The Hunting Party – Linkin Park

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Linkin Park's recent albums have seen the band attempting to reimagine their sound. A Thousand Suns(2010) conflated modern electro-pop with apocalyptic-political subject matter and Living Things(2012) was a more refined, but less interesting follow-up. Within these two experimental projects, the band seem to have ended up – either intentionally or unintentionally – writing music for a much broader, mainstream audience. The Hunting Party brings in some of the visceral modern-rock energy and anger that totally suffused their early nu-metal sound – even if it isn’t an entirely faithful return to form.

Opener Keys to the Kingdom is the heaviest thing they’ve done. The juxtaposition of Chester Bennington’s corrosive screaming and the pensive release of Mike Shinoda’s alt-pop infused verses make these dissonant parts of the song, not so much jar, as sonically collide together. The album sustains this feeling of collision and conflict pretty consistently - it's almost a metaphor for the way the band is fighting to retain the signature ferocity of their debut, Hybrid Theory, and still preserve the graceful melodic sensibility of their recent work.

The guest appearances offer varying results; Page Hamilton is effective on All for Nothing and legendary hip-hop MC, Rakim, adds an unexpected menace to the breakdown of Guilty all the Same. But Daron Malakian’s (System of a Down) presence on Rebellion and Tom Morello’s contribution on Drawbar are not nearly as distinctive or memorable as they should have been.

Although the energy and passion of The Hunting Party is unquestionable, the album doesn’t always hang together. Although the more shambolic moments are clearly a by-product of its explosive spirit, sometimes the entire album threatens to collapse in a heap. Wastelands, which comes in at the halfway point, hoists the album into place – it’s simply constructed with a great rap verse and rock chorus, reminiscent of Hybrid Theory and Meteora's schizophrenic

sound and structure. 

It is also interesting to observe how Linkin Park’s attitude towards subject matter has evolved. Their first two albums repeatedly refer to the motif of the self within the self – a Jekyll and Hyde complex that was constantly being grappled with. Lines such as; “you’ve become a part of me”/“the very worst part of you is me”/“the face inside is right beneath the skin” convey a kind of Freudian id and ego conception of the human personality – were the narrative voices in those early LP songs fought against the personification of their own dark, twisted thoughts. As time has passed the lyrics have become far more externalised and focus instead on man’s impact on the world – their anger is less angst-ridden and more concerned with the futility and suffering that exists within the dystopian-like world we live in – “the wastelands of today”. 

The Counsellor ** Despite the A-list cast and Ridley Scott’s fervent direction, Cormac McCarthy’s script leaves a lot to be desired in this overdressed drug-revenge movie.

Ridley Scott’s quasi-philosophical drug thriller sees Michael Fassbender as a slick lawyer and negotiator, only ever referred to as the titular “counsellor”. Whilst planning new business ventures with his zany associate Reiner, (played by Javier Bardem) The Counsellor becomes interested in a Mexican drug deal that promises to yield massive profit through a contact called Westray(Brad Pitt) – however the deal goes horribly wrong.

Scott’s picture may be lavishly dressed, but it is a relatively simplistic exploitation-movie setup mired by McCarthy’s over-embellished pseudo-existential dialogue. Characters say lines as turgid and insipidly enigmatic as; “are you really that cold?”, “the truth has no temperature” and there is arch talk about “the stone’s endless destiny, is that not the meaning of adornment?’ during a protracted discussion about engagement rings.

The explosive violence conflated with the overcharged sexual content should be more entertaining and daring than it actually is; it's surprising how a film that features a motorised garrotting device and Cameron Diaz having sex with a car manages to be quite so boring. Michael Fassbender in his best moments manages to convey the hollowed-out nature of his character convincingly and the likes of Bardem and Pitt ham it up as best they can in their sub-Tarantino outfits. Yet the mood of the piece is constantly trampled on by the script’s endlessly inert philosophising about drugs and death and fate – disappointing.

Edge of Tomorrow - Tom Cruise's return to sci-fi sees him stuck in a narrative device, but director Doug Liman gives us more to chew on in this blockbuster epic. ***

Doug Liman’s new movie is yet another science-fiction story that sees humans pitted against an alien invasion. Based on the novel by fiction and fantasy writer Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Edge of Tomorrow stars Tom Cruise as Major William Cage, a PR man spinning positive military propaganda about the war against the extra-terrestrials. However, after a meeting with General Brigham,(Brendan Gleeson) Cage is ordered to fight as a soldier on the front line. When he refuses to fight, Cage is forcibly sent to into battle and dropped headfirst into alien-D-Day-CGI carnage only to get stuck in a cosmic time loop in which he lives the same day of fighting over and over again - like a live-action video game where he ‘respawns’ in exactly the same place every time he dies.

Cruise’s role is more interesting than one would expect from this kind of blockbuster fare – Cage isn’t a hero, he’s a slimy, superficial, cowardly character and it is within these duplicitous qualities that Cruise has channelled his finest work in Michael Mann’s Collateral and P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia.

Nearly every review has mentioned Groundhog Day as Liman’s central touchstone device for describing how the time looping scenario works and indeed there is a moment where Tom Cruise says “what day is it?” and you almost expect Chris Elliot to jump out and say “it’s time to film the groundhog!” Furthermore, there are moments that derive Groundhog Day's similar strain of black humour from the fact that the central character dies incessantly in comical accidents.  However, when Emily Blunt's poster girl warrior character Rita, aka the “Full Metal Bitch”, is introduced the film begins to focus more on the pathos of being stuck in time in a way that is more reminiscent of the thwarted love narrative of Duncan Jones’s film Source Code. While Edge of Tomorrow is not nearly as distinctive as Source Code, (its industrial future war aesthetic clearly owing a debt to James Cameron’s Aliens and a kind of post-Judgement Day vision of the world from the Terminator movies) there is an engaging, human emphasis to the story that works well alongside the hefty action sequences.