June
26, 2001 - NY Times - CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
BMW HOPES THAT ITS MINI-MOVIES WILL SELL CARS
By
ELVIS MITCHELL (Click on Elvis for whole article)
Excerpts:
It
might not be safe to say there are countless Web sites devoted to
showing short films, but I wouldn't want to be the one charged with
tallying them. Yet of all the shorts designed to give filmmakers a
chance to show their stuff, none are quite as puzzling as "The
Hire," the series of mini-dramas commissioned by BMW and currently
running on bmwfilms.com.
..."The
Hire" shorts made by John Frankenheimer ("Ronin"),
Wong Kar-Wai ("In the Mood for Love"), Ang Lee ("Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), Guy Ritchie ("Snatch") and
Alejandro González Iñárritu ("Amores Perros")
feature Clive Owen, who is familiar to fans of the PBS mystery
"Second Sight" as Detective Chief Inspector Ross Tanner.
The British actor zoomed to fame last year with restrained star power
in Mike Hodges's canny noir film "Croupier" in a manner
close in tone to several of BMW's poshest young models also featured
in the "Hire" series.
...Mr.
Owen, with a grimace so expressive under that exquisite concave facial
structure that he could have been engineered by exacting Bavarian
designers, is the star of all five films. He's the driver, one of
those laconic action samurai who are chauffeur, shrink, bodyguard
and some kind of master mechanic. (Mr. Owen, like all the other actors
in the series, goes without a character name, apparently in the interest
of stylized anonymity associated with art films.) Given the maneuvers
he puts the cars through, he has obviously disabled the computer chip
limiters that govern top driving speeds for American cars, and probably
the ABS systems, too. (And since he has apparently managed to find
someone to insure these cars despite what he puts them through, perhaps
he could star in Internet ads for Geico next.
)
...Guy
Ritchie's "Star" plays on the public perception of pop superstars.
Madonna plays a snarl of a singer who wants what she wants when she
wants it - it could have been called "The Wife." (At least
Mr. Ritchie uses a Blur song instead of a tune by his real-life spouse
- her midlife electronica is already playing in too many BMW's.) In
"Star," Mr. Owen gets to have a good time his eyes have
a bedeviled twinkle, as if he were on the verge of a nervous breakdown
while whipping his four- wheeled co-star, the mighty-mighty M5, through
the streets of Los Angeles as if it were the agitator in a washing
machine.
...If
Mr. Hodges's "Croupier" hadn't shown how resourceful Mr.
Owen is about his astringent minimalism, then having to compete on
a tiny computer screen with just-off-the-boat cars gleaming in a muted
aluminum tone that can best be described as accomplice-after-the-fact
silver puts him in a whole new league. (Mr. Owens being subordinate
to the car is not unlike Jack Nicholson's turn in "Chinatown,"
acting in a third of the movie with a bandage covering part of his
face.) Mr. Owen's terse responses to Madonna are hilarious; he addresses
her as "Sir," as if she were Peppermint Patty of "Peanuts"
and he were Marcie.
..."The
Hire" is what movies might be like if someone decided to give
James Bond a soul. And Mr. Owen, with his elongated and cruel jawline,
suggests an updated Hoagy Carmichael as a thug a Bond physically close
to Ian Fleming's conception: the Glam Reaper. And instead of providing
Bond with a dog, his trusty companion is a BMW.
