9:30 p.m., Harvard Exit
The Escape
After Roxana Saberi's imprisonment in Iran, this Danish drama about a female journalist's captivity ought to feel topical, but mainly it's just trite. Rikke (Iben Hjejle) is kidnapped by the Taliban while reporting in Afghanistan. Cue the jihadist videos, ransom demands, and threat of beheading. Then, owing to some surprise help from the inside, Rikke escapes, returns to Copenhagen, and writes a best-selling book on her ordeal—arousing jealousy and resentment from some colleagues. Complication one comes in the form of teenage Nazir (Faegh Zamani), the conveniently English-speaking Afghan who aided Rikke's escape. He made her promise not to reveal his assistance, you see, because his fellow Talibs would kill him. But—d'oh!—he intrepidly travels across all Asia and Europe, winding up in a Danish refugee center. If Nazir and Rikke's secret is now spilled, she'd look like a liar and her memoir a hoax. Complication two comes in the form of Rikke's old flame, a married lawyer who might be able to help with Nazir's dilemma. Thanks to the War on Terror, he might be sent to Gitmo as a terrorist. Rikke can't let this happen! Even if it means, yes, destroying her own professional reputation. The Escape falls apart once it escapes Afghanistan, becoming a ludicrous amalgam of journalistic-ethics primer and chase movie (complication one) plus soap opera (complication two). The dialogue's mostly in English (Hjejle, of High Fidelity, is fluent). The plot would be equally obvious in any language. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Also: 4 p.m. Fri., June 5.
Courtesy of SIFF
Against the Current
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Friday, June 5
7 p.m., Uptown
PICK: Against the Current
Joseph Fiennes, aka "the guy who no one can believe shares DNA with Ralph/hasn't done shit since Shakespeare in Love," delivers an appropriately mysterious performance in this 90-minute rumination on suicide. Fiennes plays Paul, a financial journalist who lost his wife and unborn child to a tragic accident. (No, it's not 9/11.) Five years later, he convinces his best friend Jeff (Justin Kirk), an underachieving Manhattan bartender/actor, to accompany him by boat as he attempts to swim the length of the Hudson River, a scheme they'd hatched as boys. For the hell of it—or, as we later discover, due to her intrigue with Paul—schoolteacher Liz (Elizabeth Reaser) comes along too. While Paul's moral/mortal dilemma here is plenty compelling, the real star is the scenic Hudson River Valley, aided by a haunting score and noble supporting performances. Kirk is the designated mood-lightener who's nonetheless able to shed the sass of his Weeds character to reveal genuine spurts of more melancholy emotion. A Washington native who'll attend SIFF with this film, Kirk has grown by leaps and bounds since he appeared at SIFF '02 in the mediocre thriller Outpatient. (Go rent HBO's Angels in America to see his brilliant turn there.) At 40, he's well on his way to establishing himself as a great character actor, and Against the Current does nothing to diminish such momentum. (NR) MIKE SEELY Also: 11 a.m. Sun., June 7.
7 p.m., Egyptian
Humpday
That forlorn indie-cinema movement known as "mumblecore"—whose navel-gazing Gen-Y characters and DIY aesthetics were exalted and derided by a small coterie of film critics before most people had even seen one such movie—showed unexpected signs of life at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. There the dramatic jury awarded a special prize for "excellence in independent cinema" to Seattle director Lynn Shelton's Humpday. An improvised relationship comedy starring Mark Duplass (arguably the Jean-Pierre Léaud of mumblecore) and The Blair Witch Project's Joshua Leonard as two straight friends who decide to go gay for an amateur pornography competition, Humpday is an undeniably amusing enterprise. But why single out for excellence Shelton's meandering meditation on male bonding and amateur filmmaking when it doesn't really bring anything new to a table already occupied by the Duplass brothers' own The Puffy Chair and Baghead, to say nothing of Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy? Instead of presenting Shelton with just another bronzed statuette, my own personal jury would have awarded her a tripod instead. (NR) SCOTT FOUNDAS Also: 1:30 p.m. Sun., June 7.
7 p.m., SIFF Cinema
The Missing Person
For the most abused film genre, I nominate noir. Seriously, give those gumshoes and fedoras and gun molls a rest. Brick was stupid enough. Yet here's another neo-noir—how I hate that phrase—that dresses fresh tragedy in vintage gabardine. Everyone thinks they're Bogart and Bacall. And what, really, is the point? Hats? A mysterious client hires a Chicago private investigator (Michael Shannon, Oscar-nominated for Revolutionary Road), who shadows a benign-looking bald guy (Frank Wood) escorting a small child via train to L.A., and from thence to Mexico. The P.I.'s main contact is Amy Ryan (Oscar-nominated for Gone Baby Gone), but she's mainly a presence on the phone. Rich people in New York are pulling the strings; and until those strings are knotted at the one-hour point, we've got Shannon puzzling over cell phones and trying to smoke in cabs. He's living in the past, don't you see? And when the reasons for this finally emerge, you'll slap your forehead and say "Oh, jeez! Not another movie about that!" And to writer-director Noah Buschel, I say—leave the detectives alone. Next time try pirates or cowboys. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Also: 4 p.m. Sun., June 7.
