ZooScope

Tag: Crime/Gangster

  • See Spot Run. Dir. John Whitesell. Village Roadshow Pictures. 2001.

    See Spot Run. Dir. John Whitesell. Village Roadshow Pictures. 2001.

    Agent 11 is one of the most decorated agents in the FBI, but he doesn’t always play by the rules. This time, his vicious attack on mob boss Sonny Talia (Paul Sorvino) has made him the target of a hit.                                                                      When internal corruption leads to his Witness Protection being compromised, he must…

  • Snatch. Dir. Guy Ritchie. Columbia Pictures. 2000.

    – “Okay, I reckon the hare gets fucked” – “What? Proper fucked?” In Guy Ritchie’s comedic crime thriller Snatch, he uses this hare coursing scene to draw parallels between the animality of the dogs and the gangsters, whilst also simultaneously using the mise-en-scene to create a contrast between the agility of animals alongside the clumsiness…

  • The Mask. Dir. Charles Russell. New Line Cinema. 1994.

    The Mask[1] is a screwball gangster-comedy starring Jim Carrey as Stanley Ipkiss, a timid bank clerk who finds a Norse mask which turns him into a bold, charismatic and lustful character, much different to his usual self. The portrayal of his pet dog Milo, as well as the cartoon animal characters that share similarities with…

  • The Mask. Dir. Charles Russell. New Line Cinema. 1994.

    This scene in the film The Mask shows the protagonist Stanley in prison after being caught by police when in his Mask character. This short clip from the film allows us to truly see first-hand the love that Milo has for his owner, as well as the intelligence that he has. The pet- relationship that…

  • Ernest and Celestine. Dir. Benjamin Renner. StudioCanal. 2012.

    The animated film Ernest and Celestine[1] (2012) uses animals to offer a socio-political examination of French society. A predator-prey construct is conveyed through the division of social classes in the species contrast between a mouse- Celestine, and a bear- Ernest. By depicting stereotypes of animality and inverting the norms to show an unorthodox friendship, Renner exposes human class limitations.…

  • Oldboy. Dir. Park Chan-wook. Show East & Tartan Films. 2003.

    Park Chan-wook’s 2003 film Oldboy is at its core a thriller, a revenge story of Oh Dae-su (played by Choi Min-sik) imprisoned in a room for 15 years without any knowledge of the reasons why, and who is then suddenly released back into the world and told by his captor to try to work out…

  • La Haine. Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz. Canal+. 1995.

    One of the most enigmatic scenes in Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine, an exploration of social tensions and police brutality in the banlieues (council estates) of Paris in the 1990s, occurs the afternoon after a riot breaks out in the suburb the previous night. The sound of a hip-hop remix reverberates around the buildings, as a…

  • A Fish Called Wanda. Dir. Charles Crichton. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (US) and United International Pictures (UK). 1988.

    The murder of three small dogs one after the other is not what most people would think of as funny. Yet this exact progression becomes a running gag in Charles Crichton’s heist comedy film A Fish Called Wanda, where stuttering animal lover Ken’s failed attempts to kill an old woman (who is witness to the…

  • The Wolf of Wall Street. Dir. Martin Scorsese . Paramount Pictures. 2013.

    The Wolf of Wall Street is a biographical dark comedy that follows the life of criminal stock broker, Jordan Belfort. The presence of animals in the film draws attention to human-animal relationships and their differences. More specifically, this scene uses a goldfish to highlight these differences, as well as the film’s message about the greed and…

  • John Wick. Dir. Chad Stahelski. Summit Entertainment. 2014.

    John Wick is an exploration of domesticated animals and their hierarchical standing. The entire narrative centres around a revenge plot following the killing of Wick’s dog. It raises important questions of domestication, anthropomorphism, and worth. Following the opening montage of scenes detailing the loss of Wick’s wife, he is shown to have been given a…