DVD Catch-Up: Taken(7/21/2009)
The early part of a film year can be… interesting. Everyone knows what to expect from the summer (blockbusters) and everyone knows what to expect from the late fall and early winter (prestige pictures), but what about the other seasons? The later part of winter and early spring are often used as dumping grounds for the movies that studios didn’t think could compete during the more competitive parts of the year. That means that there’s a lot of crap coming out, but it can also be an exciting time to watch from a distance. Patterns established decades ago tend to play out during the summer and fall, but these dumping periods tend to be a lot less predictable. Movies can come out of nowhere and be surprise successes and surprise hits. One such effort is the journeyman action film Taken, an unpretentious thriller that had been released months earlier in Europe but which finally found a U.S. release late in the January of 2009. The modest production ended up making almost a hundred and fifty million dollars at the box office, surprising analysts everywhere.
The party who has been “taken” is a seventeen year old named Kim (Maggie Grace), the daughter of an ex-CIA agent named Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson). The kidnapping occurs shortly after she lands in Paris to go on a European vacation. Mills had objected to this trip but reluctantly allowed it to happen in order to please Kim and look less over protective to his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen). The moment he learns that his daughter has been kidnapped he immediately springs into action and runs off to Europe to save her. There he must investigate the world of forced prostitution in order to save the one he loves.
From that summery I bet you can tell what the movie’s biggest problem is: incredible unoriginality. This “rescue the kidnapped daughter” scenario is the oldest action movie cliché in the book. We can all probably name a million movies which have this exact same plot and what’s worse is that this movie doesn’t even do the smallest thing in order to give this some kind of original twist. There are no surprise revelations, no twists you didn’t see coming, not even a remotely different interpretation of the situation, just the same tired revenge fantasy we’ve all seen a million times; this is formulaic filmmaking through and through.
Additionally the film has undertones that are not entirely savory. Many have seen the fact that Kim is kidnapped immediately after she leaves the United States as evidence of Xenophobia. This argument does not really hold much water with me, mainly because it was produced and co-written by Luc Besson and directed by Pierre Morel who are both residents of the country that the movie supposedly vilifies. What really concerns me is not the film’s view of France, but rather the view it seems to have of the Eastern Europeans involved in the kidnapping. The idea of a film using immigrants as its villain isn’t in and of itself offensive, but we all know the long sad history of the protection of white women being used as a means of vilifying a group of people and some of the way these foreign criminals are depicted seems a little leery to me. Even more disturbing is that the Neeson character has a view of torture that would make Jack Bauer blush, the way the film uses the kidnapping to justify this kind of brutality is tenuous at best.
I’ll grant the film that its action scenes are fairly well shot and choreographed, but they’re not much more original or ambitious than the film’s story. We’re given a run of the mill SUV chase, a decent car chase, some standard gunplay, and some fast paced fight scene that look a hell of a lot like the fights from the Bourne series. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these set pieces, they just do not innovate and they do not equal the best this genre has to offer.
Pretty much the only thing in this entire movie that rises above the level of average is the performance of Liam Neeson. Action movies of this caliber usually star the likes of Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme, but Liam Neeson is a legitimate actor and his casting was a really smart way of elevating this material. Neeson is the kind of actor who can avoid being the kind of stone faced steroid freak who personified 80s action while also not being the kind of whiney twenty-somethings that have been populating action flicks these days.
There is mild enjoyment to be gained from Taken, but rather than spending your time with it I strongly recommend checking out a David Mamet movie called Spartan. Spartan is also a movie about a determined agent trying to find a kidnapped teenager, but it is significantly smarter, more original, and better written; in general it puts Taken to shame. If you rent Spartan you’ll be on the edge of your seat trying to guess where it will go next, if you rent Taken you’ll get a very strong sense of déjà vu.
**1/2 out of Four
Observe and Report(4/10/2009)
My relationship with Hollywood comedy has been shaky at best for the longest time. I’ve long been at odds with public opinion about 70s and 80s comedy “classics” like Caddyshack, Airplane, and Animal House, which all seemed like half-assed unfunny messes to me; and it wasn’t just those three movies either. I was about ready to dismiss film as a strong medium for comedy in favor of standup and television… then a man named Judd Apatow came along. It was with Judd Apatow produced films like The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad that I finally began to laugh at movie theaters again. And it didn’t stop at Mr. Apatow’s work either, a lot of other comedic talents were given the freedom to follow his example and put out like minded films. This seemed to reach its peak last year with the release of such films as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, Zach and Miri Make a Porno, and to some extents Tropic Thunder which all seemed to be inspired by this wave to some extent. But after all that… I was beginning to think I’d finally had my fill of comedies where people curse a lot and talk bluntly about sex. I skipped a few of these movies like Role Models just because I was getting sick of the formula. Hopefully I’ve had a long enough rest because it appears that the 2009 wave of these movies is being kicked off by the new Seth Rogen vehicle Observe and Report.
The film centers on Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen), a mall security guard with delusions of grandeur. Barnhardt takes his job very seriously and views himself as a real officer of the peace. These delusions are only enhanced by the emergence of a flasher (Randy Gambill) who’s been… flashing… in the mall parking lot. Ronnie views this as a call for him to step up and right a wrong in this world, his reaction to this minor sex-offense is disproportionately violent. Ronnie begins a stalker-ish fixation with one of the flasher’s “victims” (Anna Ferris) for whom Ronnie believes he has a particular responsibility to protect. It soon becomes apparent that Ronnie is not just a mildly delusional loser, but an increasingly dangerous sociopath; he’s been prescribed to take anti-psychotic drugs and he has a rather twisted (but not incestuous) relationship with his mother (who he still lives with).
In case you haven’t noticed, this comedy has a very dark streak to it. In fact this is probably the first comedy ever made to claim Martin Scorsese’s blood soaked masterpiece Taxi Driver as a primary influence, unless you mistakenly categorize Scorsese’s own very good but decidedly un-funny film The King of Comedy as an actual comedy (which it isn’t in spite of the title). In fact the parallels between this and Taxi Driver frequently move beyond conceptual inspiration to the point of being an outright parody. Anna Ferris is in the Cybill Shepherd role, A coffee shop clerk named Nell (Collette Wolfe) is in the Jodie Foster role, her boss (Patton Oswalt) is in the Harvey Keitel role, the movie’s ending is clearly in the same fantasy territory as the final scenes of Scorsese’s film and there’s even a voice-over double take clearly inspired by De Niro’s “listen you fuckers” monologue. The idea of turning this material into a broad comedy is inspired, but the idea is easier said than done and without expert execution this movie was doomed.
Sadly, I’m not sure that director Jody Hill was really quite up to the challenge of bringing his inspired vision to the screen. Hill rose to relative prominence on the strength of his debut film The Foot-Fist Way, a micro budget production that gained a distribution deal after it impressed Will Ferrell and Adam Mckay. I was not as impressed by that movie as that pair of comedic all-stars, but I did see a lot of potential in its star Danny McBride (who has a very small cameo in Observe). I was even more impressed by McBride and Hill’s HBO series “Eastbound and Down,” but again I was more convinced of McBride’s talent than Hill’s mastery of comedic structure by that project.
Finally after seeing this project I think that maybe Hill should stick to writing at this stage, because this movie falls prey to some very inconstant tone that may have been acceptable in another film but which torpedoes the meticulous balancing act this film absolutely needed. The key decision that Hill fails to clearly make is whether the film conveys the perspective of an omniscient observer or whether it’s showing what’s in the head of its disturbed protagonist. If it’s from an omniscient perspective then why are there so many bizarre occurrences? Why is Ronnie able to fight so effectively? And why are his actions placed on a pedestal at certain points? But if it’s from Ronnie’s perspective why does he still seem like a buffoon for much of the film’s running time? Why do we still hear people mock him behind his back? The answer is that the film wants to have its cake and eat it too. If the movie began to be told entirely from Ronnie’s it would have stopped being funny fast, because Ronnie doesn’t see himself as funny. As such the film never really commits to one side or the other in its flawed third act.
This is a real shame because in spite of the film can’t commit to a tone, Seth Rogen unquestionably commits to his role and gives what is easily the best performance of his career. Rogen is hardly the lovable loser here that he is in films like Knocked Up, he’s certainly a loser but he’s hardly lovable. Subverting your normal persona like that is hardly easy, just ask Jim Carrey how well The Cable Guy turned out, but Rogen clearly understands exactly what this film is supposed to be and delivers what’s needed. Reportedly Rogen agreed to star in the film under the sole condition that the studio not screw with the darkness of Hill’s vision. I was beginning to worry about Rogen before this, but now I really think he’s going to have a very long and successful career, he seems to be challenging himself and picking interesting roles rather than coasting on his reputation.
I wish I could say as much for the rest of the cast, but I think a lot of the supporting performances are a bit inconsistent. This is actually the first film I’ve seen Anna Ferris in, she was all right but I can’t say I really see what the fuss is about. Ray Liotta seems to be capitalizing on his usual barking persona, but I’m not sure he does enough to differentiate himself from his straight performances; the jokes seem to be missing whenever he’s on screen. Aziz Ansari gives his all but is limited by dialogue that feels a bit like recycled “fuck you” humor from other Apatow-esque films. Finally, there’s Michael Peña, whose character would probably feel more at home in a Will Ferrell movie than in a dark comedy about a sociopath.
The movie really does have a pretty decent supply of laughs, and if that’s all you need this movie probably is recommendable (assuming the dark tone is right for you). However, I really can’t help being pretty damn disappointed by the whole affair. The concept and performance of a brilliant movie are here and it’s just undermined by some shaky direction the whole way, I just don’t think Jody Hill had the chops to pull this off. I think that in the hads of someone like Terry Zwigoff, Spike Jonze, or David Gordon Green (who lends his usual cinematographer to the project) this could have been brilliant, but without directorial genius to match the genius of its concept I think the film falls apart.
**1/2 out of four
Watchmen(3/6/2009)
I’m not really a big comic book fan anymore, though I have been in the past. Throughout my teens I followed comic books, but I only really had enough cash for one hobby and I ended up choosing movies to follow seriously and comics sort of went by the wayside. I still read the occasional trade paperback, but otherwise the habit is pretty much in my past. There is however one relic from my comic book years that I still treasure and that’s my old Watchmen volume. I first read Alan Moore’s classic when I was fifteen and it simply blew my mind. I’ve read it many times since and it’s never failed to bowl me over with its complex story, meticulous structure, and dry satirical wit. A film adaptation of the tome has been rumored for decades, but whenever I heard talk of it I had one stock reaction: “Watchmen is unfilmable.” Now, to my continuing shock, someone has actually made the movie.
The story is an example of the alternate timeline genre. It essentially asks how history would have been affected if costumed vigilantes actually had popped up during the thirties as they did in comic books, and then influenced future generations to do the same. The main story is set during the mid eighties (a contemporary setting when the book was written), and begins with the death of the works most enduring characters; Edward Blake AKA The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) a former vigilante who is tossed out of a window by a shadowy figure. Ostensibly, this is a murder mystery seeking to find who murdered Blake and more importantly why. But there’s a lot more to the whole affair, the story investigates a number of remaining heroes and investigates how they came to be via a number of flashbacks set throughout the later twentieth century. It’s ultimately an exploration of the superhero as a character type, how the real world would affect them and how they would affect the real world.
I’m just going to concede right now that this is not a movie I can look at objectively. Alan Moore’s comic book just means too much to me and I’m just going to be holding an adaptation thereof to a much higher standard than I would any average movie. There’s no doubt that it was the financial success of Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City and Zack Snyder’s 300 that inspired the studio to give Snyder the go ahead for the project. Both of those projects had managed to stay true to their crazy source material by being almost frame by frame recreations of the comic panels. But those were Frank Miller adaptations, not Alan Moore adaptations and there’s a huge difference. Frank Miller, particularly in the case of those titles, is a dude who draws cool looking stuff for the sake of drawing cool looking stuff. They’re very simple and superficial works and there’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not what Moore does.
So what is it about Moore’s work that makes it so hard to adapt? It’s very long, but more importantly it’s complex, it covers two generations, and is set during three time periods. It has six main characters, each with a back-story that cannot be ignored as well as an entirely new take on recent history that needs to be explored. Secondly, while it is now thought of as a graphic novel, it was actually a twelve issue mini-series and a number of those issues are structurally self- contained. I’m thinking in particular of issue five (Fearful Symmetry) which is page for page symmetrical in the way its stories weave together, and issue six (The Abyss Gazes Also) which tells its story entirely from the perspective of a psychologist side character who over the course of the issue goes from optimism to despair as he’s forced to look deep into Rorsach’s psyche only to find a mirror image of himself. I highly doubted the film would preserve these structural pivots, and indeed both of these things are lost.
And that leads to larger problem; that a lot of what makes Watchmen a masterpiece is in the details rather than the story itself. The book is loaded with all sorts of sly anecdotes and small bits of brilliance that are littered throughout the narrative and into the very margins. There were just so many things that would have to be lost in any adaptations and each one of them is going to be missed. Add to all that the fact that the comic is loaded with edgy, and un-studio-friendly stuff that was unlikely to ever be seen in a studio production, and it becomes abundantly clear why I’ve been insisting on the story’s unfilmability.
To director Zack Snyder’s credit, he got a lot more into this than I thought he would, and by a lot more I mean a hell of a lot more. They were able to get the basic story in, most of the origins and a decent idea of the past events that lead up to the main story. That’s a lot more than I ever thought they could get into two hours and forty minutes, but this density comes at a price. There is so much squeezed into so little time that the movie has no room to breathe. Consequently, the whole thing feels very rushed, and the events seem to take place over a shorter period of time than they are supposed to. It’s abundantly clear to any viewer that this is not a story that was meant to be told in such a short span of time, and yet there’s still a lot missing from the equation.
The most egregious cut is the omission of a sub-plot about a newspaper vendor in the middle of New York prone to ranting about current events. The main story takes place against the backdrop of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which has brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction. This is established in the film and occasionally the audience is reminded of it, but not nearly to the extent that the comic books do. The aforementioned subplot is the main place where this is discussed, and it gives the whole story a degree of apocalyptic paranoia. This is essential both to the story’s tone and in establishing the stakes of everything that goes on.
Another of the aspects that was always a sticking point in the adaptation was the violence, sex, nudity, and language that would have horrified any movie studio. To Zack Snyder’s credit, he doesn’t sell out on anything, he shies away from nothing and appears to have ignored every studio note he undoubtedly received. Dr. Manhattan is just as naked here as he was in the book (the elimination of which would have been symbolically false), and thankfully Snyder has also included all the R-rated violence of the book. The problem, is that Snyder has not only matched the books violence but actually increased it. What was once an off-screen arson has been turned into a meat clever butchery, what was once a throat cutting has turned into a graphic chainsaw massacre, and an attempted rape scene comes with additional blows from the assailant. I suspect that Alan Moore would be horrified by this decision. Moore very specifically made all of the violence in the book potent but brief, and he’s not overly proud of all the senselessly violent stories that his work has inspired.
There are also a number of less graphic and more action oriented fight scenes that have been mishandled. Snyder has grabbed at every scene of violence to be found here and milked it for all it’s worth, extending and sensationalizing each one of them. The opening murder has gone from basically being the discovery of a body to being a five minute highly choreographed fistfight, later fights have been turned from three frame encounters into elaborate actions scenes. I probably could have lived with this, but I don’t like the way these fights play out. The characters tend to jump higher, fight faster, and have faster reflexes than any real human ever could, which is a problem because these aren’t supposed to be actually super powered people. They’re Batman-like vigilantes who aren’t supposed to be stronger than very fit humans.
This brings me to Zack Snyder’s visual style, which is another serious problem the film has. Snyder’s special effects heavy visuals were perfectly suited for filming a story about a bunch of Greeks chopping people’s heads off, but again, Watchmen isn’t a project like that. This is a dialogue heavy work that is meant to inhabit the real world. But this doesn’t look like the real world, it looks like a series of sets that have been decorated to the nth detail, everything just seems really artificial. Snyder has his camera in close all the time, he worries too much about trying to match the comic book’s angles and compositions. It feels like the camera can never sit back and simply observe people having a conversation. Look most other comic book adaptation (The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Spider-Man) and you’ll find they don’t have the same problems connecting with the real world, they’re look is a lot more naturalistic. Also the movie’s cinematography was a bit darker and bluer than I would have liked. Dave Gibbon’s artwork was a lot brighter, and skewed toward the style of silver age comics.
This brings me to another one of the film’s failures, in that its cast is not as great as it should have been. The best of the lot is easily Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who captures the look and attitude of The Comedian perfectly. Jackie Earle Haley also manages to bring the cold craziness of Rorschach both masked and unmasked, great casting there. Billy Crudup also does everything he needs to do while voicing and mocaping Dr. Manhattan. But the other three of the main cast deliver very problematic performances. Patrick Wilson fails miserably in the key role of the second Nite Owl, he fails to make him anything more than a stereotype in the early scenes and his character evolution is rushed and lacking in the subtleties needed. Malin Akerman also isn’t great as the second Silk Spectre, she comes off as whiny rather than pitiable in the film, she come off as something of a ditz. But the most egregious handling of a character is that of Adrian Veidt AKA Ozymandias. I don’t entirely blame Matthew Goode for this, but he plays Veidt as a an overly cold and calculating figure. This is exactly what Veidt is supposed to be like internally, but not externally; externally he is supposed to be a pseudo-Captain America, a Richard Branson type billionaire that has the public’s love.
I don’t want to let my pickiness overlook the film’s strong points, and there are a lot of them. It would be almost impossible for someone to adapt Watchmen and not have some of its brilliance rub off on the project. Though satire isn’t as much of a focus here as it is in the book, there are some funny moments that will be especially potent to those who don’t see them coming. Also, the movie sports an excellent soundtrack which perfectly accentuates the story with classic rock from the sixties. Also very impressive is the opening credits which show images of series history set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin,’” though I wonder how much sense this will make to those unaccustomed to the original mythology.
If nothing else Zack Snyder’s heart seemed to be in the right place, he stayed remarkably close to the source, but to what end? More than any adaptation I’ve seen, Watchmen seems more concerned with the letter of the source than the spirit. Frankly, the book was unfilmable. Sure Snyder fits a lot of Moore’s words and images onto the screen but he never creates the right the right tone and never matches Moore’s audacity. This is very different from the Wachowski Brother’s adaptation of V For Vendetta. In that project the Wachowski’s adapted the story to a different political climate and in doing so made it their own. It was something that manages to be its own thing; this on the other hand has little to offer aside from its inferiority to the source.
I’m not sure how people unfamiliar with the source would react to the film. But frankly feel sorry for them. This shouldn’t be anyone’s first exposure to Alan Moore’s magnum opus. If you really want to take in the Watchmen story this weekend they shouldn’t go to the movie theater, they should go to a book store. The real deal will be sitting in a large pile on a table near the door.
**1/2 out of Four
Body of Lies(10/10/2008)
He often doesn’t get quite the respect or reverence he deserves, but Ridley Scott is one of the most important directors of the last thirty years. One of the first directors to be given the promotion from advertising director to feature film director, Scott brought a new level of polish to the screen, raising the bar on cinematic production values. This is a fairly unpretentious accomplishment, but it’s every bit as important as the accomplishments of people like Steven Soderbergh, David Lynch, or Werner Herzog. Scott’s mastery of cinema production values is his greatest strength, no movie has better sets, special effects, photography, or set pieces than a Ridley Scott movie, and he’s still a cut above all his competitors.
However, I must say that a number of the movies Scott has made during this decade haven’t been as good as they should have been. When Scott made Gladiator in 2000, it looked like he was making a major comeback, but since then I frankly think that he’s been playing it a little too safe. His first post-Gladiator project, Hannibal was awful, I blame Thomas Harris’s horrible novel for that one, and since he made the excellent Black Hawk Down right after it Scott still seemed like he was on the right track. Then he made Matchstick Men which I think is an underrated gem, but after that the trouble started. Kingdom of Heaven was passable, but not anywhere as good as it could have been, partly because of Orlando Bloom’s lackluster screen presence and partly because of a compromised theatrical cut. At least Scott learned his lesson from that and never casted Orlando Bloom again… or anyone else who isn’t Russell Crowe. I didn’t even see A Good Year, and American Gangster was good, but again not anywhere near as good as something with that pedigree should have been. Now Scott has made another film, and this one was about the American war on terror, now that didn’t sound like something that would be playing it safe.
The film centers around Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio), a CIA agent on the ground in the Middle East. He takes orders from Edward Hoffman (Russell Crowe), a middle aged CIA member who claims to be an expert on the region but who gives his orders over the phone from his suburban household. After a botched operation on the ground in Iraq, Ferris is sent to Amman, Jordan to track down a terrorist leader who is the likely perpetrator. There he teams up with the local intelligence agency lead by a man named Hani Salaam (Mark Strong), who demands only one thing: that Ferris never lies to him. They devise a plan to infiltrate a terrorist safe house by conditioning a member of the organization to their side.
I don’t need to tell anyone how much 9/11 and the war on terror had affected our society. When the wars in the Middle East began, it was a great opportunity for filmmakers to use their craft to either make statements about our society or at least have a dramatic situation to depict. The movie that was probably best able to utilize the geopolitical situation was probably Stephen Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana, a film that had the patience to honestly describe the full complexities of the Middle East’s affect on America and America’s effect on the Middle East. Three years later, Syriana remains the gold standard for this genre, unfortunately most of the movies related to Iraq or the broader war on terror since then have not lived up to their potential. Many of them fall prey to peachiness, as was the case with Rendition, others are just too busy being angry to act as good narratives, as was the case with Redacted. These movies are overbearing and don’t work, but at least they’re trying to do something, on the other end of the spectrum there’s last year’s retarded action film The Kingdom, which exploited the war on terror in order to film a number of explosions and justified it with meaningless pseudo-moralizing in the last fifteen minutes. Body of Lies never reduces itself to the level of that stinker, but by the end it doesn’t seem to have much more on its mind.
This movie does not have a message, it doesn’t clarify the Middle East, and it isn’t a well reasoned drama. In fact Kingdom of Heaven, a movie about the 12th century crusades, probably had more to day about the modern Middle East then this does. All right, that’s an overstatement; there are a few ideas on the surface about the effect of decision making by people removed from the realities of the region, but it’s clear to me that this is not why Ridley Scott made this movie. This is a spy thriller pure and simple that happens to deal with the current conflicts. The film makes me wonder what all those cold war spy movies must have felt like while the cold war was actually going on. Like most of my generation I don’t remember much of the Cold War, and I wonder if the way I watched a Bond movie like From Russia With Love would be different if the Russians actually posed a nuclear threat. Of course a lot of those movies usually sidestepped their political implication by making the real bad guys separate criminals like SPECTRE or some sort of rouge general, there’s no such separation in The Kingdom or Body of Lies, the villains are Islamic terrorists with only superficial differences from Osama Bin Laden. Similarly exploitative undertones also killed off a lot of the fun that could have been had from movies like the new Rambo and Blood Diamond. Frankly, I’m not comfortable with simplistic action movies being made against the backdrop of the serious problems in the Middle East.
Of course this all would have been a lot more forgivable if I thought Body of Lies worked better as a straight up thriller. The movie’s fractured act structure prevents the stakes from really raising to high before the movie moves on to other things, and the ending is really anti-climactic. Also the action is mostly front loaded, in the first act there is a pretty big shootout, and an awesome car chase involving a helicopter. After that though, the movie becomes more of a cloak and dagger affair.
Ridley Scott’s direction is as slick as ever, and the dialogue is also quite good. Russell Crowe gives a pretty fun performance; it’s certainly fun watching him talk on one of those cell phone microphones that dangle down on a wire anyway. Di Caprio is also perfectly functional as the film’s hero, although I could have done without the vaguely southern accent he’s trying to do. The one who steals the show here is Mark Strong, who is really bringing his A-game as the head of Jordanian intelligence.
It should really be noted that this movie coasts along as far as it possibly can with great production values, star power, and good dialogue. But all this can only take it so far, Scott manages to maintain a certain level of dignity through the whole affair, but it can’t make up for the movie’s general pointlessness. It’s never as stupid as The Kingdom, but I don’t think it will be much more memorable either. Scott can do a lot better than this and I think he needs to think a little less commercially with the projects he chooses, as can the rest of this cast. Body of Lies is ultimately a movie unworthy of its pedigree, a real missed opportunity.
**1/2 out of Four
The Wackness(8/2/2008)
I’ve never attended the Sundance Film Festival, but I can say that the output of movies from it has never really tempted me to rush out there. The place does tend to get one or two really prestigious gems a year, but the movies that play there never seem to be up to the caliber of the films that are programmed into international festivals like Cannes, Venice, and Toronto. What’s worse the unadventurous taste of programmers there seem to have lead to the creation of the “Sundancey” genre; coming of age movies set New York, L.A. or a small town that deal with substance abuse and/or a dysfunctional family. The movie to come out of this year’s Sundance film festival was The Wackness, a movie that was (surprise!) a coming of age movie set in New York that deals with substance abuse and a dysfunctional family.
Let’s film in the blanks, the person coming of age here is Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck), an eighteen year old living in New York circa 1994 who has just graduated from high school and is depressed about his future. Luke has very little respect for his parents (dysfunctional family: check), who he sees as acting childishly, particularly his father (David Whol) who has recently put the family into financial trouble. To make money, Luke uses an disheveled Icee cart as a front for a small time pot dealing operation (substance abuse: check). His favorite customer is a psychiatrist named Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley) who’s having a mid-life crisis because of the troubles he’s having relating to his wife (Famke Janssen) and stepdaughter (Olivia Thirlby) who Luke knows from school (Dysfunctional family: that makes two dysfunctional families). Squires lets Luke give Squires free pot in exchange for free consoling, but it becomes clear that the middle aged Squires is living vicariously through Luke’s youthful stories.
Luke Shapiro is not the type of character that is usually the subject of movies; he’s too thoughtful and quirky for movies targeted at people his own age, but to cocky and immature to really be of interest to the average movie directed toward adults. As such he’s probably a bit closer to the way an actual teenager would act than one is likely to see in most movies. Despite his occupation as a drug dealer, the kid is not a real gangster at all, in fact there’s a really refreshing innocence to him. He’s not a popular kid in school, but he’s also not some kind of stereotypical nerd, he’s described in the film as being “the most popular unpopular guy ins school.” He’s fascinated by the mid-90s Hip-Hop music that populates the movie’s soundtrack, and even though he doesn’t really fit with that culture he doesn’t seem like a complete wannabe either. He talks with heavy use of dated urban slang, partly in an attempt to be cool but also out of a genuine bond he at least imagines he has with the world of the music he loves. This slang combined with his unconfident mumbling speech patterns are a bit jarring at first, but this is a deliberate choice on the part of Josh Peck and writer/director Johnathan Levine, this is an accurate depiction of how real teenagers talk even if it isn’t the most aurally pleasing speech pattern.
The fact that the filmmakers prevented Luke and other characters from simply filling stereotypes is one of the movies biggest strengths, most movies are pleased to lump teenage characters into retarded John Hughes stereotypes and play them out like that the whole way. The depiction of Dr. Squires is a little closer to the realm of cliché, as we have seen this kind of ex-hippie midlife crisis character a lot recently, but Ben Kingsley plays him in a way that makes him more interesting than he probably was on the page. The other interesting performance comes from Olivia Thirlby as Dr. Squire’s daughter and object of Luke’s desire. Between her performances in this film, Juno, and Snow Angels we’ve seen a lot of good work in diverse roles from Thirlby and she may just be the next indie-queen or even an outright movie star someday.
I said before that this film was set in 1994, well this isn’t as trivial a detail here as one would think. Levine is clearly in love with the mid-90s and has populated the film to the brim with nostalgic details and historical set-dressing from the year. Aside from the slang and the soundtrack with get references to Mayor Giuliani, Forrest Gump, Beverly Hills 90210, and an incredibly unsubtle shot of the not yet fallen World Trade Center. What do these references bring to the table aside from some nostalgic fun? Not much really, in fact they frequently detract from it. The Clinton era may seem like a while ago but fashions and settings haven’t really changed that dramatically since then, so the viewer never really settles into it as a period piece until one of these references pop out of nowhere and take you out of the movie to remind you how much Johnathan Levine loves and remembers the year that was 1994. Boiled down, the story is pretty much universal, so I can’t see too much of a reason why Levine decided to make this a period piece other than to add some flavor to an otherwise pretty routine coming of age tale.
As for the soundtrack, there is definitely some good music here but it’s not great to the point where they should be bill boarded in the trailer. This is mostly mainstream east coast hip-hop, and 1994 was a good year for it. The two big albums of the year, Nas’ “Illmatic” and Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ready to Die” both have tracks represented here, there are alos tracks from A Tribe Called Quest, R. Kelly, Biz Mackie, Will Smith, The Wu Tang Clan, and Raekwon. Some of the tracks are chosen because they’re truly good, others because they fit in better with the world. For example the Biggie track featured is “The What,” which is one of the most forgettable tracks off the classic “Ready to Die” album, but its inclusion here makes sense as it focuses on subjects like sex and drugs rather than the hardships and struggles of the more hardcore tracks, and one can tell why Luke Shapiro would relate more to it. I do however have some problems with the cheesy way that some of the tracks lyrically relate to the action on screen rather than simply set a mood, like a sex scene set to R. Kelly’s “Bump and Grind” or a the use of Biz Mackie’s “Just a Friend” shortly after Squire’s daughter says Luke’s “just a friend.”
The film is something of a dramedy, it is never straight up going for laughs, but it is by no means searing drama either. There aren’t that many belly laughs, but I did chuckle quite a bit mainly at some clever lines that pop up just enough to not overpopulate the movie. This is also a movie that’s largely unafraid to break the fourth wall, like in the opening scene where a CGI thought bubble comes up on screen leading to a brief fantasy scene on a subway, later the sidewalk Luke steps on begins to light up like in the Michael Jackson “Billie Jean” music video to express his ecstasy after a fairly successful date. These are not things that occur in every other scene and only pop up sporadically. Like with the 1994 references and soundtrack they can be an unneeded distraction and again seem to only be window dressing to hide that this is the kind of story we’ve seen before.
That’s the main draw back here, deep down this isn’t an original story, and without all the neat tricks it would be a 95-minute cliché. Like I said before, this is a prototypical Sundance storyline and there tend to be two or three movies that follow that formula which storm out of that festival every year. If you’ve seen Rushmore, Garden State, Good Will Hunting, and The Squid and the Whale you might know what I’m getting at. There’s even a sort of twist on The Graduate in that Luke befriends Squires before moving in on his daughter against her father’s wishes. At this point most coming of age movies are going to have to collide with each other, as coming of age stories is just inherently not that different in the grand scheme of things. The trick is to try to make your story stand out even if deep down it doesn’t, and Jonathan Levine tries like mad to do just that and never quite succeeds.
This one is a close call, there’s definitely fun to be had with The Wackness, especially if nostalgia is your bag. I really do love the Luke character and the way Levine prevents him from being a stock stereotype. Levine’s other choices are hit or miss and ultimately unable to hide the fact that this un-clichéd character is in a clichéd story. Ultimately I’m going to have to say that this isn’t for everyone and most can probably wait for it to come out as a DVD rental.
**1/2 out of four
DVD Catch Up: Honeydripper(6/28/2008)
John Sayles is an odd filmmaker in that his work seems oddly isolated from everything else Hollywood puts out. He’s almost a textbook example of what an auteur is, in that one can guess he directed a film simply by watching a single scene, but pinpointing why his work is recognizable is not always as easy as it is with other filmmakers. There’s something in the dialogue, the way the actors behave, and the ambitious aim of his uniquely American stories that positively define his work behind the camera. His newest film, Honeydripper, was mostly ignored in theaters and I had hoped that it would be an underappreciated gem; unfortunately it’s minor Sayles at best.
The film is set in a fictional Alabama town of Harmony during the very early 1950s. The film specifically focuses on Harmony’s black community, particularly a tavern/dance hall called the Honeydripper. The venue is owned by Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover), but it has fallen on hard times. Purvis is in danger of losing the place to a loan shark, so he and his friend Maceo (Charles S. Dutton) plan a last ditch effort to stay in business by bringing in a famous blues musician named Guitar Sam to play a big gig that would generate enough money to pay Purvis’ rent. Purvis has recently drifted away from his wife Delilah (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and is also being threatened by the town’s racist sheriff (Stacy Keach). Meanwhile a young man named Sonny (Gary Clark Jr.) has arrived in town carrying a guitar case and interested in auditioning at the local music scene to make ends meet. Purvis can’t really afford the show he plans to put on and it becomes clear that the evening’s entertainment will be a make or break night for him and the Honeydripper.
There was a lot less music in the film then I had expected, the story clearly deals with people who have music as a major part of their life, but the soundtrack is not loaded with period music. There is a great performance scene toward the end which features the use of a very early electric guitar, the music played is a primitive and toe tapping form of rock and roll.
The movie’s main problem is mainly that it has a lot of southern clichés. Among the types to be found here: a redneck sheriff, an eager young man gone to town to make something of his music career, a white southern housewife oblivious to the rest of the world, and a blind old coot who plays guitar on main street stoops. Occasionally Sayles will do some unexpected things with these types, for instance that Sheriff proves to ultimately be more interested in getting free chicken than oppressing people just for the fun of it, there’s also a neat twist with the blind old coot.
Danny Glover is probably the best thing about the film, he’s got just the right ability to seem like a nice and likable guy, but still having a certain gruffness to his character. It’s clear that Glover’s character has seen a lot over the course of his career as a bar owner and blues enthusiast. He’s a character that clearly has a past and the audience easily gets the gist of it without the movie explicitly showing or describing much of it.
In final analysis, Honeydripper is just a very average and fairly forgettable film. It has a neat atmosphere, the story works well enough, but it’s just a very small trifle of a film. Had I seen it in theaters I would have felt vaguely ripped off, and I’m not sure I’d even recommend it as a DVD rental. But, if you see it on cable or something like that I do think it’s worth giving a shot.
**1/2 out of four
The Incredible Hulk(6/13/2008)
In the June of 2003 Ang Lee put out his take on the comic book character The Incredible Hulk amidst a flurry of huge budget blockbusters like X-Men 2 and The Matrix Reloaded. The simply titled Hulk, was just coming off the success of the original Spider-Man, and Ang Lee could have easily churned out a cookie-cutter blockbuster and turned a huge profit. Instead Lee decided to take chances on his trip up to the superhero bat and essentially made a superhero drama as opposed to a superhero action movie. The result was a very interesting if somewhat flawed exploration of the genre. Of course this didn’t sit to well with the 13 year old males the studio marketed the film to and the movie famously dropped 70% in its second week, after a very respectable opening. Now, five years later, the superhero genre has gone from being a fad to being a decade long institution and Marvel has no intention of letting one of it’s biggest franchises sit around collecting dust. So they’ve decided to “reboot” the franchise, and this time they’re doing everything they can to pander to the 13 year olds.
After a quick introduction, the film opens in the Brazilian fravelas where Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) has been hiding for the last five years. Through really convoluted means General Ross (William Hurt), who’s been tracking him, manages to locate him in Brazil and sends a team to capture Banner. The leader of this team, Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), spots Banner while he’s in Hulk-form and becomes obsessed. Shortly before he’s chased out of town by the Special Forces team, an anonymous scientist calling himself Mr. Blue (Tim Blake Nelson) contacts Banner and tells him he has found a cure for Banner’s ailment (perfect coincidental timing). With this in mind Banner decides to travel to New York in hopes that Mr. Blue’s cure works out, but while he’s there he runs into his old flame Betty Ross (Liv Tyler).
The film recounts the origin story of Bruce Banner in its first three minutes while the opening credits are rolling; it generally assumes the audience to be familiar with the character from the get-go. This makes the film’s place as in independent story a bit awkward. Ignoring that opening one could conceivably pretend that this is indeed a sequel to Ang Lee’s Hulk, albeit one with different actors. The relationship between the pursuing General Ross, his daughter, and Bruce Banner seems to have carried over, and there’s nothing to contradict Lee’s film except the opening scene; in fact the film opens in South America which is where the coda for the 2002 film was set. There seems to be something rather confused and tacky about this reboot attempt, it reminded me in some ways of The Sum of All Fears, which was another film that tried to pretend the rest of its series never happened for no good reason.
There’s a film related podcast I’ve been listening to for the last couple of years called The Hollywood Saloon (which I highly recommend). The hosts of that show have come to coin the word “McMovie” which refers to bland Hollywood blockbusters which seem to be churned out for the sole purposes of making a lot of money. These movies that take no chances do not try to achieve any form of greatness; people like Brett Ratner, Tim Story, or McG usually direct them. A comparison between Ang Lee’s Hulk and this new film from Louis Leterrier (The man behind The Transporter series) provides a perfect example of the differences between a serious film and a McMovie. While Lee’s film was a thoughtful meditation, Leterrier’s film settles on loudness. It’s not just run of the mill loudness either, I haven’t seen a theater rattle like that in a long time. Lee’s film was heavy on plot and story telling, Leterrier’s film is heavy on CGI, so heavy in fact that it was often hard to distinguish the film’s trailer from the advertisements for its videogame adaptation. Lee’s film took chances within the context of it’s genre and tried to develop characters with real histories and problems outside of their comic book crisis, Leterrier’s film on the other hand feels like it was written by a marketing committee.
Of course McMovie’s aren’t always terrible, in fact they’re often quite competent, but by their nature they’re never great. This is by no means a terrible film and there’s actually a lot to like in it. Firstly, the cast here is quite good. Edward Norton is one of the best actors of his generation, and he’s really overqualified for this role, but the same could be said for almost anyone cast in a superhero movie. Norton seems to be taking his work here pretty seriously, and he brings his inner tortured soul out pretty well. William Hurt is also doing quite well picking up where Sam Elliot left off in the same basic role in Ang Lee’s film. I also really liked Tim Blake Nelson’s work in a small but important role that looks like a setup for a future sequel.
There are however definite problems with other casting choices. Particularly problematic is the casting of Tim Roth, an actor I’ve never been a huge fan of, who is supposed to be playing some kind of badass elite special forces member. Roth generally doesn’t seem very military in the way he carries himself, and he generally looks a bit too short and skinny for the buildup he’s given as “the best of the best” so to speak. Liv Tyler also has some serious problems, as I don’t think she’s evolved much as a performer since Armageddon. She seems pretty young for her role as a major biology researcher; she must have been twenty-five when Banner had his accident. Tyler seems really mild mannered at some points and highly assertive at others. Her character just isn’t very well defined or developed and she doesn’t have much to do. None of the actors here improve on their counterparts from Ang Lee’s film at all, and were recast for no reason other than to differentiate reboot from that unpopular project.
From an effects point of view the film does not live up to the standards of other movies like Iron Man, though this admittedly has a lot to do with the inherent challenges of the Hulk character. While Iron Man was largely cased in lifeless steel, the Hulk effects team had to replicate a creature of organic flesh. Characters like Spider-man can at least have some sort of humanity under all the CGI and even King Kong had a lot of fur and a real world creature to be based on, all the Hulk can really be is a walking special effect. These obstacles may have been why Ang Lee choose to focus on a very human story with his film, even the 70s T.V. series mostly focused on Bill Bixby and only used the Lou Ferrigno creature sparingly. Here on the other hand we deal with numerous extended action sequences and once a second creature emerges the film becomes increasingly CGI dependent.
The first two actions scenes have a certain level of respectability to them, particularly the first scene that is mainly a foot chase through the favelas with an un-transformed Banner. The chase is pretty exciting, at least until Banner coincidentally runs into someone from earlier in the film. A second action sequence on a college campus also has a lot going for it, though I don’t think it’s ever explained why this university is completely devoid of bystanders. The third fight scene, however, quickly devolves into a pair of CGI hulks mashing into each other.
The film generally suffers from a number of plot holes like Mr. Blue’s coincidental discovery of the cure at just the right time, and the ludicrous way the military finds Banner in Brazil, which the filmmakers try to cover up by distracting the audience with a Stan Lee Cameo. Throughout the film the military have an uncanny ability to cover-up the fascistic behavior they use to capture this escaped scientist, and the Hulk jarringly begins to sprout a conscious at the most convenient (read: sequel preserving) moment. The film also has a lot of lame attempts at humor. There’s also a tacky cameo scene that’s clumsily tacked onto the end, it exist for no reason other than to be an inside joke and it robs the movie of a naturalistic ending. Iron Man at lest had the decency to hide its tacky coda after the credits.
This is a great example of Hollywood marketing run amok, it’s a blatant attempt to reestablish the franchises brand with a run of the mill film intended to appeal to the ADD crowd. The film seems perfunctory and if you saw any of the films advertising you already saw almost everything the film had to offer. Admittedly, the film never descends to the level of stupidity found in something like Transformers, but it also features very few creative ideas. As far as these things go there are much worse ways Hollywood could have you spend two hours, but this is still a very forgettable experience.
**1/2 out of four
Redbelt(5/9/2008)
Mixed Martial arts, a recent combat oriented sport, has gained popularity as a hyped up form of kickboxing. The sport combines elements of jiu-jitsu, wrestling, boxing, and Brazilian kickboxing. The extreme nature of the sport has elicited multiple; some see it as a highly tactical form of athleticism while others like Senator John McCain have dismissed it as “human cockfighting.” Personally I think MMA as a spectator sport is a rather tedious fad that will soon go the way of televised Texas Hold ‘em. Unlike that fad however, Hollywood is putting out their cinematic tie-ins in a timely manner. Two months ago the critically panned Never Back Down came out, a good indication of the wave of films to come cashing in on the fad. But, then it was announced that another MMA related film was coming from none other then the great David Mamet. Despite my general disinterest in MMA, I’m always up for some Mamet, so I went in to Redbelt with fairly high expectations.
The film centers on Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a jiu-jitsu instructor in Las Angeles who believes sincerely in a certain code of honor in his martial art. Terry does not view combat as a sport and he looks down on competitive MMA. Terry is married to a Brazilian tailor named Sondra (Alice Braga) and is currently training a police officer named Joe Ryan (Max Martini). Early in the film a mentally unbalanced lawyer (Emily Mortimer) comes into Terry’s dojo and over-reacts when Ryan tries to help her, she grabs his gun and accidentally shoots out a window. Since Terry is in debt, he needs to take out a loan in order to pay for a new window so he goes to meet a loan shark friend of his, and at this bar he runs into a movie star named Chet Frank (Tim Allen) just as he’s about to get beaten up in a bar fight. Terry saves Frank and he offers a helping hand to him, unfortunately this leads to even greater layers of cons, twists, and betrayal.
David Mamet is a playwright turned filmmaker that I’m a huge fan of. He won a Pulitzer for his play “Glengarry Glen Ross”, which was eventually tuned into a great film by Dan Foley. Mamet eventually tuned to adapting his own plays and then started writing directly for the screen. I’m a big fan of Mamet’s last film, Spartan, which I believe to be one of the most tragically overlooked films of recent years. In many ways I think Redbelt is something of a companion piece to Spartan, perhaps not deliberately so but both films feel like parts of a stage in the auteur’s body of work.
Mamet has moved on from the type of super fast paced dialogue that made him famous, but the dialogue is still clearly Mamet’s. Here, and especially in Spartan, Mamet has found unique ways of handling exposition, mainly by ignoring it; Mamet instead trusts the audience to figure out what’s going on without the characters explaining it to them. This is less noticeable here than it was in Spartan, but it still works. For example, Terry’s lawyer friend is seen early on trying to get into a pharmacy then goes into Terry’s dojo looking noticeably disturbed. A lesser director would have followed this with a character explaining exactly what mental disorder she suffers from and a detailed explanation of her relationship with Terry. Mamet, however, realizes why this is unnecessary and decides to simply allow the audience figure this out for themselves.
There’s a trick I’ve noticed Mamet using a lot recently where he compares the action onscreen to historical traditions. This was used in The Spanish Prisoner where the con onscreen is compared to a similar con from the 15th century. His screenplay to Ronin compared cold war spies turned mercenaries to ronin samurai who wandered Japan looking for work after their masters die. The quintessential example of this trick could be found in the central speech in Spartan where the film’s entire plot is described but in the terms of a medieval setting. Redbelt uses this trick more than any of Mamet’s previous films, as it is no longer a single scene metaphor; here ancient traditions are of essential importance to the story and especially the principles of the Mike Terry character.
These Principles are a big part of what makes Mike Terry such an interesting character. Terry follows a certain code of honor in the way he conducts himself; but what he calls honor others may simply call not selling out. A running theme in Mamet’s films, especially his recent ones, is that of a principled character trying to do good within the cutthroat environments of the rich and/or powerful. This was the main point of Spartan, and it was even present in a comedic way in State and Main. Mike Terry is the perfect character to put at the center of such a plot, he has a code of honor that seems positively quaint to the moguls and movie stars he runs into, but at the same time he never comes off as an anachronistic lunatic like the title character of Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Terry is well aware of his place in the modern world and the consequences of his priorities.
This fascinating character is brought to life in a big way by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s really good performance. Ejiofor is one of the best emerging character actors of recent memory and he’s been on a role recently with roles in films like Talk to Me and American Gangster. Ejiofor brings an invaluable sense of dignity to Mike Terry without which he would not have worked on screen. In a lesser actor’s hands Terry’s speeches about honor would have come off like cheesy relics of bad kung Fu movies and would have undermined the whole film, but Ejiofor makes them work.
The rest of cast feels like a course in Mamet casting 101, and that is not a bad thing. Firstly, Mamet’s three regulars are in play: Ricky Jay is the film’s corporate villain, Rebecca Pidgeon has a small role, as does Joe Mantegna. Also present is Tim Allen of all people, trying to pull the same trick as Steve Martin pulled in The Spanish Prisoner by playing against type in a David Mamet film. Other less famous actors also do a great job; Emily Mortimer and Alice Braga both adapt to Mamet dialogue very well, and Max Martini is good as well.
I’ve said a lot of good things about this movie because there are a lot of good things in it; unfortunately they’re never quite assembled right. In many ways the film suffers greatly from a poor macguffin, I don’t really want to give this away (even if the spoilerific trailer already did), but it has the problem of being something that just isn’t worth this much trouble to get. The people seeking this Macguffin go to great (and often illegal) lengths to get it when they could have just as easily just bought it, they’re rich they can afford it. This could have in fact been part of the film’s message about the lengths greedy people will go to get what they want, but it’s hard for me to believe that even Mamet can be cynical enough to believe even the greediest millionaire will do all this to save two hundred thousand dollars.
Really, in many ways I wish Mamet had just stuck to making a movie about honor rather than getting stuck in the middle of what is in many ways a second rate con artist plot. The twists don’t really amount to as much as they should and the character story is more interesting the whole time. What’s more this con is somewhat muddled and by the end is never fully realized or explained. In many ways this fits with his pattern of avoiding exposition, but I think a clearer explanation or one more twist to fully explain the situation was probably necessary. However, though this major flaw is there to be found, it never feels like as big a problem as it should be because Mamet replaces it with things that are even more interesting, like a final ending which could be interpreted as either a triumph of the human spirit or as a cynical stunt that will ultimately help the villains more then it hurts them, if only it had also provided closure to the story it would have been perfect.
This one is a really close call, as a Mamet-head I found more than enough here to make it worth my time simply to watch the evolution of this important auteur even though the film didn’t really quite work on an objective level. But for non-Mamet freaks this is a much more iffy proposition. The performances are good, the dialogue and general filmmaking are also good, as are the themes and messages, but unfortunately the story never really works. But even if the story doesn’t work there was more than enough fun to be had along the way that I had my money’s worth, unfortunately I’m not sure that non-Mamet-heads will be a lot less interested or forgiving.
**1/2 out of Four
The Bank Job(3/28/2008)
In recent years, I’ve gotten increasingly skeptical about crime movies from the UK. I very rarely use a country of origin as a reason to be turned off by a film, but all to often British crime movies have be increasingly derivative recycling of Tarentino’s style via Guy Richie. Of course there are plenty of bad derivative crime films made all over the world, but British exports seem particularly prone to this. So why has a hater like me already seen two of UK crime films this year? Well it’s mainly because of a lack of competition, if In Bruges and The Bank Job had been released during the summer or award season I would have happily ignored them, but the pickings are slim in March so I took the risk on them, and in the case of In Bruges I was pleasantly surprised. Fortunately I was also somewhat surprised by The Bank Job, a crime film even further from the lineage of Tarentino than In Bruges.
The film is set in 1971 London, and centers on Terry Leather (Jason Statham), a low level thug who partakes in low level crimes. An old girlfriend of Terry’s named Martine (Saffron Burrows) meets up with him and tells him about a plan she has to rob a local bank whose alarm system is undergoing repairs. Terry hasn’t done a heist as big as this before, but he agrees to this one because his auto repair business is not doing great, and he thinks it’s about time his gang breaks into the big leagues. What Terry doesn’t know is that Matine is doing this because she is being Blackmailed by MI5. The entire robbery is a scheme by MI5 to retrieve a compromising photograph of Princess Margret that is being held in a safety deposit box at the bank by a pseudo black militant calling himself Michael X (Peter de Jersey).
Jason Statham is a big part of why I was hesitant to see this film. Statham is not really a bad performer, but he regularly finds himself in really trashy movies. He seems to have two careers; one involves the aforementioned derivative British crime films like Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, the other path consists of B-Grade western Martial arts movies like War and The Transporter. This film doesn’t follow either of those trends in Statham’s career, but I can’t say it really makes me like him much more than I already did. Statham has what it takes to be a solid action movie hero; he’s something of a cross between Bruce Willis and Jean-Claude Van Damme. But I haven’t seen any evidence to see him as a truly great actor outside of this type of genre work the way someone like Willis is. Still, this is exactly the type of role that suits him, it’s a movie with a little more respectability but which doesn’t require him to really express any kind of deep emotion.
Another thing that turned me off to the movie was its bland title; in fact this is the blandest heist movie title since David Mamet’s Heist. Of course one should never judge a book by its cover, but somehow I couldn’t quite expect creative genius out of a movie that’s simply called The Bank Job. Like that title, the actual heist here really is quite bland, especially when compared to other heist films. There is no elaborate plan like one would find in Ocean’s 11, no firefight along the lines of Heat, and no colorful gang members like Reservoir Dogs. Instead this heist is a simple matter of tunneling into a bank that’s been closed over the weekend, grabbing all the cash and leaving. This isn’t rocket science and it’s also nothing we haven’t seen before, tunneling has been used in every heist film from Rififi to Entrapment to The Ladykillers.
Two thirds of the way through the film I was being somewhat entertained, but the film had not set itself apart at all. Fortunately, the story picks up in a big way in its third act and improves dramatically. What sets the film apart are the things surrounding the robbery rather than the heist itself. I don’t want to give away what goes on during the third act, there isn’t really a big twist but events simply begin to get more interesting after the heist, that’s where the film really kicks in.
The film is supposedly based on a true story, but I’m very skeptical about just how true any of this is. I’m willing to buy the basic details of the heist itself, but the angle about the Princess Margret photos and the other elements surrounding the heist are a bit harder to believe. The filmmakers claim that the truth of the incident haven’t been widely reported because of a D-notice placed on the situation by the British government, and this does make most of the film’s claims a bit hard to disprove. The whole thing strikes me as something of a wild conspiracy theory to me; I’m sure the royal family is important to MI5, but I highly doubt they’d go to anywhere near the lengths they are here over one scandal. Of course I’m never one to really worry that much about accuracy as long as a good yarn is being told, and if one doesn’t take the claim too seriously this won’t get in the way of one’s enjoyment.
The impressive third act almost makes me want to give the film a pass, but the fact still remains that two thirds of the movie are rather bland. The characters work, but I had no particularly interest or attachment to any of them. The script told the story well enough and the dialogue worked well enough, although there was some kind of clunky exposition at points. The film’s visual style worked moderately well, although there was absolutely nothing about it that set the film apart from the pack. Not setting itself apart from the pack very much is a running theme in the film really. The film is simply very average for most of its running time. I’d be willing to recommend this as a rental, because I’m really close to giving it a pass, but I can’t really say it’s worth seeing in the theaters.
**1/2 out of Four
Be Kind Rewind(3/1/2008)
Michel Gondry is an interesting filmmaker, mainly because he entered the business in a different way than most. Gondry has been making music videos, commercials and short films since the late 80s, but didn’t enter the world of feature films until 2001 when he made the film Human Nature. That work was mainly overlooked, but his sophomore effort Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, ended up being one of the best movies in recent memory. Gondry is not like the many music video directors who seem obsessed with hyper kinetic pacing and massive CGI effects. Rather, Gondry has built his style around quirky stories and creative dreamlike visuals constructed mostly with physical effects. His third film, The Science of Sleep, was a disappointment. The film was cerebral to a self indulgent extent; the film was nearly impenetrable to all but the most diehard of Gondry fans. Gondry’s newest film, Be Kind Rewind, is probably the first Gondry film I’ve seen that doesn’t seem to take place in someone’s inner psyche, but it might have been more realistic if it did.
The film mostly centers on Mike (Mos Def) a young man working at a small New Jersey VHS rental shop called Be Kind Rewind. This is one of those neighborhood video stores everyone wants to support in theory, but usually doesn’t actually rent from because they have a poor selection. The shop is owned by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), who insists the store is the birthplace of the jazz great Fats Waller. Fletcher is informed by the town that his shop, which isn’t up to code, has been condemned and will need to be ripped down in favor of a condo. Rather than break this news to Mike, he goes on a trip in order to find new ways to run his business. Mike is left in charge of the store, but this quickly goes awry when is peculiar friend Jerry (Jack Black) breaks into a power plant, magnetizes himself, than accidentally erases all the tapes with his presence. Needing to procure a copy of Ghostbusters on short notice for the store’s most loyal customer, Mike and Jerry improvise and film their own DIY version of the film using very cheap effects. Strangely enough the scheme works and they must quickly make similar homemade versions of other popular films.
The movies Mike and Jerry make are really fun quirky pieces, with interesting DIY special effects. The Ghostbusters movie (which is given more emphasis than the other titles) for example, ends with a marshmallow man (made out of a coat hanger and a bag of marshmallows) being set on fire, then exploding onto Jack Black (via a whipped cream spray can). Any one of these copied movies could easily be a Youtube sensation, and Gondry continually surprises us by new and different do it yourself effects work. The film also benefits from smart title selection, as most of the movies featured somehow feel inherently linked to the VHS format.
Now I know what you’re thinking: Mike and Jerry’s scheme would never happen, no one would ever think that would work, and even if it could work it would still take a lot more money and time even to make these “cheap” versions of the films than it would be worth. But, these kind of doubts forget one major element: that this film is “quirky” and that instantly nullifies all logic and common sense. Of course that’s supposed to be the plan, but it doesn’t really work, not in the first half anyway. To the film’s credit, mid way through its established that no one actually thinks these are the real movies and that they’re mainly supporting Mike and Jerry out of a neighborly sense of encouragement, still it’s hard to believe that anyone would be paying twenty dollars to rent these things even out of the goodness of their hearts. In case you can’t tell, suspension of disbelief is necessary to get enjoyment out of this, but that’s not quite as large a problem as it would seem really, after all quirk really can explain a lot and there’s a certain “if you build it they will come” sentiment to the whole thing.
That said, there are a lot of problems with the movie, and first among them is that it doesn’t really have very strong characters. None of the characters are very well developed over the course of the film, nor are they established very well to begin with, which could have been forgiven if they were a bit more lovable, but they aren’t. Mike should be the main character of the film, he’s the one managing the video store, and he’s the one who changes somewhat over the course of the film, but Gondry fails to really focus on him, possibly because he wanted more screen time for Jack Black, whose character is really only strong enough to be a comic relief sidekick. Mos Def is a better actor than most rappers, but he’s really not quite ready to carry a movie and this role needs someone who is. Jack Black, unfortunately just sort of seems to be on autopilot, he has the disadvantage of having a character whose only real characteristics are that he’s loveably dumb and energetic.
There’s a point where Jack Black’s character lets the video store’s success get to his head and demands a trailer, here I began to think the film would turn into a satire of Hollywood, which would have been nice, but that never really materializes. The movie generally would have benefitted from more laugh out loud moments, which would have really boosted the film’s overall value, instead it becomes one of those comedies that settles on making the viewer smile a lot. I also found the film oddly predictable for such a creative piece, the filmmakers make the mistake of over-foreshadowing the finale which should have been more of a surprise than it was. The movie is really at its best when it shows the neighborhood coming together, and Gondry is very successful at building a believable community around the video store.
The DIY movies being made here reminded me a lot of the extravagant plays put on by Max Fisher in the Wes Anderson film Rushmore. Like those plays, the movies here are passionate projects built on a shoestring that can only be believed in a quirky movie like this. The difference is that those plays were just a small element in a larger movie that explores its characters, while the DIY movies are at the center of Be Kind Rewind and despite his best efforts, Gondry can’t quite build a story around them. There is fun to be had here, and there are a lot of really nice moments and an overall good spirit to the movie, but they don’t quite serve a satisfying whole.
**1/2 out of four
