The War Zone (1999)
Directed by Tim Roth
An alienated teenager, saddened that he has moved away from London, must find a way to deal with a dark family secret.
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What critics compared The War Zone to
Actor Considine follows in a great British tradition of British actors choosing tough stories for their first films – such as Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth; Tim Roth’s The War Zone and Samantha Morton’s The Unloved – and he has delivered a dazzlingly intense film that is tough to watch but completely memorable and challenging.
Joseph and Hannah’s mutual salvation at least provides some very bittersweet optimism compared to equally difficult films about family violence and persistent guilt, like Tim Roth’s The War Zone (1999) and Peter Mullan’s own Neds, released earlier this year.
Clive Owen portrays King Arthur with all the necessary seriousness, and is well supported by such thespian standard bearers like Stellan Skarsgard ("Dogville"), Ray Winstone ("The War Zone"), and Stephen Dillane ("Spy Game"), but the more than able actors can't compete with a lackluster script by David Franzoni, combined with Fuqua's shoddy direction.
If I hadn't known better, I'd have been convinced the actress had recently given birth herself, like Tilda Swinton's unabashed postnatal exposure in 1999's "The War Zone."
It’s hardly surprising that the director of The War Zone , itself a harrowing depicting of child abuse (albeit from another quarter), would appreciate Franco’s film.
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In a marital mismatch of a kind unseen since viewers of The War Zone were asked to believe that Tilda Swinton had settled down with Ray Winstone, Baldwin and Moore potter tenderly around one another, she like a tiny porcelain figurine that has somehow landed in his blundering, baseball-mitt paws.
Put it in the same category as The War Zone and The Sweet Hereafter - movies about intimate tragedies whose impact wrenches both the heart and the mind.
Thwarting ticket sales to DiCaprio's rabid prepubescent fan base with an R rating, tepid sexual subplots have been added -- between Richard and Francoise (French sylph Virginie Ledoyen), and between Richard and the commanding woman who presides over the community (''The War Zone'''s Tilda Swinton, who, with her remarkable Dutch master's visage, always looks coolly in control).
For Tilda Swinton (most recently seen in The War Zone), this is a surprisingly conventional role.
As such, while the likes of Virginie Ledoyen ("A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries," "Jeanne et le gar�on formidable"), Tilda Swinton ("The War Zone," "Orlando") and Guillaume Canet ("Barracuda," "Sentimental Education") are easy on the eye, they inhabit sketchily drawn characters at best.
It features one of the most upsetting rape scenes committed to film (behind only Irreversible and The War Zone ).
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It's much more disturbing than even the incestuous scene in The War Zone .