Saltburn (R21)
131 minutes, available on Prime Video
3 stars
The story: England’s Oxford University, circa 2006. Misfit scholarship freshman Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is invited to the stately country estate of popular campus aristocrat Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) for a summer never to be forgotten.
What is reputedly the most polarising film of 2023 is now available to stream, appalling home viewers with its menstrual blood and necrophilia – all before Saltburn climaxes in a full-frontal five-minute dance.
English film-maker Emerald Fennell is clearly enjoying building on the attention of her 2020 rape revenge comedy Promising Young Woman, which won her the Academy Award for original screenplay.
Her sophomore feature is a depraved black comedy-satire on privilege and envy as Oliver becomes obsessed with not only the blindingly beautiful Felix, but also desires everything Felix has.
And it is not hard for the house guest to worm his way into the family because the British gentry are twits in Fennell’s telling.
Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike are a hoot as the parents – befuddled Sir James and shallow former model Lady Elspeth. There is a bulimic nymphomaniac sister (Alison Oliver), and an American cousin (Archie Madekwe) is Oliver’s rival for the Catton fortune.
Oliver could be Matt Damon’s sociopath imposter of The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) intruding upon the 1945 Evelyn Waugh novel Brideshead Revisited, except the comparison would be too flattering for this cynical homoerotic thriller.
It piles on deviant provocations in the absence of originality or any insights into the English class system, other than the plebs are parasites and the poshos are clueless.
But it is an irresistible watch, thanks to Keoghan’s shifty and sinister presence in the central role. His every scene of squirmy dread could end in sex or murder. Often, it ends in both.
Hot take: Equal parts sleek and sick, this shock-value psychosexual drama will either entertain or repulse.
Endless Journey (PG13)
132 minutes, opens on Jan 4
4 stars
The story: A detective investigating a 14-year-old’s rape-murder is convicted of the suspect’s death under custody. After prison, he resumes his pursuit for justice as a civilian.
Chinese star Zhang Yi is shattering in his portrayal of Captain Cheng Bing, and Endless Journey is all the sadder for being a true story based on a 2018 non-fiction novel by Chinese author and erstwhile policeman Shen Lan.
It begins in 2002, when Cheng and his valorised Third Squad criminal investigation task force are assigned the shocking case in China’s Guangdong province.
He promises an arrest within five days. The pressure mounts along with the public’s panic, leading to a fatal mishap and jail for the five disgraced officers.
Upon release eight years later, they reassemble under Cheng to find the remaining fugitive.
Their vigilantism is without heroism. This crime drama is a very different police undertaking from actor-director Dai Mo’s 2020 Detective Chinatown buddy caper Web series.
Zhang aside, Dai’s astute casting of unfamiliar yet expressive everyman faces such as Zhang Zixian and Wei Chen adds to the realism of a downbeat docudrama. It sees the fallen cops working lowly jobs as drivers, deliverymen and security guards while trawling the country’s depressed industrialised south – up and down, for 12 years.
One by one, they come to acknowledge the futility of recapturing their past and return home to attempt a new start.
Cheng continues the manhunt, ageing and alone.
His wife, like his comrades, has moved on and his daughter is estranged. What is his never-ending chase if not a tragedy of a man running from the emptiness in his life?
Hot take: This authentic and sensitive character study deservedly claimed the No. 1 spot at China’s box office in December.
