Word: ruthless
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When your lover dies, a part of you dies too. But in Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), a new spirit is borntough, ruthless, addicted to vengeance. This thriller, directed by Neil Jordan, has so many plot loopholes, it makes sense only as the fantasy of a bereaved soul. Or perhaps as an answer to the 1970s-era Death Wish films. Troubling and engrossing, it suggests that to become an urban hero, you first have to forget you're human...
...most superficial familiarity with The Parallax View and other political-paranoia movies of the 70s - or with the crimes of EnRon and other big companies - will cue the viewer to expect corporate dirty tricks at the root of Arthur's frayed mental state. The two men will find ruthless adversaries both in the corporation's chief counsel (British actress Tilda Swinton, superbly on-pitch as always) and in their own firm's steely partner (Sydney Pollack, extending his streak of likably slimy plutocrats). The game is dangerous; it may be fatal...
...Leung usually plays sympathetic loners, as in Hero and Infernal Affairs, the film that inspired Martin Scorsese's The Departed (Leung played the Leonardo DiCaprio part). Here he's hard, knowing and Freon-cool, and as ruthless in bed as in interrogating a Resistance suspect. As for the previously unknown Tang Wei, she's not a big-eyed cutie like those three-China favorites Faye Wong or Vicky Zhao Wei. She's more in the fashion of the sour beauties of Shanghai's film and music scene in the 40s. Her style and sensuality have to be discovered, peeled...
...look likely. Under coach Henry, the Blacks have been potent, winning 38 of their 43 matches since the last Cup. But if it isn't to be New Zealand's time, who else can win? Probably only the big-occasion Australians or the grinding, brutal South Africans, whose ruthless preparations for this Cup signal their determination to lift it. On home soil, the always-stylish French are another possibility. Asia's sole representative, Japan, under former All Black John Kirwan, will try to turn around their lamentable World Cup record (which includes a staggering 145-17 loss to the Blacks...
...consumed by the chance of Zuma becoming President - and discussion of who might stop him. The prospect of a Zuma presidency fills South Africa's élite with dread. He is the target of the country's most syndicated cartoon strip, Da Zuma Code, which depicts him as a ruthless dunderhead. Editorials and letters in the middle-class press paint Zuma as a potential African strongman in the mold of so much of postcolonial Africa to the north, with some white commentators advising selling up and leaving should he take power. In a widely distributed column, white South African Rian...