EXTRACTION (US - 2020) Directed by Sam Hargrave. Written by Joe Russo. Cast: Chris Hemsworth, David Harbour, Rudraksh Jaiswal, Randeep Hooda, Golshifteh Farahani, Pankaj Tripathi, Priyanshu Painyuli, Suraj Rikame, Shataf Figar, Sam Hargrave, Rayna Campbell, Sudipto Ballav, Adam Bessa, Neha Mahajan, (R, 116 mins) A Netflix production combined with the unforeseen COVID-19 novel coronavirus covers all bases in sparing Chris Hemsworth the indignity of having another non-Marvel movie bomb in theaters, but the non-stop action extravaganza EXTRACTION kicks all sorts of ass. Of course, it's got Marvel connections beyond Hemsworth, with screenwriter Joe Russo (co-director of two CAPTAIN AMERICAs and two AVENGERS movies) adapting Ande Parks' graphic novel Ciudad, and directing duties handled by veteran stunt coordinator and Chris Evans' Captain America stunt double Sam Hargrave. EXTRACTION is an impressive directing debut for Hargrave, who keeps things at a frenetic pace with an opening hour filled with one gonzo action set piece after another, including one long, 12-minute chase sequence where the edit cheats are obvious, but it's so expertly-assembled and tightly-edited that it doesn't diminish the effect at all. Hemsworth hasn't had much box-office success outside the Marvel extended universe, but EXTRACTION is his best star vehicle since Michael Mann's BLACKHAT, which of course tanked in theaters but has found a cult following since, and although it was intended for streaming before the coronavirus shuttered movie theaters indefinitely, EXTRACTION probably would've been quite an experience on a big screen. Hargrave approaches the film with a stuntman's eye for action, and in many ways, this looks and feels like a mash-up of THE RAID 2 with a big-budget version of the kind of B-movie actiongasms that guys like Scott Adkins and Isaac Florentine have been making for years.
In Mumbai, teenage Ovi Mahajan (Rudraksh Jaiswal) is kidnapped by operatives working for Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli), an insanely wealthy Bangladeshi drug lord seeking revenge on incarcerated Indian rival Ovi Sr. (Pankaj Tripathi). A jailhouse visit with Ovi Sr spells it out for his security chief Saju (Randeep Hooda), who was put in charge of protecting Ovi Jr: "You want your son to see his next birthday? Then get mine back." Enter Australian black-ops mercenary Tyler Rake (Hemsworth), recruited by his handler Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) to lead an extraction team to Dhaka, obtain proof of life, and bring Ovi home. Rescuing Ovi goes off relatively easy--and involves Rake wiping out a dozen guys, even killing two of them with, you guessed it, a rake--but then their payment doesn't transfer and the extraction team starts getting picked off one by one by an assailant quickly revealed to be Saju. He's been ordered by Ovi Sr to wipe out the extraction team after they do all the heavy lifting with rescuing Ovi as a way to avoid paying them. But money or not, Rake is the kind of guy who finishes a mission--and he has to somehow get Ovi back to Mumbai after Asif, who has both the police and the military on his payroll, shuts down the city. And for his own personal reasons later conveyed in a tragic backstory, Rake vows to protect the sensitive boy, who plays the piano and just wants to hang out with his friends and feels sick to his stomach knowing that his father is in a business where he regularly has to kill people.
The characters are pretty paper-thin--of course Painyuli's Asif is a cartoonish villain, David Harbour as Rake's ex-mercenary buddy may have ulterior motives, and Rake has a reason for taking all of this personally and self-medicating with booze and oxy and meditating underwater to dull a pain-to-be-named-later that's hinted at in quick, blurry cutaways with Nik gravely intoning "You're hoping if you spin the chamber enough times, you'll catch a bullet"--but that's not what EXTRACTION is about. Sure, Hemsworth and young Jaiswal develop a good MAN ON FIRE chemistry as the movie goes on, and regardless of how you interpret that ambiguous final shot, it's unexpectedly affecting either way. But if you're looking for bone-crushing, limb-snapping, throat-slashing, face-pummeling, skull-blasting action, then this will definitely cure the moviegoing blues if you've missed explosive, big-screen excitement these last six weeks. EXTRACTION is formulaic at a top level, and is good enough at what it is that it instantly establishes Hargrave as a promising action director to keep an eye on.
BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE (US - 2018) Written and directed by Drew Goddard. Cast: Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Chris Hemsworth, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman, Nick Offerman, Xavier Dolan, Shea Whigham, Mark O'Brien, Jim O'Heir, Charles Halford, Manny Jacinto, Tally Rodin, William B. Davis, Katharine Isabelle. (R, 141 mins) A cursory glance at the trailer for BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE would suggest a throwback to the kinds of winking, referential neo-noirs that were commonplace in the post-Tarantino craze of two decades ago (THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD, 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY, etc). It's actually more in line with the later phase of Tarantino's career that gave us a motor-mouthed chamber piece like THE HATEFUL EIGHT, but even that isn't a completely accurate assessment since it's not nearly as self-indulgent. Written and directed by J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon protege Drew Goddard (screenwriter of CLOVERFIELD and THE MARTIAN), EL ROYALE shares many themes and motifs as his previous directing effort, the meta genre deconstruction THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, so much so that as the story begins to play out and the sense of paranoia kicks in, you almost wouldn't be shocked to find Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford observing the goings-on from a secret installation at an undisclosed location and placing bets on who makes it to the end. Goddard also blatantly patterns the structure on vintage Tarantino by dividing the film into chapters and frequently going backwards in the narrative to fill in what was going in at the same time other events have happened, but for the most part, EL ROYALE manages to be its own unique work despite Tarantino's unavoidable influence. It's got a clever, twisty structure with a ton of genuine surprises, a dark sense of humor, shocking bursts of violence, and a game cast, but at nearly two and a half hours, it starts to run on fumes by the end, and the payoff ultimately isn't on the same level as the intricately constructed, densely-plotted build-up.
In a prologue, a man (Nick Offerman) rents a room, pries up the floorboards and stashes a bag full of money before being blown away by an unknown assailant. Cut ahead ten years and it's 1969, and a group of strangers arrive one by one at the El Royale, a dilapidated Lake Tahoe motor lodge that literally straddles the state line, its lobby split down the middle between California and Nevada. There's aspiring singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), who's on her way to Reno for a low-paying gig; aging priest Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), who says he's visiting his brother in Oakland; obnoxious, good ol' boy vacuum cleaner salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm); and Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson), a hippie with a bad attitude who signs the check-in registry with a "Fuck You." The El Royale has seen better days, having lost its gambling license a year earlier, and there only seems to be one employee running the place in frazzled desk clerk Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman), who frequently goes MIA and ignores the bell, leaving the guests to serve themselves coffee and drinks from the bar. Once in their rooms, it's clear that all of them have something to hide and aren't who they claim to be. Sullivan drops the overbaked Southern accent and makes a phone call before locating and dismantling dozens of bugging devices from everywhere in his room. He finds Miles passed out with a needle in his arm, and in a long, single-take sequence, ventures down a secret corridor behind the office, where he's able to see into each room through a one-way mirror. Darlene is singing, Father Flynn--clearly not a real priest--is tearing up the floorboards, and Emily is dragging a bound and gagged young woman (Cailee Spaeny) in from the trunk of her car. Sullivan goes to a nearby pay phone and calls the FBI. He mentions the apparent kidnapping and is told that "Mr. Hoover" wants him to disregard it, stick to his assignment, make sure no one leaves, and retrieve what he's there to find.
Shot on actual film and with a Michael Giacchino score that often sounds affectionately reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann, BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE is often just as indebted to Hitchcock as it is Tarantino, particularly PSYCHO with its motel setting and the character getting the most screen time in the early going being unexpectedly killed off before the midway point. Others will find the secret corridor and see things they aren't supposed to see, which seems to be the entire purpose of the El Royale's continued existence, a place where bad things go down and equipment is in place to record it all. A classic MacGuffin comes into play in the form of a stag film shot from behind the one-way-mirror looking into one of the rooms, dating back several years and featuring someone both prominent and dead. BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE keeps piling on the twists and turns and is an absolute blast until Goddard loses his way with the third-act, dark-and-stormy-night introduction of Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth), a charismatic, Manson-like cult leader who arrives with murderous goons in tow to find one of his flock who got away from him and is keen to stick around once he sees there's a bag of loot and a potential blackmail reel involved. It's no fault of Hemsworth, who attacks the role with amused gusto, but Billy Lee is a two-dimensional villain with too little screen time to make an impact. So instead of creating a fully-developed character like the ones we've been able to get to know, Goddard lets Hemsworth ham it up and show off by smirking and strutting to Deep Purple's "Hush," while he holds everyone captive and plays roulette with their lives as the film turns into a rote, generic "terrorizing the hostages" scenario.
It's a shame Goddard couldn't figure out a way to give keep the same level of intensity and bring the story to a conclusion worthy of its set-up, but the first 2/3 of the film is so good that the less-inspired and comparatively weak final third can't help but end with a fizzled shrug. It isn't a complete deal-breaker and it's still recommended, but part of the problem is that there's simply no reason for this film to be as long as it is. But it's beautifully shot, has some wonderful production design, and the cast is terrific, particularly Erivo (a Tony-winner for 2015's Broadway musical version of THE COLOR PURPLE) and national treasure Bridges, who lends a convincing weariness to a bad guy who maybe has some redeeming qualities after all. In the end, BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE averages out to a film that's quite good, but for an hour and a half, it flirts with being a great one.
Based on Nathanial Philbrick's 2000 book chronicling the whaleship Essex and its crew's 1820 ordeal that inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Ron Howard's $100 million IN THE HEART OF THE SEA was a costly box office bomb for Warner Bros, grossing just $25 million domestically. The film was shot in late 2013 and originally set to be released in March 2015 but was delayed for nine months after a skittish Warner Bros. decided to piss away more money by converting it to 3-D. Considering they had all that extra time to get it right, IN THE HEART OF THE SEA often looks shockingly bad when it isn't on land, and that's not something you want in a nautical adventure. The greenscreen work and CGI are utterly and unacceptably atrocious for such an expensive production. The CGI waves and whales aren't the least bit convincing, and in any scene on the Essex, it never once looks like the actors are anywhere other than a giant soundstage with their surroundings to be filled in later. It looks about as believable as SIN CITY. There's no excuse for a major studio movie to look this shitty, and you know something's wrong when the best parts of the film are the framing device that Howard and screenwriter Charles Leavitt (K-PAX, BLOOD DIAMOND, SEVENTH SON) completely made up. In 1850, Melville (Ben Whishaw) visits aging Essex survivor Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson; Tom Holland plays Nickerson in the 1820 scenes) on Nantucket Island to interview him about what happened. Whishaw and Gleeson are very good, as is Michelle Fairley (GAME OF THRONES) as Nickerson's devoted wife, but the trouble is, it's complete dramatic license: Melville never met Nickerson and never used his specific story as the basis for his novel--he read stories of the Essex and took it from there. So that leaves us with Chris Hemsworth (star of Howard's racing flop RUSH, which has found a minor cult following) as first mate Owen Chase, and Benjamin Walker (ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER) as Capt. George Pollard, butting heads and nearly coming to blows before a vengeful whale sinks their ship and leaves them and the crew lost at sea for 90 days, emaciated and forced to resort to cannibalizing their fallen shipmates--special appearance by Cillian Murphy as dinner--and drawing straws to see who should be killed to provide more sustenance to stay alive as the whale continues to relentlessly pursue them.
Its dismal box office further evidence that no one cares about Chris Hemsworth outside of a Marvel movie (and I'm someone who was a huge fan of BLACKHAT) or Benjamin Walker in anything (how did Jai Courtney or Sam Worthington not end up in this?), IN THE HEART OF THE SEA is a hot mess and probably Howard's worst film, though I'm not about to watch THE DILEMMA to say for certain. Nothing works except the framing story, and that's only because Gleeson, Whishaw, and Fairley manage to rise above the bullshit and give this thing some modicum of dignity. Chase and Pollard are such paper-thin characters--Chase is from a poor family, Pollard from a rich one, so of course they clash when Pollard throws his weight around and Chase is resentful since he was promised his own ship--that you never care about them, and every single moment on the Essex is bathed in such smudgy, smeary, bush-league CGI artifice that all you can focus on is how amateurishly shoddy the whole thing looks. Was Howard honestly happy with how this turned out? I haven't even mentioned that he uses more obnoxious lens flare than in the entire filmography of J.J. Abrams. There are shots in this film that don't even look finished, and for something that was delayed for nine months, Warner Bros, Howard, and everyone else behind the scenes really have no excuse for why John Huston's 1956 film version of MOBY DICK looks better than something made nearly 60 years later. Ugly, uninvolving, unending, and at times unwatchable, the dumbfounding, embarrassing IN THE HEART OF THE SEA has to be one of the worst big-budget films to come from a major director in a long time. (PG-13, 122 mins)
MOJAVE
(US - 2015)
William Monahan got an Oscar for his screenplay for Martin Scorsese's THE DEPARTED, and went on to script films like BODY OF LIES and the OK remake of THE GAMBLER, but misfired a bit with his directorial debut, the 2011 Scorsese-meets-Guy Ritchie knockoff LONDON BOULEVARD. Monahan's second effort as a director is the woefully self-indulgent MOJAVE, a gabby would-be thriller that constantly gets bogged down in pretentious, floridly overwritten conversations where capable actors play characters who say things like "I don't even know if you exist...as I understand existence," and somehow manage to keep a straight face. Monahan can't seem to decide if he wants to make a desert-set noir thriller or an industry-insider bitchfest about debauched Hollywood jagoffs, so he throws both ideas together to make a thoroughly miserable shit sandwich of a movie that could've easily been titled ZABRISKIE POINTLESS. Self-absorbed filmmaker Tom (Garrett Hedlund) heads out to the desert to clear his head, or whatever self-absorbed asshole filmmakers do in the desert. After crashing and abandoning his producer's Jeep, he sets up a small camp and encounters eccentric drifter Jack (Oscar Isaac). Jack is the "Mojave Murderer," a desert-dwelling serial killer who sees in Tom the perfect patsy on which to pin his crimes. Tom gets the upper hand, knocking Jack out cold and fleeing on foot. The next day, Tom accidentally kills a sheriff's deputy and Jack witnesses it. Getting to the nearest town, Tom arranges for a ride back to L.A. with all the incriminating evidence in tow, while Jack finds the abandoned Jeep and, from the vehicle registration, gets an address to make his way to L.A. to stalk Jack and finish whatever it is they started.
Once Jack gets to L.A. and starts trying to ingratiate himself into Tom's professional and personal circle, first allowing himself to get picked up by a gay producer and killing him and later showing up in the backyard of Tom's French actress mistress (Louise Bourgoin), MOJAVE has no idea what it's doing or where it's going. It never recovers from a terrible scene where Tom sulks in an empty bar and Jack finds him, and the final resolution is anything but final or a resolution. MOJAVE pretends to be a cat-and-mouse thriller but it's more of a bile-soaked screed by Monahan, who takes MAPS TO THE STARS-level cheap shots at easy targets like navel-gazing auteurs, bitchy starlets, indifferent agents, and coked-up, degenerate producers, the latter represented in a grating supporting turn by Mark Wahlberg, doing a favor for his buddy Monahan but drawing the line at having his name used in the advertising. Wahlberg is Norman, the producer of Tom's latest, troubled film and the owner of the crashed Jeep, though his biggest concern seems to be spending his days lounging in his bathrobe and getting hummers from on-call prostitutes. So edgy! Hedlund is a mumbling, catatonic bore, Wahlberg bloviates and overacts, and Walton Goggins is all impenetrable dime-store Zen bullshit as Tom's agent. Isaac actually seems to be having a good time, and he's the sole saving grace, but this is a big stumble in an otherwise impressive run with the likes of A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, EX MACHINA, the HBO miniseries SHOW ME A HERO, and STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS making him happen over the last year and a half or so. A24 also released A MOST VIOLENT YEAR and EX MACHINA, and Isaac is likely the only reason they picked this up, but it only got a token limited theatrical release after premiering on DirecTV. Little more than 90 minutes of tough-guy posturing, existential ennui, and tired doppelganger foreshadowing (you could make a drinking game out of how many times Tom and Jack refer to each other as "brother") that leads you to expect an inane FIGHT CLUB-derived twist that, like the point of MOJAVE, never comes, this film fails on almost every level. The only really good line is when Jack, perhaps representing Tom's conscience, tears into the opportunistic, fame-whoring filmmaker and wonders about all the old friends he's left behind, asking him "Are you in touch with anybody not useful?" Monahan is too head-over-heels in love with everything he wrote to effectively function as a director, which is strangely fitting since he has no one other than himself in mind for an audience. MOJAVE is an impossible film to like, though I'm sure it'll find a cult following because, well, what terrible movie doesn't these days? (R, 93 mins)
BLACKHAT (US - 2015) Directed by Michael Mann. Written by Morgan Davis Foehl. Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Wang Leehom, Tang Wei, Viola Davis, Ritchie Coster, Holt McCallany, Yorick Von Wageningen, John Ortiz, Andy On, William Mapother, Jason Butler Harner, Spencer Garrett, Christian Borle. (R, 133 mins)
Michael Mann is one of the dwindling number of American auteurs whose every new project is a legitimate event for serious film connoisseurs. BLACKHAT is his first film since 2009's PUBLIC ENEMIES, an uninspired John Dillinger biopic not helped in the least by dull performances from Johnny Depp and Christian Bale playing Prohibition-era dress-up. Prior to that, Mann's 2006 big-screen take on MIAMI VICE, the iconic TV series on which he served as producer and showrunner from 1984-1986, was another disappointment that never caught fire. Both MIAMI VICE and PUBLIC ENEMIES have been the subject of much debate, with die-hard Mann apologists insisting they're misunderstood masterpieces and worthy of mention in the same breath as Mann essentials like THIEF (1981), MANHUNTER (1986), and HEAT (1995). Mann's been focused on producing other projects over the last few years, such as the barely-released thriller TEXAS KILLING FIELDS (2011), directed by his daughter Ami Canaan Mann, and the ill-fated HBO racetrack-set series LUCK, canceled after one season due to multiple horse deaths on set. BLACKHAT finds the great filmmaker reclaiming his mojo for what's easily his best film since COLLATERAL (2004), though it's proven to be divisive with both critics and fans. In a controversial stance with the celluloid faithful, the 71-year-old Mann has openly and fully embraced digital filmmaking at a time when many younger directors like Paul Thomas Anderson, Christopher Nolan, and Quentin Tarantino are fighting tooth-and-nail to keep 35mm alive. With BLACKHAT, Mann uses digital technology not for clarity, but to enhance an almost primitive grittiness to the film's general look and feel. He uses handheld cameras in chase scenes and fight sequences in a way that, yes, probably constitutes the dreaded "shaky cam" aesthetic, but by not editing the hell out of them, he allows a coherent and natural flow to the action. He's content to let it happen, even if it doesn't look pretty. Some of the best action bits in BLACKHAT look like what might happen during real fights and chases. They look awkward and unrehearsed. The choreography has a clumsiness to it, like these are people who don't get in fights and chases very often. The sound design is sometimes intentionally disorienting, putting the audience in sync with the characters, working in tandem with the look of the film to jarring, powerful effect.
Some scenes in BLACKHAT look like Mann could've shot them using his phone, and in the context of this film, it works. The Mann hallmarks are all here: the captivating, neon-drenched skylines and city streets; a propulsive, hypnotic synth/loop score courtesy of Harry Gregson-Williams and regular David Fincher/Trent Reznor collaborator Atticus Ross; and a compelling hero in Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth). An ace computer hacker four years into a 13-year stretch at a federal prison in Pennsylvania, Hathaway's skills are called upon by both the FBI and the Chinese government when a hacker--dubbed "Blackhat"-- uses a RAT (Remote Access Tool) to cause an explosion and a near-meltdown at a Chinese nuclear power plant, followed by a catastrophic manipulation of soy futures on the stock market. Chinese cybercrimes specialist Chen Dawai (Wing Leehom) recognizes the first half of the code used in the attack: he co-wrote it with Hathaway when they were roommates at MIT. Working in conjunction with FBI agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis), Dawai manages to get his old buddy furloughed to help track the elusive hacker, with the promise that if his assistance leads to a capture, Hathaway's sentence is commuted and he's a free man. Also along for the ride are Chen's tech-savvy sister Lien (Tang Wei), who also functions as a love interest for Hathaway, Hong Kong cop Trang (Andy On), and US Marshal Jessup (Holt McCallany), tagging along to keep an eye on Hathaway, who's been outfitted with an ankle bracelet if he decides to flee.
While some of the criticism of BLACKHAT has targeted its wild, labyrinthine plot (the script is credited to first-timer Morgan Davis Foehl but was significantly rewritten by Mann, who was ultimately denied a co-writing credit by the WGA), which really isn't that hard to follow, most of it has been aimed at Hemsworth's casting as a computer hacker with a six-pack. Sure, we probably have a stereotypical image of this sort of character being a pasty schlub chowing down on Funyuns and ramen and drinking Mountain Dew, but is the idea of a ripped hacker really a deal-breaker here? It's an especially petty criticism when we see Hathaway tossed into solitary early on (after hacking into the prison computer system and adding $900 to the spending account of every inmate) and immediately doing push-ups to pass the time. He's been in a tough prison for four years with nothing to do and plenty of time to shred and learn how to defend himself. Couldn't the possibility exist that Hathaway turned into Thor while incarcerated? Why is this such a bone of contention? Hathaway is a guy cut from the same cloth as James Caan's Frank in THIEF and Robert De Niro's Neil McCauley in HEAT: career criminals with a sense of honor. Hathaway's crimes targeted banks, not people. And when he's pulled into Dawai's and Barrett's investigation, he uses his criminal expertise for a good cause and becomes an equal team player. Hathaway has numerous chances to bolt and become a fugitive, but his friendship with Dawai, his feelings for Lien, and his grudging respect for the agents and the mutual trust that forms among them--after starting out firmly in "...if they don't kill each other first!" territory--is the foundation of an eclectic and appealing ensemble essayed by a top-notch group of familiar character actors. Hathaway isn't a criminal looking for a shot at redemption. He's looking to get out of prison by helping an old friend. But even that becomes secondary after a game-changing plot development completely alters the stakes going into the inevitable confrontation with the enigmatic Blackhat.
Mann and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh (THE PIANO) create the almost otherworldly real-world look that Mann fans know and love, with the skyline of Hong Kong and other locales--an extensive, HEAT-like shootout in the slums of Shek O in Hong Kong; a dried river bed in Malaysia that looks like a post-nuke wasteland; or the camera circling some actors standing in the exposed upper levels of a half-completed skyscraper in Jakarta--looking especially arresting. BLACKHAT is pretty loopy, but it moves at such a breakneck pace that you really don't have time to question the specifics of the jargon-heavy plot. Mann manages to make suspenseful set pieces out of scenes that consist of people staring at screens reading a jumble of letters and numbers until Hathaway exclaims "There! There's the code!" as they hustle to another far-off location. The $70 million BLACKHAT grossed a pitiful $4 million over its opening weekend, providing more proof that people just don't give a shit about the Hemsworth brothers outside of established franchise branding, and they especially don't care about the Hemsworth brothers if they're starring in tech-heavy cyber-espionage thrillers (lest we forget Chris' HUNGER GAMES-starring brother Liam in 2013's terrible PARANOIA). Though 2015 is young, it's possible that we already have this year's KILLING THEM SOFTLY or THE COUNSELOR, two badly-received box office failures that had a quick turnaround into open-armed acceptance in cult movie circles. The resounding rejection of BLACKHAT after a very aggressive promotional blitz throughout the holiday season doesn't bode well for revered likes of Michael Mann. Look, BLACKHAT is no THIEF. It's no MANHUNTER, and it's no HEAT. But it's still the best thing Mann's done in a decade--a perfect balance between pursuing his digital dreams and giving the audience the Mann film they came to see. It's mystifying that, after coming up with every excuse imaginable to defend utter mediocrities like MIAMI VICE and PUBLIC ENEMIES, BLACKHAT is where the Mann faithful decide to bail. If Michael Mann fans can't get behind an exhilarating and visually stunning return to form like BLACKHAT, then I really don't know exactly what it is they want.
A tired post-Tarantino knockoff that plays like a white-trash BOONDOCK SAINTS by way of SMOKIN' ACES and isn't nearly as witty and quotable as it thinks it is, the barely-released THE BAYTOWN OUTLAWS has the titular Oodie brothers--Brick (Clayne Crawford), McQueen (VIKINGS' Travis Fimmel), and Lincoln (Daniel Cudmore), who used to be a pro wrestler known as The Dixie Reaper--hired by Celeste (Eva Longoria) to retrieve her disabled godson Rob (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) from her psychotic drug lord ex-husband Carlos (Billy Bob Thornton). This out-of-town job doesn't sit well with the corrupt sheriff (Andre Braugher) who farms his dirty work out to the Oodies to keep his town in order, and now he has to contend with an ambitious ATF agent (Paul Wesley) who shows up to take them down. Once they get Rob, they have to deal with various assassins dispatched by Carlos, including a crew of lethal prostitutes led by DEATH PROOF's Zoe Bell. Directed and co-written by one Barry Battles, THE BAYTOWN OUTLAWS starts out OK enough and feels like it might be guilty pleasure material, but it quickly runs out of gas and laughs and just gets dumber and duller as it goes along. Thornton seems to be enjoying a chance to overact in a "Gary Oldman-in-THE PROFESSIONAL" sort-of way, but he only has a few scenes and Longoria even fewer, despite their being prominently displayed in the poster art. Also with Agnes Bruckner, Natalie Martinez, Michael Rapaport, and songs by Clutch, Five Horse Johnson, Hank Williams III, and, of course, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the spectacularly forgettable THE BAYTOWN OUTLAWS barely qualifies as background noise. (R, 98 mins)
THE COMEDY (US - 2012)
This abrasive, frequently squirm-inducing mumblecore black comedy is a scathing indictment of the entitled, ironic, mocking hipster, cast with people generally revered in that particular culture, making it one of the most bile-filled auto-critiques you'll ever see. Tim Heidecker (of the Tim & Eric comedy duo) is Swanson, the worst embodiment of the disaffected Williamsburg hipster, a slacker and trust-fund man-child who's about to land his dying father's estate. In his late 30s, Swanson's never had to work a day in his life and idles his time away endlessly dicking around to amuse himself: needling his father's male nurse by making fun of his job and questioning his manhood; going into stores and pretending he works there; harassing cab drivers (his actions even cause one to be assaulted), going into a bar in an African-American neighborhood, shouting "Williamsburg, represent!" and asking where the bitches are; bringing up Hitler at a party ("If you take murder out of the equation..."); and otherwise generally being a complete dick, usually solo or sometimes with his equally insufferable friends (played by Heidecker's Tim & Eric partner Eric Wareheim, LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, and Gregg Turkington, aka Neil Hamburger). Swanson has nothing to do and nowhere to be, but Heidecker does a good job of showing the self-loathing under Swanson's above-it-all exterior. There's hints of a painful past (mother is not in the picture; his brother is in an institution, and he has some kind of past with his sister-in-law that's never specifically detailed, though it's pretty clear they were a couple at some point) and, by the end, signs that he's growing up. Even if you don't like Tim & Eric or 2012's dubious TIM & ERIC'S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE (Heidecker and Wareheim are just actors here), you'll find Heidecker's generally serious performance a bit of a revelation. Co-written and directed by Rick Alverson, and produced by the FOOT FIST WAY/OBSERVE AND REPORT/EASTBOUND AND DOWN team of Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, and Jody Hill, along with Larry Fessenden, whose demands for a subplot involving Swanson's search for the Wendigo were apparently ignored. (R, 94 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
RED DAWN (US - 2012)
This pointless remake of John Milius' jingoistic, Reagan-era commie paranoia favorite from 1984 (also famous as the first film released with a PG-13 rating) gathered dust on a shelf for three years while MGM tried to restructure its finances. Then, so as not to offend China, the villains were changed from Chinese to North Koreans, necessitating reshoots and other tweaks courtesy of dubbing and some CGI. It's all for naught. RED DAWN '84 is hardly a great film, but it is a great snapshot of a point in time where something like that seemed like it might be possible, at least to impressionable teenage boys and hardcore right-wingers. RED DAWN '84 had a personality and even in its own context, had a sense that the stakes were high and that anyone could be killed, quite coldly, at any moment. RED DAWN '12 is just a lazy retread that's all platitudes and slogans shouted by people who don't sound like they know what they're talking about. Chris Hemsworth is passable in the Patrick Swayze role, as a Marine on leave who happens to be crashing at his dad's (Brett Cullen) house when the "North Korean" army parachutes into Spokane and takes over. Hemsworth leads a ragtag group of freedom fighters who dub themselves "Wolverines," including his high school QB younger brother, played by an astoundingly ineffective Josh Peck, as they run around town punking the "North Koreans" with bombs and graffiti. Most of the reshoots are obvious, but none more so than an early scene where Hemsworth starts delivering a voiceover lecture about "North Korea" that he's clearly reading from a sheet of paper for the first time, then there's a cut to Peck, who's suddenly about 15 lbs lighter and looking a decade older than in the previous scene, with a raspier voice saying something like "North Korea? But, like...why?" Peck, formerly of Nickelodeon's DRAKE & JOSH, is incredibly awful throughout, but it's not like the performances matter. The same goes for logic: why are some residents rounded up and thrown in internment camps while others are free to shop and eat at Subway? And with what money? An inauspicious directing debut for veteran stunt coordinator and second-unit director Dan Bradley, RED DAWN can't provide a single justification for its existence, and its flag-waving and chest-thumping just feels contrived and phony, and it's not even entertaining even on a "something to kill an hour and a half" level. Also with Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas, Connor Cruise, ESPN's Mark Schlereth as the football coach, Will Yun Lee as the "North Korean" commander, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Powers Boothe. (PG-13, 93 mins)
