August

August is a movie that sneaks out under a layer of deceit, its advertising talks about a business undergoing serious financial demise in the run up to the terrorist attack of September 11^th. And while August does have a story to tell, and not a particularly bad one I think this is a terrible deceit and scam to play on the public who in general give their whole hearted support to anything revolving around that fateful day.

 

Telling the tale of Land Shark (a business that to be honest I lack the intellect to really understand what their trade actually is, and August as a movie fails to elaborate upon) a business success story that over a short period of time has grown to become a giant. But suddenly just a few weeks Land Shark spirals out of control, end of the world websites predict the demise of the company which includes a second by second countdown. While trying to save the company he half owns Tom (Josh Hartnett) must wrestle with demons from the past in the form of his parents, and an old flame; problems from the present in the forms of dissention in the ranks, and a feud with his brother; and future fears as a giant company led by the sinister Ogilvie (David Bowie) who plan to gobble up the company in a similar shark like deal.

 

No stranger to deception August is the product of First Look Pictures (although developed by a smaller group); First Look have developed their whole branding strategy on acquiring big stars who are not quite so big in an effort to push otherwise doomed movies, with one success in the form of Bill (or Meet Bill) staring Aaron Eckhardt, First Look are a movie company that are amazingly surrounded in failure but continue to produce pictures. Examples of First Look’s movie making include post natal shocker First Born starring Elizabeth Shue, The King Of California lead by Michael Douglas, and Day Of The Dead starring American Pie actress Mena Suvari. August is no better in quality than any of the three movies I just mentioned; it has great promise but is essentially as empty about as empty as a cardboard box. What riles me more than anything else is the shameless way in which August backs itself on a terrible disaster, but worse still though you as a viewer having had the fact thrust down your throat by the marketing, are blatantly aware of this fact, however had you not seen the publicity the movie itself gives you not one solitary mention of the tragedy.

 

Josh Hartnett just about performs, as a self impressed individual with an ego the size of Everest, you can almost smell the self love of both the character and the actor as it drips off the screen. Even when Tom is being dealt a death blow in the boardroom by the elusive Ogilvy (reasons for the term elusive in a jiffy) he still stinks of his own self importance. What I did admire was the writing in that if you are trying to preserve a lifestyle, you could literally be forced by addiction to surrender anything in order to save it, in this case Tom’s weirdo brother and parents, one of whom played rather well by Rip Torn.

 

You have to ask why the presence of Ogilvy (Bowie) leers over everything, especially when the character appears only once in the movie, and this is right at the end for a period of about 3 minutes. I always feel these sort of cameos are best served when delivered as a surprise, had you not known of his appearance in the movie you might well have had that “Oh my God It’s David Bowie!” type moment of elation. What you get instead is a shadow of something, and a promise that you sit patiently awaiting from the movies opening, at one point I even had to ask if I had misunderstood the name, maybe there was another David Bowie or perhaps it actually said David Bone. This is the same sort of deception that the movie has already pulled off by associating itself with 9/11.

 

The whole movie is as I said earlier straight forward, but the business side of thing is never properly explained, as a result I sat from start to finish completely unaware of exactly what Land Shark was other than sort of phenomenal start up company. So the movie drove on and I felt like I was missing the plot a bit, and when I was aware of what was happening there were these almost soap opera style skits involving Tom and his incredibly boring and staring brother Joshua played by Adam Scott. The once utterly delightful to look at Robin Tunney plays the hard-nosed business associate, but I was more obsessed with her face (that seems to have been in a botox fuelled car crash) than her ferocity.

 

The story of August is not bad, it’s just been packaged incredibly badly; it’s one of those movies that you fall asleep in front of and wake up a portion of time later but have really missed nothing. I expected Wall Street, I expected Risky Business, what I got was a car crash in which Coronation Street somehow collided with Bonanza.

 

August rather appropriately opens in August, though I think you find this on television pretty soon.