After impressing Hollywood with films made in his native land, Renny Harlin came from Finland, where he was known as Lauri Harjola, to direct movies in America, and became one of the many directors to jumpstart a career by helming a Nightmare on Elm Street entry. He leapt from that to Die Hard 2, just as good as and arguably better than the first film. He stumbled a bit and then did Cliffhanger with Stallone. His next few films featured his then wife, Gena Davis, and included what might be considered his masterpiece, The Long Kiss Goodnight. An expensive film, it flopped at the box office and then he collaborated again with Stallone on Driven. At $72 million, that was his last big budgeted film. Since then Harlin has dwelled in the more modestly acquitted realm of films budgeted at around $20 million dollars. Exorcist: The Beginning and Mindhunters were both troubled projects and essentially reviled by the critics, and Harlin, perceived as vulnerable, clearly became a whipping boy for them.

Yet for me there continues to be something about Harlin’s films that I find attractive. Even at more modest budgets, they evince a command and control that should be the envy of others. And his career should be a cautionary tale to others who specialize in the action film. After burning brightly, the Ratners, the McGs, the Finchers, the Bays will at some point themselves also all fall into an abyss of one kind or another.Harlin obviously likes to do genre material but his films are mocked, while Tarantino, equally genre mad, gets a pass, indeed gets praised.

Now comes The Covenant which sneaked in and out of the theaters last fall and now appears on DVD from Screen Gems, hitting the street on January 2, 2007, for $28.95. It’s not the level of film that a Harlin apologist wants to go out on a limb for, and in fact is filled with rather amateurish mistakes. Ideally, it is Joel Schumacher material.

Harlin rather confounds critics who approach him from an auteurist bent. His films have a consistent visual quality, but it is also the same quality found in most big budgeted action films and might better be counted as a producer’s style. And it is difficult to pinpoint a thematic consistency. One of his Finnish films, Born American, concerned three American tourists who jokingly cross the border into Russia and end up in a Soviet jail. Mindhunters, Deep Blue Sea, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Cliffhanger, and Die Hard 2 all also feature innocents or something equivalent to that who stumble into a larger life threatening situation. And that’s speaking very broadly. Also, this list accounts for less than half of his output, and on cursory consideration those films don’t scream out with any kind of thematic consistency.

The Covenant also features an innocent, in this case Sarah (Laura Ramsey), who is the new student at the prestigious if also wholly ominous Spenser Academy in Ipswitch. She gets an insta-crush on Caleb Danvers (Steven Strait), the naturally charismatic leader of the student body, but a lad who also happens to be one of the descendants of the Salem witches. His posse makes up the other descendants. There is another new student in the school, the goofy Chase Collins (Sebastian Stan) who turns out to be something more than what he seems — a rival warlock who wants to suck dry Caleb’s power as he “ascends” to a higher level of skill on his 18th birthday. The film climaxes with a battle royale between the two antagonists, with Sarah held hostage between them.

If nothing else, The Covenant shows the problems facing filmmakers making a Dr. Strange movie, because it devolves into two guys facing off throwing CGI fireballs at each other across a room. Roger Corman did the same thing better 44 years ago in The Raven.

Most of the problems with The Covenant can be traced to the script credited to J.S. Cardone. The 97 minute film appears to have narrative gaps (though the disc doesn’t feature any deleted scenes), and introduces about 12 characters in its first 10 minutes. By the time you reach a state where you can tell them apart, the movie’s over. Its fantasy world is typically inconsistent, is one of those scripts in which every casual thing you see will loom large later, and is one of those “arrivals and departures” scripts, in which every scene begins and ends with someone arriving then departing. This approach to screen writing makes for very enervated, predictable, and repetitious stories. The fantasy world is inconsistent in that way typical of such films, in which powers characters have are opportunistically inconsistent. For example, on the one hand these warlocks can fly, but on the other, at the end Caleb simply carries Sarah out of a burning barn. Why doesn’t he fly out?

Thus, The Covenant is a disc for Harlin completists only. The widescreen transfer (2.35:1, enhanced), with a full frame version also available on the same disc. It’s a good transfer that makes the numerous special effects believable. Subtitles come in English and French under a English Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks. Extras consist of a commentary track by director Harlin that emphasizes the technical challenges of the production. Besides trailers, there is also a making of featurette called “Breaking the Silence: Exposing The Covenent” which is typical upbeat EPK fluff.

Comments: 1 Comment