All signs point up
Damaged characters overshadow bigger picture
SIGNS
Starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix
Written and directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Check Listings
M. Night Shyamalan is the king of making normal people suck it up for extraordinary circumstances. He even goes so far as to give action hero actors, like Bruce Willis and now Mel Gibson, normal roles that prove they have the inner tenacity to allow their other characters to play the hero. He takes on tough genres like comic book characters and ghosts without any irony or camp, and now, with his latest film, he targets aliens as his subject matter.
Signs digs up the old bogeyman of crop circles and gives it a dose of 20-20-20 fertilizer. The world is suddenly polka-dotted with the mysterious things, testing even the strongest cynic's hoax theories.
Mel Gibson plays Graham Hess, ex-minister and widowed father of two. He wakes up one morning to find his field has been chosen for a lovely three-circle pattern and his somewhat psychic children are running for an explanation. Since Dad has thrown down the collar after seeing his wife die in a freak accident, he lets his kids find their own answers while he tries to pin it on the local bad boys.
Soon the signs go from nice organic crop markings to full-on saucer mode and Earth is left waiting for the other shoe to drop from the sky. Friend or foe? Vegetarians or humanitarians? Just who the heck are these dudes? Well, I dunno and I just saw the movie... you see, it was apparently more important for us to hang out in the root cellar at the Hess house and learn to understand the difference between coincidence and meaningful coincidence than to get a good hate-on for these dad-blasted aliens!
Yes, Shyamalan is an expert storyteller when it comes to leaking information and balancing the scary with the light and the heavy with the funny. But ya know, if something as grand as aliens is the subject matter for a film... let's stick with our knitting, shall we? Instead we spend 90 per cent of our time learning that everything may happen for a higher reason – but does that require aliens?
Performance wise, Shyamalan manags to pull one of the most subtle performances I've ever seen from Mel Gibson. Joaquin Phoenix delivers a believable turn as the brother who has come to comfort and seek comfort at his newly widowed brother's home. However, the writer-director (note there is no -actor in that list) gives himself a rather meaty cameo that tends to take you out of the experience.
The film itself is neatly shot and allows the story to unfold visually rather than just through dialogue. There is a lot of suspense and light-hearted family moments with the kids, who were also excellent in their roles, but overall, it is a lot of build up to very little. |
