Film reviews: A Complete Unknown understands the cost of the Bob Dylan myth on the man

Plus: Neither Wolf Man or Back in Action really live up to the hype

Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan

• A Complete Unknown 
• ★★★★★
• In cinemas 

Will the real Bob Dylan please stand up? 

A Complete Unknown (12A) opens with the 19-year-old ‘mysterious minstrel’, played by Timothée Chalamet, arriving in New York in 1961 to pay his respects to the ailing folk music pioneer Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), whose flickering light is being tended by Guthrie’s devotee Pete Seeger (Ed Norton). 

Soon, guided by his new squeeze Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), Dylan is devouring everything Greenwich Village’s bohemian scene has to offer, wolfing down huge chunks of music, politics and art, all the while chafing at being obliged to regurgitate the folk music canon while other artists – most notably Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) – record his original compositions (the soundtrack, needless to say, is superb). 

Music biopics tend to be hagiographic these days, but James Mangold’s film about Dylan’s formative years is notable in that the central figure is the most dislikeable and least relatable character in play. 

The young Dylan, the ultimate self-invented man, is ruthlessly focused on creating the ‘Bob Dylan’ persona: he burns through people, leaving them for dead once he has sucked them dry. 

The exception is the luminous Joan Baez, who has Dylan’s number from the start, and simply refuses to play along – their duets in the film’s latter stages, as they harmonize in their off-kilter way (with Chalamet and Barbaro on vocal duties), are a teeth-gritted affair of mutual loathing and grudging respect. 

Barbaro’s flinty take on the angelically-voiced Baez is terrific, and there’s strong performances from Elle Fanning as a sweet-natured proto-hippy and Ed Norton as the idealistic keeper of the folk music flame. 

Meanwhile, Chalamet offers a recognisable Dylan despite being as defiantly undefinable as the chameleonic artist demands, his voice growing more nasal, his demeanour more affectedly gruff and withdrawn, as the artist constantly reconfigures his image. 

Never mind the dusty old acoustic-vs-electric hoo-hah that drives the film’s second half: A Complete Unknown is a very good biopic of Bob Dylan because it understands what it cost Robert Zimmerman to transform himself from unknown to unknowable.

Julia Garner as Charlotte and Christopher Abbott as Blake in Wolf Man

• Wolf Man
• ★★☆☆☆
• In cinemas

Wolf Man (16s) stars Christopher Abbott as Blake, a San Francisco-based writer whose marriage to Charlotte (Julia Garner) is on the skids. 

When the death of his missing father is finally confirmed, Blake inherits the family home in the depths of the Oregon forests. 

And so Blake bundles Charlotte and their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) into a moving truck and motors off into the wilderness, having somehow neglected to tell Charlotte that his father disappeared all those years ago whilst hunting a creature that the locals believe to be a missing hiker turned feral. 

What follows is a conventional jump-scare horror (it’s out of the Blumhouse stable) that starts to get interesting when Blake starts to exhibit wolf-like behaviour (enhanced hearing and night-vision, chewing his leg off to escape from a trap, etc.), but is ultimately a bland remake of 1941’s The Wolf Man that adds very little to the genre.

Back in Action stars Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx

• Back in Action 
• ★★★☆☆
• Netflix

Back in Action (12A) stars Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx as Emily and Matt, formerly CIA special agents and now a happily married couple raising teenagers Alice (McKenna Roberts) and Leo (Rylan Jackson) in suburban bliss. 

Until, that is, their old handler Chuck (Kyle Chandler) turns up at their door only to be assassinated by mercenaries, forcing Emily and Matt to go on the run all the way to England, where they find themselves pursued by MI6’s Baron (Andrew Scott), who just so happens to be Emily’s ex. 

All of which is grist to Emily’s mill, who fantasises about ‘popping down to South America and stopping a coup, or starting a coup.’ 

The McGuffin here is a cyberterrorist super-key, but the point of the exercise is ridiculously over-the-top chase sequences soundtracked by cheesy pop classics as Emily and Matt try to keep their kids safe. Good fun.