Triage

A highly overlooked talent for actors is their ability to pick good projects for themselves. Russell Crowe, to my mind, is the best in this regard right now. Look at his body of work – how many really bad movies has he been in and how often has he been bad in them? Denzel Washington also makes mostly smart choices. When they drop the inevitable turd, it’s disappointing but no one bats 1.000 and you can be fairly certain they’ll redeem themselves next time. Some actors will take almost anything offered them – Nicole Kidman, I’m looking at you – which makes it impossible to handicap the likelihood of getting a quality experience out of your rental. Then there’s Colin Farrell.

I imagine that Mr.Farrell would be an awesome dude to sit down and have lunch with. He’s a smart and charming lad, obviously very talented. I also think he has great intentions. Dude enjoys a good time, I’m sure he looks to bring that to every set he’s on and I believe he works hard. I just wish he had a better track record with his film projects. Watch him in Phone Booth and the Recruit and you can see untapped potential just waiting to come out. If you watched him in Daredevil and Alexander, well, I’m sorry. That was embarrassing for a lot of people. Now, there’s Triage. Sweet mother of God what a performance!

It’s like he went shopping at the Academy Award giftshop for this role. Pop quiz – how does a young actor get on the fast track to winning an Oscar? Lose 44 pounds at risk to your long term health, make sure your character has some kind of disability, make yourself ugly, and if you have an accent, use a different accent. Mission accomplished.

The movie itself is about Mark Walsh, a freelance photojournalist covering the Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq in the early 80’s. While camping with the rebel forces, he is witness to gruesome conditions - a doctor forced into committing triage via mercy killings, failed assaults, isolation, despair and food that would gag a maggot. While there he suffers a serious injury which the film is in no hurry to explain and comes home to London struggling with the burden of what he’s seen and what he knows. He is not the same man he was before and his wife/girlfriend calls in her grandfather (played by Christopher Lee) to offer him psychological purification.

Not gonna lie, I felt somewhat manipulated by the structure of this film. The score and cinematography seems familiar and borrowed from other Oscar type movies, almost like it was assembled more for film academy juries than to service the story. Be that as it may, I still liked Triage. Colin Farrell is phenominal – the story was less interesting to me than his performance. Christopher Lee in a supporting role is fantastic. I read that he had to learn more lines of dialogue for this role than in any other movie he’s ever done. Dude is 86 years old and has been in almost every movie ever made. That is impressive to me.

I give Triage 7 out of 10