THE HUNT (US - 2020) Directed by Craig Zobel. Written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof. Cast: Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz, Amy Madigan, Emma Roberts, Ethan Suplee, Wayne Duvall, Glenn Howerton, Reed Birney, Sturgill Simpson, Macon Blair, Christopher Berry, Kate Nowlin, Steve Coulter, Dean J. West, Vince Pisani, Teri Wyble, Usman Ally, Steve Mokate, Walker Babington, Sylvia Grace Crim, Jason Kirkpatrick, J.C. McKenzie, Tadasay Young, Hannah Alline. (R, 90 mins) Originally set to open in September 2019, the Blumhouse production THE HUNT had its advertising suspended by Universal after a string of mass shootings in August. Then its release was canceled entirely once Fox News informed President Trump that it was about conservative "deplorables" being hunted for sport by the liberal elite, sort-of like a MOST DANGEROUS GAME-meets-BATTLE ROYALE for the Rachel Maddow crowd. Several months later, THE HUNT has resurfaced--prefaced by a new and inferior trailer that reveals a little too much--with the hype of being "the movie they didn't want you to see," just in time for the inevitability of US movie theaters closing due to the COVID-19 coronavirus. After that six-month delay, is it worth the hype? Not really. Though if anyone on the right had actually bothered to watch THE HUNT before condemning it as dangerous propaganda from the "loony left," they would've seen that it takes far more potshots at liberals than it does conservatives, and that its right-leaning "final girl" is actually the smartest and most likable character in the film.
THE HUNT opens on a private charter flight with a group of rich, preening, condescending assholes shocked when a burly, bearded guy (Jason Kirkpatrick) breaks into the cabin from the cargo hold in a state of panic and confusion. A doctor (Steve Coulter) stabs him in the neck with a pen, followed by a mystery woman named Athena (Hilary Swank) emerging from a secluded area, stabbing him in the eye with a stiletto heel (the eye sticks to the heel when she yanks it out of the socket), with his corpse dragged back to cargo where others are restrained and sedated. Cut to a young woman in yoga pants (Emma Roberts as "Yoga Pants"), who wakes up gagged in a field in the middle of nowhere. Others have congregated in the area, all gagged and confused. There's a large crate that's pried open, and inside is a shirt-wearing pig named "Orwell," and a small arsenal of weapons. These strangers--in addition to Roberts' Yoga Pants, there's Wayne Duvall as "Don???," Ike Barinholtz as blowhard New Yorker "Staten Island," Ethan Suplee as "(Shut the Fuck Up) Gary," and Betty Gilpin as just Crystal, among others--quickly arm themselves only to be hit by ammo, arrows, and grenades coming from all directions. Most die gruesome deaths right there, but Staten Island and a couple of others make it to a gas station run by Ma (Amy Madigan) and Pop (Reed Birney) that definitely isn't what it seems. But after a few bits of misdirection and protagonist shifts thanks to some unexpected kills, it's Crystal who emerges as the central character, and she immediately proves to be a little more resourceful than her more bloviating far-right counterparts (for all his talk about owning seven guns because it's his Constitutional right, Staten Island isn't very skilled with them). She eventually teams with (Shut the Fuck Up) Gary, an ultra-conservative, Alex Jones-esque podcaster who constantly yammers on about "cucks," "crisis actors," and "the Deep State," and swears they're the latest victims of "Manorgate," a far-right, QAnon/Pizzagate-like conspiracy where "real patriotic Americans" like themselves are drugged, kidnapped, and taken to a manor in an isolated area of Vermont by a secret cabal of smug and impossibly wealthy liberals who set them free in the wild and hunt them for sport.
Well, they're not in Vermont, but it's impossible to say anymore about the plot without spoilers. Director Craig Zobel (COMPLIANCE) has fun staging some outrageously gory kills with near-Troma levels of comedic splatter. The script by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof seems adrift as far as what it's trying to accomplish. LOST co-creator Lindelof's involvement is almost certainly where the twists and turns come from, but the political satire is rather toothless, and its shots too easy. A few jabs land: one of the elite liberals crowing about his tweet getting a like from Ava DuVernay, or another wearing a kimono and being accused of cultural appropriation, and their hiring a trainer who was in the National Guard (Steve Mokate), and whose resume includes working as a technical adviser on the Bruce Willis movie TEARS OF THE SUN ("What's that? Is that like, a real title? Was it even in theaters?" they snark). I guess the problem with THE HUNT's political and social satire is that it isn't doing anything other than stating the obvious. It seems to be suffering from the "both sides"-ism that permeates today's news coverage, and as such, it errs on the side of caution by the bulk of the meaner gags being at the expense of the cartoonish liberals.
Granted, they're the villains here and none of the ribbing is unfair (the performative white wokeness and hand-wringing over whether to say "African-American" or "black," and guiltily whining "white people are the worst!"), but this is hardly the next GET OUT in terms of biting social commentary. It isn't even as subversive a politically-charged horror movie as Kevin Smith's underseen RED STATE, and its references and allusions to Animal Farm have all the analytical depth of a procrastinating high schooler's lit class essay cribbed from Wikipedia the morning that it was due. Where it does excel is as a showcase for GLOW's Gilpin, and in a better movie, this would be a star-making breakout. Right from the start, something seems off-kilter about Crystal and her instant grasp on the situation, as if Athena and the others have severely misjudged their prized quarry. In the wrong hands, this kind of reliance on tics, weird facial expressions, nervous sounds, and other oddball eccentricities could've resulted in a mannered, quirky disaster, but Gilpin manages to make Crystal endearingly strange. It's an intriguingly bizarre performance that's the unquestioned highlight of THE HUNT, a live-action comments section that's just a bit too pleased with itself and nowhere near the scorching hot take that it thinks it is.
THE LAST FULL MEASURE (US - 2020) Written and directed by Todd Robinson. Cast: Sebastian Stan, Christopher Plummer, Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Peter Fonda, LisaGay Hamilton, Jeremy Irvine, Diane Ladd, Amy Madigan, Linus Roache, John Savage, Alison Sudol, Bradley Whitford, Dale Dye, Ser'Darius Blain, Zachary Roerig, Cody Walker, James Jagger, Richard Cawthorne, Ethan Russell, Bruce MacVittie, Asher Miles Fallica, Travis Aaron Wade, Rachel Harker. (R, 116 mins) An extremely earnest and well-meaning chronicle of the efforts to award a posthumous Medal of Honor to a fallen Vietnam War hero, THE LAST FULL MEASURE wears its heart on its sleeve and you can't fault the nobility of its intentions. Jumping between 1999 and flashbacks to the botched Operation Abilene in the ill-fated 1966 Battle of Xa Cam My on a rubber plantation roughly 30 klicks outside of Saigon, the film doesn't shy away from a deep dive into hagiography in the story of Air Force pararescueman William "Pits" Pitsenbarger (played here by Jeremy Irvine), a Piqua, OH native who was killed in action on April 11, 1966 while treating and rescuing 60 Army infantrymen, then refusing evacuation and staying behind to help the unit defend their position against VC snipers. Because it was an Army operation, the request for a Medal of Honor citation was denied and Pitsenbarger was instead awarded the Air Force Cross. But the men saved by Pitsenbarger, along with retired Air Force Sgt. and fellow pararescueman Tom Tulley (William Hurt) have never given up the fight for his heroism to be properly recognized. The MOH inquiry lands in the lap of ambitious (and, like almost everyone else here, fictional) mid-level Pentagon staffer Scott Huffman (Sebastian Stan), who has loftier goals than sifting through boring paperwork for info about a 33-year-old battle that nobody remembers, and he's practically encouraged by his smarmy boss Carlton Stanton (Bradley Whitford, cast radically against type as "Bradley Whitford") to blow it off and bide his time before pawning it off on someone else.
But Huffman proceeds with at least pretending to give a shit, his obvious ambivalence to the assignment earning the derisive scorn of Tulley as well as the Cam My survivors he tracks down to half-heartedly interview (their stories are intercut with combat flashbacks to that fateful day), all of them embittered and shattered from the horrors they experienced and witnessed: Jimmy Takoda (Samuel L. Jackson), Ray Mott (Ed Harris), and Jimmy Burr (the late Peter Fonda, in his last film), the latter with a bullet still lodged in his head and suffering from PTSD so intensely debilitating that he carries a loaded shotgun at all times and sleeps during the day because he remains terrified of the darkness of night. A pencil pusher and company man who seems to demonstrate no understanding of the sacrifice these men have made, Sanford inevitably comes around to seeing the light, feeling their pain, and legitimately caring about the legacy of Pitsenbarger, especially after he meets his elderly parents, Alice (Diane Ladd) and Frank Pitsenbarger (Christopher Plummer), who's terminally ill with cancer and wants nothing more than to see his son properly honored before he dies.
It's doubtful you'll find a film in 2020 with more honorable intent. This was a longtime passion project for writer/director Todd Robinson (who previously directed Harris in the instantly-forgotten, low-budget submarine thriller PHANTOM), who spent 20 years trying to get it made before production finally began in 2017 (Roadside Attractions, Lionsgate's art house division, has been sitting on this for a while). Pitsenbarger's story could've been told without resorting to melodramatic embellishment, like the invoking of an actual friendly fire incident during the two-day battle that the film uses to lend credence to a generally debunked conspiracy theory that Pitsenbarger was denied the Medal of Honor because of potential embarrassment it would inflict on the US Army, not to mention the presidential aspirations of a fictional senator (Dale Dye) who, in the context of the film, was one of the architects of Operation Abilene. The dramatic license taken with this plot tangent certainly necessitates nearly everyone--the exceptions being Pitsenbarger, his parents, and Linus Roache as Clinton-era Air Force Secretary Whit Peters--being composite characters or whole cloth fictional creations "inspired" by actual participants. The best parts of THE LAST FULL MEASURE are provided by a stacked cast of national treasures and one ageless living legend in the always-magnificent Plummer, who's just heartbreaking when Mr. Pitsenbarger looks out of his son's bedroom window, recalling when he was just a boy, and saying "Sometimes I can still see him out there mowing the lawn." Jackson, Harris, Hurt, and Fonda are all granted time in the spotlight to work their magic, their characters haunted by memories of war and the sacrifice Pitsenbarger made to save them. When these guys are onscreen, as opposed to the bland Stan's uninteresting Sanford, THE LAST FULL MEASURE is often gut-wrenchingly powerful. That's especially true for Jackson, who gets a great monologue about coming home from Vietnam only to have the locals call him a "baby-killer," and Fonda, who goes out with a marvelous farewell performance as a broken man who's been absolutely unable to psychologically function in any capacity since the day Pitsenbarger saved his life.
Peter Fonda (1940-2019)
There's enough real drama in this story that it shouldn't have been difficult to avoid the fictionalization and the unfortunate second half turn toward the maudlin and overwrought. That begins right around the time Sanford travels to Vietnam to find another Cam My survivor (THE DEER HUNTER's John Savage), who stayed behind and turned the battle site into a CGI butterfly-filled memorial of prayer and reflection in a ridiculously long sequence that looks like an outtake from an apparent John Savage self-help meditation video. It's not long after that when Hurt's otherwise solid performance is completely derailed by a ludicrously melodramatic, saliva-spewing survivor's guilt breakdown that has him slobbering all over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Characters start giving speeches as the inspirational score swells and tugs at the heartstrings, and no matter how sincerely it's delivered, not even a great actress like three-time Oscar-nominee Diane Ladd is capable of selling florid dialogue like "Talking about Bill is one of the greatest joys of our life...keeping him alive keeps us strong...it's how we balance our grief and live a happy life without him." And around the time Pitsenbarger gets his posthumous Medal of Honor and Whitford's loathsome prick character has his come-to-Jesus moment and is shown leading the ovation with a slow clap (are we still doing this, Hollywood?), you might ask yourself why Robinson is so determined to sabotage a generally credible movie with this kind of mawkish, pandering horseshit. For most of its duration, THE LAST FULL MEASURE is a terrific showcase for some great actors, and if you're a fan of Peter Fonda, you'll be hard-pressed to not get a little choked-up at his last scene (fittingly, the film is dedicated to him). In the end, even with the second-half stumbling and bumbling (it was nice to see Savage on the big screen again, but his whole section is a momentum-killer that should've been left on the cutting room floor), it's a suitably effective--and refreshingly non-jingoistic--man-weepie that dads and grandpas will love, and I can't help but wonder if it's in theaters now so the Blu-ray will make a great Father's Day gift in June.
FRONTERA's topical subject matter of immigration and US/Mexico border security leads to a well-acted but nevertheless routine and predictable drama with a late plot twist that almost threatens to turn it into a Paul Haggis version of EL NORTE. Honest, hard-working Miguel (Michael Pena) seeks a better life in America for his pregnant wife Paulina (Eva Longoria) and their young daughter. Sneaking over the border into Arizona with the duplicitous and lazy Jose (Michael Ray Escamilla), the pair run into Olivia (Amy Madigan), a sympathetic woman on horseback who offers them water and a blanket. She tells them she and her husband own the vast swath of land they're on, known as "The Wash," which is so extensive that they're on safe ground for at least another day. In the distance, overlooking the land, three teenagers are gleefully firing warning shots at the illegal immigrants, causing Jose to flee and Olivia to be thrown from the frightened horse. Hearing the shots, her husband Roy (Ed Harris), the recently-retired local sheriff, speeds from their ranch and only gets a few moments to say goodbye before Olivia succumbs to a massive head injury. Roy only sees Miguel leaving the scene and once he's picked up, the new sheriff (Aden Young) is certain they've got their man. The sheriff didn't really conduct much of an investigation, but Roy isn't convinced Miguel is guilty and starts snooping around ("Somebody's gotta do your job for you," he tells his successor), finding shells and casings on his land that corroborate Miguel's version of what happened, but the sheriff will hear nothing of it. Meanwhile, the three teenagers responsible start panicking and one (Seth Adkins) seems destined to crack, and receiving word that Miguel is in jail, Paulina's family pays coyote Ramon (Julio Cesar Cedillo) to take her over the border, which takes the story into altogether new and grim direction.
If anything, director/co-writer Michael Berry and co-writer Luis Moulinet III try to cover too much ground in FRONTERA. As a result, the film is torn between being a grand statement on border and immigration issues and an intimate drama of two old-school, self-reliant men brought together by an unspeakable tragedy. Pena, who delivers his performance entirely in Spanish (as does Longoria) is good as an upstanding man whose morals only seems to get him in trouble while schemers and criminals like the vicious Ramon always get ahead, and Harris is all steely convincing grit as a hard-edged, modern-day cowboy, but FRONTERA is all over the place. It's scattered and ponderous, and its third-act twist is obvious and completely collapses under any serious scrutiny. OK, follow me here: the just-retired sheriff owns the biggest piece of land in the vicinity (The Wash), and these local, small-town kids specifically say "Let's go to the Wash and shoot at some illegals," but they apparently have no idea that Roy owns it or that the woman on the horse might be Mrs. Roy, who, it's later revealed, was a teacher at the local high school?! FRONTERA, please! A film with a more focused and hard-hitting statement to make certainly could've made better metaphorical use of the notion of Roy and Miguel bonding and taking that first step toward rebuilding their lives by taking up their shovels and working together to clean the horseshit out of Roy's stable. (PG-13, 103 mins)
SOULMATE (UK - 2014)
Neil Marshall (THE DESCENT, DOOMSDAY) produced this low-key British ghost story for his wife Axelle Carolyn, a sometime actress making her feature writing/directing debut. Avoiding the splattery chaos favored by Marshall in his films and in the occasional GAME OF THRONES episodes he's directed, Carolyn goes quaintly retro, fashioning SOULMATE as something that has a distinct Hammer/Amicus vibe. Light on gore aside from a bloody wrist-slitting in the opening scene, SOULMATE focuses on recently-widowed Audrey (Anna Walton of HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY), who's so distraught over her husband Tristan's (Guy Armitage) death in a car crash that she attempts suicide. Checking out of the hospital, she decides to rent a small cottage in the Welsh countryside to clear her head and get back on her feet again. It isn't long before she's hearing strange noises coming from a locked attic room and property manager Theresa (Tanya Myers) and her doctor husband Daniel (Nick Brimble, who played the Monster in Roger Corman's FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND) are evasive about it and write it off to "the house settling." Soon after, Audrey starts seeing the spectre of Douglas Talbot (Tom Wisdom), the homeowner who committed suicide in the cottage 30 years earlier. His ghost has been trapped in the house and has never been seen by anyone until Audrey. A friendship forms between the two as Douglas' loneliness is relieved and Audrey finds in Douglas someone who understands the torment of wanting to end one's life. Matters are complicated Audrey tries to convince Theresa and Daniel that Douglas' ghost continues to inhabit the cottage and Theresa, still carrying a torch for Douglas, her lover all those years ago ("I'm well aware that you settled for me when you couldn't have Douglas," Daniel tells his wife), grows jealous of the attention his spirit is giving to Audrey.
As you can see, the story careens into a silly, soap opera direction when it becomes less focused on eerie chills and comes perilously close to becoming a supernatural Harlequin romance. It's too bad, because Carolyn establishes a foreboding, vividly chilly atmosphere in the first half of SOULMATE and has it moving along like the kind of film the alleged new "Hammer Films" should be making. Shot on location in the vast hills and mountains of the Brecon Beacons in South Wales, SOULMATE looks absolutely beautiful and drawn-out scenes like Audrey lying motionless in bed while hearing the floor creak as something slowly moves down the hallway are terrifying. But once Douglas makes his presence known and all the way up to the formation of the Douglas-Audrey-Theresa love triangle, SOULMATE just starts rapidly disintegrating. Perhaps things would've worked a bit better had Wisdom played Douglas more or less resembling himself rather than looking like a ghost in a Benny Hill skit, with his face powdered in white pancake makeup and dark circles drawn around his eyes. It not only undermines the credible performance of Walton but also the film as a whole. Through no fault of Wisdom himself, it's just hard to take anything seriously after he gets a couple of closeups. It does work in Carolyn's favor that she avoids the obvious after what initially looks like a terrible job of telegraphing twists--obviously, you're thinking the cottage is some sort of purgatory and Audrey is alerady dead, and Theresa and Daniel's dog being named Anubis may have you thinking of the Egyptian god whose main duty was escorting souls into the afterlife, but it's some welcome misdirection on Carolyn's part, or just an excuse to put Anubis, the Marshall family dog, into a movie. SOULMATE gets off to a terrific start and really could've been something, but it just starts stumbling and bumbling along to nowhere special. Carolyn obviously has the directing chops to make a serious and enjoyable old-fashioned fright flick, but her script just doesn't get the job done. (Unrated, 104 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
