THE HIGHWAYMEN (US - 2019) Directed by John Lee Hancock. Written by John Fusco. Cast: Kevin Costner, Woody Harrelson, Kathy Bates, John Carroll Lynch, Thomas Mann, Kim Dickens, W. Earl Brown, William Sadler, David Furr, Joshua Caras, Dean Denton, Jason Davis, David Born, Brian F. Durkin, Jake Ethan Dashnaw, Emily Brobst, Edward Bossert. (R, 132 mins) Chronicling the notorious Depression-era Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow killing spree from the law enforcement side, the Netflix Original film THE HIGHWAYMEN centers on legendary retired Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (1884-1955), played by Denver Pyle in Arthur Penn's trailblazing 1967 classic BONNIE AND CLYDE. As great as that film is, it played a little fast and loose with the facts, most egregiously when it came to its depiction of Hamer, so much so that his widow filed a defamation of character lawsuit and won an out-of-court settlement in 1971. Hamer is presented as a bit of a buffoonish, walrus-mustached punchline in BONNIE AND CLYDE, particularly when he's captured and humiliated by the title duo. In truth, Hamer never saw Bonnie and Clyde in person until the moment he and his posse ambushed them on the side of a rural Louisiana country road and took them down in a hail of bullets. That's the Hamer portrayed here by Kevin Costner, who's introduced in 1934 barely tolerating a mostly forced retirement after the Texas Rangers were disbanded years earlier for their often lawless tactics. When Texas' "lady governor" Miriam "Ma" Ferguson (Kathy Bates) exhausts all other options for bringing Bonnie and Clyde down, she reluctantly agrees, at the suggestion of Marshal Lee Simmons (John Carroll Lynch), to make Hamer a special "highway agent" assigned to essentially hunt down and exterminate the pair.
Joining Hamer is his old partner Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson), now an unemployed drunk living in a foreclosed home with his daughter and grandson. Both men are haunted by the violence of their past and dealing with it in their own ways, and Hamer is hobbled by chronic pain from an estimated 16 bullets still remaining in his body from various skirmishes over the years. Their biggest obstacle in the pursuit is dealing with the movie star-like following that Bonnie and Clyde have with the general public, excited by their Robin Hood tactics of robbing banks at a time when everyone is in dire financial straits, but they seem to turn a blind eye to their brutality and the dead bodies left in their wake. It's even strongly suggested that one naive young deputy helping them (Thomas Mann), a childhood friend of the pair, may have even tipped them off about a plot to nab them at the home of Clyde's father (William Sadler).
Right down to its slightly overlong 132-minute length, THE HIGHWAYMEN has the leisurely feel and pace of a post-UNFORGIVEN Clint Eastwood film, which isn't surprising considering that director John Lee Hancock (THE BLIND SIDE) scripted two Eastwood works from that era (1993's A PERFECT WORLD, which starred Costner, and 1997's MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL). As written by John Fusco (YOUNG GUNS, YOUNG GUNS II, THUNDERHEART), THE HIGHWAYMEN has the comfortable, familiar feel of the kind of uncomplicated procedural that your dad would enjoy, and I mean that in a good way. Aside from setting the record straight on the distinguished career of Hamer and paying lip service to the idea of fawning over dubious celebrities (America's women make Bonnie an inadvertent fashionista by copying her clothing and hairstyle, while 20,000 people attended the pair's funerals, mourning them like heroes), THE HIGHWAYMEN is content with familiarity of well-worn cliches and character arcs, like Hamer's devoted wife (Kim Dickens) just wishing he'd stay home and paint the kitchen but acknowledging "I knew what you were when I married you," Hamer flagrantly disregarding Ma's "stay in Texas" orders and heading out of his jurisdiction, a haggard Gault seeing the pursuit of Bonnie and Clyde as the standard-issue One Last Shot at Redemption, and the usual banjos-and-fiddle soundtrack that's required by law for any crime drama set during the Great Depression or in Dust Bowl migrant towns. The most unexpected decision that Hancock and Fusco make is keeping the faces of the villains largely offscreen, with Clyde (Edward Bossert) seen fleetingly during speeding getaways and Bonnie (Emily Brobst) represented mostly by her dragging, injured left leg.
In some ways, Hamer and Gault almost feel like castoffs from THE WILD BUNCH, stuck in a modern era they don't quite understand and don't want to. Hamer has adapted better than Gault, who has no idea that the FBI can wiretap party lines, which becomes an amusing running gag throughout the film. Obviously, THE HIGHWAYMEN isn't on the level of BONNIE AND CLYDE, but it's reasonably entertaining and the stars are terrific together. It's easy to see Costner's Hamer as a morose, older version of his earnest, "Let's do some good!" Eliot Ness way back in 1987's THE UNTOUCHABLES, and looking past the actor's ill-fated hubris years that gave us WATERWORLD and THE POSTMAN, it's been a pleasure to watch him age into a top-notch character actor in his 60s, where he's carved himself a niche as the Robert Duvall of his generation.
IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT (US - 1991) Directed by Nico Mastorakis. Written by Nico Mastorakis and Fred C. Perry. Cast: Jeff Lester, Adrianne Sachs, Marc Singer, David Soul, Tippi Hedren, Brian Thompson, Shannon Tweed, John Beck, Jack Kehler, Shelley Michelle. (NC-17, 112 mins) If there's a genre of exploitation trash that's been woefully under-represented on DVD and Blu-ray, it has to be the straight-to-video, unrated erotic thrillers that were constantly gushing all over the new release walls of America's video stores throughout the first half of the 1990s. A couple of years ago, some of us hoped that Synapse's Blu-ray release of the 1995 Jim Wynorski-directed, Julie Strain-starring SORCERESS would herald the much-anticipated resurrection of these things, but it's been largely crickets and tumbleweed since. Shout! Factory recently released a POISON IVY box set, which is a start (even though the fourth one is a Lifetime movie, for fuck's sake), and Mill Creek has some Andy Sidaris joints on the way for the T&A action crowd, but where's the BODY CHEMISTRY, NIGHT EYES, INDECENT BEHAVIOR, SECRET GAMES, ANIMAL INSTINCTS, or MIRROR IMAGES collections? Where's the Shannon Tweed triple features? Where's the IN THE HEAT OF PASSION or SCORNED double feature Blu-rays? Fortunately, Vinegar Syndrome does their part to satiate the burning desires of those who were powerless to avoid the seductive early '90s temptations of any VHS box displaying the magic word--"UNRATED!"--with their Blu-ray release (because physical media is dead) of 1991's IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT, directed and co-written by Greek exploitation auteur Nico Mastorakis (more on him here).
Playing like a weird and utterly nonsensical fusion of a late '80s Italian fashion giallo and a prototype of the in-its-infancy DTV/Skinemax erotic thriller while somewhat prefiguring the "virtual reality" craze that would kick off with the next year's THE LAWNMOWER MAN, IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT centers on Scott Bruin (Jeff Lester), an in-demand Malibu fashion photographer with a glowing, fluorescent waterbed, who's suddenly plagued by horrific nightmares that look like garbled video transmissions, where he believes he's killing a beautiful woman he's never met. He even wakes up in the act of strangling his current friend-with-benefits, sultry model Lena (Shannon Tweed), who's shocked but still turned on ("Your hand was around my throat, I couldn't breathe! But I almost came..."). He gets nowhere with a shrink (David Soul), who simply advises "You need a good night's sleep," which is kinda hard with a bed that serves as a source of bright, blinding light. He also gets some jokey support from his fridge-raiding, bodybuilder best buddy Phil (Brian Thompson), and for some reason, clears his head by hanging out at the beach and having pizza with a homeless guy (Jack Kehler, best known as The Dude's dance quintet landlord in THE BIG LEBOWSKI). It's here that he sees a panicked, pony-tailed guy on a bike wearing a T-shirt adorned with the airbrushed image of the mystery woman's face. Scott does some digging and gets nowhere with Rudy (John Beck), the shop owner who made the shirt, but immediately after, the mystery woman arrives at his front door. She's Kimberly Shawn (Adrianne Sachs), who rides her motorcycle right into his living room and explains that Rudy knows her ex-husband, though she's very vague on the matter. Of course, Scott and Kimberly begin a passionate fling, but he's still haunted by visions of himself--or someone--killing her again and again.
Released straight-to-video in February 1991, IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT was among the first films to be slapped with an NC-17 rating, created the previous fall as a replacement to the stigmatized X and first given to Philip Kaufman's controversial HENRY & JUNE. There's plenty of skin, grinding, and high-in-the-sound-mix slurping in the film's sex scenes--not to mention a peculiar use for a dish of marbles--but what's here really didn't seem NC-17-worthy then and it definitely doesn't now (Mastorakis said the MPAA had a problem with the shots of Sachs' vigorous thrusting on top of Lester). The cuts had to be minimal since Republic Pictures Home Video released it in both NC-17 and R versions (the latter presumably for Blockbuster), and both clocked in at 112 minutes. Filled with plenty of neon set decor, acid-washed jeans, big hair, and wailing saxes--the tell-tale sign in these things that people are about to get busy--IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT is very much a product of the DTV erotic thriller in its early stages, but it has a more ambitious storyline than its fellow genre standard-bearers like NIGHT EYES, LAST CALL, and the later flood of post-BASIC INSTINCT knockoffs that were down the road.
Ambitious though it may be, that storyline doesn't really make much sense, especially when a sinister, smirking Marc Singer shows up in the third act for the dual function as the film's villain--the kind of guy who has an ominous wall of TV monitors in his living room--and dutiful Basil Exposition, giving a long, lecturing speech about Scott being the unwitting guinea pig in a government-contracted experiment using TV signals sent through an implant in a tooth as a means of mind control. You'd think with all the money invested in this project, they'd use this technology in a financial or even a MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE or PARALLAX VIEW way rather than just voyeuristically watching some douchebag fashion photographer bang models on his ridiculous glowing waterbed. Mastorakis specifically namechecks Brian De Palma and one could see this as sort of sci-fi-tinged BODY DOUBLE, and the stylishly foggy, blue backlit climax serves to demonstrate Mastorakis' affection for the work of Michael Mann, and to his credit, he does seem to recognize the campy elements, with some outrageously suggestive use of finger food during Scott and Kimberly's dinner, along with an overflowing bottle of uncorked champagne, stopping ust short of cutting to a shot of a speeding train entering a tunnel. Mastorakis would also have us believe that Kimberly's laserdisc movie library consists of two Nico Mastorakis films (THE WIND and GLITCH) and he also has a brief role for one-time Hitchcock muse Tippi Hedren as Kimberly's mother, complete with a shoehorned-in reference to THE BIRDS. The film gets points for its terrific B-movie supporting cast (Tweed is very charming here and you'll wish she had more screen time), but is severely deficient when it comes to the leads. Sachs (best known as the brunette hooker in the "Bitches leave!" scene in ROBOCOP) is gorgeously seductive, but she can't act, and Lester (whose most high-profile role prior to this was as one of Bo Svenson's deputies on the short-lived 1981 TV spinoff of WALKING TALL) is like a bland, blank Michael Dudikoff. Both would be out of the acting business within the next two years, though Lester embarked on a second career directing TV commercials and music videos, and has been married to Susan Anton since 1992. IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT isn't a great movie, but it's at least unusual for its type, and it was fun experiencing its rampant silliness again after all these years. Let's get some more of these things out on Blu-ray!
Directed by Peter Maris. Written by Craig Land. Cast: Deborah Rennard, Garrick Dowhen, Daniel Radell, Frank Garret, Akut Duz, Richard Allen, Bruno Chambon. (Unrated, 87 mins) We're really diving into the deep cuts of the '80s post-nuke craze if LAND OF DOOM and ROBOT HOLOCAUST have made it to Blu-ray, both courtesy of Scorpion (because physical media is dead). LAND OF DOOM was directed by Peter Maris, who had a somewhat prolific run as a C-list action guy in the late '80s into the early '90s, with video store staples like TERROR SQUAD, VIPER, and DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY. An American production shot in the Cappadocia region of Turkey, LAND OF DOOM gets some mileage out of the location work that lends some effective atmosphere, and it looks like it might've been filmed in some of the same spots as YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE. Otherwise, it's really just a Nick Nicholson or Henry Strzalkowski away from being a Cirio H. Santiago joint of the period, with the nominal "big" name being Deborah Rennard, then in the middle of a decade-long run as J.R. Ewing's secretary on DALLAS. Rennard, who would go on to be married to CRASH writer/director Paul Haggis from 1997 to 2015, stars as Harmony, a Mad Maxine-type badass fighting to survive in a desolate, dangerous, polluted wasteland ruled by the Raiders, a marauding, plague-infected band of goons led by burn-scarred Slater (Daniel Radell), a bellowing villain who looks like Ric Flair auditioning for Manowar. The fiercely-independent Harmony reluctantly hits the road with Anderson (Garrick Dowhen), who's on the run from the Raiders since he's the one who scarred Slater, and, seemingly immune to the plague, they head in the direction of a reported "safe zone" called Blue Lake.
That's pretty much it for the plot, which is largely an excuse for tons of explosions and a parade of subhuman bad guys, each one more repugnant than the last, including a French-accented creep (Bruno Chambon) who tries to rape Harmony before almost feeding them human flesh, as well as Demister (Radell, in a pointless dual role), a cackling Slater flunky who also attempts to rape Harmony and promptly gets his head bashed in for his trouble. The only other likable character is Orland (Akut Duz), an eccentric guy with a bicycle and a pack of friendly dogs who shows up in third act and helps Harmony and Anderson take on Slater in a climax that introduces some robed, chattering dwarves and has a score that sounds like it's on loan from a SCARECROW AND MRS. KING chase scene. Boasting the most cumbersomely-designed motorcycles in all of post-nuke, LAND OF DOOM is by no means an essential entry in the subgenre and is largely for die-hard completists only, though it certainly could've benefited from having some known B-movie people in support of Rennard instead of never-weres like Dowhen and Radell. It is interesting to note that both of the secretaries of DALLAS' Ewing brothers--Rennard as J.R.'s and Deborah Tranelli as Bobby's--went halfway around the world at roughly the same time for starring roles in low-budget exploitation grinders, with Tranelli headlining Cirio H. Santiago's Filipino-shot vigilante scuzzfest NAKED VENGEANCE.
ROBOT HOLOCAUST (US - 1987) Written and directed by Tim Kincaid. Cast: Norris Culf, Nadine Hart, Joel Von Ornsteiner, Jennifer Delora, Andrew Howarth, Angelika Jager, Michael Downend, Rick Gianisi, George Gray, Nicholas Reiner, Michael Azzolina, John Blaylock, Amy Brentano. (Unrated, 79 mins)
Terrible in an endearing way, the micro-budget post-nuke ROBOT HOLOCAUST makes effective use of basically two locations--the abandoned Brooklyn Navy Yard and some dirt trails on Roosevelt Island--with some cheap Ed French creature effects and sub-porn-level acting. That's oddly appropriate considering that writer/directer Tim Kincaid is better known as gay porn auteur "Joe Gage." As Gage (and "Mac Larson"), Kincaid has been an influential figure in gay porn since the late '70s, but for a few years in the mid-to-late '80s, he gave D-list, straight-to-video horror movies a shot with BREEDERS, MUTANT HUNT, and ROBOT HOLOCAUST, all three ghost-produced by Empire Pictures, apparently using some loose change from the cup holders in Charles Band's car. ROBOT HOLOCAUST looks surprisingly good on Scorpion's new Blu-ray and is even framed at 1:85:1 despite its 1.33:1 home video roots, and if nothing else, Kincaid's intentions seem earnest. Set in an post-apocalyptic NYC now known as "New Terra," the film deals with the after-effects of a robot uprising at the command of The Dark One, who now controls the atmosphere and enslaves humanity in a plot element that sounds suspiciously Cohaagen-esque for any TOTAL RECALL fans. Scientist Jorn (Michael Downend) creates a device that blocks out The Dark One's atmosphere control and is quickly taken prisoner by The Dark One's chief enforcer, a tentacle/Davy Jones-mouthed robot named Torque (Rick Gianisi). Jorn's daughter Deeja (Nadine Hart) assembles a motley crew to venture into the wasteland--South Point Park on Roosevelt Island--with nomadic warrior Neo (Norris Culf) and his robot sidekick Klyton (Joel Von Ornsteiner) on loan from the Rebel Society to lead the group and reclaim control of The Power Station, the stronghold of The Dark One.
Angelika Jager as Valaria. Somehow, Olympia Dukakis
took home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year.
Skewered on MST3K all the way back in the show's first season in 1990, ROBOT HOLOCAUST is all kinds of awful but there's an infectiously goofy DIY quality to a lot of it, whether it's the rampant continuity errors, the iconic NYC skyline still intact and seemingly unaffected by the robot uprising, and the terrible performances from everyone, none more so than German actress Angelika Jager, who's astoundingly bad as Valaria, The Dark One's femme fatale second-in-command who keeps her job despite fucking everything up. God love her, Jager is beautiful and enthusiastic, but she makes everyone else in the cast look like Actors Studio alumni. Of course, it doesn't help that her grasp of English seems tenuous at best, but the ridiculous dialogue doesn't do her any favors ("Torque! Take him to the Room of Questions!"). Jager, Culf, Hart and several others were out of movies after ROBOT HOLOCAUST, but among the supporting players, Gianisi went on to star in Kincaid's MUTANT HUNT and later earned his place in cult movie history with the title role in Troma's SGT. KABUKIMAN NYPD. The biggest surprise career path for the ROBOT HOLOCAUST cast has to be Von Ornsteiner, now known as "J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner," or "Dr. Buzz," a forensic psychologist who hosts the reality show COPYCAT KILLERS and is a semi-regular talking head when murder cases dominate the cable news cycle. Buried in the closing credits with the art department was Gary Winick, who would later direct popular '00s chick flicks like 13 GOING ON 30 and BRIDE WARS. Kincaid went as far into mainstream circles as helming Vestron's barely-released 1989 Carrie Fisher comedy SHE'S BACK before a decade-long filmmaking sabbatical, after which he returned to his "Joe Gage" roots, where he's been busy since, his most recent credit being JOE GAGE SEX FILES VOL. 23: JACK'S NEW JOB.
THE DIRT (US - 2019) Directed by Jeff Tremaine. Written by Rich Wilkes and Amanda Adelson. Cast: Douglas Booth, Iwan Rheon, Colson Baker, Daniel Webber, David Costabile, Pete Davidson, Levin Rambin, Kathryn Morris, Rebekah Graf, Max Milner, Joe Chrest, Tony Cavalero, Christian Gehring, Elena Evangelo, Kamryn Ragsdale, Anthony Vincent Valbiro. (Unrated, 107 mins) In various stages of development for over a decade, the Netflix adaptation of Motley Crue's 2001 tell-all The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band still can't help but feel a little like BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY II: THE CRUE. One can imagine this becoming a burgeoning subgenre with any major, influential figure or band (there's already an Elton John biopic on the way with Taron Egerton), and like the extremely popular Queen/Freddie Mercury chronicle, THE DIRT glosses over details and fudges some facts. It also omits some of the more vile, salacious, X-rated material while still managing to leave in a visual presentation of drummer Tommy Lee's cunnilingual ability to bring a woman to a geyser-like orgasm in a room full of people. Approved and co-produced by the band, THE DIRT doesn't shy away from showing them at their worst, from letting fame go to their heads, sleeping with each others' girlfriends, vehicular manslaughter, and the deepest pits of smack addiction. It also shows them as human beings with plenty of baggage, from bassist/leader Nikki Sixx's horrible childhood to guitarist Mick Mars' quiet battle with a degenerative bone disease to frontman Vince Neil losing his four-year-old daughter Skylar to cancer. The bit with the phone? Yeah, that got lost in the transition from page to screen.
THE DIRT kicks off at the dawn of the 1980s on L.A.'s famed Sunset Strip, as bassist Sixx (British actor Douglas Booth of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES and THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM) looks to start a new band after the implosion of his last one, Strip fixture London. He's approached by London superfan and amiable goofball Lee (Colson Baker, aka rapper Machine Gun Kelly) and they decide to start a band and begin auditioning guitar players. Enter the jaded, cynical Mars (GAME OF THRONES' Iwan Rheon), who's several years older and with a rare disease that will slowly affect his spine and bones over time. He feels that the clock is ticking and only wants to be in a serious band, and even he's won over when Lee introduces them to Neil (Australian actor Daniel Webber, who played Lee Harvey Oswald on the Hulu miniseries 11.22.63), a buddy from high school who's currently in a cover band called Rock Candy. The magic happens almost immediately when Sixx writes "Live Wire," and after settling on Mars' suggested name (rejected ones included Sixx's "XMass" and Lee's "The Fourskins," so-called because "we fuck the audience in the face every night!"), Motley Crue quickly become the hottest band on the Strip. They're courted and signed by Elektra A&R guy Tom Zutaut (Pete Davidson) and managed by the legendary Doc McGhee (David Costabile), but it's not long before it's all about the groupies, the booze, and every debauched indulgence imaginable (cue Neil screwing Zutaut's girlfriend, Sixx snorting coke out of Lee's girlfriend's ass crack). With the release of the debut album, they land the opening spot on an Ozzy Osbourne tour, and they're warned by Ozzy (Tony Cavalero, doing what's basically an SNL impression) to control themselves and their excesses as he himself snorts a line of live ants and laps up his own piss.
All of the well-known Crue highs and lows are here to a point: a drunk Neil behind the wheel of a car crash that takes the life of passenger and Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle Dingley (Max Milner); Lee's romance and wedding to TV star Heather Locklear (Rebekah Graf); Sixx's worsening heroin addiction where he actually flatlines in the ambulance before being brought back to life; a newly-sober Crue's 1989 Dr. Feelgood triumph followed by Neil's acrimonious departure two years later, during which time his daughter is diagnosed with stomach cancer while the band carries on with new singer John Corabi (Anthony Vincent Valbiro), playing half-filled venues before Elektra eventually drops them; and their inevitable reunion with the caption "The band played for another 20 years" that demonstrates a brusqueness usually reserved for Poochie dying on the way back to his home planet. Yeah, "another 20 years," give or take. Lee's one-album departure and replacement by ex-Ozzy drummer Randy Castillo is never mentioned, nor is (thankfully) his ludicrous side project Methods of Mayhem. Likewise, Lee's marriage to and much-publicized sex tape with Pamela Anderson never comes up, nor does any mention of domestic violence or the time Lee spent in jail because of it.
Taken on its own terms for the somewhat fictionalized '80s nostalgia that it is, THE DIRT is entertaining, never dull, and the four leads do some convincing cosplay (particularly Baker as Lee), though it never goes beyond the superficial and in one case, is utterly cringe-worthy (as Sixx, Booth is actually required to say the line "I fell in love...her name was Heroin"). Each band member (and McGhee and Zutaut) get their turns narrating, with sometimes amusing results, whether it's Zutaut's "Don't leave your girlfriend alone with Motley Crue, because they will fuck her," or Mars breaking the fourth wall with "What you just saw...that never happened" and Sixx introducing a nameless character who literally fades from the screen with the explanation "We cut him from this movie." Like any biopic there's some degree of whitewashing and selective revisionist history, but for the most part, THE DIRT is basically a re-enactment of a BEHIND THE MUSIC episode mixed with JACKASS-like antics (like running through hotels naked and setting Mars' room on fire while he's sleeping), not surprising given that director Jeff Tremaine's resume includes co-creating JACKASS and directing the three JACKASS movies and the JACKASS spinoff BAD GRANDPA. At any rate, any 2019 depiction of the halcyon days of the early '80s Sunset Strip that manages to namecheck Y&T deserves some points for cred.
DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE (US/Canada/UK - 2019) Written and directed by S. Craig Zahler. Cast: Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn, Tory Kittles, Don Johnson, Thomas Kretschmann, Michael Jai White, Jennifer Carpenter, Laurie Holden, Fred Melamed, Udo Kier, Tattiawna Jones, Justine Warrington, Jordyn Ashley Olson, Myles Truitt, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Noel G, Primo Allon, Matthew Maccaull, Richard Newman, Liannet Borrego. (R, 158 mins) "I'm a month away from my 60th. I'm still the same rank I was at 27. I don't politic and I don't change with the times and it turns out that shit's more important than good honest work." With his 2015 cannibal horror/western BONE TOMAHAWK and his 2017 grindhouse B-movie prison face-smasher BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99, musician and author-turned-filmmaker S. Craig Zahler established himself as a bold new voice in cult cinema (presumably as a goof, he also scripted 2018's PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH). Can one appropriately follow up a film where Vince Vaughn tears a car to pieces with his bare hands? Well, the gritty and amazingly-titled cop thriller DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE is Zahler's most ambitious provocation yet, weaving complex characterizations, multiple storylines, bursts of truly shocking violence and splatter and several startling plot turns into a compelling crime saga that runs a sprawling 158 minutes. Zahler's cache in genre circles hasn't come without controversy, with detractors hurling accusations of racism and branding his films as right-wing fodder for the Trump crowd. Cop, and by association, vigilante movies, have been labeled fascist fantasies for decades, going back decades to Clint Eastwood in DIRTY HARRY, Gene Hackman in THE FRENCH CONNECTION, and Charles Bronson in DEATH WISH. Zahler's characters do and say despicable things I don't see him defending or excusing their actions. Understanding the mindset of a political viewpoint doesn't necessarily mean tacit endorsement or justification. Perhaps it complicates things by showing that these characters have a human side and might be doing very wrong things for what they perceive to be right reasons, but Zahler isn't being overtly political here. It's more likely a sign of the times and the cultural environment where the younger generation of film critics have focused less on writing about the films and more about "hot takes," expressing themselves, airing their own grievances, looking for things to be offended by, and making a huge production out of how woke they are. That's really no way to watch movies, people.
He's obviously aware of the criticisms of his work, and even before watching DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE, one has to marvel at how well Zahler has his trolling game down: how much sheer chutzpah and raw balls does it take to make a movie about corrupt, racist cops in 2019 and cast Mel Gibson in the leading role? Few things piss off woke pop culture publications more than Gibson finding gainful employment, and his presence here can be seen as a test of separating the art from the artist or at least exposing the film's pre-release detractors for doing exactly what they're doing: passive-aggressively rehashing and reviewing Gibson's past transgressions instead of reviewing the movie. Gibson has lost none of his power to command the screen, turning in his best work in years as Detective Brett Ridgeman, a veteran cop in Bulwark, a fictional, good-sized lower-to-middle class city that's seen better days. Partnered with the younger Anthony Lurasetti (Hollywood conservative Vaughn, in his second Zahler film), Ridgeman is hardened, cynical, embittered, and a ticking time bomb. He does his job and refuses to play nice, and while his and Lurasetti's arrest records are exemplary ("Two wings of the penitentiary are filled with our collars...maybe three"), they're suspended for six weeks without pay when someone records Ridgeman using excessive force during an arrest, dragging a suspect (Noel G) out of the window on a fire escape and forcefully pressing his boot down on his head. The cell phone footage makes the local news, and while Ridgeman blames it on a society gone soft (sounding like a Fox News host when he barks "We get suspended because it wasn't done politely...the entertainment industry, formerly known as the news, needs villains" like a talking point), his former partner and current boss Lt. Calvert (Don Johnson) uses the opportunity to remind him "There's a reason I'm behind this desk running things and you're still out there on the streets."
Neither Ridgeman nor Lurasetti are in positions to go six weeks without pay. Lurasetti is about to splurge on an engagement ring for his girlfriend Denise (Tattiawna Jones), and Ridgeman is feeling pressure from multiple directions. His wife Melanie (Laurie Holden) is a former cop who was forced into early retirement when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and with the reduced income, they had to move to a crummy neighborhood where their teenage daughter Sara (Jordyn Ashley Olson) is regularly menaced by a group of black kids ("I was never a racist until we lived in this neighborhood," Melanie laments). Pissed that he's got over 30 years on the force with nothing to show for it and refusing to take a temporary security gig, Ridgeman calls in a favor from posh clothier and connected criminal Friedrich (Udo Kier), who tells him about a vaguely-defined job being orchestrated by associate Lorentz Vogelman (Thomas Kretschmann). With a reluctant Lurasetti onboard ("This is bad...like lasagna in a can"), the pair stake out Vogelman's apartment building for several days before piecing together some semblance of what he might be up to. Meanwhile, in a parallel storyline, just-paroled ex-con Henry Johns (Tory Kittles) arrives home to find his junkie mother (Vanessa Bell Calloway) working as a prostitute. Forced to grow up early after his closeted gay father abandoned the family ("Pops is a yesterday who ain't worth words") and wanting a better life for his mother and his wheelchair-bound little brother (Myles Truitt), Henry teams up with old buddy Biscuit (Michael Jai White), who gets wind of a job offer for a getaway driver.
Despite its gargantuan length, DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE is never dull and never crosses the line into self-indulgence. Like BONE TOMAHAWK and BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99, it unfolds like a novel, drawing you in and letting the story and the characters breathe and take form and find their voice at its own leisurely pace. It's a good 100 or more minutes before all the plot lines converge (Jennifer Carpenter also figures in with a small but pivotal role as a nervous first-time mom having severe separation anxiety on her first day back to work after having a baby three months earlier), and Zahler is in no rush to get anywhere. Its twists, turns, and detours recall JACKIE BROWN-era Quentin Tarantino, and while Zahler may lack QT's signature pop culture, "Royale with cheese" pizazz, the novelist in him has a way with words that is uniquely his own and fits perfectly with the bleak, abrasive, nihilistic vision of DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE's world. Zahler stops short of rooting for Ridgeman and Lurasetti, but he manages to humanize them in the antihero cop tradition of DIRTY HARRY's Harry Callahan and THE FRENCH CONNECTION's Popeye Doyle (speaking of Doyle, there's a character who would never fly in woke 2019). DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE is an equal opportunity offender, whether Ridgeman and Lurasetti are pretending they can't understand a hearing-impaired female perp speaking clear English (Lurasetti: "Sounds like a dolphin voice") or one of Vogelman's goons needing to cut open a corpse (it's a long story) and being reminded "Careful you don't open the liver...it's the worst smell in the world, especially with a black guy," or the numerous bits of overt homophobia. DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE takes place in an ugly and dangerous world filled with ugly and dangerous people. Though it has its share of humor (watch Gibson's seething slow burn on the stakeout as Ridgeman clocks Lurasetti--it's also a vintage Vaughn moment--at 98 minutes to finish an egg salad sandwich, finally snapping "A single red ant could've eaten it faster"), it's a furious, ferocious, and fearlessly uncompromising gut punch of a film that isn't pretty, doesn't play nice, and isn't easily shaken.
US (US - 2019) Written and directed by Jordan Peele. Cast: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon, Madison Curry, Ashley McKoy, Alan Frazier. (R, 116 mins) 2017's GET OUT came along at the perfect moment in time to serve as zeitgeist-capturing, sociopolitical snapshot of American culture. It also earned a Best Screenplay Oscar for writer/director Jordan Peele, then best known for the sketch comedy stylings of KEY & PEELE and on nobody's radar to be named the next major player in the horror genre. But with GET OUT, Peele found his true calling and horror the most effective way to explore his concerns, and US, his follow-up effort, is even more conceptually ambitious if at times muddled in execution. Even before a late-film split-diopter shot, I was continually reminded of Brian De Palma while watching US--not because of its subject or its style, but in its methodical and precise construction. Every shot, every plot detail, and every visual element is there for a reason, so much so that it'll take multiple viewings to pick up everything. Peele is making much grander thematic overtures with US compared to GET OUT, and it gets away from him a bit in the home stretch in a way that shows his intentions are clear in his own head but they're maybe too unwieldy to communicate in the most succinct fashion. To that end, US is a film that works terrifically as a visceral horror experience, and its greater concerns give it some timely resonance and much for an attentive and engaged audience to discuss and debate when it's over.
In a bygone era of exploitation hucksterism, this could've easily been called THE STRANGERS 3, but the home invasion angle played up in the trailer and TV spots constitutes a surprisingly little amount of screen time. In an extended prologue set in 1986, a young girl (Madison Curry) is with her bickering parents at an amusement park on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. She wanders off into a funhouse with a hall of mirrors and encounters her exact double. Cut to the present day and the girl has grown up to be Adelaide Wilson (12 YEARS A SLAVE Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o), married to Gabe (Winston Duke), and with two children: teenager Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and young son Jason (Even Alex). Still quietly traumatized by the 1986 funhouse incident though she's never told Gabe about it, Adelaide can barely hide her discomfort at the idea of spending a family vacation in Santa Cruz with everyone insisting they go to that very beach on the boardwalk. A very brief Jason disappearance when he wanders away to use a restroom is enough for a frazzled Adelaide to insist they go home, but that plan is put on the backburner with the sudden appearance of a family dressed in red jumpsuits appearing in the driveway of their beach house. This mystery family eventually gets into the house and are revealed to be haggard and almost feral doppelgangers of the Wilsons, all armed with large scissors and wearing one leather driving glove on their right hand: kids Umbrae (Zora) and Pluto (Jason), dad Abraham (Gabe) and mom Red (Adelaide), who speaks in a gasping, guttural wheeze and is the only one with any verbal communication skills. "It's us," Jason says. "We're Americans," Red replies.
That line from Red is a little too on-the-nose and on the heavy-handed side as far as being a somewhat cloddish harbinger of where Peele is about to take things. The home invasion soon leads to a subsequent escape and the film is only about 1/3 over as Peele steers things into a number of unexpected directions that won't be revealed here. It's probably no accident that Peele is hosting the upcoming CBS All Access reboot of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, as much of US plays like a feature-length episode of that very show. But there's a lot--maybe too much, even--to chew on here, not only with Peele wearing his influences on his sleeve, but with insightful, razor-sharp commentary on income inequality, the American underclass, and the good fortune to be blessed with health, success, and taking for granted the ability to attain the American Dream. The Wilsons don't appear to be rich, but they're very comfortable, though Gabe buys a cheap secondhand boat and is clearly a little jealous that it's not as nice as the one that his buddy Josh (Tim Heidecker) and his wife Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) have. The doppelgangers and the hall of mirrors are just the beginning when it comes to the recurring examples of duality (even the film's title can be read in two different ways), and it's likely the only film you'll ever see where the 1986 "Hands Across America" event takes on a completely sinister new incarnation. Peele is juggling a lot of ideas here and he can be forgiven if he doesn't quite follow through on all of them. There's a laborious exposition dump that slows down the third act and frankly, doesn't really hold up under any serious scrutiny (though I guess it doesn't really have to), and most people will see the final twist coming long before it occurs, but the film succeeds in establishing and maintaining a profound sense of unease and menace throughout and the performances by the cast, most of whom are required to play two distinctly different characters, are excellent across the board. That's particularly true of Nyong'o, who not only fashions Adelaide as a furious protector of her family but also creates a memorably terrifying figure in Red. With all its serious, heady ideas and effective jump scares (Peele is great at using every bit of the frame), US is also very funny at times, both with its snappy dialogue and a few inspired gags (like one character telling an Alexa knockoff called "Ophelia" to "call the police" only to have it play N.W.A.'s "Fuck tha Police" instead). You'll also never be able to hear The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" the same way again.
CAPTIVE STATE (US - 2019) Directed by Rupert Wyatt. Written by Erica Beeney and Rupert Wyatt. Cast: John Goodman, Ashton Sanders, Vera Farmiga, Jonathan Majors, Kevin Dunn, James Ransone, Alan Ruck, Kevin J. O'Connor, Colson Baker, Madeline Brewer, Ben Daniels, D.B. Sweeney, Caitlin Ewald, KiKi Layne, Lawrence Grimm, Guy Van Swearingen, Rene Moreno, Michael Collins, Marc Grapey. (PG-13, 109 mins) Sometimes, flawed films that don't quite knock it out of the park end up being more interesting and more worthy of study than those we deem "great." CAPTIVE STATE is the kind of film that--let's just be honest here--is gonna tank in theaters. It's gonna tank hard. It's not what the ads make it look like, it's messy, it's a little disorienting in the way it throws out a lot of exposition in the early going, and it bites off a lot more than it can chew. But there's something here--it's politically and sociologically-loaded with historical metaphors, and takes a unique approach to its subject matter that almost guarantee it'll be the kind of film that has a serious cult following before it even leaves multiplexes in, well, probably a week. Shot two years ago, CAPTIVE STATE's release date was shuffled around multiple times--originally due out in summer 2018--as distributor Focus Features clearly had no idea what to do with it (I mean, what is that poster selling? The other one isn't any better). As a result, they're taking the easiest route possible and pushing it as a rote, run-of-the-mill alien invasion sci-fi actioner like it's another SKYLINE, and that does it a major disservice. Given the state of distribution today, it's a small victory that something like this even got made at all, let alone dumped on 2500 screens to certain doom. It's directed and co-written by Rupert Wyatt, best known for 2011's terrific RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. He directed 2014's THE GAMBLER in the interim, and while it looks like he had to make a few compromises, one can sense that CAPTIVE STATE is a pet project and something he's been ruminating on for quite some time.
In a prologue set in 2019, Earth is the target of an alien invasion. All of the world's major cities are seized by what are initially termed "roaches," alien beings of fluctuating, shape-shifting structure with a porcupine-like exterior. A cop and his wife are killed trying to flee Chicago, making orphans of their two young sons Rafael and Gabriel. Cut to a decade later, and the world remains under control of the "roaches," now known as their preferred title, "The Legislators." All of the governments of the planet acquiesced and ceded control to The Legislators. Everyone is tracked via implant, their actions monitored. Crime has gone down and jobs have increased. Income inequality is greater than ever--the rich have never been richer and the living conditions of the poor are atrocious. Criminals and non-conformists are taken "off-planet," and forced into slave labor, never given any thought by a population that, overall, has it pretty good since the takeover. The Legislators have stuck around and remain underground in major cities beneath "Closed Zones" off limits to humans without special access, usually limited to high-ranking government or police officials who are periodically summoned by The Legislators to receive their marching orders.
Gabriel (Ashton Sanders of MOONLIGHT) lives in the slums of Pilsen and scrapes by working in a factory downloading and cataloging the SIM cards of confiscated cell phones and mobile devices for inspection by The Legislators. He lives in the shadow cast by his big brother Rafael, a legendary resistance leader who was killed a few years earlier when he helped orchestrate a failed uprising that resulted in the complete destruction of Wicker Park at the hands of the outraged Legislators. There's a new insurgent group calling themselves Phoenix, and Chicago cop William Mulligan (John Goodman, in his second teaming with Wyatt after THE GAMBLER) is convinced they're about to strike and further incur the wrath of their extraterrestrial rulers, who have established a near-totalitarian society but remain generally hands-off as long as the ostensible leaders do what they're told and the population behaves itself. He's also watchful of Gabriel, whose father was his old partner back in the day. Sensing that Gabriel has something to do with Phoenix, he monitors his activities and finds out shortly after Gabriel does that Rafael (Jonathan Majors) is alive in the ruins of Wicker Park, having successfully faked his death, removed his tracking device and gone completely off the grid to regroup and lead another revolt to take back the planet. There's a planned 10th anniversary "Unity Rally" celebration for The Legislators at Soldier Field, and Rafael and the members of Phoenix plot an elaborate infiltration of the event that could mean the end of Chicago--and other cities if The Legislators are angry enough--if they fail.
Wyatt and his wife/co-writer Erica Beeney (THE BATTLE OF SHAKER HEIGHTS) aren't really interested in a standard-issue alien invasion chronicle. We've seen INDEPENDENCE DAY and a hundred other movies of that sort, so they take it from a different angle, instead focusing on the insurgency and the dogged attempts of the weary Mulligan--who has conflicts of interest, to put it mildly--to stop it. The best stretch of CAPTIVE STATE is the riveting middle, which deals with Phoenix's planning and executing the Soldier Field "Unity Rally" plot. It's got an almost MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE quality to it, but taken as a whole, the entire film feels like DISTRICT 9 if written by John Le Carre. This is an alien invasion story told in the style of classic nuts-and-bolts espionage. Phoenix uses the personals of the newspaper to communicate to its members; a radio DJ relays coded messages over the air; resistance members have clandestine conversations on still-functioning pay phones; walls barricading Chicago neighborhoods from Closed Zones have a very distinct Cold War-era Berlin look to them; debriefing rooms at the Legislator compounds are filled with interpreters on headsets and look like the drab, chilly offices of the spymasters in TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY; and Goodman even gets to monitor some activities in what looks like a low-tech version of a Bourne crisis suite. There's other, more contemporary jabs at the world's uncomfortable willingness to cave to autocratic rule without question, and the Chicago P.D. engaging in what looks very similar to all manner of "enhanced interrogation" in the style of Gitmo.
Propelled by a killer electronic score by Rob Simonsen, CAPTIVE STATE balances a large number of characters and their locations and unfolds like a compelling page-turner of a novel. It's admirable in its ambition, but yeah, it's not perfect. It doesn't handle Vera Farmiga's character very well, barely utilizing her in what seems to be a nothing role, virtually guaranteeing to the seasoned moviegoer that she'll be the center of any any third act "surprise." And what is intended as a twist ending doesn't play out as well as Wyatt planned, with a reveal that ends up feeling like an unsatisfying deus ex machina that might negate much of what came before. It may not follow through 100%, and it wouldn't be incorrect to say that it collapses when it matters most, but there's a lot of good stuff here that's smart, densely-plotted, thoughtfully-constructed, politically-charged with historical and literary inspiration (Gabriel's oppressive workplace is positively Kafka-esque). You can nit-pick why so many pay phones still exist in 2029 or why The Legislators still allow newspapers, but goddamn, this thing aims for the fences and goes for broke, and there's something to be said for that. It succeeds a lot more often that it fails, and in an era of endless sequels, franchises, remakes, reboots, and soulless, assembly-line, focus-grouped product, something this brazenly original and ambitious deserves to be recognized even if, in the big picture with all things considered, it maybe only rates a "B" instead of an "A+." Shortcomings and stumbles be damned, if a fervent cult following forms around CAPTIVE STATE, count me in.
Based on the acclaimed 1989 novel by Martin Amis, LONDON FIELDS' arduous journey to the screen has already taken its rightful place among cinema's most calamitous dumpster fires, while also confirming every suspicion that the book was unfilmable. David Cronenberg was originally attached to direct all the way back in 2001 before things fell apart in pre-production, with Michael Winterbottom (24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE) and David Mackenzie (HELL OR HIGH WATER) also in the mix over the next several years. It wasn't until 2013 that filming actually commenced, with music video vet Mathew Cullen at the helm, making his feature directing debut, from a script initially written by Amis (his first screenplay since 1980's SATURN 3) and reworked by Roberta Hanley (VERONIKA DECIDES TO DIE). After a private press screening at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival, where the film was acquired by Lionsgate, the planned public festival screening was abruptly canceled due to various lawsuits being filed amidst a very public spat between Cullen and the producers. These included: several of the producers suing Cullen after he missed two deadlines for turning in the finished film and they found out he was off shooting a Katy Perry video instead of completing post-production; Cullen countersuing when producers took the film away from him and recut it themselves; the producers suing star Amber Heard for breach of contract after she refused to record some required voiceovers after production wrapped and badmouthed the film to the media; and Heard countersuing, claiming the producers violated her no-nudity clause by hiring a double to shoot explicit sex scenes involving her character after she left. Deciding they wanted no part of the rapidly escalating shitshow, Lionsgate dropped the film, which remained shelved until the fall of 2018 when settlements were reached with all parties and a compromised version--assembled by some of the producers and disowned by Cullen--was picked up by, of all distributors, GVN Releasing, a small company specializing in faith-based, evangelical, and conservative-leaning fare, which the very R-rated LONDON FIELDS is decidedly not.
A movie about the making of LONDON FIELDS would be more interesting than watching LONDON FIELDS, an incoherent mess that looks like it was desperately cobbled together using any available footage, with little sense of pacing or narrative flow. Seeking any spark of inspiration, blocked American writer Samson Young (Billy Bob Thornton) answers an ad to swap apartments with famed British crime novelist Mark Asprey (Jason Isaacs). While Asprey writes his latest bestseller in Young's shithole Hell's Kitchen hovel, Young works in Asprey's posh London pad and finds his muse in upstairs neighbor Nicola Six (Heard). A beguiling and clairvoyant femme fatale, Nicola wanders into the neighborhood pub wearing a black veil and mourning her own death, having a premonition of her inevitable murder--on her 30th birthday on the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes Day--at the hands of one of the three men she encounters: the dour and jaded Young; upwardly mobile investment broker Guy Clinch (Theo James, at the beginning of the apparently perpetual attempt to make Theo James happen); and skeezy, lowlife, would-be darts champ and Guy Ritchie caricature Keith Talent (Jim Sturgess), who owes a ton of money to scar-faced, bowler-hatted Cockney gangster and chief darts rival Chick Purchase (an uncredited Johnny Depp, long before his and Heard's very acrimonious split, which should give you an idea of how old this thing is). Observing near and from afar how Nicola manipulates the men in her life, the dying Young weaves a complex tale that becomes the great novel he's always had in him. It seems like there's some kind of twist near the end, but it's hard telling with what's here.
Cullen put together his own director's cut that got into a few theaters for some select special engagements. It runs 11 minutes longer and with many scenes in different order (for instance, Depp appears seven minutes into this version but not until 35 minutes into Cullen's cut), but the only version currently on home video is the shorter "producer's cut" that GVN released on 600 screens to the tune of just $433,000. It's doubtful, but there's perhaps a good--or at least better--film buried somewhere in the rubble, and there's some enjoyment to be had from the scenery-chewing contest going on between Depp and Sturgess, who gets a ridiculous scene where he's dancing in a torrential downpour to Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing." It's an amusingly silly sequence but therein lies the conundrum of LONDON FIELDS: it hasn't the slightest idea what it's doing or what it wants to be. Is it a romantic murder mystery? A drama about manipulation and obsession? A grotesque black comedy? The climactic tournament showdown with Keith and Chick gets perilously close to turning into a darts version of KINGPIN, with both Sturgess and Depp fighting over who gets to be Bill Murray's Big Ernie McCracken. It's easy to see why there were so many conflicting intentions on LONDON FIELDS: there's a ludicrous 12 production companies, 46 credited producers, four credited editors, and even three guys credited with doubling Thornton. Heard seems game to play a seductive and dangerous femme fatale in a twisty noir thriller, but LONDON FIELDS is not that movie. Or any kind of movie, for that matter. (R, 107 mins)
THE LAST MAN (Argentina/Canada - 2019)
The first narrative feature from Argentine documentary filmmaker Rodrigo H. Vila is a resounding failure on almost every front, save for some occasionally atmospheric location work in what appear to be some dangerous parts of Buenos Aires. A dreary, dipshit dystopian hodgepodge of THE MACHINIST, JACOB'S LADDER, and BLADE RUNNER, the long-shelved THE LAST MAN (shot in 2016 as NUMB, AT THE EDGE OF THE END, with a trailer under that title appearing online two years ago) is set in a constantly dark, rainy, and vaguely post-apocalyptic near-future in ruins from environmental disasters and global economic fallout. Combat vet Kurt Matheson (Hayden Christensen) is haunted by PTSD-related nightmares and hallucinations, usually in the form of a little boy who seems to know an awful lot about him, plus his dead war buddy Johnny (Justin Kelly) who may have been accidentally killed by Kurt in a friendly fire incident. Kurt also falls under the spell of messianic street preacher Noe (Harvey Keitel, looking like Vila caught him indulging in some C. Everett Koop cosplay), who tells his flock that "We are the cancer!" and that they must be prepared for a coming electrical storm that will bring about the end of civilization (or, on the bright side, the end of this movie). Kurt gets a job at a shady security firm in order to pay for the fortified bunker he becomes obsessed with building, and is framed for internal theft and targeted by his boss Antonio (LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE's Marco Leonardi as Almost Benicio Del Toro), while at the same time having a clandestine fling with the boss' ex-model daughter (Liz Solari).
Oppressively dull, THE LAST MAN is an incoherent jumble of dystopia and apocalypse cliches, dragged down by Christensen, who still can't act (2003's terrific SHATTERED GLASS remains the only film where his limitations have worked in his favor), and is saddled with trite, sub-Rick Deckard narration on top of that (at one point, he's actually required to gravely mumble "If you look into darkness, the darkness looks into you"). Vila's idea of humor is to drop classic rock references into the dialogue, with Kurt admonishing "Johnny! Be good!" to the dead friend only he can see, and apparent Pink Floyd fan Johnny retorting with "Shine on, you crazy diamond!" and "You're trading your heroes for ghosts!" And just because a seriously slumming Keitel is in the cast, Vila throws in a RESERVOIR DOGS standoff near the end between Kurt, Antonio, and Antonio's duplicitous right-hand man Gomez (Rafael Spregelburd). The gloomy and foreboding atmosphere Vila achieves with the Buenos Aires cityscapes is really the only point of interest here and is a strong indicator that he should stick to documentaries, because THE LAST MAN is otherwise unwatchable. (R, 104 mins) TYREL (US - 2018)
It's hard to not think of GET OUT while watching TYREL, and that's even before Caleb Landry Jones appears, once again cast radically against type as "Caleb Landry Jones." The latest from provocative Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva (NASTY BABY), TYREL is a slow-burning cringe comedy that takes a sometimes frustratingly ambiguous look at casual racism in today's society. With his girlfriend's family taking over their apartment for the weekend, Tyler (Jason Mitchell, best known from MUDBOUND and as Eazy-E in STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON), who runs the kitchen in an upscale BBQ restaurant, accompanies his friend Johnny (Christopher Abbott) to a remote cabin for a reunion of Johnny's buddies, who are gathering to celebrate Pete's (Jones) birthday. The cabin is owned by Nico (Nicolas Arze), and it's an eclectic mix of rowdy dudebros that even includes openly gay Roddy (Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum). Tyler is already somewhat nervous as the outsider of the group and he's the only black man present, and things get off to a slightly awkward start when one of them thinks his name is "Tyrel," and Pete seemingly takes offense that Tyler doesn't remember meeting him on a prior occasion. The first night is mostly ballbusting (including casually throwing around the word "faggot" as a playful insult) and their usual drinking games that an uncomfortable Tyler doesn't feel like playing. He ducks out and pretends to go to sleep, which only earns Johnny's derision the next morning, so to put himself at ease, Tyler starts overdoing it, getting far too intoxicated over the course of the day, especially once a second group of guys, including rich, eccentric Alan (Michael Cera), show up.
Almost every comment is loaded with a potential misread, from questioning chef Tyler whether grits should be eaten with sugar or salt to someone asking "Is this a Rachel Dolezal thing...am I allowed to do this?" All of these guys are liberal and affluent to some degree, and TYREL speaks to how words and actions can be interpreted even if the intent isn't there, making the point that assumptions and belief systems are ingrained into one's psyche. No one says or does anything that's intended to be overtly offensive (Roddy brushes off the homophobic slur directed at another, because it's just guys being guys) or blatantly racist, but Tyler has been on the receiving end of it enough that his guard is always up. He frequently exacerbates the situation by overreacting in an irrational way, especially on the second day when he gets far more intoxicated than anyone else, even drunkenly helping himself to an expensive bottle of whiskey that was a gift for Pete, as Silva starts using subtly disorienting camera angles to convey Tyler's--and the audience's--increasing discomfort. TYREL is mainly about creating a mood of one unintentional microaggression after another, but Silva somewhat overstates the point by setting the getaway bash on the same weekend as President Trump's inauguration, a ham-fisted move that puts a challenging character piece squarely into "MESSAGE!" territory, especially when Alan breaks out a Trump pinata and smirks to Tyler, "Oh, you'll love this!" TYREL moves past that heavy-handed stumble, and ultimately, there's no big message to be had here, but while it seems slight on a first glance, much it will nevertheless stick with you. It's anchored by a perceptive performance by Mitchell, supported by an ensemble that's strong across the board, with a nice late-film turn by the late, great character actor Reg E. Cathey--in his last film before his February 2018 death from lung cancer--as one of Nico's neighbors. (Unrated, 87 mins)
TRIPLE FRONTIER (US - 2019) Directed by J.C. Chandor. Written by Mark Boal and J.C. Chandor. Cast: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal, Adria Arjona, Rey Gallegos, Louis Jeovanny, Juan Camilo Castillo, Sheila Vand, Madeline "Maddy" Wary. (R, 125 mins) In various stages of development since 2010, Netflix's drug cartel heist thriller TRIPLE FRONTIER was originally set to be director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's follow-up to their Oscar-winning THE HURT LOCKER, with stars like Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Channing Tatum, Tom Hardy, Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, and Mark Wahlberg all in talks or attached to make up the ensemble cast at different points along the way. By the time the film went into production in early 2018, only Ben Affleck remained as Bigelow and Boal were out, though both are listed as co-producers, and Boal shares screenwriting credit with eventual director J.C. Chandor, who established himself as a promising new filmmaker with the riveting financial crisis autopsy MARGIN CALL, the Robert Redford-starring ALL IS LOST, and the throwback Sidney Lumet-style NYC crime and corruption of A MOST VIOLENT YEAR. Chandor seems an odd choice for a big-budget actioner like this (and seeing the finished product, it's a little difficult to picture Tom Hanks starring), but it finds its bearings after a shaky opening act that, with dialogue like "That's the price of being a warrior" and needle-drops by Metallica and Pantera, seems dangerously close to venturing down the same path as the meat-headed, barbed-wire-tatted bicep brosploitation of 2014's mouth-breathing SABOTAGE, a fuckin' wicked sick fuckin' work-hard/play-hard fuckin' X-Treme energy drink disguised as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
Pope (Oscar Isaac) is ex-Special Forces now earning a living as a military contractor. He's been after South American drug lord Lorea (Rey Gallegos) for several years and has an inside informant with his lover Yovanna (Adria Arjona), who handles Lorea's books. Pope wants to nail Lorea but he has other plans, namely getting his hands on his money, which Lorea keeps at his heavily-guarded Brazilian fortress. Hatching a plan that's dangerous and very off-the-books, Pope recruits four of his former Special Forces badass buddies to go along on a fact-finding recon mission to hopefully talk them into raiding the compound, wiping out Lorea and his army, and making off with his estimated $75 million fortune that's kept somewhere on the premises. There's Redfly (Ben Affleck), now a divorced dad and unsuccessful real estate agent; disgraced pilot Catfish (Pedro Pascal), who's been making ends meet as a coke trafficker; Ironhead (Charlie Hunnam), who's taken his PTSD anger-management issues and found work as a motivational speaker for the newly-enlisted; and Ironhead's nickname-less little brother Ben (Garrett Hedlund), now an MMA fighter with a losing record. None of these guys are happy with the current state of their lives and only feel at home in combat, so of course they'll hesitate at first but eventually agree. Before you know it, they're crossing the border into Brazil to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through the Jungle," without question the most overused classic rock song in commercial cinema today. I don't have scientific evidence, but I watch a shit-ton of movies and I see a lot of montages with a lot of familiar needle-drops, and I can say with certainty that I didn't hear the Fabulous Thunderbirds' "Tuff Enuff" in the mid-1980s as much as I've heard goddamn "Run Through the Jungle" in the latter half of the 2010s.
That's about 30 minutes in, and honestly, I was getting a little irritated with TRIPLE FRONTIER. Fortunately, it improves quite a bit, particularly with the botched escape from Lorea's fortress, where the money is hidden in the walls, and the eventual issues they have transporting it to their rendezvous point, which requires them to fly over the Andes in a military chopper that can't handle the weight of the cargo since the presumed $75 million is actually closer to $250 million. This forces them to resort to drastic measures--from ditching some of the money to finding alternate modes of transport--that turn TRIPLE FRONTIER into a sort-of FITZCARRALDO reimagined as a heist/survivalist adventure. The characters themselves are rather two-dimensional, though it does go for an unpredictable choice as to who the hair-trigger fuck-up among them will be that causes an already dangerous situation to get exponentially worse. Aside from a dodgy-looking CGI chopper crash, TRIPLE FRONTIER, shot on Oahu and in Colombia, is fairly suspenseful and solid entertainment that's certainly worth a stream, even if runs a tad longish at just past two hours.
