Review: Due Date

Buddy road movie from the director of The Hangover never quite arrives.

Mismatched-buddy comedies are a long and vaunted tradition in Hollywood, dating at least as far back as the Abbott & Costello/Laurel & Hardy films of the 1940s and continuing most notably, at least to Gen-X audiences, with John Hughes’ 1987 Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Director Todd Phillips’ follow-up to The Hangover borrows the structure of that beloved Steve Martin – John Candy effort, teaming an uptight professional with an easygoing, misunderstood slob on a cross-country trek with a clearly defined deadline involving the straight man’s family.

Comparisons between the two films are unavoidable (Even Wikipedia’s entry on the film carps on the similarities), and that’s bad news for Due Date, which relies too much on co-star Zach Galifianakis’ weirdo schtick without building enough jokes around it to lend the story any comic vitality. Meanwhile Robert Downey, Jr., continuing his streak of always playing the smartest guy in any given room, lends his acerbic poise perhaps too much, inadvertently weighing the already-dark script  with too much straight snark. The two make an uneven comic team,  and even with the necessarily episodic script that imbalance creates problems from jump. That’s not to say there aren’t occasional funny moments, but like highway rest stops they always seem too far apart when you need them and perpetually available when you don’t.

Architect Peter Highman (Downey, Jr.) is desperate to return to Los Angeles from a business trip to Atlanta before his wife Sarah (Michelle Monaghan) gives birth to their first child. But a preflight mixup with actor wannabe Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) gets them both kicked off the flight and placed on a no-fly list. Thanks to Tremblay, Highman somewhat incredibly leaves his wallet on the plane; while attempting to steal a rental car from the airport lot he’s reunited with Tremblay, who offers to drive him to Los Angeles by way of apology.

A whirl of fuzz in layers of 1990s-era fashions and a delicate hair perm, Tremblay is a gentle if self-sabotaging soul, the owner of a Two and a Half Men fansite who admits to running himself over with a car and pronounces Shakespeare as “Shakesbeard.” But he’s also grieving for a recently diseased father whose ashes he carries in a can of coffee grounds, seeking closure but putting off several opportunities to get it. Conversely, Highman is all white-collar privilege and suburban entitlement; you can imagine him readily enjoying the same amenities as George Clooney’s similar road warrior from Up In The Air while sneering at the slobs flying business class.

The two are severely underqualified to attempt a 3000 mile drive separately, let alone together, and the interpersonal friction as they reach strange locations ought to propel the comic give-and-take. Yet the script from former King of the Hill writers Alan R. Cohen and Adam Freedland (with additional work by Adam Sztykiel from Phillip’s story) doesn’t have the duo go very many places, with the ensuing result that the story… doesn’t really go any place. Instead, the stops they make are long, protracted, and disjointed: a trip to a vendor of “medical” marijuana in Alabama; a Western Union branch in Louisiana; incredibly again, the Mexican border and the Grand Canyon. Despite the time-table crucial to the plot setup, there’s seldom any sense of urgency, despite Highman’s frequent, panicked calls home.

One of Planes, Trains and Automobiles‘ most endearing – and enduring – virtues rested in the commonality of its situations: Martin’s yuppie and Candy’s blue-collar lummox negotiated the impersonal, indifferent hurdles of cross-country travel over a grueling three-day odyssey, facing impersonal hotel rooms, numbingly indifferent airline personnel, incompetent customer service, and many, many other small setbacks incomprehensible in their banality. But where that film mined the everyday, the shock value of Phillps et al.’s script explores only the less ordinary, and frequently for shock value: Highman is busted for drugs at the Mexican border;  Tremblay forgets his own name as the two try to receive a wire transfer; Tremblay’s dog masturbates alongside his owner.

Stalling things even further is a wasted, unnecessary subplot involving Highman’s college friend (Jamie Foxx) and the possibility that he’s actually the father of Sarah’s child. It’s an unexplored, inert distraction from the rest of the story, and the payoff at film’s end is mostly flat as a result. An earlier gag involving a crippled war veteran (Danny McBride) beating Highman with a club for his arrogance is almost painful to watch; meant to be outre, it’s just mean-spirited to both characters involved. Finally, a late revelation from Tremblay will seem to anyone who’s seen The Hangover as derivative by half of another plot twist also involving Galifianakis’ character.

Ultimately, Due Date is an unfunny comedy that’s not worth seeing in a theatre but perhaps watching on home video and only for devoted fans of its several stars. But in one sense it doesn’t matter: the director and performers will make better films, many of which will likely look just as good within their previews, too. (Due Date is the epitome of a film whose best moments appear in its ads.) By the time these things happen we’ll have forgotten all about this misfire. Honestly, we’ve already started.

- Michael Kabel

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Our Traditional Turkey Dish

Celebrating once again the cinema of Turkey, the land that copyright infringement laws forgot.

Spend the holiday with friends.

Do you have big plans for the holiday tomorrow? Ours involve a lot of not blogging. We’re going to not blog as hard as we can. But, since traffic here on SBR has grown so much lately we want to once again re-present our traditional thanksgiving salute to Turkey – the country – thereby killing two birds (maybe even turkeys) with one stone.

Turkey, if you don’t already know (and why wouldn’t you) sometimes… ahem, pays homage to Western comic and sci-fi franchises by imitating them on the cheap. As a bizarre example, check out how the  Turkish entertainment industry rips off Batman and Robin:

You can’t really call them “caped crusaders” because they don’t have capes. (For that matter, historically speaking the term “crusader” may not have the same noble connotation in Asia Minor.) Whatever, the clip is typical of Turkey’s devil-may-care attitude about copyright. YouTube is chock-full of Turkish riffs on most Western geek culture mainstays, riffs that almost always employ (in a clumsier manner than their American cousins) dizzying amounts of violence, sex, and overwrought soundtracks. Did we mention they’re also really cheap-looking? It bears reiteration. Check out the Turkish Star Trek:

As the clip shows, the Turkish Captain Kirk is much better at walking than most American actors. Still, the language barrier makes impossible any stab at understanding why a peasant hangs out on the bridge and pesters the legitimate crew members. The bridge set also seems to be in some kind of basement garage, if those metal support posts are any indication.

Still, where there’s Star Trek there has to be its dumber, more exciting cousin Star Wars, right? 1982′s Dunyayi Kurturan Adam (“The Man Who Saves The World”) used bootlegged footage from Star Wars Episode IV as well as stock footage of American and Soviet test rocket flights to tell its weird, garbled saga about… stuff in space? The musical score to this clip’s interminable opening credits sounds like public access talk show music from the 1970s, and it only gets worse from there.

Not content to hit George Lucas up once, Dunyayi Kurturan Adam also pilfers the themes to Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as Battlestar Galactica. Eventually achieving cult status by sheer power of its awfulness, the film spawned a 2006 sequel. In a case of bad art imitating more bad art,some fans of the original complained the follow-up was kind of a letdown – just like Lucas’ recent efforts.

Finally, given Marvel Comics’ love for merchandising we’re not entirely sure this next clip is even a bootleg. 3 Dev Adam (“Three Mighty Men”) was a startlingly low-budget, brazenly lurid 1973 abomination depicting an ersatz Captain America’s struggle to stop an evil, pudgy Spider-Man knockoff from running amok through Istanbul. Cap was joined in his efforts, for some reason, by a copy of the legendary Mexican luchadore El Santo. Meanwhile “Spiderman” and his two girlfriends idly torture and kill people in depraved ways or have sex in front of puppets.

Probably the single most trivial thing you will learn this week: 3 Dev Adam featured Turkish star Aytekin Akkaya, who also appeared in Dunyayi Kurturan Adam.

We’ll be back next week with plenty of fresh content, including our latest edition of the always-popular Miscellaneous Debris. Have a happy, safe holiday weekend.

- Michael Kabel

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Noir Cinema: Somewhere In The Night

 Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film noir dreamscape is a frustrating, haunting mystery of identity.

Released near the beginning of film noir’s postwar golden age, 1946′s Somewhere In The Night includes a lot of the elements that would eventually help to identify, if not exactly define, noir as a genre: the embittered and spiritually lost war veteran protagonist, his torch singer with a heart of gold love interest, the shifty criminals with murky motives and odd personalities, the sexpot femme fatale with a heart of money. Adding to the noir atmosphere, director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (A Letter To Three Wives) meticulously directs the film with an eye for the intimate, giving each scene a sense of cloistered self-containment that helps describe the protagonist’s senses of isolation. While not exactly essential noir viewing as a result of some serious story flaws, it’s still a mesmerizing viewing experience and a potent example of the genre’s potential for psychological exploration.

The film begins as Army soldier George Taylor (John Hodiak) lies in a battlefront medical tent, reeling from a concussion and with his face covered in bandages. With no memory of his life previous to waking up, in time he finds the only clues to his identity are his army discharge papers and an unsigned note written from someone who hates him. Taylor follows the note to Los Angeles, searching for his previous life – effectively searching for himself. An early break comes in the form of a checked suitcase found at a railway station. The case contains a gun and a note from a “friend” named Larry Cravat, directing Taylor to a bank account containing five thousand dollars.

Taylor goes to the bank but is met with suspicion by its employees. After another dead-end in a men’s steam room, he finds himself pursued through a swanky basement nightclub and cornered in the dressing room of singer Christy Smith (Nancy Guild). Later, following a kidnapping and beating by thugs employed by the mysterious thief and occultist Anzelmo (Fritz Kortner), a creaky plot contrivance leaves him dazed and injured at Smith’s door. She nurses him back to health, falling in love with him in the process.

Together the two pursue fringe-like clues to Taylor’s identity and the whereabouts of the vanished Cravat, despite the machinations of Anzelmo and a tawdry con woman (Margo Woode) who may or may not have known Taylor in his previous life. Eager to help the vulnerable Taylor, Smith enlists the help of her boss and potential suitor (Richard Conte), who in turn brings in a homicide lieutenant (Lloyd Nolan) who’s a lot smarter than he lets on. The lieutenant tells Taylor that his “friend” Cravat was in possession of stolen Nazi funds when he disappeared three years previous – the same time Taylor joined the service. Taylor and the lieutenant both begin to suspect him of Cravat’s murder, escalating the desperation in uncovering Taylor’s true identity. (The solution ultimately bears a strong resemblance to a similar revelation in Alan Parker’s 1984 horror noir Angel Heart.)

Mankiewicz shrewdly bends the noir aesthetic towards establishing a vague and mysterious air around even the simplest locations, giving the film a dreamlike quality that eerily conveys Taylor’s growing paranoia and self-loathing. But the complicated and rambling plot is freighted with diversions and vignettes that, while dramatically effective, don’t always serve to move the story forward. One scene in particular, in which Taylor confronts the daughter of a potential witness to Cravat’s crimes, is achingly acted and beautifully shot but nevertheless slows the movie’s momentum to a crawl. And the film is dialogue-heavy to a fault, with characters reeling off whole paragraphs even in the most mundane conversations. Conversely, the script has an annoying habit of never having characters answer a direct question with candor, lengthening the time needed to bring facts to light while working too hard to sustain suspense.

More troubling, at least regarding the script – adapted from Marvin Borowsky’s story by Mankiewicz and several others, including legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg and equally legendary British author/playwright W. Somerset Maugham – are the voids that leave vital information unanswered. Because the film is chiefly Taylor’s journey, the story most often takes pains to establish each step along his way. Yet how he came into possession of the search-igniting claim ticket is left unexplained, while the rapid growth of Smith’s affections is left underdeveloped and somewhat superfluous as a result. Such details feel important in retrospect, and unfortunately a second viewing doesn’t fill in their sizeable blanks.

Despite those failings the cast is hardworking, committed, and effective. Hodiak, sweating bullets throughout, conveys his character’s mounting panic while still retaining a sense of determination and composure – an ideal example of the relentlessness common to noir protagonists. Making her debut appearance with wardrobe and makeup apparently crafted to make her resemble Lauren Bacall as much as possible, Guild is sweet and convincing despite some corny dialogue of the “Can’t you see I’m nuts for the guy?” variety. (She and Kortner reteamed the following year in another noir, The Brasher Doubloon, an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The High Window.)

Richard Conte, still several years from headlining Jules Dassin’s masterful Thieves’ Highway, is underused as a foil and friend to Taylor’s respective romance and quest, appearing in only a few scenes. Finally, Woode’s radar blip of a career is puzzling given her sweet/predatory smile and crackling screen sexuality. Her character’s affected sophistication, communicated chiefly through sprinkling French expressions into her come-hither game with Taylor, gives the film both edge and a strange sense of resonant sadness. Nobody is who they seem to be somewhere in the night, but nobody is who they want to be, either.

- Michael Kabel

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70s Cinema: Fat City

John Huston’s overlooked masterpiece follows the struggles of boxers and boozers in Northern California.

At what point does life pass you by? When and how do you reconcile yourself that your hopes and dreams, no matter how sincere, are not going to come true? John Huston’s superb 1972 life-on-the-skids drama Fat City, adapted by Leonard Gardner from his own novel, follows two boxers who pass each other on the escalator of success. One is rising just slightly up, the other is starting a long road down. The two are guided by a trainer and manager whose belief in the sweet science is an act of faith, and hindered by women who trap them for the most mundane of reasons. There are no miraculous comebacks planned, no short trips to glory. Their tragedy is that they are average, working class people in a working class sport, in a small city where work is almost all there is.

Yet Huston (who spent a brief time as an amateur boxer himself) and Gardner never let the story get bogged down, focusing instead on character development and context rooted in compassion. Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) was once a promising heavyweight until an ill-fated marriage combined with a disastrous loss in Panama to end his career. Reduced to sleeping in flophouses and working the fields outside the dreary Northern California town of Stockton, as the film begins he’s nonetheless not quite finished with himself. Working out at the YMCA, he happens across Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges), a kid fresh out of high school with talent to burn. Tully recognizes Ernie’s gift and encourages him to see his old manager Ruben Luna (Nicholas Colasanto).

Ruben takes the boy under his wing, training him and putting him into a stable of up-and-coming fighters who tour neighboring towns to fight in gritty matches with small purses and high risks of injury. Ernie loses his first fight, even getting his nose broken, but throughout Ruben encourages his fighters with visions of riches to come. An early scene in which the old man expresses his hopes for Ernie to his wife tells his life’s story: she doesn’t bother rousing from a half-sleep to listen, because she’s heard it many times before, about many fighters who’ve come and gone.

Meanwhile Tully has fallen into the orbit of a bitter drunk named Oma (Susan Tyrrell), stealing her away from her imprisoned boyfriend over the course of one long, boozy conversation. The two settle into a shabby domesticity, with Tully sliding into the part of caretaker and companion to Oma’s blowsy dissipation. The two are so pathetic in their slow-burning need for one another, with Keach and Tyrrell so adept at circling each other, that the scenes focused on them are almost painful to watch.

Ernie keeps fighting, winning amateur matches while planning the arrival of a child with his girlfriend Faye (Candy Clark). Tired and exhausted by the rigors of the fields, Tully returns to Ruben’s gym, getting himself together long enough to qualify for a comeback match. But his previous career casts a long shadow, and Ruben is only able to secure him a match against Lucero (Sixto Rodriguez), a Mexican fighter with a reputation for fierce efficiency. Tully wins the long and brutal bout, not so much from his own skill as from Lucero’s secret kidney injury. “Did I get knocked out?” Tully asks as the final bell rings. Rather than gloat, he embraces the hurting Lucero, giving the film a moment of transcendent grace.

A moment that doesn’t last. Tully has no more left the match than a long-simmering grudge against Ruben erupts again, sending him into a self-destructive tailspin that’s worsened by finding Oma reunited with her paroled boyfriend (real-life welterweight champ Curtis Cokes). The final scenes of the film are a heartbreaker. Tully and Ernie kill time in a decrepit cafe, with a possibly punchdrunk, possibly drunk Tully realizing the emptiness of the life before him in a devastating moment of clarity. The story ends with the ambivalence that was so common throughout the 70s, challenging the audience to put the pieces together for themselves.

Huston and cinematographer Conrad L. Hall (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) cast the town of Stockton, full of Depression-era buildings and rooms poorly lit by too much flourescent glare, with an objectivity that never condemns or celebrates the town’s ramshackle durability. Like its inhabitants, the town weathered adversity but didn’t come out of hard times unscathed. The cast, Keach and Tyrrell especially, give their roles a profoundly lived-in feel (ironic for Keach, given his subsequent well-publicized battles with drug addiction) that rings true without ever seeming patronizing. Keach is mesmerizing, allowing glimmers of youth and charm to shine through Tully’s hard knock present, even while bitterness and rage keep him from moving forward.

Of the supporting characters, while Colasanto would later carve a place for himself in TV history as Ernie “Coach” Pantusso on Cheers, here he’s equally moving as a trainer with bigger hopes than he can handle. Finally, real-life lightweight champion Rodriguez, in his only film appearance, makes the most of every second as the outwardly menacing Lucero. Watch for the scene of him leaving the arena alone after the fight, departing with his dignity intact despite defeat.

- Michael Kabel

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Sick Transit

Seven films to watch while you’re laid up with the cold, the flu, or whatever else gets you down.

NOT recommended viewing. For so many reasons.

Welcome once again to cold and flu season! Every year who knows how many millions of people get the common cold, the flu, the stomach flu, and a variety of other painful and discomforting illnesses. Some people (we think they’re the smart ones) cope by parking themselves on the couch and in front of the DVD player , creating some prime movie-viewing time.

Watching a favorite movie is pretty much the best way to spend a sick day. You don’t have to move around, you don’t have to think that much about the plot (since it’s your favorite, you’ve seen it before already) and you can pause the film for trips to the bathroom, kitchen, or medicine chest. For those of you who don’t have a “favorite” movie to help get you through the long, queasy recuperation hours, consider these classics. We’ve tried to include a variety of stuff, representing several genres.

Office Space – If you’re not going in to work you owe it to yourself to laugh at American office culture. Mike Judge’s (Idiocracy) comedy, in which Ron Livingston gets hypnotized into not giving a damn about anything his boss or company wants, remains the perfect way to laugh at all the healthy worker drones spending the day at their jobs. Bonus sick day activity: Drawl like office middle manager Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) to everyone you speak with, as in: “Hello, pharmacy? I’m gonna need you to go ahead and refill my prescription. Yeah, that’d be great.”

In The Good Old Summertime – A favorite among Judy Garland’s legions of fans, this romantic comedy/musical puts her at professional odds with fellow music shop salesman Van Johnson, even while the two fall in love as pen pals when off the clock. Proudly warm and nostalgic for its soundstage-perfect Victorian Era setting, the film features Garland as irresistable as ever and Johnson well-cast as a suitor so straight-laced he seems almost quaint by modern standards. And if store owner Mr. Oberkugen seems familiar, you probably also saw S. Z. Sakall play Carl, the maitre d’ at Rick’s Cafe Americain, in Casablanca. Bonus sick day activity: Sing along with Garland, especially during the showstopping “I Don’t Care.”

The Dirty Dozen - Twelve Army convicts are offered full pardons if they follow a bitter commando (Lee Marvin) on a suicide mission deep into Nazi-occupied France. The epitome of classic Hollywood cinema that doesn’t ask too much of the brain, director Robert Aldrich’s fast-paced adventure stays enthralling right up until the last, disappointing final scene. Still, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to see while you’re watching it. Bonus sick day activity: Devise your own resolution to the Dozen’s raid on the Nazi castle, one that doesn’t uphold the Establishment status quo but instead lets Posey (Clint Walker) and Jefferson (Jim Brown) survive.

High Noon - Speaking of guy films, this high-water mark of the Western genre has everything a good Western should: an iconic good guy (Gary Cooper), a ferocious antagonist (Ian MacDonald) and a whole town up for grabs. Director Fred Zinnermann (From Here To Eternity) films the story in real-time, ratcheting the suspense up even further. Not for nothing, but it’s also probably got the coolest theme song of any Western ever made (shown in the fan video below). Bonus sick day activity: Count off the townspeople running from outlaw Frank Miller (MacDonald) on their big clay feet; come up with your own argument to give the sheriff’s wife (Grace Kelly) that yes, sometimes violence is the answer.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles – Especially topical this time of year, John Hughes’ masterwork tells the hilarious story of an uptight yuppie (Steve Martin, giving probably his best performance) and an uncouth shower curtain ring salesman (John Candy, definitely giving his) stuck with each other while trying to get home for Thanksgiving. The ending is amazingly touching without falling into hokum, a rare feat in most Hollywood films. Bonus sick day activity: Follow Del Griffith’s (Candy) suggestion and play pickup sticks with your butt cheeks; alternately, wash all your pillowcases.

Stripes - Ivan Reitman’s spoof of basic training and army operations works from such an episodic script you can basically watch the film in ten and fifteen minutes doses. Nevertheless, stars Bill Murray and Harold Ramis put in some sublime comic acting, bolstered by a wide ensemble cast including Candy, Judge Reinhold, Sean Young, Warren Oates and John Larroquette. Fans of the Canadian series SCTV should look for cameos by alumni Dave “Doug McKenzie” Thomas and Joe “Count Floyd” Flaherty. Bonus sick day activity: Teach yourself to march and drill the John Winger (Murray) way, by shouting songs at the top of your lungs while making goofy faces.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy – Probably best if you’re going to be laid up all weekend (or for several days, anyway) the monumental LOTR saga has everything you could want from a film series – adventure, intrigue, romance, a metric ton of action – while still remaining approachable and reasonably episodic. The plotlines start to drag a bit at times, and director Peter Jackson’s (King Kong) sense of restraint gets out from under him in the third chapter. Nevertheless, taken as a whole the trilogy delivers hours and hours of riveting viewing, especially the epic Battle of Helm’s Deep. Bonus sick day activity: Take a shot of Vitamin C every time Frodo (Elijah Wood) or Legolas (Orlando Bloom) stare at something in close-up. You’ll be up and moving around in no time.

Take it easy and we hope you feel better.

- Michael Kabel

(This article was orginally published November 3, 2009.)

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See This Movie: Zodiac

Reprising one of our best articles and singing the praises of an outstanding film.

Released in 2007 to warm but not rave critical reviews and a tepid box office reception, David Fincher’s Zodiac nevertheless represents probably the most precisely executed police procedural of the decade. It’s a haunting film not just about catching the bad guy or punishing evil but also a character-rooted, deeply emotional tale of crime and its human cost on both the victim and those who pursue the wrongdoer. That it’s meticulously based on a harrowing true series of events only makes its narrative and its broad ensemble of fine performances all the more resonant. For film noir fans, crime movie enthusiasts, or just those who enjoy good period pieces, it’s simply unmissable cinema.

Its true story is the stuff of legend. Beginning in 1968 and lasting through the Seventies, San Francisco and its surrounding environs were terrorized by a serial killer who typically preyed on couples alone in deserted areas, committing savage attacks that included elaborate costuming and hastily scrawled messages left at the scene. The killer, who called himself “The Zodiac” in postcards and letters mailed to local newspapers, taunted authorities with elaborate coded messages he defied experts to decipher. Though investigators from several police and sheriff’s departments spent years running down thousands of clues, ultimately his identity was never conclusively proven, passing into the realm of endless conjecture and debate. To this day confessions and leads continue to appear with steady, if frustrating, regularity.

Downey Jr., Gyllenhaal co-star as investigators Avery, Graysmith

Fincher’s film moves according to a delicately balanced tone, and in creating the Bay Area at the end of the 60s he emphasizes the dark edges of a region for whom the Summer of Love was already dead and gone. The marvelous set piece that opens the film moves at a deliberate pace that both establishes the terrible nature of Zodiac’s crimes and explains why the hunt for his capture would reach such desperate lengths in the months to come. This first attack, as with the later depictions, are not shown as sexy, stylized, or maudlin. They are swift and brutal, leaving the audience not scared or titillated but instead serve to provoke a moral response: repulsion, dismay, horror.

Yet the sequence is just prelude for the main segment of the narrative, which depicts the long and tortured investigation that suffered setback after maddening setback. When the Zodiac’s coded messages arrive at the San Francisco Chronicle, they attract the attention of star reporter Robert Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.) and cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal). Graysmith, a former Eagle Scout and amateur cryptographer, finds himself both fascinated and repelled by the Zodiac killings, while the self-destructive Avery at first sees only his next story.

Edwards, Ruffalo as Inspectors Armstrong, Toschi

Meanwhile Zodiac strikes again and again, including an unforgettable daylight attack on the shores of a tranquil lake in which he appears as a hooded executioner, binding and viciously stabbing a young couple. Weeks later, the murder of a San Francisco taxi driver is assigned to SFPD Inspectors David Tosci and William Armstrong (Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards, both excellent). The two are dedicated, intelligent, methodical – career men experienced in difficult cases but also principled and even somewhat idealistic. (Toschi was an inspiration for Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character and the visual model for Steve McQueen’s portrayal of Bullitt.) Together with police officials from neighboring areas (played with muted reserve by Elias Koteas, Donal Logue, and others), the two detectives slowly begin amassing a library of circumstantial evidence yet always come just short of discovering the one, case-breaking clue. Zodiac, it seems, was smart enough to strike in areas of overlapping or poorly defined police jurisdiction, so coordination and communication lags – the attacks occur just as the fax machine was becoming available – slow their respective efforts.

This is the Zodiac speaking: Lynch as suspect Arthur Leigh Allen

They come closest when interviewing refinery worker Arthur Leigh Allen, a lumbering hulk of a man who appears helpful but subtly taunts the inspectors by flaunting a Zodiac wristwatch and boots that match tread marks taken from an early attack. Actor John Carroll Lynch (Fargo, Waking The Dead) is brilliantly economical in depicting Leigh – whom the real-life Graysmith and detectives believe was Zodiac – as an unassuming but inwardly arrogant figure with just enough edginess to be the sociopathic murderer. “I’m not the Zodiac, and if I were I certainly wouldn’t tell you,” Leigh tells the detectives with glacial calm. A search of his squalid house trailer reveals nothing, compelling the inspectors away from the man they feel certain is the killer.

Ultimately, however, as budgets shrank and other crimes demanded attention the pursuit of the case fell on Graysmith’s shoulders alone, despite repeated discouragement from colleagues, his bosses at the Chronicle, Avery, and later his loving but frustrated wife (Chloe Sevigny). Graysmith wrote the two books that serve as the film’s inspiration, and Fincher narrows the camera time given to each investigator until only Graysmith remains, often chasing the most dubious of leads. A final set piece, set in the creaking basement of an informant’s house, twists the oldest of suspense tropes by using it as a visual metaphor for Graysmith’s obsessive search. Despite a ruined marriage, suffering career, and estranged children, his motivation is explained in the simplest terms. “I want to look him in the eyes, and I want to know,” Graysmith explains late in the film. It’s a sentiment extended by implication to all the investigators who bend or break procedure to help his search.

The Code Breakers: Downey, Jr., Gyllenhaal

James Vanderbilt’s script connects the various set pieces together with dialogue-driven scenes that establish the characters while serving to display the slow procession of time. A leap of several years is shown by the time-lapsed construction of the Transamerica Pyramid building, a San Francisco landmark. True to real events, characters drop out of the investigation, get reassigned, or meet with career setback or other difficulty. When at the end of the film Allen remains free, guilty in the minds of those consumed by his pursuit but not by any official court, the resolution feels oddly fitting given their lonely efforts.

I am Paul Avery: Downey, Jr.

In a movie about human frailty and cruelty, the actors have to carry the drama, and the marvel of Zodiac is not the superb cast itself but rather how many of them capably perform when cast diametrically against type. There’s no reason to think frequent indie and romantic comedy star Ruffalo would work as the man who inspired Steve McQueen’s most memorable role, yet Ruffalo owns the part. As noted above, Lynch is a revelation as the benignly terrifying Allen. Gyllenhaal reportedly struggled with his part during shooting, but the vulnerability he brings to Graysmith gives the viewer an emotional focal point. Finally, Downey, Jr. is pitch-perfect as the debauched, imploding Avery, evoking alternate but equal amounts of sympathy and frustration from the viewer. If you thought his performance as Iron Man’s Tony Stark was clever and multifaceted, he’s even better here.

There’s a sense throughout that Fincher guided his actors but did not control them, so that each naturalistic performance becomes a part of the greater whole. That understated approach, the discipline to get out of the film’s way, allows Zodiac to tell a sprawling, complex story without getting bogged down in “hey look at me” stylization. Like Quiz Show and Serpico, the story is allowed to speak for itself and make a deeper point than mere directorial style. In that way, it’s a film that leaves you thinking not just about the events presented – and they’ll stay in your mind for some time – but about the very potential of film itself to relate human events.

-Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: The Girl Who Played With Fire

Dull, formulaic import thriller now available on DVD and Blu-Ray.



There’s a long-standing pretension among American audiences, largely unsaid, that films imported from Europe possess an innate superiority to their homemade counterparts. Maybe that’s true, and The Girl Who Played With Fire is the exception that proves the rule. Far from art or even good crime cinema (the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive), it’s instead a particularly pungent rehashing of some pretty familiar genre clichés, piled high with unmitigated sexism and a cruel streak a mile wide. Densely plotted and manacled by leaden acting from its two blandly cryptic leads, it’s an only sometimes interesting stack of plot twists and turns, each one circling a story idea that’s never quite addressed in the time or space it deserves. It’s also seldom entertaining to watch, thanks to almost artless directing and strictly utilitarian production design that feels not quite real enough to carry off a realistic tone.

Picking up where The Girl With Dragon Tattoo left off, emotionally battered computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is living in the Caribbean, still attempting to come to grips with the horrific sexual abuse inflicted on her by her guardian Bjurman (Peter Andersson) as well as by violent events within a traumatic childhood. Returning to Sweden, she learns that a freelance journalist and his researcher girlfriend have been murdered, shortly after the journalist sold a series of articles exposing a sex trafficking ring with ties to the Swedish government.

Providing plot complications with only a minimum of contrivance, the journalist was working for Millennium, the magazine operated by Salander’s former confederate and lover Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist). Salander’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon, thanks to a visit she paid Bjurman upon her return. Of course the police suspect her, pursuing her with narrow-minded if myopic determination after Bjurman too is discovered dead. Meanwhile Salander’s kickboxing girlfriend (Yasmine Garbi) is kidnapped by towering white-haired brute Neidermann (Micke Spreitz), whom Salander has previously surveiled in Bjurman’s company. An attempted rescue by Salander’s boxing coach gets them both thrown into a barn that the brute lights on fire, though they escape with only moderate difficulty.

There’s an additional storyline regarding Salander’s search for the accurate progress reports Bjurman compiled on her mental condition, not the doctored statements she’d coerced him into sending to the Swedish government. Niedermann dispatches two bikers (themselves straight out of central casting) to intercept her. The meeting allows Salander the opportunity to fire a gun and apply a taser to one of the rape-happy biker’s testicles. As in many other scenes, Salander applies the violence without emotion other than a vague snarl, dispassionate in her vengeance to a degree that’s almost lifeless. It’s typical of the film’s attitudes that no one onscreen seems surprised or excited by anyone’s malevolence.

Ultimately, Salander follows the assorted crimes and sex trafficking ring to aged Soviet defector Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov) with whom she has a deep and troubled past; Zalachenko is her father, and the same man she set on fire after he sexually assaulted her mother. Now scarred and almost cartoonishly evil, after belittling her rape at Bjurman’s hands Zalachenko orders Niedermann to kill her. She’s shot several times and then buried alive, leading to a plot twist so incredible it snaps suspended disbelief: a small-framed girl, shot several times and bleeding, digs herself out of a grave after apparently spending several minutes underground, without suffocating. Such is the herculean strength of the film’s surly anti-heroine.

Swedish television director Daniel Alfredson adapts Larsson’s densely plotted novel with little sense of rising tension or mounting suspense, so that each scene plays out more or less at the same leaden pitch. Salander or Blomkvist brood about something, or get pissed off, with little growing feeling. With a 129 minute runtime, that flatline stretches to the horizon and back again. Screenwriter Jonas Frykberg’s adaptation of Larsson’s novel is so baldly episodic that at times the events possess a curious detachment from one another, with the third-act dovetailing that should propel the film towards its climax instead feeling only random and breathless. At its center stands Rapace, all wide eyes and focused yet shallow intensity, but she can’t manage to imbue complexity to Salander’s personality: because the script (and presumably its source novel) only defines her by her trauma, there’s little to work with by way of character building except rage and pain. Few real people are so uncomplicated, and rarer still are successful fictional characters so simplistic.

What the film lacks in structure and staging it wants to make up for with violence and spectacle; if only its dreary, disingenuous worldview allowed for anything other than shock and misanthropy. Heterosexual sex involves rape or bondage, or carries such superficial emotion as to be meaningless; Salander’s night with her girlfriend is a casual fling on the living room floor, presented not much differently than similar episodes encountered in porn. Niedermann suffers from a condition called congenital analgesia: he literally cannot feel pain, while Zalachenko’s scalp is a hideous swirl of contracture scars. They are fierce antagonists for Salander’s wounded determination, but their scenes together are shrill and void of emotion, especially towards the film’s climax, which collapses under its too-numerous similarities to a stock-grade slasher flick.

There’s a worthwhile, if not exactly refined, story buried under the bile that clutters The Girl Who Played With Fire. But the long atrocity exhibition presented within keeps that story tangled up in its fascination not with the causes or aftermath of inhumanity but rather by the spectacle of such acts taking place; the film positively wallows in violence, particularly sexual violence. Whatever failures and laziness debilitate American films, Hollywood at least doesn’t have a monopoly on the exploitation of barbarity or on the leering, voyeuristic depiction of the same.

- Michael Kabel

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