Echo Two

I've read some of Caroline Alexander's books before including the brilliantly left-field depiction of polar exploration, Mrs.Chippy's Last Expedition.

The war that killed Achilles (Guardian review) is a brilliant exegesis of The Iliad that attempts to reclaim the story as one about the dreadful waste of war. Achilles is envisaged as a rebellious warrior as eager to return home to obscurity as he is to vengefully fight for glory. Homer is the poet that humanises the fallen victims of a war on both sides and sees in the conflict the fall of both Greek and Trojan.

There are lots of interesting observations throughout the book. Achilles mother Thetis is an immortal, already estranged from her mortal and aged husband and soon to lose her son. Her grief will be all the greater for being immortal and eternal, her son is short-lived but the grief of his death must be born forever.

Hector decides to save his life and flees Achilles, only to be tricked by the gods into facing him and subsequently dying.

Alexander is also adept at invoking the fate and tragedy of the women of the Iliad. Taken as prizes and put to the service of the murderers of their family, removed to foreign lands and utterly powerless.

Ultimately she feels that the true message of the Iliad has been usurped and this is an attempt to re-position it as the ultimate and complete tragedy, corrupting and destroying everyone who takes part in it, including the gods themselves.

I thought the first Captain America film was pretty dreadful so I was surprised to see how well reviewed the follow up was.

The addition of Black Widow (Scarlet Johanssen) to the cast brings some quippy dialog between the leads that creates a spark that was lacking in the first film.

It is an interesting film in that it is stylistically very indebted to the language of comics and the plot is so formulaic I couldn't imagine anyone being surprised as it unwinds.

What does make it interesting is the layer of contemporary comment that runs through it. Captain America (Chris Evans) feels out of sync with the modern world but the film has sympathy for his old-fashioned values of liberty and freedom in the face of the technocratic plan for world order advanced by SHIELD and (ho hum) the UN.

Banding (and bonding) together with Iraq veteran Falcon (Anthony Mackie), an excellent take on a not very interesting member of the Marvel Universe, strikes a blow for individual liberty against the state and gets his groove back under the Stars and Stripes and via massive property destruction.

By interrogating the spy state, the imperatives of national security, the nature of a soldier's service and the limits of their loyalty the film engages in a way that only the best pop culture can.

Essentially when the film isn't featuring driving then it is pretty bad, even some of the driving sequences are absurd, such as vehicle to vehicle refuelling. The dialogue clunks along like the actors are hitting it with spanners. The leads are good but they are given nothing to work with. Imogen Poots and Aaron Paul have good chemistry, Dominic Cooper broods in his villainy, but it's mostly about cars and men looking grim as they steer them. Like dance-off movies the reasons why people have to race cars are very contrived, even when they are given a way to resolve their goals they choose to ignore it in favour of driving... very.. fast.

Despite this there is some interesting screencraft, the one time that the heroes are in genuine jeopardy is when they are being shot at in a scene that calls back to the end of Easy Rider.

The relationship between the male and female lead is curiously chaste until you realise that they are almost literally id and ego. Julia is Tobey only without the grief and remorse, they like the same things, they can do the same things, you're almost expecting a Fight Club resolution at the end.

There's some silly sexist behaviour and this is a script from before the Bechdel test so don't hope for much on that front.

However when it comes to cinematography for street racing this film does actually move things along.