Day 773

Aka Thursday 14^th March 2019

Went for a morning constitutional, aka my long walk, and managed to walk 10.09km (6.27 miles), in 1 hour 50 minutes and 27 seconds, which burnt through 1,100 calories and took 12,552 steps…and then I did some weights when I got home…beef cake!!!

…when I got home, I started worked on, completed and submitted an application for a Policy Adviser post in the MOJ…

…and then watched:

‘Mile 22’, which in a nutshell is about an American black ops team must get an asset from the American Embassy to a waiting plane 22 miles away, but other people want to prevent this from happening. And it’s well acted, directed, dressed, etc. and there is plenty of action and explosions and daring-do, but unlike other films of this type there are no good guys, yes we spend a little bit of time with some of the American team and it does humanise them, but only as flawed people, not as good people having to do bad things to prevent even worse things from happening, which is what normally happens in this type of film. The people you are normally meant to sympathise with are portrayed as (flawed) dicks! Although a good half of the team aren’t portrayed as anything excerpt as red shirts.

There are also scenes with the team leader being debriefed, after the mission has been completed, interspersed throughout the film which double as a sort of meta-commentary on what is happening in the film and as the set up for a possible. I thought ‘Mile 22’ would be a simple dumb, but fun action film, something I could watch as a brain palate cleanser. And it certainly has those elements, but it also has elements that are critical of dumb, but fun action films. It’s like a cross between ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ and ‘Black Hawk Down’. I don’t think that these two elements mesh particularly well, but it’s interested that they tried to combine the two elements. 6/10.

…and ‘Halloween’ (2018), which ignores all the previous ‘Halloween’ sequels, Michael was caught after ‘Halloween’ and spent the last forty years in mental hospital. But! he is being transferred to another hospital and on route to this new hospital he escapes and makes his way back to Haddonfield! But! Laurie has spent the last forty years training and learning how to shoot, fight and be a badass. Although it did cost her: her relationship with her daughter is messed up, although her relationship with her granddaughter is okay, she’s pretty much a loner and thought of a bit of a mad woman and has kinda separate from society, waiting for Michael to return. 

And like I said Michael does return, killing plenty of people on his way back, but it all feels a bit meh (except for the score, which sounds great). There’s very little feeling of jeopardy, as you know that the main characters must make it to the final fight, otherwise it won’t be the final fight and the characters can’t work through the trauma (including the family disfunction) caused byMichael in the first Halloween! There’s also no explanation about way Michael goes back for Laurie and her family, except that “needs to finish what he started [in the first film] and kill Laurie to reassert himself”, which makes less sense than Laurie being his sister or that he kills anyone who messes with his family home (or gets in his way when he is travelling back to his family home).

It’s certainly not the worst ‘Halloween’ film and there’s some nice story elements, like the effect of severe trauma on someone and how it ripples through their life and the lives of those close to them (although these elements could do with being fleshed out more), but by ignoring all the other sequels and their mythology and history, it loss that ‘Halloween’ specialness and just feels like an average slasher film. 6.5/10.

…and I did the G2 Crossword:

…which continues the hot streak as I only had to cheat on one of the 21 clues for Thursday’s crossword and I’m only let down by my small geographical/historical knowledge as I didn’t know that ‘Vasco da Gama’ was a ‘Portuguese explorer d. 1524’, otherwise it would have been a clean sweep!