Powder Keg (2001)

Simply A Masterpiece

Please don't spend money on this.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Another one of the BMW short films, 8 minutes live action, 3 minutes credits, this one came from Maxican director Alejandro González Iñárritu after he gave the world his famous feature film "Amores perros" and before he shot "21 Grams" and "Babel". This one is a bit different to the other films of the series. There's less action, a real moral conflict and more emotion. Sounds good, doesn't it? However, I'm not sure if it really is. For me, those films work the best when they're just entertaining fun. We shouldn't forget, it's still basically just a longer car-commercial. The sudden doubts in the mind of Skarsgård's character if it's justifiable to film and not to intervene appear very much out of nowhere and it's certainly difficult to really develop characters to which the viewer can make an emotional connection. However, what worked better for me was the final scene of the driver at the old lady's house. It's a decent short film, though not my favorite from the series.

In the fifth of the BMW short films call The Hire, The Driver is sent into Columbia to recover a wounded war photographer and pull him out of the country. The photographer laments his role as observer across war after war, looking to the few rolls of film he has of a massacre as being perhaps a way he can do good.The subject matter here is a real odd choice and it is all the odder when you view it in the context of the other short films in this series which are glossy and sleek generally. With this one though the filming is grainy and the focus is less on the vehicle and more on the dialogue between the two men – again, an odd thing for a film funded by BMW, but here we are. I was actually very open to the idea of something more than just another car chase short film, so I didn't have a problem with it in terms of its concept, just its delivery. You see there isn't anywhere near the grit that this suggests and it feels like it is "doing" gritty rather than being that way by natural of extension of what it is doing and what it is covering.This shows once the characters start interacting. The photographer's lamentations are fairly standard things and they are sturdy rather than natural in the writing. His dialogue is made worse though by the even clunkier lines delivered by the Driver, the worse by far being "but Mr Jacobs your photographs have done a lot of good" or something like that – with that line you could see Owen had no idea how to say it and make it work. The short also comes over as being hollow because really it doesn't have much to say at all on the world it is set in, which adds to the feeling of the dialogue being empty which then feeds back onto the film as a whole to make it seem like it is just wearing the clothes of concern for the sake of a short film.The most surprising thing then is that it was directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, a director on the rise at the time after Amores Perros. He directs it like it is insightful, brave and challenging but this approach is totally at odds with the clunky nature of the script (such as the thing with the mother at the end) and the fact that the central thing about the short is selling a high-end luxury car. The latter point (about the commercial) I can swallow to a point, but it is the failure to deliver a story that doesn't feel hollow that really hurts me. It hurts the cast too. Skarsgård rolls in his own blood and laments his life of observation the best he can, but he is alone in the core of the film; Owen has a much harder job and he looks uncomfortable and cannot make even the smallest lines work.I applaud the BMW funders for trying to make some of their short films be "about" something and for not just making glossy action shorts (although they made those too!) but this film just doesn't work at all. Viewed on its own it is clunky, overly well-meaning and labours throughout its short run-time; however viewed alongside the other shorts, it stands out as odd all the more and frankly doesn't fit in with the overall concept of the films. I wanted it to work because it is the most "worthy" of the shorts, but to be honest the best I can say about it is that it "meant well".

Alejandro González Iñárritu is not a household name, but he made a name for himself directing "Amores Perros" in 2001. That year and the following, BMW sponsored a series of 8 films all with the common theme that a BMW was prominently featured in it....and, of all things, Clive Owen starred in each one. For this odd experiment, some of the top directors in the world were somehow obtained--including John Woo, Ang Lee and even the great veteran director John Frankenheimer. Iñárritu was given a prime chance to 'mix it up with the big boys' by making this film and he did admirably. While I have only seen three of the films so far, I was surprised that "Powder Keg" is so far the best of them--even better than Frankenheimer's short (and I am a huge fan of his work). I think the reason is that unlike the other two films, the emphasis is less on spectacular chases and stunts (though there are some) but on telling the entire story--including some very emotionally draining aspects to this film that lift it to greatness. This is clearly NOT just a glorified ad for BMW but a wonderful little film you really should see. Just be sure to have a Kleenex nearby.

Powder Keg concludes the BMW short film series "The Hire" by adding a very human element to the enigmatic and elusive series title character played by Clive Owen. Director/co-writer Alejandro González Iñárritu departs from the pattern established by the previous 4 directors and makes the driver more of a background character, focusing instead on a war photographer who, after snapping a shocking series of photographs, is on the run and grievously injured. He takes the time to reflect on his life and what he's done-or not done-with it, and why he started taking pictures in the first place. Stellan Skarsgård does a wonderful job as the photographer, and manages to communicate volumes just as much with what he doesn't say as with what he does. Clive Owen has the opportunity to portray a different side to the driver then in the previous films, allowing his normally unflappable character to have an emotional moment beyond what we've seen. The moment at the end of the film between himself and the woman played by Lois Smith is made more pronounced by his inability to effectively communicate his thoughts and feelings, and his abrupt exit punctuates that perfectly.Iñárritu directs this short perfectly, using hand-held 16MM cameras to capture a grainy, almost documentary-like feel to the film, and over-exposure for certain shots adds the right amount of dramatic flair to the film.All in all, my only regret with this film is that it's the last one in this excellent series. BMW should be highly commended for allowing what could have been little more than overblown and expensive commercials to be short films in which the centerpiece vehicles sometimes took a back-seat to the characters and their stories instead. I hope to see another series like this again soon.