Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit” and John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13.” It poses a one-night structure that puts to test the resolve of its Black protagonist to simply survive the night whether through brunt force or through pained civility. And while certain thrills can be had from its nuts and bolts construction, you’re left wanting this film to lessen its well-worn genre elements in deference to the difficult father-son dynamics it initially sells.
Those dynamics, in an on-the-nose script written by Vromen and Sascha Penn, come in two forms. The first arises between Mercer and Antoine. The former was recently released from prison six months ago, and now he’s working on not going back by staying away from the gang he once ran with and by plying his trade as a maintenance worker in a plant. Mercer, of course, doesn’t want Antoine to follow in his footsteps. So he has the teen, despite Antoine’s charge that he’s being locked in a proverbial cage by his dad, to return directly home from school. The film’s other strained father-son relationship is Riggin Bigby (Scott Eastwood) and his father Lowell. It’s Riggin who thinks up a get-rich-quick scheme, proposing that Lowell’s gang rob Mercer’s plant where there happens to be $10 million worth of platinum—with the uprising associated with the Rodney King verdict providing the perfect cover for their plan.
Of the two threads, it’s clear that Mercer and Antoine have a far more potent relationship. Through their eyes we are transported back to the hood films of the 1990s, where the potential for danger seems to rise higher around every corner. It’s here Mercer is still a local legend for his violent ways. In the film’s first half, Gibson remains stoic, as though he is afraid that any show of emotion will lead to trouble. The same could be said of his hunched posture, the way his body is swallowed up by the oversized jumpsuit he wears to work. This is a man attempting to change himself from the inside out. When Mercer’s acquiescence is thrown against Antoine’s fervent desire for revenge following the verdict, an enthralling explosiveness develops between the two. Unfortunately that energy is often undone by the film’s frank dialogue and blunt scenarios, such as a police barricaded roadblock that nearly goes wrong.
That father-son relationship only leaves the other more wanting. We know that Riggin is tired of working for his dad and his band of petty criminals. He also wants to take his younger, sensitive brother away from Lowell. Beyond that the writing just sorta stops. There are very few scenes between Liotta and Eastwood, which admittedly, might have been out of Vromen’s hands. We’re not sure why Riggin hates Lowell and vise-versa. Nor do we get a sense of Lowell. Liotta is delivering his lines with confidence, but they don’t string together into a complete character. He is merely violent and heartless, and not much else.
Fascinatingly, these two families do not immediately meet. In fact, Lowell and his crew are halfway done with their robbery, over halfway through the film, before Antoine and Mercer stumble onto their criminality. The film then becomes a fight for survival as Mercer and Antoine attempt to avoid Lowell’s wrath. Though the majority of the action happens in these scenes, the film, mysteriously, appears to slow down. There is no suspense to Mercer brawling with Lowell’s men. Maybe that’s because it’s all been thrown together at the last minute, casting away the pleasures of seeing rivalries and vendettas that have naturally been developed over the course of the picture? Or maybe it’s because the shooting of these sequences is fairly rudimentary?
In any case, “1992” doesn’t wear its genre elements well. It can also struggle in the edit too, such as the clumsy integration of archival footage from the Los Angeles uprising. Vromen can’t decide whether to show us those images via the television, whose broadcasts of the news often occupy the back of the composition or to show it as a documentary. The score also feels mismatched, opting for syncopated jazz music in a film that plays as far too sweaty and far too grimy for such precise percussion.
And yet, it’s difficult to wholly disavow this film. There is an albeit obvious tension in two Black men avoiding these white criminals while in the film’s outer world white folks are steering clear of Black protestors. There is also a palpable anger felt by Mercer and Antoine that the film understands. And Liotta, in his final completed film, is a plus presence. You just wish all of those elements came together in a movie that had the ability to lean on its human components and find drama in their relationships rather than pushing them aside for lackluster set pieces in a conventional social picture.
Desert Warrior, 2026.
Directed by Rupert Wyatt.
Starring Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley, Ghassan Massoud, Sharlto Copley, Sami Bouajila, Lamis Ammar, Géza Röhrig, Numan Acar, Nabil Elouahabi, Hakeem Jomah, Ramsey Faragallah, Saïd Boumazoughe, and Soheil Bostani.
SYNOPSIS:
An honorable and mysterious rogue, known as Hanzala, makes himself an enemy of the Emperor Kisra after he helps a fugitive king and princess in the desert.
With aspirations of being a historical epic harkening back to the sword and sandal blockbusters of yesteryear, Rupert Wyatt’s seventeenth-century Arabia tale is about as generic and epically dull as one would expect from a film plainly titled Desert Warrior. Yes, there appear to be real locations here, and there are some admittedly sweeping shots of various tribes storming into battle on horseback and camels, but it’s all in service of a mess that is both miscast and questionable as the work of a filmmaking team of mostly white creatives.
The story of Emperor Kisraa (Ben Kingsley, a distracting presence even with only one or two scenes) rounding up women from other tribes to be his concubines, which inevitably became the catalyst for a revolution led by Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart), uniting all the divided clans and strategizing battle plans for flanking and poisoning, is undeniably ripe for cinematic treatment. The problem is that what’s here from Rupert Wyatt (and screenwriters Erica Beeney, Gary Ross, and David Self) is less than nothing in the primary creative process; no one seems to have a connection to Arabic heritage or culture, but they have made a flat-out boring film that is often narratively incoherent.
Following the death of her father and escaping the clutches of oppression, the honorable Princess Hind joins forces with a troubled, nameless bandit played by Anthony Mackie (he totally belongs here…), who seems to be here solely to give the movie some star power boost without running the risk of white savior accusations. Whatever the case may be, it’s jarring, but not quite as disorienting as how little screen time he has despite being billed as the lead and how little characterization he has. It is, however, equally disorienting as some of the other names that show up along the way.
As for the other factions, Princess Hind talks to them one by one, giving the film an adventure feel that fails to capitalize on using beautiful scenery in striking or visually poignant ways at almost every turn; the leaders of these tribes also often have no character. There also isn’t much of an understanding of why these tribes are at odds with one another. This movie is filled with dialogue that consistently and shockingly amounts to vague nothingness. Nevertheless, each tribe doesn’t take much convincing to begin with, meaning that not only is the film repetitive, but it’s also lifeless when characters are in conversation.
That Desert Warrior does occasionally spring to life, and a bloated 2+ running time is a small miracle. This is typically accomplished through the occasional fight scene between factions that also serves to demonstrate Princess Hind coming into her own as a warrior. When the tribes are united in a massive-scale battle, and that plan is unfolding step by step, one certainly sees why someone would want to tell this story and pull it off with such spectacle. However, this film is as dry as the desert itself.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist
‘4’, the opening track on Richard D James’ (Aphex Twin) self titled 1996 album is a piece of music that beautifully balances the chaotic with the serene, the oppressive and the freeing. It’s a trick that James has pulled off multiple times throughout his career and it is a huge part of what makes him such an iconic and influential artist. Many people have laid the “next Aphex Twin” label on musicians who do things slightly different and when you actually hear their music you realise that, once again, the label is flawed and applied with a lazy attitude. Why mention this? Well, it turns out we’ve been looking for James’ heir apparent in the wrong artform. We’ve so zoned in on music that we’ve not noticed that another Celtic son of Cornwall is rewriting an art form with that highwire balancing act between chaos and beauty. That artist is writer, director and composer Mark Jenkin who over his last two feature films has announced himself as an idiosyncratic voice who is creating his very own language within the world of cinema. Jenkin’s films are often centred around coastal towns or islands and whilst they are experimental or even unsettling, there is always a big heart at the centre of the narrative. A heart that cares about family, tradition, culture, and the pull of ‘home’. Even during the horror of 2022’s brilliant Enys Men you were anchored by the vulnerability and determination of its main protagonist.
This month sees the release of Jenkin’s latest feature film, Rose of Nevada, which is set in a fractured and diminished Cornish coastal town. One day the fishing boat of the film’s title arrives back in harbour after being missing for thirty years. The boat is unoccupied. And frankly that is all the information you are going to get because to discuss any more plot would be unfair on you and disrespectful to Jenkin and the team behind the film. You the viewer should be the one who decides what it is about because thematically there are so many wonderful threads to pull on. This writer’s opinions on what it is about have ranged from a theme of sacrifice for the good of a community to the conflict within when part of you wants to run away from your roots whilst the other half longs to stay and be a lifelong part of its tapestry. Is it about Brexit? Could be. Is it about our own relationships with time and our curation of memory? Could be. Is it about both the positives and negatives of nostalgia? Could be. As a side note, anyone in their mid-40s, like me, who came of age in the 1990s will certainly find moments of warm recognition. Is the film about ghosts and how they haunt families? Could be…I think you get the point.
The elements that make the film so well balanced between chaos and calm are many. It is there in the differing performances between the brilliant two lead actors George MacKay and Callum Turner. It is there in the sound design which fluctuates from being unbearably harsh and metallic, to lulling and warm. It is there in the editing where short, sharp close ups on seemingly unimportant factors are counterbalanced with shots that are held for just that little bit too long. For a film set around the sea, it is apt that it can make you feel like you’re rolling on a stomach churning storm one minute, or a calming low tide the next. Dialogue can be front and centre or blurred and buried under static. One shot is bathed in harsh sunlight whilst the next can be drowned in interior shadows.
Rose of Nevada is Mark Jenkin’s most ambitious film to date yet he has not lost a single iota of innovation, singularity of vision or his gift for telling the most human of stories. It is a film that will tell you different things each time you see it and whilst there are moments that can confuse or beguile, there is so much empathy and love that it can leave you crying tears of emotional understanding. It is chaotic. It is beautiful. It is life……
Rose of Nevada is released on the 24th April.
Mark Jenkin Instagram | Threads
Released through the BFI – Instagram | Facebook
Review by Simon Tucker
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