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Death Stranding immediately earns points for putting a fresh spin on the post-apocalypse. Its stunning, sprawling open-world is clearly edging towards its end of days, but there’s nary a nuclear winter or zombie trope in sight. That’s not to say its carefully crafted universe doesn’t pack a foreboding punch. On the contrary, its potential to fuel future nightmares is easily on par with any fallout-scarred earth or undead dystopia. In fact, because its disturbing elements – from its creepy pod babies to its unnerving, ethereal entities – are so unfamiliar, they’re often more frightening.

The originality of Death Stranding’s world and its inhabitants doesn’t just support its atmosphere, but also its ambitious, albeit beyond-bizarre, story. The aforementioned Bridge Babies and Beached Things will sit in your psyche long after you power down your PS4 for the night, but they’re much more than one-off props meant to shock. Every last element is organically woven into the complex narrative, connecting each encounter and interaction to the world’s menagerie of mysteries.

Death Stranding
Of course, the game’s biggest mystery might be how it manages to mine compelling gameplay from one of the medium’s most maligned activities. As Sam Porter Bridges, you essentially play a glorified errand boy, obediently ferrying packages from point A to point B. There’s ample opportunity to engage in more traditional combat and execute stealth tactics, but carrying cargo is what Sam does best.

A highly original experience that’ll either blow your mind or leave you scratching your head.

This core concept largely side-steps becoming a series of boring fetch quests, though, because it’s realised with the same level of originality that makes the world and story stand out. The seemingly simple act of delivering crates from one destination to the next is actually layered with enough nuance and depth to keep even the most seasoned RPG fan invested and engaged.

It’s difficult to recognise at first, as you’re not monitoring mana bars, managing weapon stats, filling out skill trees, or slotting enchantments into swords, but the many systems and mechanics involved in bringing a box to its destination can be just as involved and absorbing. Your mileage may vary here – acquiring a reliable pair of boots or successfully balancing Sam in hip-high water might not grab you like looting a new bastard blade of smiting.

Another welcome level of depth comes courtesy of the game’s social side, an asynchronous multiplayer component that allows players to help each other by leaving tips and sharing supplies in the world. Similar to the system in the Dark Souls series, it encourages you to engage with the larger community, while still letting you forge your own path in a solo adventure.

Death Stranding is a highly original experience that’ll either blow your mind or leave you scratching your head. If you’re expecting a familiar, open-world action adventure, you’ll likely land in the latter camp. If you’re craving a fresh take on the genre, however, it more than fits the bill… and that’s before you even begin crafting grenades from Sam’s bodily fluids.

(Empireonline)

Pokémon Sword / Pokémon Shield Review

by admin December 5, 2019December 5, 2019

Welcome to Galar – the Britain of the Pokémon world, filled with red postboxes, industrial towns standing between lush green fields, and people using lingo like “telly” and “mate”. Unlike the real world, this idealised take on the UK isn’t tearing itself apart politically, but there is still an uncomfortable underlying sense of small-c conservatism that holds Pokémon Sword and Shield back.

There’s a lot to love in the series’ first core entries to grace a home console, and Sword and Shield are in many ways the most ambitious entries in the franchise’s history. It introduces full 3D sections with the Wild Areas, where Pokémon roam free, quizzically coming up to you or pouncing on you from the long grass. Pokémon battles – although retaining the turn based, four-moves-at-a-time format – are more dynamic than ever, with enhanced animation and more cinematic cuts to action. These are bolstered further, in special cases, with the ability to use Dynamax attacks, where your Pokémon grow to kaiju-esque proportions – these are no longer Pocket Monsters.

Pokémon Sword and Shield
The world itself is one of Pokémon’s finest too, beautifully presented and filled with some of the series’ best new creatures yet. Electric corgi Yamper is an immediate icon, as is Wooloo – basically just a sheep, but what a sheep – but almost every new critter has something to like. An early favourite is Nickit, a fox that steals food whenever it can – truly, developer Game Freak did its research into British wildlife. There are even fun twists on old Pokémon to surprise long-time players, such as Galar region alternatives for Weezing or Mr. Mime, or new evolutions for Meowth and Farfetch’d that appear nowhere else. It’s all a delight.

Sword and Shield are fantastic additions to the Pokémon library.

However, despite all the fresh additions and remixes to old favourites, it’s hard not to feel Sword and Shield haven’t regressed slightly from Pokémon Sun and Moon on the 3DS. The biggest offender is reverting to staid gym battles, a staple of the series since the original Red and Blue. Sun and Moon did away with these, instead having players participate in Island Challenges to progress – different each time but more deeply rooted into the world and better involving its characters. Here, going back to battling through a bunch of regular trainers and solving a gym’s puzzle before fighting the gym leader feels dated.

It’s slightly disappointing that the full 3D experience is limited to the Wild Areas of the game, rather than being the truly open world Pokémon game players have dreamed of. Still, Game Freak has shown they can make such a feature work on a limited scale – a grander roll out may lie in the series’ future. Conversely, the biggest controversy surrounding the game, that not all Pokémon ever imagined can be ported into Sword and Shield – proves to barely be a factor. There are still a whopping 400 Pokémon in the game, with more than enough charm and battle prowess to please even the most ardent trainer.

Ultimately, Pokémon Sword and Shield aren’t the revelatory evolutions that Super Mario Odyssey or Zelda: Breath of the Wild were for their beloved franchises, but they are still fantastic additions to the Pokémon library. A few backwards steps, as with the gyms, can’t hold back an otherwise excellent adventure.

(Empireonline)

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Review

by admin December 5, 2019December 5, 2019

It is a dark time in Star Wars fandom – or more specifically, the segment of Star Wars fandom that prefers single-player video games. Since Disney acquired the franchise, the focus has been on the multiplayer shooter Battlefront series at EA, and maintaining the MMO The Old Republic. If you fancied battling your way through a galaxy far, far away on your own, the closest option recently has been VR effort Vader Immortal.

Now comes a new hope for single-player titles – Jedi: Fallen Order, set between Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope and focusing on Cal Kestis, a Padawan who survived Order 66, the purge of the Jedi knights. Hiding on Bracca, a non-descript world far from the Empire’s purview, Cal attracts the attention of the sadistic inquisitor Second Sister when he uses the Force to save a friend’s life. Sent on the run, with the support of a former Jedi Master and the adorable droid BD-1, Cal is drawn into a mystery centuries old that takes him to some of the galaxy’s most impressive locations.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
Developer Respawn Entertainment has brilliantly crafted a slice of Star Wars lore that fits in perfectly with the classic George Lucas trilogies. The settings Cal visits perfectly blend ancient ruins with advanced star fighters, strange monstrous creatures with sentient robots, the hard technology of the Empire and burgeoning Rebellion with the weird mysticism of the Force. Where the Battlefront games feel like remixes of Star Wars’ best bits, Fallen Order manages to provide something new that slots in seamlessly alongside the old.

Fallen Order borrows liberally from other action-adventure series but combines elements into a satisfying whole that feels sufficiently fresh.

Mechanically, Fallen Order borrows liberally from other action-adventure series but combines elements into a satisfying whole that feels sufficiently fresh. Exploring the environments has a strong Assassin’s Creed vibe, with Cal parkouring his way up, around, and over most obstacles, but with several areas only accessible by navigating specific pathways, a lá Uncharted or the modern Tomb Raider games. Combat is a speedy mix of lightsaber flourishes and dodges, ricocheting laser blasts back at Stormtroopers, all enhanced by Cal’s burgeoning Force abilities, allowing him to shove or slow enemies.

It’s all capped off by a dash of Dark Souls, with signature ‘boss’ enemies to discover and beat, and grunt enemies respawning when Cal rests at meditation points. Thankfully, unlike the Souls series, Fallen Order doesn’t feel quite so punitive when you fail – you’ll only need to attack an enemy to regain the experience points you’ll have dropped, allowing you to snatch them back then run for cover again, while grinding experience points to enhance Cal’s skills is faster and less of a chore.

There is a sense that in some respects, Respawn have played it safe here – from the melange of gameplay styles from tried and tested titles, to the setting itself, to musical cues deliberately reminiscent of John Williams’ work on the films, Fallen Order feels very familiar in places. It even “Vader baits”, with the antagonistic Second Sister a protégé of the Sith Lord.

However, the story Fallen Order tells and the characters it introduces players to are captivating despite the familiarity, and exceptional voice acting across the board elevates the whole production. All told, Star Wars’ return to story-driven, single-player gaming stands up as a great experience in its own right – at least enough so that a bit of nostalgia along the way can be forgiven.

(Empireonline)

Shenmue III Review

by admin December 5, 2019December 5, 2019

When it first debuted on Dreamcast back in 1999, Shenmue was a wonder to behold. Set in a gloriously recreated 1980s Japan, it helped pioneer the open world adventure genre – although creator Yu Suzuki preferred to call his masterpiece a “FREE”, or Fully Reactive Eye Entertainment – as it told of young martial artist Ryo Hazuki’s quest to find his father’s murderer. Mixing combat and exploration with the need to take on day jobs and choose your activities carefully to meet the demands of a pressing clock, it was one of the most realistic games then seen. Although a 2001 sequel continued Ryo’s quest and took him from Japan to Hong Kong, it ended on something of a cliffhanger and the series has been in limbo for the better part of two decades.

Until 2015, that is, when Suzuki announced a Kickstarter to produce the long-awaited next chapter. While the original game was, at the time of release, the most expensive video game ever made, the crowdfunding campaign hit its own record of being the fastest funded and highest funded game in the site’s history, bringing in $6.3m.

Shenmue III
Sadly, it turns out $6.3m – plus whatever extra funding Suzuki attracted after the crowdfunding – is not enough money to make a Shenmue sequel that lives up to its predecessors or its reputation. The money seems to have been spent on some absolutely stunning environments, with everything else finished with some loose change found down the back of the couch – background characters pop in and out of existence, NPC models are often cartoonishly ugly, and the voice acting is some of the worst we’ve heard. This is Shenmue on a budget, and even then it’s two years later than the original Kickstarter pitch of 2017.

Shenmue III picks up right where the second game left off, with Ryo and his companion Shenhua finding a mysterious cavern. While there’s a catch-up movie to ostensibly bring new players up to speed, it works best as a reminder for returning ones. Narratively and structurally, you’re thrown into the proceedings with no real imperative to care about Ryo’s dead dad or Shenhua’s missing one. If this had come out circa 2003, continuing directly might have been forgivable (or more importantly, in players’ memories). In 2019, it’s an invitation not to care.

Shenmue III feels dated and clunky to play, more an unearthed relic than a long awaited return.

This sense of detachment is, probably accidentally, Shenmue III’s calling card. While the original game was set roughly a decade before its real-world release, the long years since Shenmue II make this feel even more of an anachronism. We’re now roughly 30 years removed from its setting – not a problem, video games are fiction – but more problematically 20 on in design sensibilities and technology.

The mechanics have scarcely evolved, making Shenmue III feel dated and clunky to play, more an unearthed relic than a long awaited return. Combat, for instance, starts off with a prompt to literally just hammer the face buttons, and although Ryo can learn more combos and specific attacks as you progress, the experience never feels to expand beyond randomly hitting buttons. Similarly, exploration and talking with random characters, once one of the delights of the series, is brought low with atrocious dialogue – characters frequently respond with non-sequiturs, making conversations baffling.

On top of all that, the UI is terrible, with the kind of simplistic menus that would seem out of place on a PS2 game, and having to zoom into first person mode to pick up or interact with items. Again, it all feels horribly outdated for a game released in 2019.

Shenmue III does try to retain the softer elements that made the previous games so unique, with cinematic camera angles and multiple shots for cutscenes, though these occasionally get a little too choppy. There’s also no denying the sheer ambition of the game, packing in a frankly daunting amount of side content – mini-games, shops, cooking, back alley brawls, items to collect and more – and some breathtaking locations to explore.

It’s not enough though. While there’s nothing overtly broken about the game, it’s all so sloppily put together that it can’t help but disappoint. Shenmue, and its fans who’ve been waiting two decades – some of whom will have directly invested in this game’s production – deserved better.

(Empireonline)

Motherless Brooklyn Review

by admin December 5, 2019December 5, 2019

New York, the 1950s. Private eye Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) is killed by shady characters. His protégé Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton) — who suffers from Tourette syndrome — investigates, finding connections between property developer Moses Randolph (Baldwin), his estranged brother (Willem Dafoe) and housing activist Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw).
By Kim Newman | Posted 2 Dec 2019
Release Date:
06 Dec 2019
Edward Norton has been developing his second film as a director – his first was Keeping The Faith, a 2000 romcom about a priest and a rabbi in love with Jenna Elfman — for two decades. Acquiring the rights to Jonathan Lethem’s novel on publication in 1999, he opted to script it himself — choosing to retain Lethem’s opening chapter and central character, but change everything else. It seems the pudding was in the oven too long. Everything about this long, slow private-eye/conspiracy drama is considered, careful and a little bland — an approach which doesn’t suit a movie whose protagonist has a unique, fractured point-of-view that earns picturesque nicknames, including ‘Motherless Brooklyn’ and the easier-to-understand ‘Freakshow’.

Motherless Brookyln
The novel has a contemporary setting and is a detective story in which the narrator investigates his own convoluted psyche, but the film relocates to the 1950s and tips in a plot about New York City planning, with a villain out to ethnic cleanse run-down neighbourhoods to build parks and futuristic skyscrapers. This strategem owes so much to Chinatown that it’s not too hard to figure out that the finale will hinge, as it did in Roman Polanski’s film, on the personal perversions of a monstrous robber baron. The problem is compounded by the way a supposedly brilliant sleuth takes two- and-a-half hours of trudging around libraries, public records offices, press conferences, jazz clubs, and slums — with time-outs for a few regulation back alley beatings — to see through a mystery that turns out to be standard. He even seems to forget he’s supposed to be avenging his murdered mentor.

Norton is excellent as the usually calm, rational Lionel, who seems to share his brain with an anarchist.

From his early showing in Primal Fear and signature role in Fight Club — even in his acceptable Bruce Banner — Norton is always well cast as neuroatypical, and he’s excellent as the usually calm, rational Lionel, who seems to share his brain with an anarchist. Lionel can easily skip tracks and start talking in bepop beat poetry, which also gives him insights that make him potentially a great detective. Much of the script — the hero keeps apologising for his ‘condition’ and being treated with understanding — feels wrong for the 1950s, but Lionel’s odd, off-centre exchanges with witnesses, suspects, hoods and classy dames make for smart little scenes. Norton especially clicks when he works with Michael Kenneth Williams, playing jazzman Wynton Marsalis, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, as the mystery woman at the heart of the puzzle.

Just as Chinatown used its 1930s history lesson to address Watergate era-America, this is obliged to extrapolate from its urban redevelopment storyline and yank in a sheaf of contemporary editorial concerns. At this point, simply casting Alec Baldwin as a political Mr Big evokes President Trump — and Baldwin goes the full Donald in a speech about the sexual opportunities of fame.

(Empireonline)

Empire’s Original Attack Of The Clones Review Review

by admin December 5, 2019December 5, 2019

Ten years have passed, and the Republic isunder threat from separatists, forcing Senator Padme Amidala to seek protection from Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan Kenobi discovers a secret Clone Army…
By Chris Hewitt | Posted 2 Dec 2019
Release Date:
15 May 2002
Running Time:
142 minutes
Certificate:
PG
In 2002, George Lucas made a film. I reviewed that film. That review did not go down well. So much so that we eventually unpublished it. But here it is, over 17 years on, for you to point and laugh at. But bear two things in mind. One: before you throw space shade my way, I feel the same way you do. For more details, read my full piece about this in the Star Wars supplement that comes free with the new issue of Empire, on sale now. And two: this is not the review you think it is. Enjoy?

Chris Hewitt

Attack Of The Clones
The Phantom Menace was awarded four stars by this very magazine. Going by that rationale, Attack Of The Clones deserves, oh, 20. Okay, Clones isn’t the greatest film ever. It’s not even the greatest Star Wars film ever, falling short of close relative The Empire Strikes Back. Yet it outstrips TPM completely, gives Return Of The Jedi a run for its money, and Steven Spielberg thinks it’s better than A New Hope. Make no mistake, Star Wars is back.

For a man supposedly oblivious to Phantom’s critical pasting, Lucas’ fifth instalment feels like it was made by a fanboy committee. There’s more action, more humour and more humanity (McGregor’s Obi-Wan is more confident and cynical, while Portman’s Padme is less regal and more sexy). On the flip-side, there’s no midi-chlorians and – hurrah! – barely any Jar Jar. Meanwhie, Lucas directs capably, showing off his visual skills (breathtaking shots are legion) while letting the increasingly dark story develop unhindered.

Make no mistake, Star Wars is back.

Phantom may have been just for kids, but thanks to its frequent decapitations and murky tone, Clones skews a lot older. It’s not as simple as white hats, black hats anymore: the proto-Stormtrooper Clones are here — oh, the irony! — led into battle by Yoda; while the loathed Jar Jar inadvertently sets in motion the Clone Wars. Lucas also bravely consigns his nominal baddies — Jango Fett and Christopher Lee’s imposing Count Dooku — to the background, allowing him to focus on Anakin’s fall from grace. The Tusken Raider slaughter and Anakin’s subsequent hate-fuelled confession is the most emotionally-charged Star Wars sequence since Empire’s climax; thankfully the glowering, preening Christensen delivers a suitably tortured performance. Episode III awaits.

It’s not all perfect: the romance never escapes its plot device origins; the dialogue is still clunky; non-fans might get lost, and the mid-section lacks pace. As for ILM’s wall-to-wall CG (most of the walls are CG), such hyper-reality means Clones occasionally resembles the most expensive Babylon 5 episode ever made.

Attack Of The Clones
Then again, the climactic battle, featuring Jedi kicking ass and — heyl — Clones attacking, is a mind-boggling fusion of technology and entertainment that eclipses anything seen before in the fantasy genre. Hell, in any genre. And then, along comes Yoda’s astonishing, crowdpleasing battle with Count Dooku. A showdown that is — inarguably — the Star Wars saga’s greatest single moment, and for that, all past indiscretions are forgiven. Welcome back, George.

(Empireonline)

No Time To Die: James Bond Teaser Arrives Ahead Of First Trailer

by admin December 5, 2019December 5, 2019

James Bond is back. The first half of 2020 will bring with it the next 007 movie, the much-anticipated No Time To Die – and ahead of the first full trailer arriving on Wednesday 4 December, we have an initial teaser showing a few tantalising glimpses of Bond’s next outing. The 14-second reel has some moody Daniel Craig shots, a first look at Lashana Lynch’s agent, some impressive motorbike action, and a tooled-up Aston Martin. Take a look below.

While the production on No Time To Die was beset by troubling tabloid reports and the spectre (no pun intended) of Danny Boyle’s highly-publicised departure, the teaser certainly restores plenty of excitement – that iconic music, Craig looking suave as ever in his tux, and some very stylish imagery, courtesy of director Cary Joji Fukunaga. We should see plenty more when the full trailer arrives on Wednesday, with the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Jeffrey Wright, Naomie Harris, and Léa Seydoux returning from previous Bond outings. Maybe we’ll even get a glimpse of Rami Malek’s new villain, Safin.

Watch out for the trailer coming later this week, and prepare for the full film to hit UK cinemas on 2 April 2020.

(Empireonline)

Ordinary Love Review

by admin December 5, 2019December 5, 2019

Joan (Lesley Manville) and Tom (Liam Neeson) live a comfortable if dull life in Belfast — a daily walk, chit-chat about soup, never discussing their deceased daughter — until Joan discovers she has a lump in her breast.
By Ian Freer | Posted 2 Dec 2019
Release Date:
06 Dec 2019
Arriving with little fanfare, Ordinary Love is a sad, low-key treat. Directed by married filmmaking team Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn, best known for 2012 punk rock anthem Good Vibrations, their latest is a complete change of gear, a beautifully observed look at a couple trying to deal with the unthinkable. Poignant and painful, it’s a film about how we cope, brought to life by two stellar performances from its two leads.

The film is terrific on the realities of care, often inhabiting the spaces and scenes other films leave out.

Written by Owen McCafferty who went through a similar ordeal when his wife contracted cancer, it starts as a micro portrait of a retired middle-aged couple. Joan (Manville) and Tom (Neeson) fill their days with a brisk sea-front walk (always turning back at the same tree), debating the workings of Fitbits, watching TV and bickering about the amount of tomato juice Tom needs — all the while trying to come to terms with the sadness over the death of their daughter Debbie (we never find out details). Their low-level melancholic routine is broken when Joan finds a lump in her left breast. An early GP diagnosis suggests a cyst with only a three out of five chance of being cancer. Tom reads this as 50:50; Joan sees three as closer to five. When the devastating news comes, amidst all the grief, Manville delicately conveys a sense of smugness at being right.

As Joan’s condition gets worse in increments, the film is terrific on the realities of care — the monotonous journeys to the hospitals for visits, the kind of hollow words of encouragement from other patients — often inhabiting the spaces (waiting rooms) and scenes (a sex scene as they bid a tender farewell to Joan’s breasts) other films leave out. At one point, Tom pops to the loo as Joan is called for her diagnosis — the wait for him to return is real and agonising. There’s also gallows humour; during a chat with a terminally ill patient, Joan uses her wig as a tea cosy.

There are observations about the NHS — there’s a whole dialogue about paying for parking at a hospital — but this isn’t a political film, it’s a deeply human one. While it is a joy to see Neeson once again use his skills to etch a real human being rather than whack terrorists — Tom is an amiable shmoe always ready with a bad joke — this is Manville’s movie, subtle, resilient, heartbreaking. Together, they take something that is tragically common place and make it heart-rending.

(Empireonline)

So Long, My Son Review

by admin December 5, 2019

Following a personal tragedy, two families take different paths through the tumultuous changes in recent Chinese history.
By Ian Freer | Posted 2 Dec 2019
Release Date:
06 Dec 2019
Wang Xiaoshuai’s So Long, My Son is so epic and ambitious it renders most other movies puny by comparison. Spanning three decades, Beijing Bicycle director Wang tries to encapsulate the seismic changes in Chinese society but parlay them through the prism of ordinary people living ordinary lives. But not only that, he mounts the story in a bold narrative fashion, flitting between different time frames to create interesting connections and juxtapositions between old and new. If it is sometimes perplexing with the occasional inert passage, the result has all the richness of a novel — even if sometimes you would like to flick back a few pages to keep events clear.

So Long, My Son
Genre-wise, So Long, My Son is a family melodrama. In ’70s China during the Cultural Revolution, Yaojun (Wang Jingchun) and Liyun’s (Yong Mei) young son Xingxing dies in a drowning accident so the pair leave their home town to restart their life in a small Fujian town where they adopt a teenager we later learn is also called Xingxing (Wang Yuan). Flashing back to the ‘80s, Yaojun and Liyun are working in a factory where their friend Haiyan (Al Liya) is the factory official in charge of planned parenthood, forcing Liyun to have an abortion after she falls pregnant contravening the (now abandoned) Chinese national policy that decrees couples have only one child.

Yang’s delicate touch, both in filmmaking terms and with his actors makes it ring both true and moving.

Orbiting these characters is Yaojun’s apprentice Moli (Qi Xi), the sister of Haiyan’s husband Yingming (Xu Cheng), who has an infatuation with her mentor, and Xinjan (Zhao Yanguozhang), a fun-loving, narcissistic livewire who finds his high spirits quashed by the draconian authorities.

There are multiple characters to keep track of over numerous timelines and Wang doesn’t give you any signposting (i.e. captions) to keep you straight. Slowly drip-feeding character information, his decision to play with the time line is one of the reasons the film doesn’t descend into sudsy melodrama. There’s so much in the way of incident, big narrative turns and huge emotions that in less skilful hands it would feel manipulative.

Yet Yang’s delicate touch, both in filmmaking terms — Kim Hyun-seok’s handheld camera is unobtrusive, Dong Yingda’s spare score is beautiful — and with his actors makes it ring both true and moving. The cast is across the board strong, but the MVP is Wang Jingchun. He gives Yaojun an innate sense of decency and humanity that is deeply affecting — especially in its last act when Haiyan and Yingming, now prosperous property developers, invite Yaojun and Liyun back to their home town when the various plot and emotional strands come together to devastating effect.

(Empireonline)

Honey Boy Review

by admin December 5, 2019December 5, 2019

Twentysomething actor Otis (Lucas Hedges) is doing well professionally, being thrown about on blockbuster sets. Inside, though, he’s burning, self-harming to almost every degree, and winds up in rehab. Meanwhile we meet his 12-year-old younger self (Noah Jupe), a child actor in the grip of his tyrannical father (Shia LaBeouf).
By Alex Godfrey | Posted 2 Dec 2019
Release Date:
06 Dec 2019
Shia LaBeouf has always seemed tinged by mania, on and off the screen. Even when starring in garbage he’s never cut corners, burning up the joint with emotional desperation. There’s a genuine sense of danger about him, his real-life upsets bleeding onto his sets — the self-inflicted knife scars on his face, unscripted and unrequired from his time on David Ayer’s Fury, still show today, but mental scarring is evident too, barely beneath the surface. In Honey Boy, an autobiographical open-wound scripted by LaBeouf in rehab, all of this unravels with a wallop.

Honey Boy
The names have been changed, as this isn’t documentary, but to all intents and purposes Lucas Hedges plays LaBeouf, all explosive aggression, indiscriminate anger and self-sabotage. We meet Otis (Hedges) on the set of a big-budget action film (a thinly disguised nod to LaBeouf’s Transformers years), and after a night of hedonism turns ugly he gets arrested, and eventually arrives at a rehabilitation centre. From here we rewind a decade or so to catch up with the 12-year-old Otis (Jupe), a child actor plying a trade in sitcoms, his alcoholic deadbeat dad on his payroll. And this is where the lid comes off this big bowl of WTF, because LaBeouf himself plays his own father, dishing out abuse to his younger self. It’s wild.

It’s hard to recall any other film that does what this does, an actor laying himself bare like this.

To say Honey Boy is one big therapy session is to do it a disservice — it’s much better than that — but it literally is. After getting arrested in July 2017, another all too public humiliation, LaBeouf went to rehab, where he was encouraged — and we see this dramatised in Honey Boy — to write about his feelings and experiences. That resulted in this screenplay, which he sent to his friend Alma Har’el (director of 2011’s musical documentary Bombay Beach), who has crafted LaBeouf’s life story into something poetic and often heartbreaking.

LaBeouf, captivating as ever, is frightening as his own dad, a loose cannon oozing a creeping menace. Jupe is a powerhouse: your heart bleeds for this kid, for both Jupe’s portrayal and for the pre-teen LaBeouf he plays. It’s a devastating performance, phenomenally so for such a young man. Hedges, meanwhile, puts in a furious turn, perfectly embodying years of damage and neglect, while singer FKA Twigs, as a sort of calming guardian angel for the young Otis, has an ethereal and almost otherworldly presence.

Above all, Honey Boy is tragic. LaBeouf even gives his dad a shade of sympathy, presenting him as a cracked, pitiful human being. The film is somewhat slight, running out of steam a little towards the end, but that’s maybe for the best — a tidy resolution would have felt like a betrayal. This isn’t an ending for LaBeouf, but a step forward. Every day counts.

It’s hard to recall any other film that does what this does, an actor laying himself bare like this, in terms of both the script and his own performance as his father — there are levels and levels and levels. With almost every role of his career, LaBeouf has seemed like he’s on fire. To some degree, this fascinating piece of work explains why.

(Empireonline)