Little Wing

Little-Wing-123Movies
Little Wing – 123Movies

The big screen has seen dramatizations of the works of journalist Susan Orlean on a few occasions, one of the most famous in 2002, by Charlie Kaufman for the Oscar-nominated film “Adaptation,” a meditation on the writing process. But even the girl power surfing film “Blue Crush,” also from 2002, had its own rough and tumble appeal. I would have liked to do that for “Little Wing,” the latest film influenced by Orlean’s unique approach to journalism. Although there are some incredibly stupid lines in the dialogue, which was reasonable overall, the screenplay was completed by John Gatins, known for “Flight.” This disorganization of Israelite’s directing is so annoying and hectic and chaotic that it has eliminated any possible charm the story had left.

The movie is set in Portland, Oregon, and revolves around Brooklynn Prince, who is gifted with the physicality and the essence of an amorous Kelly Macdonald in her early years, playing Kaitlyn, a moody teenage girl of thirteen years old who claims to be performing badly in school due the ‘emotional turmoil’ resulting from the recent divorce of her parents. Kaitlyn’s married mother, a detective named Maddie (Kelly Reilly), resides with her brother Matt (Simon Kahn) who has, following the breakup of the family, gone mostly mute. Due to being unable to pay for the $100,000 mortgage on their house (while paradoxically being able to send her children to a private institution), Maddie has listed the family house for sale. She also, for some strange reason, permitted her colleague to present Kaitlyn with two juvenile, competitive pigeons.

Kaitlyn is bored by the pigeons until her pigheaded best buddy, Adam (Che Tafari), tells her about some pigeon racing buff called Jaan (Brian Cox) who possesses an exceptionally valuable bird called Granger, valued at about $125,000. The two kids, aided by the moneyhtographer’s fascination with caged pigeons, make plans to steal the precious bird and resell it to the Russian pigeon mafia. Naturally, once Jaan learns of these events, he tracks the kids down and the entire pack swears revenge on the mafia and returns home with the missing pet bird.

In the beginning, there is a quote by Orlean explaining how racing pigeons have ha come as a fixed and deep place unchangeable by outside influences. Embodying the pigeon and his love for a house that seems not to have any basis throughout the story is Kaitlyn. In other words, Kaitlyn is the pigeon.

What memoirs does she possess there? What is the reason of her attachment to this house with the most obvious reason being she has spent her entire life in it? At least Matt questions her saying, “It was hard to grow up here sometimes.”

Kaitlyn, whose only development seems to be a passable devotion to Bikini Kill, engages in self-destructive behavior while contemplating the idea of suicidal ramifications, nothing more. And, indeed, the characters have little individuality to them and are mostly unexplored. Most of the scenes show Maddie being a police officer in Portland where police oppression is rampant, but somehow we never hear about it. Why would a Black child in post-Ferguson America even consider persuading Kaitlyn to perform a certain act to which several children of his mind would have gladly participated to kiss her is completely ridiculous. Cox tries to provide some emotions to the character of Jaan, where the original idea of having him work alongside Nicolas Cage in the ironically superior Portland film “Pig” could have elevated his career, but he is then forced to bear the burden of a factual twist in a repetitive cliche way, one where he unfortunately has cancer.

Had it not been for the irreconcilable focus that Israelites had – this could have been molded into something fairly acceptable. The lack of seriousness needed while handling kid’s movies seems to be intact as well as the style that has been popularized in cartoons. Blending comedy, action, and drama seems to be impossible as the scope of Anne Nikitin keeps jumping from one musical style to another without an attempt to tie the three diverse styles together. The performances by the cast are lost behind flashy techniques like smash edits that are totally unnecessary. As a lot of films nowadays, ‘Little Wing’ employs extreme widescreen, but neither Israelite or Cutter loads the screen up with something that is entertaining or very aesthetically pleasing.

In a scene like this, Kaitlyn decides it is alright to stand up and interrupt one of the presentations given by a classmate to recite lyrics to “Keep On Livin’” by Le Tigre, from the repetitive lyric “This is your time, this is your life and You gotta keep on (Keep on livin’)” several times. This should be a moment of release for both Kaitlyn and the audience, but the moment is diminished by the terribly shaky camera work employed by Cutter and the syrupy post-production that instructs the viewer on how to react instead of allowing them to interpret Prince’s performance.

The most dreadful aspect is the way the pigeons have been captured.

Pigeons are pretty birds. Their feathers shimmering in colors such as deep purple, grey, orange, and teal. The Granger is said to have a white helmet head, however, the bird used may be considered to fit that description, as he never was shot in a close-up. Neither do Kaitlyn’s newly acquired birds, Charlie Tickets and Juliet. In a scene towards the end of the movie, when pigeons square off with Storm during the race, thousands of awful wig bag images are released to the skies in the dawn, not the actual birds but images instead of birds. Influence the birds who flew off as Cox bowed his head in recognition of them.

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