BRIGHT (US - 2017) Directed by David Ayer. Written by Max Landis. Cast: Will Smith, Joel Edgerton, Noomi Rapace, Edgar Ramirez, Lucy Fry, Ike Barinholtz, Brad Henke, Veronica Ngo, Happy Anderson, Margaret Cho, Enrique Murciano, Jay Hernandez, Alex Meraz, Dawn Olivieri, Matt Gerald, Joseph Piccuiro, Scarlet Spencer, Andrea Navedo, Cle "Bone" Sloan, Brandon Larracuente. (Unrated, 117 mins) Netflix enters the realm of the brain-dead blockbuster with the $90 million BRIGHT, the follow-up teaming of star Will Smith and director David Ayer after last year's SUICIDE SQUAD, a film that grossed $750 million worldwide despite nobody really liking it all that much. While SUICIDE SQUAD's contributions to pop culture are limited to teenage girls and MILFs dressing as Harley Quinn for Halloween and this image accompanying any article on Margot Robbie for the rest of her life, BRIGHT is a film nobody will remember a week from now. Nobody's dressing as a BRIGHT orc for Halloween. Playing like the rough draft of a gritty L.A. cop script if written by the late Gary Gygax after he just saw ALIEN NATION in 1988 and immediately ran it through his shredder, BRIGHT tries to fuse Ayer's love of cop movies into the realm of otherworldly fantasy, existing in a present-day world where humans, orcs, and elves have co-existed since the defeat of the "Dark Lord" 2000 years ago. In an effort to promote the appearance of diversity, the LAPD has given burned-out cop--is there any other kind?--Daryl Ward (Smith) an Orc partner named Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton under extensive old-school prosthetics). There's some heavy-handed allegorical implications of racism in an era of controversial police shootings of unarmed black men, with the insulated "protect the shield" attitude extending to the calculated ostracizing of Jakoby. Ward pleads with his watch commander Sgt. Ching (Margaret Cho) to get a new partner, but since nobody wants to work with him either, the two are forced to pair up...if they don't kill each other first!
Or bore the viewer to death first. Ward and Jakoby answer a call and discover a bloodbath at the hideout of the Shield of Light, a fringe underground group of renegade elves prepping to stop the resurrection of the Dark Lord. The lone survivor is Tikka (Lucy Fry as Milla Jovovich in THE FIFTH ELEMENT), a gibberish-spouting elf in possession of a magical, glowing wand that's intended for a "Bright," a standard-issue "chosen one" with the power to defeat the minions of the Dark Lord (any guesses who the Bright will be?). Ching and three other dirty cops arrive, planning to plant the wand on Jakoby and accuse him of stealing it, using that as an excuse to kill Jakoby and Ward, who hates Jakoby but refuses to go along with railroading a fellow officer. Ward ends up killing the other cops to protect Jakoby, and the three find themselves on the run, fleeing a variety of pursuers: the L.A.P.D.; villainous dark elf Leilah (Noomi Rapace), who's after the the wand and Tikka; evil Orc gang leader Dorghu (Brad Henke), and Kandemore (Edgar Ramirez), an elf agent in the FBI's "Division of Magic."
I can't even believe I just wrote that last paragraph. Who thought it was a good idea to combine a hard-R cop thriller with Dungeons & Dragons? The script is credited to Max Landis (son of John and the writer of CHRONICLE and VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN), who was faced with several sexual misconduct allegations just as Netflix rolled this out, but it's obvious Ayer rewrote significant chunks of it. Ayer's fingerprints are all over, whether it's the ballbusting banter between Ward and Jakoby, the "survive the day" motif so vital to the Ayer-penned TRAINING DAY and his much later END OF WATCH, and most glaringly, an entire plot development involving Dorghu and his son that Ayer lifted almost completely from that long, intense sequence in TRAINING DAY when Ethan Hawke's Hoyt is held in a bathtub at gunpoint by Cliff Curtis' Smiley. The glum BRIGHT is riddled with fantasy genre cliches as well: in a shocking turn of events, evil Leilah jumps from a high point and does a three-point superhero landing looking down, then lifting her head to make eye contact with Ward.
It also takes itself far too seriously for such a bonkers premise, so much so that very few of the humorous elements are successful amidst the confused mash-up of dark fantasy, horror, and cop tropes. The only big laugh comes from the revelation that Orcs like death metal, and the sight of a seething Ward watching Jakoby jam along in the police cruiser to Cannibal Corpse's "Hammer Smashed Face," calling it "one of the great love songs." Elsewhere, tiny fairies are regarded as common household pests. Ward swats one with a broom, quipping "Fairy lives don't matter today!" which is one of many Smith groaners that clang to the ground throughout (other witticisms include "A Bright came in and used the wand to magic everyone the fuck up!" and "You fucked over my life for some stupid Orc knucklehead?" and "You're gonna need to unfuck us! Magic us to Palm Springs or some shit!"). Edgerton comes off the best, not surprising given that he's playing the most sympathetic character and one who's discriminated against by his colleagues as well as his own kind for selling out to become a cop and for being an "unblooded orc," whatever that is. BRIGHT can be summed up best by a perfectly appropriate event that takes place at exactly the halfway point: the action stops cold for a long dialogue scene that exists simply so Kandemore can deliver a mid-film exposition dump to his cynical partner Montehugh (Happy Anderson) in an attempt to catch the viewer up to speed on the incoherent plot. While it serves its purpose, it does prompt a bewildered Montehugh to offer the ultimate BRIGHT auto-critique: "What a shitshow."
FURY (US - 2014) Written and directed by David Ayer. Cast: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, Brad William Henke, Xavier Samuel, Scott Eastwood, Kevin Vance, Jim Parrack, Anamaria Marinca, Alicia von Rittberg, Laurence Spellman. (R, 133 mins)
It's been 16 years since the visceral brutality of the opening sequence of Steven Spielberg's SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, a horrific depiction of the D-Day invasion at Normandy, forever changed the cinematic depiction of war. Sure, plenty of war films, especially those centered on Vietnam, pulled no punches and went straight for the jugular, but SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was a game-changer, at least as far as depictions of long-ago wars were concerned. Its impact has been felt in practically every war film or TV show that came in its wake, from the graphic detail of the beloved HBO miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS and THE PACIFIC to the infamous femoral artery scene in Ridley Scott's BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001). The fictional FURY, set in April 1945 during the final month of action in the European theater, is a film that wants to be another SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but really only ends up being an exponentially more violent and foul-mouthed take on the kind of WWII saga that would've been made in the days after WWII and into the late 1960s. It has engrossing story, some good performances, and some well-shot battle sequences that abstain from today's standard quick-cut shaky-cam action, but there's a gnawing feeling that you've seen it all before, from the graphic carnage and the way ammunition shreds through flesh to the outsider joining an established unit and going through the requisite hazing and having to prove his manhood, to Brad Pitt's performance being a somewhat toned-down rehash of his work as Lt. Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009). Writer/director David Ayer (END OF WATCH) has Spielberg-sized ambitions, but he can't resist relying on easy genre tropes, cardboard characterizations, and fuckin' macho tough guy fuckin' posturing just like he fuckin' had earlier this fuckin' year in fuckin' SABOTAGE, one of fuckin' 2014's worst fuckin' movies. And please, in the name of all things cinematic, the time has come to declare a moratorium on alpha-male lunkheads in war movies or cop movies or firefighter movies or doctor movies--any kind of real-world movie or TV show with an ensemble of everyday people doing heroic things--feeling the need to emphatically declare "This is what we do!"
FURY focuses on a close-knit Sherman tank crew (the tank has been christened "Fury") led by Wardaddy (Pitt), a stern, no-nonsense type who lives for war because it's what he does. He's fiercely protective of his men: devoutly-religious Bible (Shia LaBeouf), fast-talking Gordo (Michael Pena), and sub-literate hillbilly Coon-Ass (Jon Bernthal). They've just lost their assistant driver and Wardaddy isn't happy with his newest addition: inexperienced and terrified Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a typist who's been in the Army for eight weeks. Naturally, Norman is razzed and ridiculed by the others and an early fumbling of the ball leads to another tank commander being ambushed and killed by German soldiers ("That's on you!" Wardaddy yells, because of course he does). Ayer's episodic script follows the men on a series of assignments, culminating in an epic battle where every other tank in their company is destroyed and they hit a mine shortly after, rendering the tank immobile. Rather than turn the film into DAS TANK, Ayer introduces a battalion of German officers approaching from further down the road as the men of Fury strap in, hunker down, and arm themselves for a 5-against-300 suicide mission that jettisons the relative realism of the preceding 80 or so minutes as the film degenerates into the equivalent of a WWII cartoon.
Ayer leaves no cliche unused, and the men of Fury exit in the exact order you expect. Of course, Norman proves his worth to the crew and earns his own cool nickname--"Machine"--because that's what he is. The arc of "Machine" hits all the required marks of a naive, innocent, baby-faced kid turning into a battle-hardened killer. And of course, Coon-Ass isn't the complete dipshit he spends almost the entire film being, acting like a bullying Neanderthal before putting his arm around Machine and grunting "Yer alright." Some attempts at character depth are made, like Wardaddy excusing himself so he doesn't look shaky and apprehensive in front of his adoring men, and LaBeouf turns in a strong performance as Bible, with a stare that belongs to a good-hearted man who's dangerously close to losing it--it's too bad Ayer undermines LaBeouf's performance by almost constantly showing him with tears welling in his eyes to the point where it becomes unintentionally funny. But for a film where none of war's graphic horrors are spared--heads are blown off, tanks squash corpses underneath, limbs are seared off, bodies split in half, Norman has to clean up pieces of his dead predecessor's face--the most impressive and suspenseful section of FURY is a long sequence where Wardaddy and Norman invite themselves into the home of a German woman (Anamaria Marinca) and her niece (Alicia von Rittberg). We're not sure where it's going, but as the women make eggs and coffee and Wardaddy shaves, a romance blossoms between Norman and the niece and there's a temporary and oddly tranquil domesticity amidst the madness that's destroyed when the other three guys from Fury drunkenly barge in and behave like animals. The ultimate end to this detour is that it makes Norman a man in more ways than one, but it's a strange sequence (I'm surprised the studio didn't make Ayer shorten it or cut it entirely) that demonstrates something genuinely substantive beyond Ayer's uber-macho dick-swinging and the checklist of war movie cliches and could almost function as a stand-alone short film. If only the rest of FURY was as unpredictable and willing to take chances.
SABOTAGE (US - 2014) Directed by David Ayer. Written by Skip Woods and David Ayer. Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington, Olivia Williams, Mireille Enos, Terrence Howard, Harold Perrineau, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, Max Martini, Martin Donovan, Troy Garity, Maurice Compte, Kevin Vance, Michael Monks, Gary Grubbs, Mark Schlegel. (R, 109 mins)
Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to movies after a decade in politics has largely found the action icon in self-deprecation mode, poking fun at his age in the sadly neglected THE LAST STAND and cutting loose while Sylvester Stallone played his straight man in ESCAPE PLAN. Those two films, along with his appearances in the EXPENDABLES outings, showed a fully self-aware Schwarzenegger who seemed to be happy just making formula action movies again. Unfortunately, if the word "expendables" isn't in the title, formula action movies with '80s action stars aren't doing very well in the 2010s, so Schwarzenegger tries something different with SABOTAGE, teaming with writer/director David Ayer, who's made a name for himself with tough, gritty L.A. cop thrillers--he scripted the great TRAINING DAY (2001) and the underrated DARK BLUE (2002), directed the frequently absurd STREET KINGS (2008), and both wrote and directed END OF WATCH (2012). Ayer's had some stumbles--his 2006 directing debut HARSH TIMES features what's thus far the only bad Christian Bale performance--but the idea of collaborating with Schwarzenegger had some interesting potential. Unfortunately, SABOTAGE is an almost total bust with only the hints of a better film occasionally peaking through the rubble. I like the idea of an aged Schwarzenegger exploring the dark side of a character who's spent his life in law enforcement and has seen far too much horrible shit, and that comes through in a powerfully effective closing shot that strongly suggests Ayer might've been going for something meaningful, but until then, SABOTAGE is filled with tired cliches, obnoxiously cartoonish heroes, and illogical plotting. It seems torn between being a Schwarzenegger vehicle and an Ayer film, clumsily reaching a happy medium that comes off as an awkward, compromised attempt at the most mediocre of both worlds.
Schwarzenegger is John "Breacher" Wharton, a veteran Atlanta-based DEA badass who runs a crew of hardcore, hypermacho, undercover dude-bros who play by their own rules and look like the types of guys who go to metal shows just to beat the shit out of people in the mosh pit. They fuckin' live on the edge 24/7, motherfucker. They fuckin' work hard and they fuckin' play harder. They make SONS OF ANARCHY look like fuckin' pussies and they've always got each others' backs, bro, because that's all fuckin' matters in this world. It's not just a fuckin' job...they fuckin' live it, man. It's what they fuckin' do. They fuckin' crush fuckin' cartels, they fuckin' get shit done, and they fuckin' answer to fuckin' no one. Then they fuckin' go to fuckin' titty bars and they fuckin' make it rain, slammin' fuckin' shots, fuckin' smashin' bottles, and kickin' the fuckin' shit outta some fuckin' pussy bouncers, just because they fuckin' can. They're the fuckin' best at what they do. They got fuckin' names like Breacher, Monster (Sam Worthington), Sugar (Terrence Howard), Grinder (Joe Manganiello), Neck (Josh Holloway), Pyro (Max Martini), Tripod (Kevin Vance), and Smoke (Mark Schlegel). But the fuckin' sickest of all is Monster's old lady Lizzy (Mireille Enos), who's like, just totally fuckin' off the chain, bro.
"Get up, come on, get down with the sickness!"
Breacher's still getting over his wife and son being murdered by a Guatemalan cartel boss when he and his crew orchestrate a $10 million heist of drug money to set themselves up for life. The money goes missing and the Feds are on to them, but after laying low for six months, they get nothing and have no choice but to send Breacher and his team back in the field. Shortly after, members of the crew start getting offed one by one in assorted gruesome ways that mimic the revenge tactics of the cartel: one is smashed to pieces by a train, another is disemboweled, gutted, and nailed to the ceiling. Hard-nosed Atlanta homicide detective Brentwood (Olivia Williams) and her partner Jackson (Harold Perrineau) are in charge of the investigation and get no cooperation from the crew (who, naturally, want to fuckin' deal with this in their own fuckin' way, telling Brentwood--what else--"Welcome to our world"), though a reluctant Breacher slowly begins to warm up to her. As the body count rises and a drug raid reveals they aren't being targeted, Breacher and the team lose trust in one another with the pending exposure of their corruption and the increasing likelihood that the killer is one of their fuckin' own.
Ayer doesn't shy away from graphically gory carnage, making SABOTAGE an unusually grim Schwarzenegger film. But Ayer and co-writer/screenwriting pariah Skip Woods (A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD) never really establish a consistency between a brutal DEA thriller and an Arnold actioner. Schwarzenegger seems up to the challenge of playing a morally-conflicted, burned-out DEA field op whose years on the job mixed with unspeakable tragedy have prompted him to go rogue, but Breacher and his colleagues are some of the most absurdly posturing, gratingly repulsive heroes to hit screens in ages. They act like the kind of roid-raging, fart-obsessed Beavis & Butt-heads who go to public places just to yell, start fights and break shit. They're the kind of no-rules renegades who leave a trail of dead bodies and just strut away from the scene of a meth-stronghold massacre, telling the cops "Cleanup, aisle 3." It's hard to care about Monster and Lizzy's imploding marriage, since it's obvious these two sacks of shit were made for each other. Enos is a fine actress, but she's completely over-the-top here, and not in a good way (see Eva Green in 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE). You can tell Ayer handled the writing in the scenes with Williams and Perrineau, because their rapport and ribbing with one another expertly conveys the kind of lived-in comfort and trust of two veteran cops who've worked together for some time. The scenes with these two are far more interesting than anything involving Breacher and his crew of goonish idiots (Williams also gets the film's best line, telling a posturing Grinder "I hate to interrupt your bro-down, but..."). I also liked some amusing asides here and there, like Breacher being under constant surveillance during his suspension, bringing Pop Tarts to the Feds parked outside his house and sharing his Netflix DVDs with them.
As an actor, Schwarzenegger has overcome the obstacle of his thick Austrian accent with his larger-than-life screen presence and sheer charisma--when he plays a Texas sheriff in RAW DEAL or a US Special Forces vet in COMMANDO or a big-city cop or even a KINDERGARTEN COP, he's Arnold and you just roll with it, no matter how inherently absurd his casting may be. That's why he's awesome. But with SABOTAGE, it's the first time it feels like Schwarzenegger is out of place. Maybe it's the conflicted script, maybe it's the ill-fitting suits he wears in the DEA offices, or maybe it's his age, but for whatever reason, it's hard to buy the Breacher that he's selling here. He doesn't look comfortable in the action scenes, and while it's commendable that he isn't going full Seagal and checking out entirely while his stuntman does the heavy lifting, Arnold just doesn't move like he used to. He looks oddly slumped when he's carrying a shotgun and barging through doors. It's perfectly understandable--no matter how great of shape he's in, he's still 66 years old and it's not 1990 anymore. There's no mention made of his character's age, but maybe it would've been smart to work it in, especially given the implications of the closing scene. But as it is, for the first time since his post-Governator comeback, he actually comes across as too old for this shit. Perhaps if SABOTAGE were as relatively lighthearted as THE LAST STAND or ESCAPE PLAN, the miscasting wouldn't come off as so glaring. But that again speaks to how SABOTAGE is constantly working at cross purposes. It's Schwarzenegger taking on dark, serious material, but it's at least a decade too late, and the filmmakers feel too much of an obligation to make it an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, and as a result, it's a complete mess that unfortunately feels like it should've gone straight to DVD. Ultimately, the basic center of the film--the mystery of who's offing the crew and why--doesn't really hold up to any serious scrutiny. Also, SABOTAGE can't even follow the advice of its own one-sheet ("Leave no loose ends"): what was the point of introducing Troy Garity's bitter, whistleblowing Fed only to drop him completely after two scenes? And if Breacher's crew followed their directive to blow up all the money in their initial raid, then how did the DEA suits know $10 million was missing? That's got "Skip Woods" written all over it.
Written and directed by David Ayer. Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena, Anna Kendrick, Natalie Martinez, America Ferrera, Cody Horn, Frank Grillo, David Harbour, Cle Sloan, Maurice Compte, Yahira "Flakiss" Garcia, Diamonique, Kristy Wu. (R, 110 mins)
Since his breakthrough scripting 2001's TRAINING DAY, David Ayer has become an auteur of Los Angeles crime cinema, demonstrating a particular gift for capturing the sights and sounds of cop and criminal life, with the lines often blurred beyond recognition. Ayer has focused largely on corrupt cops (in addition to TRAINING DAY, there's 2004's DARK BLUE, and 2008's STREET KINGS, which he directed but didn't write), and would appear to be the cinematic heir apparent to the Demon Dog of L.A. crime fiction, James Ellroy (who collaborated with Ayer on the DARK BLUE script and co-wrote STREET KINGS). But Ayer seems to work better as a writer than a director, and the results of END OF WATCH are mixed. There's no questioning Ayer's knowledge of South Los Angeles and his dedication to capturing the environment in the most realistic, hard-hitting ways. But there's also no questioning that the best cop films Ayer's been involved in--TRAINING DAY and the underrated DARK BLUE--were directed by others (and I'm not counting hired-gun scripting gigs like the original THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and S.W.A.T.). Ayer's first time behind the camera was with 2006's HARSH TIMES, where he managed to accomplish the unthinkable and show us that there were indeed some roles that an absurdly miscast Christian Bale can't play. STREET KINGS had some strong elements undone by plot contrivances and a ridiculous performance by Forest Whitaker. Similarly, END OF WATCH is hampered by inconsistencies that don't derail the film but absolutely hold it back and keep it from becoming the modern day crime classic that it has the potential to be.
The film follows two South Central officers--Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala(Michael Pena)--on their day-to-day routine. Taylor, a law student by night, brings along some cameras on the job for a filmmaking course he's taking as an elective, and right away, Ayer makes a major misstep in not really doing anything with this idea once it's established. It figures in the early going with a lot of shaky-cam chases and the like (Ayer has said he wanted a YouTube sense of immediacy to the film), and for a while, the film feels like any number of reality TV shows. But then Ayer gets sloppy with the concept and essentially abandons it unless it's convenient or can provide a cool shot, but continues shooting the film in the same dizzying fashion from angles that can't possibly be from the concealed cameras that Taylor and Zavala have attached to their uniforms. What's the point in Taylor even mentioning he's taking a filmmaking elective? Is it to provoke the sort of badass, ballbusting posturing they engage in? I doubt it, since they act the same whether they're filming each other or not.
Ayer spends a lot of time in the car with Taylor and Zavala, and it's here where Gyllenhaal and Pena demonstrate a very real chemistry and feel very much like old friends who know each other and have each other's back. Taylor also starts a serious relationship with classmate Janet (Anna Kendrick), and wants to quit playing the field so he can have the same life that Zavala has with his wife Gabby (Natalie Martinez). But again, Ayer falls asleep on the job (or just nixed stuff in the editing room), because Kendrick's Janet is so underwritten that he needn't have bothered putting her in the story at all. It's not like her presence prompts Taylor to quit hot-dogging it on the job, where he and Zavala have earned reps as cocky badasses.
But it's this incessant cockiness that causes the pair to run afoul of barrio crime kingpin Big Evil (Maurice Compte), who has some serious Mexican cartel connections and is far more dangerous than Taylor realizes when he decides to roll up on Big Evil's backyard party over a noise complaint. Ayer drops the Big Evil thread for a good chunk of the running time, but it comes back into play in the undeniably powerful last 20 or so minutes, where Ayer stages an admittedly bravura shootout that Taylor and Zavala never see coming because they have no idea just how much they've pissed off some powerful people (although, for a second, Zavala seems like he might after reading a Spanish-language message scrawled in blood at a crime scene--but it's never mentioned). The last section of END OF WATCH is so brilliantly conceived and edited that it not only has you leaving the theater thinking you just saw a better film than you really did, but it's obvious Ayer thought of the finale first and then realized he needed to build a film around it, and that the rest of what he had to build was done in a rather hasty fashion. The whole "filmmaking elective" thing reeks of some pandering-to-the-focus-groups need to trendhop onto the handheld/found footage craze (though it isn't a "found footage" film, it's definitely a close relative, at least until Ayer gets bored with it). I wish Ayer had spent more time on the Big Evil subplot, because his crew is filled with some of the most merciless and plausibly terrifying villains that a cop movie has ever offered. Even an old-school South Central gangsta like Tre (the great Cle Sloan), who forms an uneasy alliance with Taylor and Zavala and tries to warn them that the word on the street is that they've got serious people after them, is wary of Big Evil and his crew. They're absolutely nihilistic, completely sociopathic, and without a shred of remorse or pity. And as played by Compte and particularly rapper Yahira "Flakiss" Garcia (who almost steals the film as the ruthless La La), they very quietly create some unforgettable, despicable, and unsettling figures, and they never go over the top with it. Big Evil's crew doesn't get a lot of screen time, but your stomach will be in knots every time they're onscreen.
There's a great film buried somewhere in END OF WATCH, but we only see fragments of it: the Taylor/Zavala camaraderie, the desire to vividly capture the reality of police work in South Los Angeles, and the performances of Gyllenhaal, Pena, Compte, and Flakiss. END OF WATCH is easily Ayer's most accomplished work yet as a filmmaker, but it's hard not to wonder if having someone else behind the camera--an Antoine Fuqua, perhaps?--would've allowed him to focus more on the writing and flesh out and fine-tune the less successful elements. In the end, END OF WATCH is extremely flawed and problematic, but as frustrating as it is, what it gets right is done so well that it's still very much a worthwhile film.
David Ayer regular Cle Sloan has a supporting role in
END OF WATCH, which begs the question...
