DA 5 BLOODS (US - 2020) Directed by Spike Lee. Written by Danny Bilson, Paul DeMeo, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee. Cast: Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Chadwick Boseman, Jean Reno, Melanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Paakkonen, Johnny Tri Nguyen, Le Y Lan, Nguyen Ngoc Lam, Sandy Huong Pham, Van Veronica Ngo. (R, 155 mins) His 2018 film BLACKkKLANSMAN reflected a still-open wound with its release timed to the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville tragedy, but DA 5 BLOODS finds Spike Lee making a film boiling with such rage over systemic racism that it could've been shot in the last two weeks. Of course, that systemic racism is there and always has been, but no film in recent memory has felt more "of the moment" than this, a sprawling and ambitious epic that does, on a few occasions, get too uneven and too unwieldy for its good. Lee and BLACKkKLANSMAN co-writer Kevin Willmott extensively reworked an existing script called THE LAST TOUR, written in 2013 by the team of Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo, who got their start in the '80s writing cult sci-fi B movies like TRANCERS and ELIMINATORS for Charles Band's Empire Pictures. They soon moved up to THE ROCKETEER for Disney and into TV with the CBS series THE FLASH (DA 5 BLOODS also marks the final writing credit for DeMeo, who died in 2018 and gets a special acknowledgement in the end credits). Bilson and DeMeo have always had an affinity for men-on-a-mission wartime scenarios, from 1986's ZONE TROOPERS all the way to 2013's DTV video-game spinoff THE COMPANY OF HEROES and it's their LAST TOUR script that provides the foundation for DA 5 BLOODS, as four aging vets go back to Vietnam of the present day, ostensibly to retrieve the remains of their fallen friend, but with a second, off-the-record reason: to retrieve a chest of CIA gold they retrieved from a plane crash in 1971 and buried.
That B-movie premise has Bilson's and DeMeo's fingerprints all over it--one can imagine them saying "It's THE DEER HUNTER meets KELLY'S HEROES!"--but Lee goes bigger. He's mining superficially similar territory here with the African-American POV of his 2008 WWII film MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, but DA 5 BLOODS tracks the fury of '60s activism (clips of Malcolm X, MLK, Kwame Ture) all the way through to the advent of Black Lives Matter and the Age of Trump, whose presence is felt here even beyond being referred to as "President Fake Bone Spurs." The four vets are Otis (Clarke Peters), Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Paul (Delroy Lindo), and though an ensemble piece for the most part, it's Paul who becomes the emotional center of the film. Still suffering from PTSD, short-tempered, paranoid, and with an ever-present chip on his shoulder and looking for confrontation everywhere, staunch conservative Paul is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off even before he starts parroting Trump talking points about immigrants, fake news, and "building the wall," plus other derogatory terms for the Vietnamese people. All of the men are haunted by the death of their unit leader and friend "Stormin' Norman" (Chadwick Boseman in flashbacks), killed in action back in 1971 just after they retrieved and buried the gold, but Paul has been unable to move on. That extends to his fractured relationship with his son David (Jonathan Majors), a liberal Black Studies instructor at Morehouse who's earned nothing but scornful derision from his father ("You've been an anchor around my neck since the day you were born"). Though there's no affection between them, David shows up at their Saigon hotel unexpectedly out of concern for his dad and insists on tagging along, telling him "You've been acting more crazy than usual."
Through wealthy investment broker Tien (Le Y Lan), a former prostitute that Otis knew during what the Vietnamese call "The American War," they meet with Desroche (Jean Reno), a French money launderer who agrees to convert the gold to cash for a 22% share (it was only 20%, but Paul starts getting belligerent about Normandy and how America had to "save France's ass" during WWII). With a map provided by guide Vinh (Johnny Tri Nguyen), they head back into the jungles of 'Nam in search of the gold and the burial spot of Stormin' Norman, with Paul sporting a red MAGA hat to everyone's disdain. The journey begins with a slow boat ride accompanied by Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," which isn't the only APOCALYPSE NOW reference over the course of the film. There's even an APOCALYPSE NOW banner in a nightclub in downtown Saigon, where neon signs for McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and KFC illustrate how things have changed in the nearly 50 years since they were last there. There's also an invocation of "We don't need no stinkin' badges!" from THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, and the references, shout-outs and the loose, freewheeling nature--with occasional cutaways to North Vietnamese radio propagandist Hanoi Hannah (Van Veronica Ngo)-- make this feel like a Quentin Tarantino film at times, not in terms of any revisionist history (Melvin does take the time to mock the '80s "free the POW" movies of Sylvester Stallone and "Walker, Texas Ranger"), but in a more enraged and politically substantive manner. Unlike what Bilson and DeMeo wrote for THE LAST TOUR, DA 5 BLOODS explores in depth the experience of the black soldier in Vietnam (Hanoi Hannah reminding them "Black G.I., is it fair that Negroes make up 11% of the US population but among American troops, you are 32%?) in ways that Hollywood typically hasn't focused on, aside from the mid '90s films DEAD PRESIDENTS and the virtually forgotten THE WALKING DEAD.
DA 5 BLOODS doesn't always feel cohesive as far as how the Bilson/DeMeo material meshes with what was written later by Lee and Willmott. At times, it's a straight-up treasure-hunt adventure once some Vietnamese adversaries led by the embittered Quan (Nguyen Ngoc Lam) enter the picture. It's also prone to some hard-to-swallow contrivances, like the discovery of the gold and Stormin' Norman's remains, as well as a trio of activists (Melanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, and Jasper Paakkonen) who go into war zones to find and defuse land mines showing up exactly when their services are needed. Terence Blanchard's otherwise fine score seems a little intrusive and overbearing in the flashbacks, which Lee frames in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, with the jungle sequences at 1.85 and the Saigon scenes at 2.35. And as welcome as it might be, the anti-Trump sentiment feels occasionally wedged in, especially in an earlier scene where David has a conversation with the three activists at a Saigon bar. Lee also takes a big risk in having Lindo, Peters, Lewis, and Whitlock play their characters in the flashbacks minus any IRISHMAN-like CGI de-aging, but it works because they're presented in a kind-of stream-of-consciousness fashion and he mainly keeps the four of them in shadows or in the background as the focus is on Boseman. All in all, DA 5 BLOODS is a powerful film with a startling resonance to things happening right now. It also boasts a career-best performance by an absolutely riveting Lindo, who's alternately despicable, heartbreaking, and utterly devastating as Paul, whose story and the source of his Vietnam anguish, and the reasons he's been such an asshole to his son, don't fully come into view until late in the film, though you'll probably figure some of it out before then. Be sure to watch through the very end of the closing credits to catch a fun stinger for Isiah Whitlock Jr superfans.
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (UK/US - 2017) Written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Peter Dinklage, John Hawkes, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Caleb Landry Jones, Clarke Peters, Zeljko Ivanek, Amanda Warren, Samara Weaving, Sandy Martin, Kerry Condon, Brendan Sexton III, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Kathryn Newton, Malaya Rivera Drew, Jerry Winsett, Nick Searcy. (R, 115 mins) With its dark humor, small-town cops, generous doses of local color, quotable dialogue, shocking bursts of unexpected violence, and Frances McDormand heading the cast, it's inevitable that THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI will draw comparisons to the Coen Bros.' FARGO. But it quickly makes its case as very much its own film, and it's the best work yet from Martin McDonagh, the British writer/director who gave us the great IN BRUGES and the half-great (loved the first half, didn't care for the second) SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS. McDonagh expertly captures the small-town, rural atmosphere and succeeds in making every major character complex and multi-dimensional. Lesser films would've made everything that transpires black and white and one-sided, stacking the deck against the main character to maximize sympathy, but in THREE BILLBOARDS, everything is in shades of gray. Even the most loathsome characters have redeeming qualities, and while the outrageously foul-mouthed insults and seething anger fly fast and furious, THREE BILLBOARDS is, at its core, one of the warmest, honest, and most emotional films to hit theaters in some time.
Seven months after her teenage daughter Angela was raped, doused in gasoline, and burned to a crisp, Mildred Hayes (McDormand) has run out of patience. There's no leads, no breaks, and local police are still reeling from a recent scandal where Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a racist cop with serious anger management issues, beat and tortured a black suspect. Consumed with bitterness and rage and past her breaking point, Mildred rents out three billboards near her home outside the tiny town of Ebbing, MO, on a virtually abandoned stretch of road that's been rarely used in the 30 years since a nearby highway was constructed. They say, in succession, "Raped While Dying," "And Still No Arrests?" and "How Come, Chief Willoughby?" Understandably, police chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) is upset, explaining to Mildred that there was no DNA match, no witnesses, and nothing for them to go on. The billboards attract the attention of the local and regional media and earn Mildred the scorn of Ebbing's residents, with none more furious than Dixon, who repeatedly tries to intimidate and bully Mildred and local ad agency owner Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones) into taking them down. People also resent Mildred's aggressively calling out Willoughby since it's the worst-kept secret in Ebbing that the chief, married to Anne (Abbie Cornish) and with two young daughters, is terminally ill with pancreatic cancer and doesn't have long to live.
To say much more about the relentlessly busy plot would spoil the rich rewards THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI has to offer. The billboards have an effect on everyone: Willoughby, a good man trying to do his job and being put in an awkward position while facing his certain death; Mildred's son Robbie (MANCHESTER BY THE SEA's Lucas Hedges), who's already having a hard time getting over the death of his older sister (he thanks his mom for the billboards "in case I go more than two minutes without thinking about her"); and Mildred's ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes), a wife-beater still prone to violent tendencies who's taken up with 19-year-old Penelope (THE BABYSITTER's Samara Weaving). But none are impacted more than Dixon, and Rockwell rises to the challenge with the film's most difficult role and most expansive and unexpected character arc, simultaneously presented as a dipshit, mama's boy cop who took six years to get through the police academy, a virulent and unapologetic racist and homophobe, and ultimately, a guy capable of recognizing the mistakes he's made and doing something to right his many wrongs. It's national treasure McDormand's film for obvious reasons, and it's probably her finest work since FARGO, but an Oscar-worthy Rockwell has never been better. All of the actors get a chance to shine, even if they only have a couple of scenes (especially Weaving as the sweet but dim Penelope, and Peter Dinklage as the local used car salesman and town drunk who has an unrequited crush on Mildred), and McDonagh's dialogue, while occasionally coming off as a little too scripted (particularly Mildred's rant at a local priest played by Nick Searcy), is brutal and lacerating in its misanthropic fury that's also occasionally sweet, if you can believe that. Only in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI could "cunt" be a term of endearment from a son to his mom and sister. It's a moving, perceptive, tragic, funny, and devastating look at grief, choices, and the haunting regret of words and actions that you'd give anything to take back. It's one of the best films of the year.
There's undoubtedly a smart and funny satirical comedy to be made based on the conspiracy theory that a post-2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Stanley Kubrick helped NASA fake the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, but the atrocious MOONWALKERS cluelessly pisses away any potential that it had. Written by DEATH AT A FUNERAL scribe Dean Craig, who's having a really off day here, MOONWALKERS stars a visibly bored Ron Perlman as Kidman, a hard-nosed CIA agent already suffering from Vietnam-related PTSD when he's assigned to travel to London with a briefcase full of cash to secure the services of Kubrick in the event Apollo 11 can't land on the moon. Through convoluted and unlikely circumstances, he thinks he's in a meeting with Kubrick's agent but he's really talking to Jonny (Rupert Grint from the HARRY POTTER series), a broke-ass concert promoter who owes money to some gangsters led by Dawson (James Cosmo), all of whom appear to be on loan from a shitty Guy Ritchie movie. Jonny takes the money and passes his acid-dropping buddy Leon (Robert Sheehan) off as Kubrick, but the money ends up getting stolen by Dawson's goons. Kidman tracks Jonny and Leon down, forcing them to rely on a pretentious, would-be filmmaker acquaintance named Renatus (Tom Audenaert) to somehow make a fake moon landing movie.
Laboriously-paced and utterly juvenile, MOONWALKERS makes a couple of easy Kubrick references but doesn't seem to even know much about the legendary filmmaker beyond the idea that he's legendary. There's nothing in the way of industry or political satire or absurdist humor that's inherent in the very concept. Instead, Craig and director Antoine Bardou-Jacquet focus on endlessly repetitive stoner humor, various vulgarities, predictable soundtrack choices (oh wow, hippies tripping on LSD at a happening set to Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit"! Imagine that!), stale sub-AUSTIN POWERS gags where the punchline is pretty much "it's the late '60s, baby!" and over-the-top splatter humor that wouldn't be out of place in an early Peter Jackson movie. What any of this has to do with Kubrick and the fake moon landing conspiracy is anyone's guess. Perlman and Grint never click as a comedy team, with the usually reliable Perlman looking irritable and completely sleepwalking his way through this. MOONWALKERS is appallingly bad, and the only thing resembling any legitimate humor is provided by Stephen Campbell Moore in a too-brief supporting role as Jonny's cousin--Kubrick's agent--a coke-snorting sleazebag with vintage 1969 Michael Caine glasses. Painfully unfunny, loud, abrasively obnoxious, and feeling three hours long, MOONWALKERS is a missed opportunity and a complete waste of time and the emptiest '60s nostalgia piece since the unwatchable PIRATE RADIO. (R, 97 mins)
THE BENEFACTOR
(US - 2016)
Did writer/director Andrew Renzi have any idea what his endgame was with THE BENEFACTOR? Feeling like it was decided to make a second, different movie midway through filming, it starts out like it's headed into commercial psychological thriller territory before abruptly turning into a turgid, overwrought addiction drama. And that's before everything falls into place for a pat, feelgood ending complete with a miscarriage scare and a premature birth that's used to symbolize the rebirth of the central character in the most facile, Intro to Creative Writing way imaginable. Over the last few years, Richard Gere has done fine work in some small, under-the-radar films like ARBITRAGE and TIME OUT OF MIND, but his performance in the Sundance-financed THE BENEFACTOR is self-indulgent, film festival awards baiting at its most transparent and shamelessly circle-jerking. Gere is Francis "Franny" Watts, an impossibly wealthy philanthropist who's fallen into total despair after his married best friends Bobby and Mia (Dylan Baker, Cheryl Hines) are killed in a car crash that happened when Franny was goofing off and distracting a behind-the-wheel Bobby. Five years later, the guilt-plagued Franny is largely a shut-in at his mansion except when he pops into to entertain the kids in the cancer ward at the hospital he owns. He finds a new mission in life when Bobby and Mia's daughter Olivia (Dakota Fanning) reconnects with him to announce she's pregnant and has just married young pediatric oncologist Luke (Theo Jones of the DIVERGENT series). Franny instantly ingratiates himself into the lives of Olivia, who he still refers to by her childhood nickname "Poodles," and Luke, who he keeps condescendingly calling "Lukey," by buying her childhood home and gifting it to them, getting Luke a cushy job at the hospital, and paying off all of his student loans. Franny seems vaguely sinister in the way he's always around and won't take no for an answer, and for a while, it's hard to tell if he's just trying to assuage the guilt he's assumed in Bobby and Mia's deaths or if he's a lunatic with a bizarre fixation on the young couple.
Just as it seems poised to play out like a glossy "(blank)-from-Hell" '90s throwback thriller (which would've been dumb but at least entertaining), THE BENEFACTOR drops everything to focus on morphine-addicted Franny's quest to find someone, anyone, to fill his hydrocodone prescription. In denial that he's a junkie, Franny tries to guilt-trip any medical professional he can find into getting a refill, with no success. Gere is an underrated actor that Hollywood seems to have largely left behind, and the earlier scenes with him shoehorning his way into the lives of Olivia and Luke are moderately effective in their cringe-worthy discomfort, especially when Olivia or Luke lose their patience and Franny immediately blurts out the "Hey, come on, I'm just jokin' around!" excuses. But then it abruptly turns into a completely different movie and he's not even playing a character anymore--he's going through a checklist of "big moments" in a rambling, disjointed film that never comes together and never gives you a reason to care about Franny either as an antagonist or a protagonist. Jones just looks lost throughout, Baker and Hynes are gone before the opening credits, the great WIRE/TREME star Clarke Peters has a nothing supporting role as a doctor, and Fanning is completely wasted, spending the bulk of her screen time sitting on the couch, looking concerned and rubbing her prosthetic pregnant tummy until the script needs her to confront an endlessly self-pitying, withdrawal-shaking Franny and yell "You're not the only one who lost them!" By the end, it's 90 minutes of pointless nothing, and it's too bad there wasn't a benefactor at Sundance to bequeath to Renzi a reason for this confused mess of a film to exist. (Unrated, 93 mins)
There's been no shortage of ambitious, gifted, and intelligent artists-turned-working-stiff actors who put their game face on, punch a clock, and schlep their way through movies they'd rather not be doing, but few are worse at masking their utter contempt for a project they know is beneath them than Bruce Willis. The odd thing about Willis is that, unlike a journeyman mercenary who doesn't command an eight-figure salary, he's still an A-lister and doesn't need the work or the money. But here he is, in the grand tradition of unseen, streaming-ready duds like CATCH .44, SET-UP, FIRE WITH FIRE, LAY THE FAVORITE, and THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY, coasting through for another easy payday and doing as little work as possible. Willis isn't alone, as THE PRINCE is also the latest piece of evidence in the ongoing autopsy of John Cusack's career. Cusack, the once-iconic star of SAY ANYTHING, GROSSE POINTE BLANK, and HIGH FIDELITY, has spent the last couple of years on an relentless kamikaze mission to accept every role Val Kilmer probably turned down. But Willis and Cusack are just prominently-billed guest stars in THE PRINCE. The actual star is Jason Patric, hailed briefly in the early '90s (AFTER DARK, MY SWEET and RUSH) as the great actor of his generation, but now reduced to appearing in movies like THE PRINCE. Patric's place in popular culture is forever cemented by THE LOST BOYS and in tabloid history by being the guy Julia Roberts ran off with three days before she was supposed to marry his friend Kiefer Sutherland, but he hasn't appeared in a major movie since playing the villain in 2010's underrated THE LOSERS and, like Willis and Cusack, has often been cited as being mercurial and difficult on a movie set. Unlike Willis and Cusack, however, Patric has been spending most of his offscreen time fighting a legal battle with his ex-girlfriend and California lawmakers for sperm donor parental rights, and seems to be in THE PRINCE because he probably needs the money and it's the best gig he can get right now. It's also his second consecutive film (after this year's earlier THE OUTSIDER) with director Brian A. Miller, whose resume is littered with forgettable, mostly 50 Cent-produced cop movies. Miller and Willis have already completed something called VICE, coming to a Redbox kiosk near you in early 2015.
Hideously shot, with garish lighting and a smeary, smudgy color palette and everyone looking waxy like a Blu-ray with too much DNR (moonlight coming through the blinds on a bedroom window looks like the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND mothership is parked outside), THE PRINCE has 33 credited producers and a plot that's virtually identical to THE OUTSIDER. Patric had a supporting role in that film, but here he's the star and he brings more grit and gravitas than a going-through-the-motions TAKEN ripoff like this deserves. Patric is Paul Brennan, a hardworking Mississippi mechanic and widower whose daughter Beth (Gia Mantegna) has gotten hooked on heroin and gone missing from college in New Orleans. Brennan also happens to be an ex-criminal and a once-legendary Big Easy hit man known as "The Prince." He vanished without a trace 20 years back after a botched hit on New Orleans crime lord Omar Kaiser (Willis) resulted in Kaiser's wife and daughter getting killed instead. Brennan drags Beth's dramatically-sighing friend Angela (Jessica Lowndes) along to New Orleans with him, which results in much back-and-forth banter, as Angela can't even. They get to New Orleans and find Beth has hooked up with a ruthless drug kingpin known as "The Pharmacy" (50 Cent), and after numerous instances of Brennan walking into a club and asking about his daughter only to be promptly told to fuck off, he's amassed enough of a body count that word gets to Kaiser that his arch-enemy is back in town. This leads to the inevitable showdown at now-successful businessman Kaiser's company headquarters, which looks suspiciously like the hotel where Willis was likely staying during his 3-4 days on the set. Most of Willis' scenes have him seated at a desk surrounded by surveillance monitors and mumbling orders while his top flunky (South Korean pop star and NINJA ASSASSIN lead Rain) does the leg work. Fiddy and Jonathan Schaech (as a gun shop owner) have about three minutes of screen time and a tired-looking Cusack, barely conscious in a nothing supporting role, first appears 50 minutes in and has a few scenes as an ex-sidekick of Brennan's who briefly helps him take on Kaiser's goons before vanishing from the film. With his steely, intense persona, Patric is surprisingly effective here and seems much more comfortable in action mode now than he did in 1997's disastrous SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL. It's too bad his efforts are wasted in something so trifling and dumb. If Brennan had to change his name and his safety and the security of his future family depended on him never again setting foot in New Orleans, then perhaps he should've moved further than one state away when he went into self-imposed exile. Perhaps he should've attempted to talk his daughter into going to college anywhere other than in New Orleans. Perhaps he should've considered storing his stash of weapons somewhere other than in the back room of a gun shop in, yes, you guessed it, New Orleans. (R, 91 mins)
GOOD PEOPLE (US/Denmark/Sweden - 2014)
Another VOD dump-off by Cannon cover band Millennium, GOOD PEOPLE is a good example of the kind of commercial, popcorn suspense thriller that would've cleaned up at the box office in the mid-to-late '90s, but just doesn't get much distributor support today. Based on a 2009 book by Chicago-based Marcus Sakey, a prolific mid-level crime novelist who specializes in the kind of brisk, well-crafted page-turners that people used to read on long flights, GOOD PEOPLE moves the setting of the novel from the Windy City to London for no particular reason, but other than that, retains the same basic plot. Financially-strapped American expat couple Tom (James Franco) and Anna Wright (Kate Hudson) have invested all of their money into renovating a dilapidated home left to them by Tom's British grandmother. Tom is a construction contractor and Anna is a schoolteacher, but there isn't enough money coming in, Anna desperately wants to start a family, and they've resorted to renting their basement to a tenant. Tom finds the tenant dead and discovers a duffel bag filled with £220,000 (approximately $350,000) stashed above the ceiling tiles. Rumpled detective Halden (Tom Wilkinson) comes snooping around and Tom is being followed and harassed by both vicious drug dealer Jack Witkowski (Sam Spruell) and French crime lord Genghis Khan (Omar Sy), each of whom claim the missing money belongs to them. Tom and Anna have stashed the money, but catch the attention of Halden when they start doing stupid things that people in movies who fall into dirty money usually do, namely Tom making large bank deposits and paying off long-gestating bills and Anna splurging on an expensive washer-dryer set for her single-mom best friend (Anna Friel) and paying for expensive tests at a fertility clinic. Before long, Tom and Anna are in the middle of a war between Witkowski and Khan, which leads to the inevitable showdown between all interested parties at the grandmother's abandoned house.
Sakey's book was a compelling and uncomplicated read, but GOOD PEOPLE is a bland and unexciting film. The script by BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD and SNOWPIERCER screenwriter Kelly Masterson, having a bit of an off-day here, and the direction by Danish TV vet Henrik Ruben Genz (FORBRYDELSEN, the original Danish version of the TV series THE KILLING) are exceedingly routine and by-the-numbers. Genz really drops the ball in the climax, which is very badly-staged, too dark, and confusingly executed. GOOD PEOPLE is watchable enough, but it never really tries to be anything more than that. Franco and Hudson do what's required of them, but only Wilkinson seems invested enough to try and create something a little deeper with his cynical and melancholy character, one of those "last honest cop" types wading through a department full of corruption and who lost his junkie daughter to drugs dealt by Witkowski. So yeah, this is...personal. In the end, there's absolutely nothing here you haven't seen before, and even the actors seem to know it. (R, 90 mins) LOCKED IN (UK/US - 2014)
If you've seen the barely-released 2008 film PASSENGERS, you've got a good idea where LOCKED IN is headed. Both films share the same screenwriter (Ronnie Christensen) and both owe a tremendous debt to the heyday of M. Night Shyamalan. Josh (Ben Barnes), his wife Emma (Sarah Roemer), and young daughter Brooke (played by twins Abigail and Helen Steinman) are in a bizarre car accident that leaves Brooke comatose with "locked-in syndrome"--she's alive and her brain is active, but her body is in a state of total paralysis. It isn't long before Josh starts getting voice mails from Brooke and is certain she's attempting to communicate with him. He believes she's doing this to convince Josh and Emma to reconcile, as they've recently separated after he had a one-night fling with psycho ex Renee (Eliza Dushku). Josh even finds what he believes is evidence that Renee ran their car off the road and caused the accident. What's going on is a bit more spiritual, as Josh's older brother Nathan (Johnny Whitworth) directs him to sympathetic medium Frank (Clarke Peters), who insists that "time is a factor" and "it's not too late" to rescue Brooke from wherever she may be. There's a barrage of revelations in the closing minutes, followed by one final twist that doesn't make much sense.
But then, not much does in LOCKED IN, a troubled production that was shot in Boston in 2009 and shown at some film festivals in 2010. It was tied up in legal wrangles for several years and existed in various cuts on the bootleg circuit (the festival version ran 85 minutes), before indie distributor Wrekin Hill finally sent it straight-to-DVD with a running time of 78 minutes and three credited editors obviously on a doomed salvage mission. It doesn't seem like any of the editors looked at what the others did--whole chunks of story seem to be missing. Sometimes it seems like Josh lives at the house, sometimes it seems like he's living in a motel. There's no consistency to how some characters behave, especially Emma's mom, played by MY LEFT FOOT Oscar-winner Brenda Fricker. And why is John Carpenter favorite Peter Jason wearing a bear costume as a boozy mattress king shooting a TV commercial in one scene? He's listed rather high in the credits for such a throwaway bit part--surely he had more to do at one point than slur a couple of lines before declaring "I gotta take a shit." Maybe he just ad-libbed that last part and fled the set? Both Barnes and Roemer were almost Next Big Things five years ago (Barnes was Prince-then-King Caspian in the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA franchise, and Roemer was Shia LaBeouf's love interest in the surprise 2007 hit DISTURBIA), and Roemer had enough momentum going at the time to get a producer credit on this, but LOCKED IN is a catastrophe that isn't doing anything for anyone's career, especially the great Peters (THE WIRE, TREME), who's entirely too good an actor to play such a stock, cardboard "Magical Negro" stereotype. The end result can't possibly be what Christensen and veteran British TV director Suri Krishnamma had in mind when they went into this. LOCKED IN is one of those movies that wasn't finished--it was abandoned. (R, 78 mins).
JOHN WICK (US - 2014) Directed by Chad Stahelski. Written by Derek Kolstad. Cast: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Alfie Allen, Adrianne Palicki, Bridget Moynahan, Dean Winters, Lance Reddick, Clarke Peters, Daniel Bernhardt, David Patrick Kelly, Omer Barnea, Toby Moore, Bridget Regan, Kevin Nash, Randall Duk Kim, Keith Jardine. (R, 102 mins)
When retired hit man John Wick, pulled back into the game when his former, violent life intrudes on his present, peaceful one, ferociously declares "Yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back!" it could also double as a boldly confident statement by Keanu Reeves, the star of JOHN WICK. It was 2008--an eternity by today's standards of fame and pop culture relevance--when Reeves last had anything resembling a hit movie (the forgettable remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL). Since then, he's done some small indies like HENRY'S CRIME (2011) and the unwatchable GENERATION UM... (2013), and directed and co-starred as the villain in the surprisingly entertaining but little-seen martial-arts saga MAN OF TAI CHI (2013), but most of his time was wasted on the disastrous mega-budget bomb 47 RONIN (2013). So yes, with the giddily entertaining JOHN WICK, 50-year-old Reeves is justified in thinkin' he's back. On the surface, it's little more than a standard-issue revenge saga of a guy single-handedly taking on the Russian mob, but in the hands of Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, two veteran stuntmen making their directing debut (they worked as a team, though some DGA snafu only permitted Stahelski to be credited), JOHN WICK is a furiously-paced, dazzlingly-stylish and thoroughly inventive journey into a cinematic world that looks like an alternate-universe NYC, a sort-of reality-grounded SIN CITY minus the graphic novel conventions and various noir grotesqueries. It's the kind of city where hit men and mob assassins have a culture and a social circle all their own, with hotels, nightclubs, and even a gold-coin currency exclusive just to them. They have the cordial, surface respect of competitors in a business, each one willing to rub the other out if the price is right.
John Wick left this world five years earlier when he married Helen (Bridget Moynahan), who turned a violent, ruthless psychopath into a good, upstanding man. When Helen dies from cancer, John is lost and heartbroken but finds a way to get through his grief when a package arrives, its delivery arranged by Helen in the event of her death: a beagle puppy, she explains, "because you need someone to love." John and the puppy, named Daisy, become inseparable companions. When John is filling up at a gas station, his 1969 Mustang is spotted by a sniveling punk (GAME OF THRONES' Alfie Allen), who wants to buy it. "She's not for sale," John says. Undeterred, the kid and some Russian thugs show up at John's house in the middle of the night, hit him over the head, kill Daisy, and take the Mustang. The sniveling punk is Iosef Tasarov, the only son of powerful Russian mob boss Viggo Tasarov (Michael Nyqvist, from the original Swedish GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO trilogy). Viggo is furious with his spoiled brat of a son. "It was just a car and a dog!" Iosef explains, to which his enraged father replies "It's not what you did...it's who you did it to." John Wick used to work for Viggo, and Viggo agreed to grant John his freedom from the organization if he could complete an impossible task, figuring there was no way he could do it and John would remain in his employ. John pulled off the job ("The bodies we buried that day built the foundation of what we have now!" Viggo tells the useless Iosef), and has lived in quiet anonymity since.
Viggo knows John all too well. John Wick is known in assassin circles as "Baba Yaga," or "The Boogeyman." Viggo knows he's a relentless, unstoppable killing machine and he's coming to avenge his dog. But very much the way John has to do what he has to do, so must Viggo in his obligation to protect his son, no matter how worthless he may be. Viggo sends a 12-man crew to wipe out John and when all 12 are killed, Viggo puts out an open contract on John for $2 million as the top players in the assassination game converge on the luxurious Continental (played externally by the Flatiron Building-like 1 Wall Street Court), the hotel of choice for the city's most elite hired killers, to have a go at John Wick, including his old friend Marcus (Willem Dafoe), who spends most of the film acting as John's guardian angel, taking out competitors to ensure that he has his own shot at the $2 million. From then on, it's one brilliantly choreographed set piece after another as John is pursued through the hotel by the likes of scheming femme fatale Perkins (Adrianne Palicki) and through a garishly-decorated multi-level club by Tasarov bodyguards led by Kirill (Daniel Bernhardt), in a sequence that takes its rightful place beside NIGHTHAWKS and COLLATERAL in the pantheon of classic nightclub pursuits.
Considering Stahelski and Leitch's background in stunt coordination (Stahelski has been Reeves' longtime stunt double, doing heavy lifting for him in 1991's POINT BREAK and 1999's THE MATRIX, and elsewhere, Stahelski served as the Eric Draven double in reshoots for 1994's THE CROW after star Brandon Lee's tragic on-set death), there's an intense focus on making JOHN WICK's action sequences hard-hitting and actor-involved. The directors make great effort to shoot scenes in ways that show the actors as much as possible, be it a fight scene, a shootout (this has some of the best since the heyday of John Woo and the "gun-kata" histrionics of Kurt Wimmer's 2002 cult classic EQUILIBRIUM), or a car chase. Most of the blood is CGI, but when they use CGI, it's done in a way that doesn't draw attention to the artifice, which is another example of the way JOHN WICK goes about its mission statement in a way that's refreshingly lacking in self-conscious snark. It would've been very easy to turn this into a ridiculous, CGI-heavy shitshow, but Stahelski and Leitch are to be commended for taking on this project with a clear vision that's seen all the way through. Yes, it is a ridiculous and over-the-top movie, but by not making the characters and their world a cartoon, they convey a brutal effectiveness throughout in addition to some precise and efficient storytelling. The directors and screenwriter Derek Kolstad (whose undistinguished past credits include the DTV actioner ONE IN THE CHAMBER) lay out the exposition in the most no-bullshit fashion imaginable. The entire story is set up and off and running in about 15 minutes, and we've learned everything we need to know about John Wick, his past life, his present life, and what the stakes are for Viggo and his empire.
JOHN WICK is one of the best films of the year though, yes, if you wanted to nitpick, you could question the plot hole of how it's possible that John and Iosef don't know each other. But, more importantly, something occurred to me while watching it: this isn't the kind of movie audiences are used to seeing on the big screen. In between their big Hollywood stunt gigs, Stahelski and Leitch have logged a lot of time working on low-budget actioners like the ones Kolstad usually scripts (he also wrote the 2012 Steve Austin vehicle THE PACKAGE), and that's the angle from which they approach JOHN WICK. You don't see action movies like this in theaters--you seem them on VOD and on Netflix. That's where the bold and innovative actioners are being done by the likes of Isaac Florentine (the UNDISPUTED sequels, NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR) and John Hyams (UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING) and flying completely under the mainstream radar. And with that, the magic of JOHN WICK is clear: it's a high-end DTV actioner that managed to sneak out of the Redbox gutter and somehow con its way into a national theatrical release. Sub in Scott Adkins for Reeves, Rade Serbedzija for Nyqvist, Dolph Lundgren for Dafoe, and I guess Daniel Bernhardt for, uh, Bernhardt, and you've got essentially the same movie minus, of course, the added enjoyment of seeing Reeves in a career-rejuvenating comeback. With its non-stop and coherently-shot action, imaginative setting and colorful production design, sly and sometime subtle wit (during a phone call, Nyqvist's beautifully underplayed delivery of a simple "...oh," when he realizes he's dealing with John Wick, earns quiet chuckles that soon erupt into a wave of loud laughter throughout the theater), and showy supporting turns by vets like Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Dean Winters, Clarke Peters, Lance Reddick, and the great David Patrick Kelly as Charlie, an affable cleaner ("Dinner reservation for 12," John tells him over the phone when he needs the remains of Viggo's dozen assassins removed from his home), JOHN WICK gets everything right. It's the kind of inspired, immersive, and wholly entertaining experience that restores your faith in big-screen action movies and proves that it's sometimes still possible to be surprised.
Postmodernist literary icon Don DeLillo has always seemed like one of those authors whose novels are simply unfilmable, and David Cronenberg proves both that theory and that every great director has to have a worst film with the ill-advised and badly-executed COSMOPOLIS, based on DeLillo's 2003 novel. Cronenberg hasn't shied away from difficult-to-film literary works before, and he succeeded with 1991's NAKED LUNCH, based on the William S. Burroughs novel. The filmmaker is long past the point of needing to prove anything to anyone, but COSMOPOLIS just doesn't work. In an admirable attempt to stretch, TWILIGHT's Robert Pattinson stars as 28-year-old Wall Street billionaire Eric Packer, whose fortune is about to be decimated by fluctuations in the Chinese yuan. Packer decides that today is the day he wants to travel across Manhattan to get a haircut, despite the protests of his security chief (Kevin Durand) that traffic is being tied up by a Presidential visit, anti-capitalist riots, and a funeral procession for a dead rap star, plus he's getting warnings from "The Complex" that there's been a "credible threat" issued against Packer. Undeterred, Packer orders his security team to take him for a haircut in his ludicrously high-tech stretch limo, where most of the film takes place. Over the course of the day-long ride, Packer picks up various advisors (Samantha Morton, Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire) for business meetings and philosophical discussions in the limo, hooks up with his art dealer (Juliette Binoche), picks up a doctor (Bob Bainborough) for his daily EKG and rectal exam, gets out of the limo for a quickie with one of his security detail (Patricia McKenzie), and to have lunch with his wife of less than a month (Sarah Gadon) who complains that she "smells sex" on him. Meanwhile, Occupy-type protestors vandalize the limo and one (Mathieu Amalric) throws a pie in Packer's face before he gets half of a haircut (from veteran Canadian character actor George Touliatos!) and comes face to face with the disgruntled ex-employee (Paul Giamatti) who has vowed to kill him.
Cronenberg updates DeLillo's novel to a certain extent (in the book, Packer was part of the dot com bubble), by tying in the Occupy Wall Street movement and utilizing the yuan as opposed to the Japanese yen. I get what Cronenberg was going after here, with Pattinson's intentionally blank-slate performance illustrating Packer's fundamental disconnect from reality, from emotions, from the 99%, etc. and in dark-humored bits where he's listening to his chief of theory Morton's financial analytical babbling while not even noticing that the limo is being violently attacked by rioters. But it's so ponderous, so tedious, and so heavy-handed that Cronenberg just never gets this off the ground. And dialogue like "The glow of cybercapital is so radiant and seductive," "Money has lost its narrative quality, the way painting did once upon a time," and "My prostate is asymmetrical," works a lot better on the page than on the screen being spoken by actors playing characters. Even the final-act appearance of Giamatti, cast radically against type as "Paul Giamatti," fails to generate any signs of life in this shockingly DOA misfire from Cronenberg. If you're looking for a reason why there haven't been any other features made of DeLillo's novels, look no further than COSMOPOLIS. Even with Pattinson's involvement, this still only played on 65 screens at its widest US release, grossing around $750,000. As bad as this Arthouse Hell is, it would've been undeniably entertaining to watch it in a crowded theater filled with members of Team Edward and seeing how quickly it took for an angry mob of texting Twi-hards to like, totally complain to the manager because they like, paid to get in here and this is so not cool because they're like, talking, and he's got that old doctor dude's finger up his ass, and it's like, eeew!(R, 109 mins)
RED HOOK SUMMER (US - 2012)
Other than documentaries like WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE (2006) and director-for-hire gigs like 25TH HOUR (2002) and INSIDE MAN (2006), Spike Lee has lost a bit of his magic when it comes to smaller, personal indie films. 2004's SHE HATE ME didn't seem to be liked by anyone and got Lee the worst reviews of his career. His latest, the low-budget, self-financed RED HOOK SUMMER, exhibits all the self-indulgent qualities that Lee keeps in check when he's working for a major studio. The newest chapter in Lee's "Brooklyn Chronicles" series (which includes such films as 1989's DO THE RIGHT THING, 1994's CROOKLYN, and 1998's HE GOT GAME), RED HOOK SUMMER (which Lee scripted with MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA writer James McBride), has 13-year-old Flik (Jules Brown) being shipped off from a cushy Atlanta suburb to the Red Hook projects in Brooklyn to spend the summer with his fiery preacher grandfather Bishop Enoch Rouse (Clarke Peters). Flik isn't enthused about being there, especially when the Bishop makes it clear that he's using this time together to turn Flik to Jesus. The fish-out-of-water teen also befriends the outgoing Chazz (Toni Lysaith) and has a run-in with gang member and aspiring rapper Box (Nate Parker). Lee frequenly meanders and lets scenes drag on much longer than necessary, with a lot of screen time devoted to the drunken ramblings of Deacon Zee (Thomas Jefferson Byrd), who's never short on opinions about Wall Street and the bailout. And when he isn't doing things like switching film stock for no reason other than because he can, Lee even finds time for a couple of awkward walk-ons as an aged, paunchy, gray-bearded Mookie, his character from DO THE RIGHT THING, and yes, he's still delivering pizzas for Sal's. Really, Spike? Come on.
The best thing about RED HOOK SUMMER is a powerhouse performance from Peters, best known for his work on the HBO series THE WIRE and TREME. There's a third act plot development that essentially forces Lee to turn the whole film over to Peters, and it's here that it finally finds some dramatic momentum, even if it creates a massive logic lapse as to why Flik's mom would send him to Red Hook. Too much time is spent with Flik and Chazz, and I know they're new to this and it's the first movie for each of them and it's kind of a dick move to take cheap shots at young, inexperienced performers and I'm sure they're nice kids, but Brown and Lysaith are absolutely terrible actors. I really don't think Lee could've done a worse job casting these two pivotal roles. Peters tries to carry young Brown along, but there's only so much he can do. If you're a fan of Peters' television work, then RED HOOK SUMMER is worth seeing for him. He's great but he's not enough to keep this from being one of Lee's least-interesting films, though it does have Peters' WIRE co-star Isiah Whitlock, Jr. stopping by long enough to drop a "Sheeeeeeeeeit!" (and he's credited as Isiah "Sheeeeeeet" Whitlock, Jr!). Otherwise, it's a sluggishly-paced horse pill that actually seems to last an entire summer. (R, 121 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
(US - 2012)
Equal parts Terrence Malick and Maurice Sendak, the critically-adored BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD stars a cast of non-professional actors led by six-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis, who rises above the film's more frustrating elements to deliver a truly remarkable performance. As terrific as she is, the film as a whole failed to connect, regardless of how well-intentioned it is. Hushpuppy (Wallis) lives with her father Wink (Dwight Henry, also excellent) in an impoverished, fictional area off the coast of Louisiana known as "The Bathtub" (inspired by the disappearing Isle de Jean Charles). The Bathtub is on the wrong side of the levee, and as Hushpuppy's teacher Miss Bathsheba (Gina Montana) tells her, the ice caps are melting and The Bathtub will eventually cease to exist due to rising waters. Hushpuppy has visions of rampaging aurachs frozen for centuries, now freed by the melted ice caps, in addition to having imaginary conversations with her absent mother and trying to care for the loving, but unstable and frequently abusive Wink after a Katrina-like storm destroys The Bathtub. The residents of The Bathtub are the kinds of close-knit, insulated, and isolated types that have always been left behind by society. Most are illiterate and live in uninhabitable shacks (Hushpuppy has her own home, an elevated trailer near her dad's rundown shack; and their boat is the detached bed of a pickup truck). Director/co-writer Benh Zeitlin is to be commended for getting such a natural, unaffected performance out of a six-year-old novice (she's particularly devastating near the end, and it's Oscar-caliber work), but the film otherwise comes off like an NPR wet dream. (PG-13, 93 mins)
