Chronicle vs Warrior

Before Chronicle, there was a trailer for Project X, a “found footage” movie about a high school house party. By the end, I had hit my limit of first-person, hand-held, Blair Witch-style storytelling. The novelty is gone, leaving only limited perspective, plot holes, and ugly cinematography. And then Chronicle started, and it’s told the exact same way.

Fine, but this is the last one.

Luckily, in Chronicle, the camera is held by a character that knows how to use it, and has a life truly worth filming. Andrew (Dane DeHaan), is a nice High School kid who has decided to record his life. His mother is terminally sick, and his father is abusive. It’s not quite clear if he’s seeking to document only this period in his life, or if it’s an ongoing project, but early in Chronicle, he uses the evidence as a threat against his thug of a dad (Michael Kelly). Andrew’s treated at school much as he is at home, meaning, with taunts and fists. If Andrew were more socially accepted, his classmates would probably love that he brings a camera everywhere; but since it’s an outcast behind the lens, they treat him like a voyeur. Andrew has a friend in his much more outgoing and laid-back cousin, Matt (Alex Russell). If not for the opportunity to film everything, Matt would have never gotten Andrew to a party. It’s basically a rave, held in an empty building near the woods, and it’s packed with teens. Eventually, Andrew is driven back out into the parking lot, having grown tired of the camera being slapped. I get the need to paint Andrew as an outsider, but show me a party full of teens in 2012 that minds having their picture taken. Suddenly, Matt rushes to Andrew, needing his camera. He’s with Steve (the fantastically named Michael B. Jordan), a popular jock running for Class President. What would those two bros want with Andrew? They lead him into a clearing in the woods, where they’ve found a hole in the ground. There’s an odd sound emanating from it randomly, like speaker feedback. Steve jumps in the hole, followed by Matt. Andrew doesn’t want to, but he has the camera, and it’s not like he has anywhere else less scary to be otherwise. The hole actually leads to a cave, which you might have guessed, houses a meteor. Did the meteor drop into the original hole and then roll into the cave? Did it drop to Earth, create its own hole, and then grow? Was it there all along? Why did all the other kids leave? Matt says there were others, but that they got bored. Maybe the meteor wasn’t as interested in them? Whatever the reason, only three guys go down into the cave. The meteor is glowing and spiked, and contains tiny black roots that stretch out from within and appear to be reaching for them. Everyone’s noses bleed, which in a movie you know is bad news. Fade to black.

When we next see the three meteor-touchers, they’re best friends, happy, still filming everything, and out enjoying a sunny day of moving things with their minds. They’re still getting the hang of it, Matt got smacked in the face with a baseball, but the guys’ powers are legit. Something in that cave gave them telekinetic abilities. Because of the flash forward, we don’t know how much time has passed, or which of them noticed his powers first. Before long, they’re moving much more than baseballs, tossing people and shopping carts around in a store, and sliding a car into a different spot in a parking lot. And then they figure out how to fly. Andrew, Matt and Steve don’t just hover around their bedrooms or yards, either. They fly high above the city, throwing a football and diving through the clouds. The question arises of what to do with these abilities, besides fun and pranks.

Chronicle is not typical of the genre its cinematography suggests. Instead of a horror film, we get a movie more like Unbreakable: an origin story for superheroes with no comic book. One of the pranks, in the trial run of testing their powers, goes horribly wrong. Matt declares that they have to establish rules for using their new powers, and have to agree to keep their secret. It’s all very “With great power comes great responsibility.” And the one among them who probably knows the most comic book origin stories—Andrew—is also the one who has the most trouble adhering to their guidelines. The anger he feels over his situation at home and school amplify his powers in a way the other two don’t experience. A school talent show gives Andrew a brief glimpse of a happier life, but like Carrie at the prom, it’s not meant to last.

Chronicle is the first film directed by Josh Trank, who finds ingenious methods of sneaking wide-screen cinematography and special effects into a movie that’s supposedly made with a teenager’s video camera. Andrew upgrades to a better camera, and becomes adept enough with his telekinesis that he can let go of it, letting it float behind and above him and his friends, getting the shots unavailable to the characters in Cloverfield. Whenever the opportunity arises, Trank cuts from Andrew’s point-of-view to security cameras, bystanders’ phones, and another documentarian working on her blog. Other movies that have attempted this technique have done so in a way that seems to mask a lack of special effects prowess, but in Chronicle’s case, the opposite is true. By giving Chronicle a documentary aspect, the special effects are as magical and believable as movie special effects can muster these days. In that way, Chronicle reminded me a little of District 9.  Andrew and his friends really do seem to fly; just like the kids watching that talent show, we see it, know it isn’t possible, and then believe anyway, because we haven’t been given another option.

The acting in Chronicle is mostly good. The bulk of it rests on Dane DeHaan, who shows us what might have happened if Leonardo DiCaprio had played Donnie Darko. As in that movie, it’s really only the lead with much of an arc to play. Matt and Steve already probably seemed to Andrew like people with super powers before they’d ever gone down that hole. And Andrew’s parents are never more than Sick Mom and Mean Dad. Chronicle tries to pitch Andrew as the movie’s hero and then makes him its villain, with too few scenes remaining for a fully satisfying payoff. A tag before the credits does a little damage control, a little too late. Still, that Chronicle thrives in a genre I had washed my hands of before the opening scene, gives me hope that we may have a director who might be able to freshen up other tired genres as well.

Chronicle is one of those movies that reveal its template as it progresses. Although I didn’t like it quite as much as Super 8, Chronicle’s influences are just as apparent, and for the most part are celebrated just as much. It’s tempting to follow it with Spider-man, but another recent film had a similar surprising emotional resonance for its genre, as well as a much-needed jolt of realistic effects.

Warrior, directed by Gavin O’Connor, tells the story of Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a father and high school teacher trying to keep his head above water financially. His wife (Jennifer Morrison) thinks he’s moonlighting as a bouncer at a club to help make the mortgage, but Brendan is really fighting in matches held in the parking lot.

Across town, Tommy (Tom Hardy) has returned home to his father, Paddy (Nick Nolte), whom he hasn’t seen in years. Tommy’s memories of his father are of alcoholism and abuse, even though Paddy is sober and repentant now, and seems thrilled to see his son. Tommy is a marine, and there’s a shadow of secrecy over why he’s come home, and why he sought out his father after all this time (Tommy’s mother died a few years back). The only motive Tommy will reveal is that he wants to start fighting again (he wrestled in school), and wants his dad to train him. Paddy loves the idea, and sets up a plan for getting Tommy into fighting shape, although any hopes he has of reconciliation are for naught.

You can probably tell a couple things (both were spoiled by the trailer, but you’d get them anyway): Tommy and Brendan are brothers, and they’ll eventually have to fight each other. But like Chronicle, Warrior is a movie we think we’ve seen enough of that makes the case for watching at least one more. The fight movie has a list of plot points to move through, and of course Warrior checks them all. But there’s a focused honesty at play, both in the MMA fight scenes (every punch seems to actually connect, and the sound effects crew makes sure we hear each one), as well as the quieter moments of family drama. Edgerton is a convincing fighter, but makes us believe Brendan gets his strength and inspiration from his family. Tommy has different motives, but Tom Hardy is so good that they don’t matter. We want him to win just as much, because it’s so apparent that whatever brought him to the ring was a last resort. Also, Hardy looks like he could fight for real. Dude’s shoulders have shoulders.

The backbone of the movie is Nick Nolte’s performance. Paddy created a map of violence for his boys to follow in life, but managed, somehow, to give it a practical application. They both hate him, probably justifiably, but I couldn’t. Nolte plays Paddy as if he’s got open wounds. A scene late in the movie finds Paddy breaking down, quoting Moby Dick and searching for someone or something in his life to hold on to, and maybe something that will hold him too. It’s a hell of a performance, bigger than the genre its in and the camera that captured it.

Chronicle: B

Warrior: A-