THE LAST FULL MEASURE (US - 2020) Written and directed by Todd Robinson. Cast: Sebastian Stan, Christopher Plummer, Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Peter Fonda, LisaGay Hamilton, Jeremy Irvine, Diane Ladd, Amy Madigan, Linus Roache, John Savage, Alison Sudol, Bradley Whitford, Dale Dye, Ser'Darius Blain, Zachary Roerig, Cody Walker, James Jagger, Richard Cawthorne, Ethan Russell, Bruce MacVittie, Asher Miles Fallica, Travis Aaron Wade, Rachel Harker. (R, 116 mins) An extremely earnest and well-meaning chronicle of the efforts to award a posthumous Medal of Honor to a fallen Vietnam War hero, THE LAST FULL MEASURE wears its heart on its sleeve and you can't fault the nobility of its intentions. Jumping between 1999 and flashbacks to the botched Operation Abilene in the ill-fated 1966 Battle of Xa Cam My on a rubber plantation roughly 30 klicks outside of Saigon, the film doesn't shy away from a deep dive into hagiography in the story of Air Force pararescueman William "Pits" Pitsenbarger (played here by Jeremy Irvine), a Piqua, OH native who was killed in action on April 11, 1966 while treating and rescuing 60 Army infantrymen, then refusing evacuation and staying behind to help the unit defend their position against VC snipers. Because it was an Army operation, the request for a Medal of Honor citation was denied and Pitsenbarger was instead awarded the Air Force Cross. But the men saved by Pitsenbarger, along with retired Air Force Sgt. and fellow pararescueman Tom Tulley (William Hurt) have never given up the fight for his heroism to be properly recognized. The MOH inquiry lands in the lap of ambitious (and, like almost everyone else here, fictional) mid-level Pentagon staffer Scott Huffman (Sebastian Stan), who has loftier goals than sifting through boring paperwork for info about a 33-year-old battle that nobody remembers, and he's practically encouraged by his smarmy boss Carlton Stanton (Bradley Whitford, cast radically against type as "Bradley Whitford") to blow it off and bide his time before pawning it off on someone else.
But Huffman proceeds with at least pretending to give a shit, his obvious ambivalence to the assignment earning the derisive scorn of Tulley as well as the Cam My survivors he tracks down to half-heartedly interview (their stories are intercut with combat flashbacks to that fateful day), all of them embittered and shattered from the horrors they experienced and witnessed: Jimmy Takoda (Samuel L. Jackson), Ray Mott (Ed Harris), and Jimmy Burr (the late Peter Fonda, in his last film), the latter with a bullet still lodged in his head and suffering from PTSD so intensely debilitating that he carries a loaded shotgun at all times and sleeps during the day because he remains terrified of the darkness of night. A pencil pusher and company man who seems to demonstrate no understanding of the sacrifice these men have made, Sanford inevitably comes around to seeing the light, feeling their pain, and legitimately caring about the legacy of Pitsenbarger, especially after he meets his elderly parents, Alice (Diane Ladd) and Frank Pitsenbarger (Christopher Plummer), who's terminally ill with cancer and wants nothing more than to see his son properly honored before he dies.
It's doubtful you'll find a film in 2020 with more honorable intent. This was a longtime passion project for writer/director Todd Robinson (who previously directed Harris in the instantly-forgotten, low-budget submarine thriller PHANTOM), who spent 20 years trying to get it made before production finally began in 2017 (Roadside Attractions, Lionsgate's art house division, has been sitting on this for a while). Pitsenbarger's story could've been told without resorting to melodramatic embellishment, like the invoking of an actual friendly fire incident during the two-day battle that the film uses to lend credence to a generally debunked conspiracy theory that Pitsenbarger was denied the Medal of Honor because of potential embarrassment it would inflict on the US Army, not to mention the presidential aspirations of a fictional senator (Dale Dye) who, in the context of the film, was one of the architects of Operation Abilene. The dramatic license taken with this plot tangent certainly necessitates nearly everyone--the exceptions being Pitsenbarger, his parents, and Linus Roache as Clinton-era Air Force Secretary Whit Peters--being composite characters or whole cloth fictional creations "inspired" by actual participants. The best parts of THE LAST FULL MEASURE are provided by a stacked cast of national treasures and one ageless living legend in the always-magnificent Plummer, who's just heartbreaking when Mr. Pitsenbarger looks out of his son's bedroom window, recalling when he was just a boy, and saying "Sometimes I can still see him out there mowing the lawn." Jackson, Harris, Hurt, and Fonda are all granted time in the spotlight to work their magic, their characters haunted by memories of war and the sacrifice Pitsenbarger made to save them. When these guys are onscreen, as opposed to the bland Stan's uninteresting Sanford, THE LAST FULL MEASURE is often gut-wrenchingly powerful. That's especially true for Jackson, who gets a great monologue about coming home from Vietnam only to have the locals call him a "baby-killer," and Fonda, who goes out with a marvelous farewell performance as a broken man who's been absolutely unable to psychologically function in any capacity since the day Pitsenbarger saved his life.
Peter Fonda (1940-2019)
There's enough real drama in this story that it shouldn't have been difficult to avoid the fictionalization and the unfortunate second half turn toward the maudlin and overwrought. That begins right around the time Sanford travels to Vietnam to find another Cam My survivor (THE DEER HUNTER's John Savage), who stayed behind and turned the battle site into a CGI butterfly-filled memorial of prayer and reflection in a ridiculously long sequence that looks like an outtake from an apparent John Savage self-help meditation video. It's not long after that when Hurt's otherwise solid performance is completely derailed by a ludicrously melodramatic, saliva-spewing survivor's guilt breakdown that has him slobbering all over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Characters start giving speeches as the inspirational score swells and tugs at the heartstrings, and no matter how sincerely it's delivered, not even a great actress like three-time Oscar-nominee Diane Ladd is capable of selling florid dialogue like "Talking about Bill is one of the greatest joys of our life...keeping him alive keeps us strong...it's how we balance our grief and live a happy life without him." And around the time Pitsenbarger gets his posthumous Medal of Honor and Whitford's loathsome prick character has his come-to-Jesus moment and is shown leading the ovation with a slow clap (are we still doing this, Hollywood?), you might ask yourself why Robinson is so determined to sabotage a generally credible movie with this kind of mawkish, pandering horseshit. For most of its duration, THE LAST FULL MEASURE is a terrific showcase for some great actors, and if you're a fan of Peter Fonda, you'll be hard-pressed to not get a little choked-up at his last scene (fittingly, the film is dedicated to him). In the end, even with the second-half stumbling and bumbling (it was nice to see Savage on the big screen again, but his whole section is a momentum-killer that should've been left on the cutting room floor), it's a suitably effective--and refreshingly non-jingoistic--man-weepie that dads and grandpas will love, and I can't help but wonder if it's in theaters now so the Blu-ray will make a great Father's Day gift in June.
JOY (US - 2015) Written and directed by David O. Russell. Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, Edgar Ramirez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rossellini, Dascha Polanco, Elisabeth Rohm, Ken Howard, Susan Lucci, Donna Mills, Laura Wright, Maurice Benard, John Enos, Alexander Cook, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Melissa Rivers. (PG-13, 124 mins)
With JOY, a loose biopic of inventor, entrepreneur, and HSN personality Joy Mangano, writer/director David O. Russell has started to coast on formulaic tropes that stretch back to 2010's THE FIGHTER and 2012's SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. Like those two justifiably acclaimed films, JOY has a down-and-out protagonist trying to scrape by while being helped but more often hindered by an ostensibly well-meaning but absurdly dysfunctional family. We had Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) in THE FIGHTER, struggling to succeed in the ring while dealing with a crackhead brother (Christian Bale), a pushy mother (Melissa Leo), and a small army of almost comically unpleasant sisters, and Pat Solitano, Jr.(Bradley Cooper) in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, struggling to come out on top with his bipolar disorder while falling for a bitter young widow (Jennifer Lawrence) and dealing with his wacky friends and family, headed by his superstitious, Philadelphia Eagles-obsessed dad (Robert De Niro). Lawrence, De Niro and Cooper all star in JOY (all also appeared in Russell's 2013 Scorsese homage AMERICAN HUSTLE), and Lawrence's title character is largely cut from the same cloth as Micky Ward and Pat Solitano.
Once-promising high-school valedictorian Joy is an airport ticket clerk and divorced mother of two struggling to support everyone in her family: kindly, encouraging grandmother MiMi (Diane Ladd), her soap opera-addicted, shut-in mother Terry (Virginia Madsen), and even her ex-husband Anthony (Edgar Ramirez), who still lives in the basement. She also has to periodically take in her dad Rudy (De Niro), when he's in between girlfriends, and puts up with older, bitter half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Rohm)--Rudy's daughter by his first wife--who constantly bad-mouths Joy to her own children. Fed up with none of her dreams coming to fruition and everyone's dependence on her, Joy long ago abandoned her gift of creativity when real life set in. After mopping up a spill and cutting herself on broken glass while hand-wringing the mop, Joy is inspired to create a single-looped thread, self-wringing mop and gets investment backing from Rudy's newest lady friend, wealthy widow Trudy (Isabella Rossellini). Eventually, Joy gets a meeting with QVC exec Neil Walker (Cooper) and after a couple of stumbles that lead to Joy going on the air herself to sell it, the "Miracle Mop" becomes a huge hit, but Joy is unprepared for the cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world of commerce. 95% of the film is Joy's struggle with little regard to the time frame, then it ends with a five-minute wrap-up where years have gone by and she's suddenly a huge business mogul with inventors coming to make product deals with her as if she's Vito Corleone doling out favors on his daughter's wedding day.
At face value, JOY can be seen as an uplifting tale of determination and can-do spirit as the underdog achieves the American Dream and overcomes the obstacles to become a self-made success. But the story is so predictable and the characters surrounding Joy such unlikable and quirky cartoons that it never rings true. Russell seems to vacillate between lighthearted Coen Bros. and less-precious Wes Anderson throughout. Russell isn't as interested in production design as Anderson, but character-wise, it fits that mold. It's often like THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS restaged as a blue-collar HUDSUCKER PROXY. JOY is almost defeated by a bungled opening half-hour that jumps all over the place and never gets the groundwork and exposition effectively conveyed (it's telling that there's four credited editors). We're shown Joy's family as the train wreck they are and get little sense of what brought them to this place of almost outrageous self-delusion. Anthony is constantly regarded as a lazy, deadbeat fuck-up by the family, but he ends up being Joy's rock while everyone else except the loving MiMi--even the allegedly business-savvy Trudy, who insists they don't need a patent attorney--gives Joy terrible advice and almost actively thwarts her progress. Scenes sometimes end in the middle of sentences--possibly an ill-advised stylistic choice--and there's huge gaps in the story that are simply left hanging: does Joy ever quit her airport job? We see her being told she's getting moved to the night shift, then her job is never mentioned again. Why is Peggy such a bitch to Joy? Why do we see so much of Joy's daughter but never even get a clear look at her son's face? Joy Mangano (her last name is never mentioned onscreen) has patented over 100 inventions but we only hear of two: the Miracle Mop and the Huggable Hanger.
Russell has directed Lawrence, Christian Bale, and Melissa Leo to Oscars (along with nominations for Cooper, De Niro, Jacki Weaver, and Amy Adams), with second nominations after the win for Lawrence and Bale. He's certainly an actor's director and JOY intermittently works in fits and starts thanks to its cast: 25-year-old Lawrence is miscast and a decade too young to play someone who quit college 17 years earlier to take charge of the family after her parents' divorce (Mangano was already in her mid-30s when she invented the Miracle Mop), but manages to get by on her energy and screen presence. De Niro has a couple of good De Niro moments (he's really funny in the flashback to Joy and Anthony's wedding, and when he unloads on Terry with "You're like a gas leak--we can't see you, we can't smell you, but you're silently killing all of us!"), Cooper only has a few scenes, but his tour of the QVC operation with Joy is probably Russell's most inspired sequence in the film, and Ladd provides some much-needed warmth and humanity as the loving MiMi. Ramirez is alright but isn't given much to do but stand around, but almost everyone else--Madsen with her gaudy, unsightly eyewear, Rohm constantly glowering and seething, Rossellini's inconsistent shifting from kindly widow to ruthless shark--is stuck playing unplayable characters. Madsen comes off the worst by far, with her pathetic helplessness and her addiction to a terrible daytime soap--featuring characters played by soap vets Susan Lucci, Donna Mills, and John Enos, among others--getting entirely too much screen time (it seems like it'll function as a Greek chorus of sorts, but with Lucci, Mills, and the others giving intentionally terrible line readings, it ultimately plays as a cheap, lazy recurring gag that doesn't really belong in this movie). Madsen's Terry also gets a love interest in Haitian plumber Toussaint (Jimmy Jean-Louis) in a quickly abandoned subplot that never seems plausible and goes nowhere fast. There's probably a very good movie hiding somewhere in the middling misfire JOY ends up being. It feels like Russell is half-assing it, banking on the track record of the proven Lawrence/Cooper/De Niro magic to carry the weight and compensate for the cut corners and shortcomings of a script that maybe needed another polish or two before it was ready to roll.
