Jack Quaid | Bouquets & Brickbats

02/02/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Occasionally I find myself wishing that I haven’t already seen the trailer for a film and Companion is a good case in point.

Writer/director Drew Hancock’s debut feature is a spirited genre mash-up, part sci-fi, part horror, part comedy. The aforementioned trailer has no qualms about alerting potential viewers to a major plot reveal in the story. (Even the film’s poster is a dead giveaway!) Okay, the revelation occurs only twenty or so minutes into proceedings and, yes, there are a whole bunch of hints along the way but still… when the revelation occurs, I can’t help thinking what a delicious shock it would have been if only I hadn’t known this was coming. No matter, because there are a whole bunch of other surprises studded throughout the audacious, twisty-turny storyline that ensure I still have plenty of fun.

We open with a flashback as Iris (Sophie Thatcher, last seen interviewing Hugh Grant in Heretic) wanders dreamily through a Stepford Wives sort of supermarket and has a meet-cute with Josh (Jack Quaid). In a voice-over, she tells us about something major that is going to happen later on. Another spoiler? Yes, but weirdly that’s not the one I’m worried about.

We cut back to now (somewhere in the near future). Iris and Josh are an established couple and are heading off in their self-driving car to the swish lakeside home of mega-rich Russian oligarch, Sergey (Rupert Friend). Sergey happens to be dating one of Josh’s friends, Kat (Megan Suri), and we learn early on that Kat isn’t keen on Iris. Also invited along for the weekend are Josh’s friends Eli (Harvey Guillén) and his devoted partner, Patrick (Lucas Gage).

From the beginning it’s clear that there’s something different about Iris; she’s almost too perfect, too well-informed about a whole variety of subjects… and well, that’s because she isn’t human, but a highly sophisticated AI companion, or as Josh puts it a tad more bluntly, a ‘fuckbot.’ (Always nice to know you’re appreciated.) It turns out that the aforementioned meet-cute between Iris and Josh is actually just a manufactured memory, picked at random from a list of possibilities, designed to enforce Iris’s abiding devotion to the man who is her, er… boyfriend?

Companion is the kind of film that isn’t shy about swinging for the fences and really, the less I reveal about the plot from this point, the better. Suffice to say, whenever it seems in danger of petering out or treading on over-familiar territory, Hancock throws in something totally unexpected – something violent, or something funny – and even when the film appears to be heading into a straightforward chase scenario, Iris finds herself faced with yet more unexpected situations. Of course, we’re all familiar with those ‘evil AI’ plots, but Companion turns that idea on its head and makes me feel sorry for Iris and hoping that she can extricate herself from the mess that she’s been dropped into. As her woes steadily mount, so the film’s subtext becomes increasingly feminist.

Thatcher is terrific in the lead role, managing to convey her Uncanny Valley persona with great skill and I’m sure we’re going to see more of her on the big screen in due course. I’ve noticed a few ‘too cool for school’ reviews that have slammed the film as being ‘not as clever as it thinks it is,’ but I beg to differ. For my money, this is an assured debut and I’m already fascinated to see what Hancock comes up with next.

Companion gets a big thumbs-up from B & B and I would urge you to go and see it at your earliest opportunity. And, if you haven’t seen the trailer… so much the better.

4. 4 stars

Philip Caveney

07/09/17

It’s four years since Steven Soderbergh made the shock announcement that he was retiring from filmmaking. Mind you, he hasn’t exactly been putting his feet up with a cup of cocoa. There’s the little matter of directing two seasons of medical TV show, The Knick (under an alias) and his involvement in the upcoming project Mosaic (of which I know very little, other than it’s a ‘branching narrative’) So there’s the distinct impression that he may have returned to the big screen with Logan Lucky for a quieter life.

In a way, he’s returning to familiar territory, as this is a heist movie, a path he’s already worn fairly smooth. But put aside all thoughts of the slick, ultra cool Oceans 11. As one character observes in Rebecca Blunt’s caustic script, this is more like Oceans 7/11 – a tattered, down-at-heel story set in West Virginia. (John Denver on the soundtrack? Naturally.)

Channing Tatum plays Jimmy Logan, a down-on-his luck former sports star, who loses his job as a bulldozer driver because of an old injury which has left him with a permanent limp. Divorced from his wife Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes) and with a precocious young daughter to care for, he comes up with a desperate scheme to make money, one that he shares with his taciturn one-armed war veteran brother, Clyde (Adam Driver). The two of them will rob the Coca Cola 600 Race in Charlotte, Virginia, a massive sporting event that generates millions of dollars. Clyde decides that he’s ‘in’ but, to carry out the robbery, the brothers will need to enlist the services of infamous explosives expert, Joe Bang (Daniel Craig, as you have never seen him before). Only problem is, Joe is already doing time for other misdemeanours, so the brothers will need to break him out of jail, do the heist and get him back inside without his presence being missed. Complicated? You bet. Impossible? Well, it’s going to take some planning and, of course, this is exactly the kind of premise that Soderbergh loves to play with.

There’s plenty here to enjoy. Tatum and Driver work well together, even if they are the most unlikely film siblings since Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. Riley Keough puts in an appealing performance as Jimmy’s resourceful sister, Mellie, and both Jack Quaid and Brian Gleeson are brilliant as Joe’s dumb-and-dumber brothers, Fish and Sam, who Joe insists must be brought on board to help expedite the robbery. And Craig really does have a whale of a time as the outlandish explosives expert, addicted to eating hard boiled eggs and able to create explosives from the most innocuous ingredients. Gummy Bears? Who knew?

But not everything in the mix is perfect. I could have done without Seth MacFarlane’s oafish Max Chilblane, sporting an English accent that’s almost as bad as the one employed by Don Cheadle in the Oceans movies. Hilary Swank is mostly wasted in the role of a ruthless investigator trying to nail the perpetrators of ‘the Hillbilly Heist’, given little to do but stand around and glower at people and, in my opinion – at just under two hours – the film is about thirty minutes too long. A leaner, meaner narrative would have helped no end here, but perhaps I’m quibbling. This is a very enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours in the cinema and there’s no doubt that Soderbergh has returned to the movie business with a palpable hit.

What next for him, I wonder? Another ‘retirement?’ More TV? And that branching narrative he keeps mentioning? We’ll just have to wait and see.

4 stars

Philip Caveney