Xavier Gens' THE DIVIDE: Here comes a particularly unsettling apocalypse

After a nasty, envelope-pushing Frontier(s), followed by a better-than-you-heard-but-still-not-very-good Hitman, French genre director Xavier Gens looks to have found his stride with his latest -- THE DIVIDE -- an ugly, apocalyptic scare fest that is also profoundly sad and all-too unpleasantly human.

An ensemble piece that begins with a memorable shot of New York under nuclear siege as viewed through the eyes of the character with whom we come to identify most, a young woman named Eva (played with a smart combo of steely reserve and pop-up vulnerability by Lauren German), the movie soon becomes the tale of survivors holed-up in the fallout shelter basement of a Manhattan high-rise -- where the usual happens but in a decidedly unusual manner.

M. Gens, pictured at right, both wrote and directed Frontier(s) but only directed Hitman and The Divide, which accounts for the tightness of the formers' screenplay, plotting and characterization. What makes The Divide work as well as it does is the fact that he and his writers (Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean) place characterization above all else (except the main situation, of course) and then let character control the outcome. This adds immeasurably to the movie's believability and helps keep us watching through the most horrible of several wretched occurrences. Unlike those in so many genre movies, you won't find these people doing a lot of out-and-out stupid things along the way. Nasty, character-driven things, perhaps. But not necessarily stupid.

Along with the fine Ms German (above), the cast includes Iván González as her less-than-helpful boyfriend, Michael Biehn (standing, below center, and very good as the super whose basement bunker this is), Rosanna Arquette as a bereaved mother whose bereavement takes an unusual course, Ashton Holmes as the single sensitive guy, and Milo Ventimiglia (second right, below) and Michael Eklund (below, right) as the two most "problemed" males in the bunch.

Among the several intelligent surprises the movie has to offer is the revelation of the identity of the "towelheads" (as Biehn's super calls them) who attacked us, and the short excursion that one of our fellows makes outside the bunker -- the results of which you'll wish you didn't know.

No rom-com day-at-the-beach, The Divide is grueling but satisfying (in dark ways, yes). The movie, from Anchor Bay Films and running 110 minutes, opens this Friday, January 13, at midnight screenings only (it deserves better and more) in Austin, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles and New York, and will hit a flock of other cities beginning Friday, January 20.  Click here (and then click on SHOWTIMES) to find all currently scheduled cities and theaters.

Lucy Walker's COUNTDOWN TO ZERO wants to scare us into going anti-nuke

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Are there any among us who actually want nuclear holocaust? Not likely.  Not on the surface, at least.  If we go all Freudian, of course, we might suggest that, though some people claim they want no war, they're really cham-
ping at the bit to indulge.  Provided, of course, that they and their families remain safe.  Even then, for those among us who worship thanatos via our subconscious, the death wish may be so strong that it can finally topple everything else.

The beauty of the nuclear thing is that no one remains safe -- at least not for miles and miles and miles and....  Oh, gosh: here I am sounding all mid-20th Century again, ready to dive under my school desk and thus be somehow saved from destruction.

According to Lucy Walker, shown at right, the British filmmaker who has written and directed COUNTDOWN TO ZERO, we'd better get right back into that mode, this time with the knowledge that nothing we do, short of somehow banning nuclear weapons completely -- or overseeing them so closely and cautiously that not a terrorist gets through -- will prevent from happening the horrors she details here.   We first hear from fall girl extraordinaire Valerie Plame Wilson (below), who tells us a lot of fascinating stuff, including the fact that, should terrorists want to get hold of a nuclear bomb and blow up, say, New York City, they'll look first to Russia. You'll soon be put in mind of The Sum of All Fears.

We also hear a lot from foreign affairs maven Joseph Cirincione who explains that, "If you can get hold of the materials, you can make a bomb."  Comforting.  But many of us already knew that.  We may not, however, know that "a perfectly secure nuclear weapon is also an unusable one."

In addition to a number of experts (Mikhail Gorbachev, shown above, and Jimmy Carter among them), the filmmaker poses questions to various men and women in the street.  One such -- How many nuclear weapons exist in the world today? -- receives wildly divergent answers.  And why not: I had no idea of the actual count, either.  But then, I've always thought that whether it's 10 bombs or 10,000 -- it's only going take a couple of strikes to begin the escalation that will wipe out most of the known world.

Ms Walker's movie begins with (and ends and is literally stuffed with repetitions of ) a statement made by President John F. Kennedy back in 1961 to the U.N. General Assembly.  It's a good statement, but did we need to hear it ten times -- plus seeing it writ out before us on-screen?   This is the major problem with Coundown to Zero.  It's repetitive, hectoring and whiny beyond belief.   Surely nuclear disarmament deserves a more intelligent, thoughtful approach?  No matter how dire the consequences, we all can die only once, and despite (no, because of) the description here of "how" we will die under nuclear attack, Walker seems to be plastering it on with a shovel.  Well, she's scared, and rightly so, as we all should be.  But using fear, as did the Bush administration, as a weapon on the public is not the best way to make the case.

Repeating (and repeating), nattering at us, showing us perhaps the ugliest shots of Times Square I have ever seen (is the purpose here to make New York not such a nifty target -- or one that wouldn't be missed much, post-attack?), and finally making those man-in-the-street questions increasingly useless and ridiculous, the movie simply grows worse as it goes along, as though its creator had let her fear overwhelm everything else.

Well-intentioned as the movie is, I doubt enough people will see Walker's film to make much of a difference.  The push for nuclear disarmament deserves better than this.  By the finale, I was sitting there in the dark thinking that a full-out attack, complete with "nuclear winter," would at least stop global warming. That’s probably not the reaction the filmmaker wants.

Countdown to Zero, from Magnolia Pictures, opens this Friday, July 23, here in the city that terrorist do seem to love: New York, NY, at the Angelika Film Center and the AMC Empire 25.  It opens simultaneously in Rockland, Maine, and Washington DC.  Next week it'll expand to many more cities and theaters. You can find all the playdates here.

All photos above are from the film, except for that of 
the filmmaker, courtesy of TimeOut London.