Review: Eagle Eye

Contrived, derivative actioner keeps its eyes on the product placement prize.

One of my favorite movie quotes comes from 1995′s vastly underrated Strange Days: “Paranoia,” one of the characters explains, ”is reality on a finer scale.” Later, another character asks the story’s protagonist, “The question isn’t ‘Are you paranoid?’ It’s ‘Are you paranoid enough?” Misunderstood as a Virtual Reality rock video, that film was really an examination of the way technology was steadily eroding the individual will at the turn of the millennium. In the thirteen years since its release, thanks in no small part to the shabby example set by our government, America has become more paranoid than ever, both as a people and as a nation. And the worst of it is that that condition shows no sign of going away.

Eagle Eye wants to be about paranoia, and about how 21st Century Americans are all ghosts in a giant machine of computer files and encrypted data that define us as individuals and place us within society itself. Subject to some expert hacking and a little determination, we are liable to having our lives turned upside down and twisted inside out, because we are all “on the grid” of the Information Age. Such an idea is a compelling if not wholly unprecedented theme, and that idea sometimes bubbles to the film’s shiny surface. But arrhythmic pacing, far fetched plotting and too many product placements ultimately make it collapse under its own cumbersome weight.

Can you hear me now? LaBeouf, Monaghan

Shia LaBeouf (Transformers: The Movie) plays Jerry Shaw, a minimum wage slave and designated prodigal black sheep of his career military family. When his (contrivances begin here) twin brother is killed, Shaw finds his bank account stuffed with cash and his apartment loaded with enough ordinance to stage a guerrilla war. Then a mysterious female voice begins giving him directions over his cel phone, directing him from Chicago to Washington, D.C. in the company of single mom Rachel Holloman. (Michelle Monaghan, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) The same voice is threatening to kill Rachel’s young son, who’s himself away on a band trip to the nation’s capital. It turns out Shaw’s dead brother was actually an analyst with a top-secret Pentagon intelligence project, one that seeks to assassinate most of the federal government in one fell stroke.

LaBeouf didnt realize the Decepticons already had him surrounded.

Rather than try to describe any more of the plot, I’m just going to list some of the plot devices: runaway artificial intelligence; explosive crystals detonated with sound frequencies; robot loading cranes; hidden floors at the Pentagon; preemptive military strikes on Arab villages; drone planes; pinwheeling eighteen wheeler trucks; twin sibling biometrics; and finally, the staggering credulity and incompetence shown by law enforcement officials in hundreds of other movies just like this. Perhaps more audacious, and more egregious, are the cribbed plot points and story elements lifted wholesale or in part from other films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Enemy of the State, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Wargames, The Parallax View, and The 39 Steps. Recognizing which parts of this film came from those better ones makes for a good diversion when Eagle Eye’s pacing falls slack, as it does several times.

LaBeouf, Monaghan enter the Circuity City Home Theatre of Despair

Director D.J. Caruso (The Shield) takes his directing style from a single page of the Michael Bay/Armageddon playbook, the one that says keep everything slick and glossy while stacking the supporting cast full of respected character actors in order to give the outlandish script some gravitas. Armageddon had Billy Bob Thornton, and he appears here as well. Actually, his flair for snarling lines like “You’ll be demoted to some kind of job that involves touching shit with your hands” brightens the film at several moments. Michael Chiklis, William Sadler, Rosario Dawson, and Anthony Mackie also appear as various military and/or police personnel.

Pretty: Monaghan

As for the leads, LaBeouf does his best but is neither compelling as a man distanced from his own twin or forceful enough to convey any fugitive intensity while hunted halfway across country. Monaghan’s character is better written, and she does a fine job of making Rachel both strong and terrified without whining or playing to the camera. But there’s only so much any woman can do in a film about computers, guns, robots and soldiers. Monaghan is a beautiful and promising actress who, after this and Made of Honor, needs to pick better scripts immediately and from now on.

The true stars of the film, however, are in many ways the products and corporations shamelessly and relentlessly marketed throughout. Executive producer Steven Spielberg has never been shy about putting products into his films, and here that commercial instinct overheats and very nearly explodes. The use of the Sprint phones alone, the company logo always prominently displayed, defies any claim to artistic integrity.

A couple of times lately I’ve written about movies that had something on their mind besides action and suspense. It seems an exaggeration to say the same about Eagle Eye, which feels in every way like screenwriters John Glenn and Travis Wright tried to write a blockbuster based on what they perceived as zeitgeist in the age of identity theft and government wiretapping. In other words, the film’s topical resonance is only a launching platform for semi-mindless boom boom boom action sprinkled with what the producers, studio, and director think people care about. But such second-guessing and condescension happen everyday in the movie business, regardless of whether the public realizes it or not. It’s enough to make any filmgoer feel manipulated, maybe even paranoid.

-Michael Kabel
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Paul Newman: 1925 – 2008

Legendary film actor, humanitarian dies of cancer at his Connecticut home.

Cool Hand Luke: Newman, 1967

Paul Newman, the intense, magnetic actor whose screen presence loomed large over American cinema in the 1960s and 70s, died Friday of cancer at his Westport, Connecticut home. He was 83.

Born in a Cleveland suburb and trained as a stage actor in New York, Newman came to widespread attention in his second film role, playing real-life boxer Rocky Graziano in the 1956 drama Somebody Up There Likes Me. He shortly thereafter appeared in the sexually-charged The Long Hot Summer, opposite actress Joanne Woodward. The two were married for more than fifty years, frequently co-starring together and becoming the symbol of Hollywood gentility worldwide.

As Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler, 1961

Newman’s restless energy, coupled with an often brooding sensitivity, frequently brought him to play troubled protagonists and outlaw good guys. But that rogue persona served him well, leading to a string of classic films: Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, The Sting, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. By the time he reached his fifties, his career took a turn into even darker films roles, including a desperate lawyer in The Verdict, a neglectful father in Harry & Son (which he also directed), and even a vengeful mob boss in Road To Perdition. In 1987 he won the Best Actor Oscar for The Color of Money, a sequel to 1961′s The Hustler.

Newman’s charity work was also legendary. His Ashford, CT-based Hole-In-The-Wall-Gang Camp, a sanctuary and resort for seriously ill children, has helped thousands since its inception in 1988. Newman’s Own, a brand of foods begun in 1982, has funneled millions of dollars into various charities.

You will never be this cool: Redford, Newman as Butch and Sundance, 1969

Newman’s passing marks not just the death of an actor but also the passing of a legendary presence that was almost synonymous with the 20th Century American conception of masculine poise and self-restraint. In short, Newman was cool before anyone was really sure what being cool meant or why it would become so important in the coming decades. He was an actor of his time and he was the leading man for his times.

The scene below is the climactic confrontation in The Hustler, pitting Newman’s Fast Eddie Felson against Jackie Gleason’s Minnesota Fats.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Miscellaneous Debris, September 2008 Edition

Random ideas and observations that maybe aren’t enough to support a full post.

This is probably our favorite picture.

There’s a lot going on in film and TV news right now, what with the fall season heating up and the big prestige Oscar-bait rollouts like Baz Luhrman’s Australia and Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon just around the corner. In fact it’s too much to keep track of all at once, unless you really stick to the Intertubes’ news sites and of course the millions of bloggity blogs on the blogosphere. (What did we do before the advent of the blog? Discuss our opinions with friends?)

So here’s some stuff that’s been piling up in our inbox, things that maybe don’t have enough information or – more importantly – enough of our interest to merit a full posting. There’s no order of importance; we’re just offering opinions here, like all good bloggers.

Casting Depp-arture?: The Riddler

1. A bunch of rumors circulated last month that Johnny Depp was getting courted to play The Riddler if and when Warner Brothers stages a sequel to this summer’s made-more-money-than-Jesus The Dark Knight. As an alternative to Depp (who may have gotten ahead of his talent in that last Pirates sequel) we’d like to suggest someone else who can play both menacing and wacky flavors of crazy. He’s an underrated, underused veteran actor who’d bring a sense of coming full circle to two decades of Batman films. We nominate this guy as the perfect Riddler.

2. The Office season premiere was great last night (Is Holly the new Pam?), but what caught our eye in the commercial breaks was the ad for Zack and Miri Make A Porno, which almost doesn’t advertise that the film is written and directed by Kevin Smith. It’s got Seth Rogen’s and Elizabeth Banks’ faces in almost every frame, but no mention of Smith anywhere except the credits at spot’s end. Would MGM rather the public see Rogen and Banks and assume it’s a Judd Apatow production?

First lady, porn star: Banks

3. Speaking of Banks, she debuts a Texas accent as Laura Bush in the new, funnier trailer for Oliver Stone’s Dubya satire W.  On which, we should mention, it looks like the director did a heckuva job. Josh Brolin has Shrub’s mannerisms bolted down, and the film’s apparent bleak wit couldn’t reach theatres at a better time. The powerhouse cast includes James Cromwell, Ellen Burstyn, Jeffrey Wright, Toby Jones, Thandie Newtwon, Ioan Gruffudd, Scott Glenn, and Noah Wylie.

4. Why aren’t more film scholars and devotees excited about Blu-Ray? Both The Godfather and L.A. Confidential were released on the new format this week. So was Madagascar. Two steps forward, one step back.

5. October wouldn’t be the same without some low-budget horror, and Quarantine looks to be equal parts Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project. Still, the preview’s image of the guy getting sniper-shot for trying to exit the infected building was a new twist that made us jump in our seats. (Yes, putting this item next to the Madagascar animals was intentional.)

6. Continuing his unstoppable rise to guru of the Hot Topic crowd, writer-director Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy 2: The Golden Army) will release a trilogy of vampire novels written with crime novelist Chuck Hogan. The first chapter will arrive in stores next summer, no doubt accompanied by some kind of premium collector’s edition.

7. The reports saying the ratings for this past Monday’s season premiere of Heroes were down 23 percent over last year’s season opener are kind of missing the bigger picture. Shows like Heroes – and Lost, and Battlestar Galactica – can last forever with a reasonably-sized core audience that’s kept satisfied.

They... they wish they could swim, like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim: the cast of Heroes

Right now it’s the fomerly devoted fans that have to be wooed back, not the casually curious that were tuning in as was likely the case a year ago. With positive reviews steadily sweeping message boards and blogs, the show has a solid fresh start. Not for nothing, but we thought the first two episodes were pretty much exactly what they needed to be.

8. Is anyone else bothered by the new high-resolution imagery used in some current promotional images? Daniel Craig looks vaguely waxen in the new Quantum of Solace poster, and Blake Lively’s tempestuous mane comes across as brittle wire in the Gossip Girl image. For a show about rich teenagers jumping in and out of bed with one another, “lifeless” night not be the ideal connotation.

9. Finally, we’ll probably do a separate piece about the upcoming The Day The Earth Stood Still remake later on, but in the meantime we want to share the trailer now. Keanu Reeves notwithstanding, the ace cast includes Jennifer Connelly, Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm, Kathy Bates, John Cleese, and Battlestar Galactica’s Aaron Douglas. As fans of the original 1951 sci-fi masterpiece, we think Keanu would’ve made a wonderful Gort the Robot; unfortunately, he’s center stage as alien herald Klaatu.

We’ll be back Monday with a review of Eagle Eye. Or, if we wake up feeling hip tomorrow, a review of Choke. Have a better weekend than you normally do.

- Michael Kabel  

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Preview: Flash of Genius

Greg Kinnear stars in a true story about little guy inventor vs. Big Auto.

Greg Kinnear’s come a long, long way from hosting the E! Network’s Talk Soup. So far, in fact, that by our count he’s deserved an Academy Award at least twice already: once for As Good As It Gets (he was nominated) and again for his lead in Paul Shrader’s little-seen Bob Crane biopic Auto-Focus. This October he gets what might be his best shot yet at some real critical acclaim with the true-life Flash of Genius, an epic story about… the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. Part common man tragedy and part real-life historical footnote, if nothing else it’s sure to resonate with an America already sickened by the need for yet more big business bailouts.

Kinnear plays Robert Kearns, a Detroit engineering professor and father of six who worked on inventions in his basement. While Detroit’s leading automakers, including Ford and Chrysler, threw teams of researchers towards building the intermittent wiper, which stops and starts ever few seconds, Kearns perfected a working model in the basement of his home. What happened next is the stuff of American tragedy: having grown up near a Ford plant in Gary, Indiana, Kearns respected the company and believed they’d welcome his innovation. They do at first, but subsequently use it on cars without giving him credit or royalties. Kearns was in fact awarded a patent for his wipers in 1967 – two years before.

So began a grueling fifteen year legal battle that eventually cost Kearns his marriage and job and left him with mental troubles including a 1976 nervous breakdown. His case went through years of appeals, eventually reaching the Supreme Court, and though by 1995 he’d been awarded more than $30 million dollars Kearns maintained the case was always about getting credit for his invention. All he wanted, he said in a 1990 interview, was to own a factory where he and his family could manufacture the wipers he’d invented and duly patented.

If Kearn’s story sounds like a value-sized downer, consider that playing tormented nice guys is by now pretty much Kinnear’s stock in trade, and the story gives him plenty of room for gravitas. The talented supporting cast will also likely shed some light on the dour events. Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls, Bad Santa) plays Kearns’ wife, while Alan Alda appears as Kearn’s lawyer, Dermot Mulroney as Kearn’s friend and associate, and Mitch Pileggi in a rare (and overdue) turn as a bad guy. The film marks producer Marc Abraham’s (Children of Men, Thirteen Days) directorial debut, and it’s based on a New  Yorker magazine article by John Seabrook.

Reportedly the subject of lukewarm reception at this year’s Telluride Film Festival as well as middling early reviews, the film is likely a straightforward effort for those who already enjoy such David-and-Goliath efforts. On the other hand, it could also become a cult favorite in the way that Francis Ford Coppola’s similar 1988 man-against-Detroit biopic Tucker: The Man and His Dream garnered a loyal audience for years after its middling box office reception. Still, in the current political economy – $700 billion dollars! – the basic premise alone might be enough to spark the public’s fascination. Flash of Genius premieres October 3.

-Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Review: Lakeview Terrace

What could be safer than living next to Samuel L. Jackson?

Race divides most Americans, whether in their attitudes to different ethnic groups, the amount of mistrust between those groups, or opinions about how much groups can – or should – celebrate and mimic one another. There’s an old saying that racism begins at home, and the idea that our homes are not only not safe but also the proving ground for many of our failings permeates Lakeview Terrace. It’s a bold and for the most part successful film, even if some thriller movie cliches occasionally allow it to list in the wrong direction.

Samuel L. Jackson, probably America’s most prolific film star, plays veteran LAPD officer Abel Turner, a weary freight train of a man both on the streets and when raising his two teen-aged children in their comfortable suburban home. In previous decades – he explains he bought the house twenty years ago, after grueling years of overtime and extra jobs – such a home probably represented the pinnacle of working class mobility. But unseen and paranoia-fueling troubles (drug dealing, domestic violence, juvenile delinquency) are beginning to creep into the neighborhood, threatening his sense of stability.

When mixed race couple Chris and Lisa Mattson buy the place next door as a “starter house,” Abel is less than pleased. He has his own burning and deep-seated reasons for mistrusting blended couples, fused to a simmering racism that Jackson expresses through controlled, tight body movements. “You don’t see straight,” a white informant tells him early in the film, and the series of hazings he puts the new couple through proves that observation time and again. Abel has a short fuse but tall principles, while the Mattsons are what used to be called Yuppies – impressed with themselves, glib, affluent, confident. They wouldn’t like one another under the best of circumstances. Pressed together, their conflict seems believably unavoidable.

The Mattsons don’t go out of their way to make a good impression, either. They have sex in their pool despite its visibility from neighboring houses. Chris (Patrick Wilson, Hard Candy) flicks cigarette butts into Abel’s yard and leaves his car parked in the street – venial sins in most neighborhoods but not to Abel, whose siege mentality is only reinforced by what he sees at work. His retaliations are swift but elusive; as a cop, he knows the difference between breaking laws and bending them. The Mattsons, comfortable in their white-collar social bubble, unwisely attempt to communicate with him in the same way they would a peer, not someone from a different walk of life. And the tension escalates even further, growing increasingly violent and acrimonious.

Ebony & ivory: Washington, Wilson

Screenwriters David Loughery and Howard Korder shrewdly stack the script with signs that Chris and Lisa are what’s sometimes euphemistically called “tourists” – people selfishly fascinated with other ethnic groups. Director Neil LaBute (In The Company of Men, The Shape of Things) fleshes out such self-congratulatory “enlightenment” in subtle ways. The Mattsons host a cocktail party for other mixed-race couples, one of whom congratulates Chris for “scoring a black chick.” Lisa designs urban designer clothes for children of all races but cautions her husband that Abel is “a brother.” The young couple doesn’t see anything wrong with their lifestyle – “Society” says it’s okay, and they’re not hurting anyone else. In that respect, they have a valid if only normative point. Abel’s constant and escalating haranguing often seems excessive, but the story and Jackson’s superlative performance always counterbalance that audience reaction with something that makes his behavior understandable if not sympathetic. Good fences make good neighbors, but misunderstandings and wasted opportunities make grudges accumulate.

White light, white heat: Wilson

All of this has to lead somewhere, and the final confrontation between Chris and Abel is nothing that hasn’t been done before – in fact, it’s cliche in any number of ways. The plot twist that establishes the climax is also creaky enough to be heard from your theatre’s lobby. But as with the recent Traitor, the film says something different despite following a well-worn path. LaBute has a long resume of making thought-provoking films that don’t quite have their own ideas sorted out, but here the Gordian Knot of American race relations gives him enough material to provoke without having to comment. A somewhat artless exception is the subplot of the wildfires approaching the neighborhood. While an opportunity to provide some breathtaking CGI imagery, the encroaching blaze is pure high school English symbolism, and its use in the climax doesn’t really earn its keep.

Wilson gives a fine performance as Chris, all confused expressions and jangling nerves. With his moist blue eyes and face straight from Greek statuary, he’s the picture of homogeneous Caucasian beauty. Kerry Washington (The Last King of Scotland) makes the most of an underwritten role and comparatively sparse screentime. Ron Glass (Barney Miller, Firefly) is pitch perfect as Lisa’s father, a successful Oakland businessman who’s less than thrilled about his daughter’s provocative marriage. As their benefactor in the house purchase, he’s both resigned but wary; call it Guess Who’s Paying For Dinner? Ultimately, the film’s secret star may be Mychael and Jeff Danna’s haunting, echo-laden score. Sounding both isolated and claustrophobic at the same time, it’s the perfect backdrop for people with virtually nothing in common failing to make peace with one another or even just get along.

- Michael Kabel
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Preview: Max Payne

A noirish video game becomes a noirish Mark Wahlberg vehicle.  

When movie genres go out to eat in restaurants, the video game adaptation probably gets seated next to the kitchen door. Little loved and long dismissed as a fast, sleazy way to make an easy buck, the game-to-movie genre gets tossed among Italian zombie epics, Dane Cook romantic comedies, and right wing/McJesus polemics in the basement of critical patience.

If October’s Max Payne doesn’t raise the standard or even earn some grudging respect, if nothing else no one can blame the source material. The 2001 video game was a grime-soaked but sharp combination of slow-motion bullet time action, graphic novel story panels, and hardboiled genre forms, drawing from Dashiell Hammett, John Woo’s Hong Kong period actioners, and classic American pulp fiction.

Following a frame for murder and the death of his family, DEA undercover agent Payne stalks and takes revenge on the New York-based Punchinello crime family and the evil Aesir corporation. A simple premise, sure, but the evocative artwork on its graphic novel-style cutaway segments combined with pitch perfect narration by actor James McCaffrey (Rescue Me, The Jackal) elevated the game play to a stylish level rarely seen in third-person shooters. A 2003 sequel, The Fall of Max Payne, expanded Payne’s storyline and character depth but was hampered by a weak conclusion.

World of Payne: Wahlberg

Now director John Moore, who’s probably best known for high-budget remakes with underwhelming box office such as Flight of the Phoenix and The Omen, presents a slightly streamlined version of both games’ storylines. The story seems faithful, except for a quote on the official site’s synopsis about “battling enemies from beyond the natural world,” which is pretty far afield of the game’s original narrative. The black angel at the end of the trailer below confirms the film may take on a Spawn-like pathos, which seems unnecessary even in its two-seconds of screen time.

Sax appeal: Kunis

Payne is given life by Mark Wahlberg, while Mila Kunis (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, That 70s Show) plays his adversary/love interest Mona Sax. Beau Bridges, Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges, and Chris O’Donnell appear in various noir-standard supporting roles. So our appreciation for the lovely Ms. Kunis notwithstanding, the cast is less than electrifying. Oz and 30 Rock co-star Dean Winters has for years been considered perfect for the part of Payne, and plenty of fans were hoping Jennifer Garner might grace the role of the ruthless but principled Sax. Still, Wahlberg is sometimes surprisingly effective, and more than a decade after Boogie Nights he’s shaped into a dependable if not always magnetic leading man, a kind of Kurt Russell for his generation. So he may own the part, or not.

It would be something if the film itself were superlative, bolstering the beleagured video game genre in much the same way that The Dark Knight got mainstream critics to fork over some respect for the comic book movie. But it’ll have to do more than showcase snappy bullet time firefights, surly lighting and tawdry explosions to do that. It’ll have to bring a depth of feeling and drama to the screen, the same way its source material cranked up the story quality of the unsophisticated third-person shoot-em-up. The film opens in wide American release October 17.

- Michael Kabel

  :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Review: Burn After Reading

The Coen Brothers’ latest dark farce belies a chilly core.

After two and a half decades, is there any doubt that the Coen Brothers are a major force within American cinema? After so many critically-lauded efforts and rooms full of awards, their legacy seems secure. Film students of future years will likely debate and compare the merits of their various works, dissembling their best from the smaller collection of middling accomplishments and the smaller still assortment of weak efforts. Their latest film, Burn After Reading, is either at the top of the middle tier or the very bottom of the highest level. A bleak, unmerciful and at times unfair depiction of human failings venial and great, it shows the brothers’ classic strengths while hinting at an emerging misanthropy no longer tempered by intellectual reserve.

The MacGuffin of stolen spy secrets featured in the film’s marketing campaign is really only a small part of the Catherine wheel plot involving a melange of unsavory and unsympathetic characters. Pompous ivy-league CIA analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is removed of his duties and sent packing from the agency. He retreats into a drunken stupor in order to write a memoir, though his days are mostly spent staring out of a window or watching television. His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is planning a divorce and sleeping with aging U.S. Marshall Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney). When a disc containing Osborne’s memoir notes and personal finances gets lost at a fitness center, it falls into the clutches of gym employees Chad (Brad Pitt) and Linda (Frances McDormand).

Strange bedfellows: Clooney, Swinton

Chad and Linda attempt to sell the disc, first back to Osborne and then to the Russians, with no success. Linda wants the money to fund four plastic surgeries.  ”I’ve gone as far as I can with this body,” she tells her boss Ted (Richard Jenkins.) Her obsession with her youth runs so deep that, like the man children of Bottle Rocket, her apartment’s decor is frozen in the bygone 1970s. Chad seems ecstatic to be in the world of “some CIA shit, man.” Overambitious and deeply under-prepared for such black op negotiations, the pair’s greed is matched only by their incompetence.

Then Linda starts sleeping with Harry, and plot points that run shaggy and free through the film’s first half begin to coalesce. Chad infiltrates the Cox household with tragic results. Linda’s romance with the easygoing, slow-witted Harry offers some joy but dissolves into selfishness. Osborne collapses into bitterness and binge drinking. Katie, the icy center of the characters, remains static and shrill while bullying Osborne and Harry alike. Every character has plenty to hide, and in a city like Washington, D.C. their paranoia is only amplified by their surroundings. And as if to justify such suspicion, events are monitored by two nameless CIA office workers (David Rasche and J.K. Simmons) who clean up their messes and remark dispassionately on the proceedings.

“What did we even learn?” Simmons asks in the film’s thunderously anti-climactic denouement. The Coens are expert at depicting paranoia and selfishness but stop short of offering an explanation for why that behavior would seem so universal to the human condition. In a sense, such lack of theorizing reinforces a common complaint against their formidable screenwriting skills: that they lack compassion for their characters and only seldom condescend to depict human warmth. While a hint of such attitude has always floated across the surface of their work – most notably Miller’s Crossing and Fargo- here the contempt becomes unmistakable. It’s been suggested elsewhere that the lack of a warm center such as Fargo’s Marge Gunderson makes these flawed characters seem more acrid for lack of a counterpoint. But in removing that warmth the Coens are approaching the same chilly disconnect that Stanley Kubrick withdrew into after Barry Lyndon – a withdrawal that consequently led to diminishing achievement in his later films.

Jenkins, McDormand, Pitt check out SBR

That’s not to say the plot isn’t tautly suspenseful, or that the dialogue isn’t sharp as a sword. The Coens are probably incapable of producing anything less. But their sense of humor is getting meaner, less agile, even while the plot twists darken and grow increasingly gruesome. Two acts of largely shocking violence are depicted in the most bloodied manner possible, evoking the lusty gore of last year’s troubled No Country For Old Men. That the second instance seems thoroughly superfluous only muddles the film’s tone even further.

If nothing else, the Coens serve up a movie of performances. Clooney reverses the cocky weariness he employed a decade ago in Out of Sight to portray a man grabbing for any creature comfort; Harry’s compulsion to jog after sex speaks volumes about his ability to commit. McDormand finds a weird charm in Linda’s desperate flight from old age, while Malkovich gets more mileage out of roaring the f-bomb than any actor this side of Denis Leary. Swinton’s part is underwritten, but she’s memorably bitchy in a glacial kind of way. Pitt bops through the role of Chad like a man on the first day of his annual vacation. For all the actor’s philanthropic efforts, the chance to play the simple, cocky musclehead must have been liberating indeed. Jenkins, so effective earlier this year in The Visitor, gives a delicate, nuanced turn; an abandoned subplot regarding Ted’s previous career screams for re-visitation that never arrives.

Sharp, mean, intelligent and caustic, Burn After Reading is a film about stupid people in situations the smartest among us have trouble negotiating. Washington, D.C. is no country for dumb men, and the petty failings of these characters only dooms them further. If you can stomach the Coens’ rapidly overshadowing disdain for such people, or especially if you agree with it, you’ll have a great time.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Review: Righteous Kill

An ignoble genre exercise darkens the twilight of two legendary careers.

A couple of weeks back we ran a preview of Righteous Kill with our fingers firmly crossed, hoping that veteran screen lions Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino might transcend the limitations of their recent lackluster work and give us crime film fans something we’ve wanted since their brief screen pairing in Heat thirteen years ago: a full-on teaming of the two tough guys who’ve been synonymous with urban drama for thirty-plus years. At least, the previews indicated it migh deliver a quality neo-noir mystery that, if not great cinema, might cruise along as a guilty pleasure. But Righteous Kill  is not that movie. It is not even a particularly good movie, but it is a movie we have seen, in miscellaneous parts or in whole, many times before.

DeNiro and Pacino play two veteran homicide detectives who, some years previous, planted evidence to send a wrongly-acquitted child killer to prison. In the present day, a string of executions targeting known criminals (always called “psychopaths” and “scumbags,” in vintage potboiler lingo) are turning up dead. Through the film, DeNiro gives the audience a videotaped confession about how he committed the various killings. Except – and here’s the part you’ve seen many, many times – he may not be the real killer after all. The revelation and aftermath of the true killer’s identity are the stuff of which screenplays’ third acts are made.

While Heat was a sprawling saga imbued of subtly deeper meanings than its genre forms readily indicated, with Righteous Kill what you see is what you get. Inelegantly directed by Jon Avnet, who led Pacino through the guilty pleasure mire earlier this year with 88 Minutes, there’s a parade of predictable events leading up to the resolution. In fact Russell Gewirtz’s (Inside Man) script at times seems desperate not to miss any plot contortions that have already been explored. Carla Gugino’s crime lab detective likes rough sex. There’s a pretty young defense attorney (Alicia Silverstone lookalike Trilby Glover) who bonds with DeNiro after a shootout. Leguizamo and his partner (Donnie Wahlberg) are younger cops who just want to close the case by the book. DeNiro and Pacino are weary but resolute and committed to the cop way of life, and to each other, and to hell with anyone who thinks otherwise.

You talkin to me? DeNiro, Pacino phone it in

The derivation from other, better movies grows so intense that at one point DeNiro’s narration gives up and just quotes Dirty Harry Callahan. And (for me, anyway) that’s when the signal flares can no longer be ignored. It’s one thing for a film to be aware of its influences; it’s an admission of desperation when one film asks another for help getting its point across. That DeNiro spent the 1970s making exponentially better films than any of Dirty Harry’s seamy exploits only highlights the script’s stark faults.

Troubled scripts are often saved by remarkable performances. DeNiro and Pacino have each accomplished as much many times in their storied careers (Cape Fear and Sea of Love, for examples). Here, however, they both appear too indifferent to muster the simmering intensity that shaped their earlier work. As noted elsewhere, DeNiro gives a default performance of squinty eyes and lumbering rage; Pacino is all kinetic movement and rapid talk. Gugino, Wahlberg, and Leguizamo seem bored with their parts, as if they’ve played them fifty times already (and in fact they may have). Brian Dennehy, a silvered lion of an actor himself, is only given dialogue like “you’re going down” as the detectives’ garrulous lieutenant. Rapper 50 Cent mumbles his way through a largely superfluous role as a drug dealing nightclub owner. One bright spot: Melissa Leo (21 Grams) appears in  a single scene to demonstrate to Wahlberg, Leguizamo, et al what inhabiting a character looks like.

So come give me a hug: Fiddy, actors

What a twisted pile of wasted opportunity. DeNiro and Pacino have done better, are still better than this route exercise in b-grade (which is not the same as a B-movie. This film can only aspire to B-movie status) filmmaking. It’s possible too that all is not lost – both actors are still just compelling enough that fans can hope for a more memorable effort still to come. But after waiting thirteen years for this, will anyone else still care if they try again? Bad movies happen, and good stars make bad films. But to make one this lazy just isn’t right – or righteous.

- Michael Kabel
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

DVD Review: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Season 3

The “STD for your TV” returns with new DVD package, fourth season.

Apparently it’s TV on DVD week around here. That’s fine with us, because few things right now bring more wicked fun than the FX sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. With the fourth season set to debut next week, a DVD set collecting Season Three’s fifteen episodes arrived in stores yesterday. That such a program sits on store shelves next to safe-by-design fare like Smart People and Baby Mama says strange, reassuring things about American culture. Because sweet Jesus, is this show brilliantly wrong.

If ever a comedy tempted you to clean your television set after watching, it’s probably Sunny. The premise, if understanding such a thing is really even necessary, stays simple enough: lifelong Philly blue-collar slackers Mac (Rob McElhenny) and Charlie (Charlie Day) own a shitty bar somewhere in the bowels of the city with their rich friends, twin sibs Dennis (Glenn Howerton) and Sweet Dee (Kaitlin Olson). As of Season Two, they’re abetted, bullied, and supported by Frank Reynolds (Danny DeVito), shown at first as the twins’ father but later revealed to be Charlie’s papa instead.

'The Gang' passing themselves off as a normal sitcom cast

There is no sweet center to the cast, no moral compass. Mac is a conniving idiot with delusions of intelligence, Charlie a naive savant with crippling dyslexia. Dennis is a vain womanizer, while Sweet Dee is a narcissist still nursing the emotional scars of a childhood spent within a back brace (“Your bones are like glass,” Dennis tells her. “You’re like 90% scoliosis.”) Frank, a debauched, evil man refusing to grow old gracefully, is vile in the charming way only DeVito can really play. And all this is only the backstory.

The ”gang” goes through the motions of remaining human beings, though often only nominally, while throwing themselves with idiot zeal into a series of get rich quick schemes and half-brained plans. The straightforward episode titles often speak for themselves: “The Gang Finds A Dumpster Baby.” “Sweet Dee’s Dating A Retarded Person.” “Dennis and Dee’s Mom Is Dead.” “Frank Sets Sweet Dee On Fire.” There’s more going on than one premise in each epsiode – sometimes too much more. But more gags work than not, and at least McElhenny, Howerton, and Day – who also write the show – are willing to try new things.

'Masters of Karate and friendship for everyone'

With Season Three that reach starts to exceed its grasp, if only a little. DeVito’s joining brought more exposure, and probably more money from the network, so the gang can leave the bar for the wide environs of the city. Sometimes, as when they try out for the Philadelphia Eagles a la Invincible (“That New Kids On The Block movie”) the results are inspired slapstick. Other times the jokes fall flat or, oddly, stop short of a payoff. McElhenny et al try to give their characters more depth over the season’s progression, too, with mixed results. Howerton’s Dennis never really materializes as a character to the extent that Mac and Charlie accomplish, and his plotlines rely on his good looks probably once too often. And the season ender, “The Gang Dances Their Asses Off,” falls strangely flat thanks to an ending that all but includes a rimshot.

Still, such slight failings are swept up in the show’s whirling manic spirit, which keeps enough good jokes coming fast enough that the bad ones aren’t so obvious by comparison. Enjoy the show, check it out, but make no mistake. Sunny is a barfly of a show, the chain-smoking foulmouthed guilty pleasure you can’t help but sit next to for longer than you should. You can hate yourself in the shower the next morning.

The Season Three DVD set includes commentary tracks on several episodes, a gag reel, a featurette showcasing the Gang’s rival McPoyle family, and several other features. Now, this Season Four promotional video was directed by Fred Savage of The Wonder Years. Almost none of it is SFW.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Life Comes Back Sept 29

Grown-ups, rejoice: It’s not all Gossip Girl and 90210 this fall season.

One of last year’s best new shows, Life was truncated only eleven episodes into its inaugural season by the now-infamous Writer’s Guild strike. But NBC has stuck by the unusual cop drama – after a fashion – with a second season debut September 29. The Season One DVD came out this past week, and with a MSRP of $29.99 it’s mroe than worth picking up for nights when nothing’s on.

The show’s premise is so old-school television it’s practically retro, at leat on the surface: framed for a gruesome triple murder he didn’t commit, LAPD patrolman Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis, Band of Brothers) gains his freedom after twelve years in prison and returns to the force as a homicide detective. While solving cases, he’s assembling the evidence necessary to find the real murderer even while uncovering a larger conspiracy that likely stretches to the highest levels of police authority.

The Season Two cast

And that’s where creator Rand Ravich starts to stir the pot pretty good. Crews endured prison through Zen mediation, and his half-complete understanding of its philosophy frequently leads him on long metaphysical discussions that never seem trite for the audience. He’s partnered with recovering drug addict Danni Reese (Sarah Shahi, The L Word), whose own ties to the conspiracy may be deeper than even she realizes. Crews’ former partner Bobby Stark is always hanging around ready to assist, though with questionable motives for doing so, while Crews lives with a former prison friend, white-collar criminal Ted Earley (Adam Arkin, Chicago Hope).

Like ER, NYPD Blue, and Mad Men before it, Life arrived looking as if it had been on the air for years, sidestepping the coltish growing pains common to many network shows. Directed with a visual attention towards Los Angeles’ sunny skies and glass and steel downtown metroscapes, each episode (including the standout “Powerless,” directed by modern noir maestro John Dahl) has a bright, airy look that belies the complicated emotions roiling beneath the characters. Equally compelling are cutaway segments of a documentary about Crews’ trial and imprisonment, interviewing characters involved in the larger storyline.

High on Life: Reese, Stark, Crews on the job.

And Season Two promises more of the same, if only slightly retrofitted for a bigger audience. Ravich announced in July he’s planning to relaunch the show, with a functioning second pilot for the season two debut. There are cast changes, as well: former Homicide lieutenant Karen Davis (Robin Wiegert, Deadwood) is gone, replaced by veteran character actor/comedian Donal Logue (The Tao of Steve, Grounded For Life) as jaded squad chief Captain Brian Tidwell.

Critics last fall noted the lack of marketing NBC gave the show, but this season the network is trying to either boost its chances or kill it slowly. The first two episodes will air Mondays after Heroes, now the peacock’s highest-rated program. But subsequent episodes will move to Friday nights at 10, long considered a wasteland where shows go to die. Can NBC think its Deal of No Deal lead-in will provide Life a substantive ratings anchor? Or are they avoiding going head-to-head with any of CBS’s rapidly aging CSI: franchises? If you can believe it, they’ve done this before: both Homicide: Life On The Street and Crime Story endured the Friday Night Death Slot. Decades later, both are considered ingenious cult shows far ahead of their time. Myabe for NBC, old habits die hard. But a show this good deserves a better slot, preferably either before or after one of the Law & Orders.

Check it out for yourself, either on air or with your DVR. A complicated, intelligent drama in a television landscape increasingly filled with “reality” shows and game show dreck, Life is worth saving.

- Michael Kabel

  :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::