With a US president still claiming that a "great,big, beautiful wall" is going up along the US/Mexico border, it's not hard to see some prescient political subtext to a film like DESIERTO, even if it spent two years on a shelf before STX released it on just 168 screens in the US. Directed, co-written, and edited by Jonas Cuaron (who co-wrote GRAVITY with his dad Alfonso, who's a producer here), DESIERTO can easily be read as a stern if inadvertent rebuke of the Trump agenda, but it's really a mean, gritty B-movie survivalist thriller that wouldn't have been out of place at a drive-in in the late 1970s with Hugo Stiglitz and Cameron Mitchell in the lead roles instead of today's Gael Garcia Bernal and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Bernal is Moises, one of about 19 migrants being taken through the "badlands" of the Sonoran Desert and across the border into Arizona by coyotes Lobo (Marco Perez) and Mechas (Diego Catano). The truck breaks down and they're forced to travel on foot in the baking, 120°F sun. After crossing over into the US, Mechas' smaller group ends up much further behind Lobo's, and they're forced to watch as Lobo and about 15 others are picked off one by one by Sam (Morgan), a racist vigilante who has appointed himself protector of the border. With his vicious dog Tracker at his side, Sam relentlessly pursues Moises and the scant few remaining as a game of cat-and-mouse ensues in the harsh, unforgiving elements.
DESIERTO is a simple, straightforward story that doesn't get bogged down in ham-fisted statements and Big Picture proclamations, It's a mainstream thriller that STX originally planned on opening wide but kept shuffling its release date and eventually downgraded it to a limited release, probably skittish over the tense political climate or, just as likely, commercial concerns that any of the dialogue not spoken by Morgan or, in one brief scene, Lew Temple (THE DEVIL'S REJECTS) as a border patrolman, is in Spanish with English subtitles (a French/Mexican co-production, DESIERTO was submitted to the Oscars to be Mexico's Best Foreign Language Film nominee but didn't make the cut). We don't learn much of Sam's backstory and we really don't need to. Most of Morgan's scenes are by himself or talking to Tracker, and Sam's got a real chip on his shoulder about Mexicans coming into "his" country. Moises' conscientious qualities are displayed when he intervenes when one migrant won't keep his paws off a woman who's clearly not interested, and there's some added poignancy to his situation when we learn he was already in the US and working on becoming an American citizen, but a traffic stop over a busted headlight escalated and he ended up in a detention center on his way to being deported, his wife and son still in America. He's determined to get back to them, even bringing his son his musical teddy bear that, of course, keeps going off at all the wrong times. Fast-paced and smart enough to not overstay its welcome at just 88 minutes, DESIERTO is an intense exploitation throwback with stunning desert cinematography by Damian Garcia that makes you feel every degree of the setting's sweltering temperature amidst the endless barren emptiness that gives Moises and the dwindling band of survivors little opportunity to hide from a psycho who's declared himself judge, jury, and executioner. (R, 88 mins)
MAN DOWN
(US - 2016)
Military personnel returning home with severe PTSD is a serious issue that deserves a serious film, but MAN DOWN isn't that film. That's not on star Shia LaBeouf who, for all of his eccentric performance art stunts and demonstrable past douchebaggery, has emerged as a compelling actor who throws himself into roles and is willing to take chances in outside-the-box projects like Lars von Trier's NYMPHOMANIAC and Andrea Arnold's AMERICAN HONEY. No, MAN DOWN fails because of the wildly inconsistent Dito Montiel, who got some acclaim with his 2006 debut A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS (featuring a younger LaBeouf), but whose best film remains 2009's FIGHTING. Montiel has shown occasional flashes of promise (the posthumous Robin Williams drama BOULEVARD is one of his better movies), but when he's having an off day--THE SON OF NO ONE, EMPIRE STATE--his work borders on the unwatchable, and even his muse Channing Tatum, who starred in his first three films, seems to have abandoned him. MAN DOWN is closer to the bottom end of Montiel's increasingly suspect filmography, and would be a complete train wreck if not for the commitment of LaBeouf, who gives it far more than he or anyone watching will get in return.
MAN DOWN's story is told over three cross-cutting timelines haphazardly cut together with little regard for thematic overlap or storytelling rhythms. One shows Marine Gabriel Drummer (LaBeouf) and his best friend Devin Roberts (Hollywood still trying to make Jai Courtney happen) going through basic training and deployment in Afghanistan. The second is a meeting between a possibly suicidal Drummer and a military psychologist (Gary Oldman) after some traumatic incident that will be made clear later. The third is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland after a biochemical terrorist attack has wiped out most of America, with Gabriel and Devin searching for Gabriel's missing wife Natalie (Kate Mara) and young son Johnathan (Charlie Shotwell). The three narratives play out as tediously as possible, making the film feel much longer than its relatively brief 90 minutes. One storyline doesn't seem to belong and it's clear early on that Gabriel has had some kind of PTSD breakdown and maybe, just maybe, the future dystopia thread isn't really happening. But there's a bigger twist that can't be revealed without significant spoilers, and it feels cheap and insulting once it finally presents itself--not just because it demeans a serious subject but also because any experienced moviegoer will see it coming about 75 minutes before Gabriel does. MAN DOWN wants to pay respect to soldiers struggling with PTSD, but the impact veers too far from the intent. It dumbs the subject down into rote cliches and simplistic characterizations and motivations: Gabriel is ostensibly set off by one tragedy, but it seems driven more by his wife's infidelity; and his entire inspiration for joining the Marines seems to come from catching a few minutes of an O'REILLY FACTOR segment where Bill O'Reilly (credited with playing himself) warns viewers of the potential of terrorists engaging in biochemical warfare. MAN DOWN is heavy-handed and its future dystopia embarrassingly cheap-looking, but if you're a LaBeouf fan, it's probably still worth a look, if for no other reason than to see a fiercely committed performance in a futile search for a better movie. (R, 90 mins)
TRESPASS AGAINST US
(UK/US/UAE - 2016)
Bland and unengaging from the word go, the crime drama TRESPASS AGAINST US recalls films like 1978's KING OF THE GYPSIES and 1997's TRAVELLER and the short-lived FX TV series THE RICHES, all of which focused on a close-knit family of con artists and criminals who are constantly on the move and scraping by on small-time schemes. Despite the presence of two great actors in Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson, TRESPASS AGAINST US never finds its footing and never gives you a reason to care about anyone or anything that's happening. Uneducated and illiterate Chad Cutler (Fassbender) has always lived in the shadow of his gregarious father Colby (Gleeson), who rules their tight-knit band of marauding West England low-lifes who have set up a semi-permanent trailer park in a vacant field. They get by on stealing cars, knocking over convenience stores, and other nickel-and-dime machinations, but Chad wants out. He wants something more for his wife Kelly (Lyndsey Marshal) and their children Tyson (Georgie Smith) and Mini (Kacie Anderson), but finds it hard to escape from under the thumb of the manipulative, controlling Colby. He also has a difficult time dealing with the pressure of being trapped by his own inability to read or write, which is why he insists on putting the kids in a good school even though the Cutler clan's criminal activities cause the kids to be truant enough to get them expelled. Not much happens in TRESPASS AGAINST US: there's a lot of "fook"s and "cunt"s being thrown about in thick accents that make the film reminiscent of early Danny Boyle or earlier Gleeson roles circa I WENT DOWN. The cops, led by Lovage (Rory Kinnear) are complete buffoons who even resort to kidnapping the kids from school in order to lure Chad to the police station, which is indicative of the inability of screenwriter Alistair Siddons and debuting director Adam Smith (a veteran of music videos and British TV favorites like SKINS and DOCTOR WHO) to settle on a tone. TRESPASS AGAINST US can't decide if it's a less grim, gypsy traveller take on ANIMAL KINGDOM or a wacky, would-be Irvine Welsh-type exercise. There's ill-conceived comic relief in the form of Gordon (Sean Harris), aka "Worzel," Chad's half-wit, borderline feral brother, a character so grating that it's a shock that Sharlto Copley wasn't cast in the role. Fassbender and Gleeson are exemplary performers, but they're both on autopilot here with little to inspire them. There's nothing here, no hook to get your interest in this family of assholes, and the stars seem to know it. A total misfire. (R, 100 mins)
The third of four films Robin Williams had in the can at the time of his death in August 2014 and the last to feature him onscreen (he voices a dog in Terry Jones' long-delayed sci-fi comedy ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING, tentatively due in the US in early 2016), BOULEVARD finds the actor on the controlled, dramatic side of things for one of the better projects from his mediocrity-plagued final couple of years. A character study of a lifetime of repression and walled-off emotions, BOULEVARD was directed by the wildly inconsistent Dito Montiel, who garnered some indie acclaim with 2006's A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS, but other than 2009's underrated FIGHTING, has fizzled in the years since. Montiel's specialty is shooting his films in the parts of NYC that still look like the NYC of the 1980s, but BOULEVARD finds him venturing outside his comfort zone. A low-budget indie shot in Nashville in the summer of 2013, the film didn't even secure a distributor until several months after Williams' death (Starz Media, who opened it on 11 screens in July 2015), which probably had to do with the subject matter as much as it's just a depressing downer without a lot of mass appeal. Williams stars as Nolan Mack, a milquetoast, 60-year-old loan officer who's worked at the same bank branch for 25 years. The comfort and familiarity of his job extends to his home life with wife Joy (Kathy Baker). While they enjoy one another's company, share an affinity for fine wine, the literary works of John Updike and Salman Rushdie, and movies like Godard's MASCULIN FEMININ, the childless couple are more like old friends than spouses. They sleep in separate rooms and there's no indication of any physical intimacy between them in quite some time. While returning from a visit to his father (Gary Gardner, who also died prior to the film's release) at a nursing home, Nolan impulsively detours through a sketchy part of town and picks up Leo (Roberto Aguire), a male prostitute who suggests they go to a motel. Asexual Nolan declines any offers of sex and just wants to talk or, at most, gently caress or hold Leo. Nolan becomes a sugar daddy of sorts, buying Leo a phone, clothes for a job interview, and giving him money. He grows possessive of Leo, who comes to like Nolan but is still drawn to the streets and hustling. Nolan's fixation on Leo becomes a major life distraction that eventually gets him a black eye after a physical altercation with Leo's pimp (Giles Matheny) that spills over into his workplace, and forces him to spin a web of lies that Joy constantly catches him in but says nothing.
It's always strange seeing an actor who's since passed on in a new project months or years after their death. Of course, the fact that Williams is no longer here and that his life ended the way it did casts a dark cloud over the already melancholy BOULEVARD. Nolan is a meek man who loves his wife, but whose life has passed him by and at 60, he's only now coming to terms with the fact that he's gay but too emotionally withdrawn to know how to act on it. After years (decades?) of a loving but platonic, convenient marriage, that part of Nolan has shut down but Leo stirs something inside of him and while he can't act on it in a sexual way, it's making him re-evaluate everything, much to the dismay of Joy, who loves her husband but knows their marriage is a security blanket of sorts. She even demonstrates just how well she knows her husband when he finally admits he's been lying and her first question is "What's his name?" Williams and Baker are very good here, and after some truly abysmal films in recent years (THE BIG WEDDING, THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN, A MERRY FRIGGIN' CHRISTMAS) and the failed TV series THE CRAZY ONES, it's nice to see one last excellent performance from him--he's always been at his best when a director can rein him in, and Montiel succeeds on that front, even as the story seems ready to clandestinely veer into ONE HOUR PHOTO territory at any moment. Williams also works well with Aguire and with Bob Odenkirk, as Nolan's best friend, a cynical English prof with a propensity for younger women. BOULEVARD manages to accomplish the rare feat of being a downbeat film that doesn't force its characters to wallow in misery, but at the same time, it offers no real surprises in its outcome and it's prone to clunky exposition drops. It's not a great film (unless you're grading on the Montiel curve), but it's an occasionally effective and heartfelt one, and fans of Williams and the always-excellent Baker (who gets a fine Beatrice Straight-from-NETWORK tirade near the end) will definitely want to seek it out. (R, 88 mins)
THE D TRAIN (US/UK - 2015)
IFC opened THE D TRAIN on over 1000 screens in the second week of the summer movie season and watched it promptly tank, landing in 19th place with $450,000 and plummeting an apocalyptic 97% in its second weekend. It's a mixed bag, but commercially speaking, it's the kind of offbeat project--think of Adam Sandler fans going to see PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE--that produces vitriolic reactions from an audience that's not getting the movie they thought they'd be getting. Of course, THE D TRAIN didn't really get much of a push in the first place, starting with a vague trailer that sort-of looked like a wacky reunion comedy but seemed a little off. IFC was probably betting on Black's presence alone netting them a commercial hit, while Black was probably thinking this would be another BERNIE to beef up his indie cred. Black is Dan Landsman, a nice-guy sad sack with a nice family--wife Stacey (Kathryn Hahn), teenage son Zach (Russell Posner), and an infant daughter--and a dull job at an outdated Pittsburgh consulting firm whose technophobe owner Bill (Jeffrey Tambor) doesn't buy into the idea the computers are essential. Dan also chairs his 20th high school reunion committee, even though the other volunteers don't like him and don't invite him out for drinks after their meetings (Dan sees their bar pics on Facebook the next day). After spotting their high school god Oliver Lawless (James Marsden) in a sunblock commercial on TV, Dan has a plan to make the reunion epic and make himself the hero in the process: get Lawless, a star athlete and all-around stud who went to L.A. after high school to become an actor, to commit to the reunion. Dan grows a soul patch and fakes a business trip to L.A. in order to meet up with Oliver, and after a drug and alcohol-fueled weekend where something quite unexpected happens, Oliver agrees to come to the reunion, which up-ends Dan's life in ways that soon spiral out of control.
Given that the sexually adventurous Oliver talks openly of no preference for women or men, just "whatever feels right," what happens in L.A. between him and Dan probably won't come as a surprise to anyone who's seen 2000's CHUCK & BUCK, the indie hit whose star/writer Mike White--looking alarmingly like the late, great Norman Fell as he gets older--has a supporting role and co-produces here. THE D TRAIN explores this plot turn with little concern for commercial viability, but the biggest issue is that Dan never seems like a real person. He's a man who desperately wants to rewrite his high school experience, even inventing ridiculous nicknames for himself (like "The D Man," "D-Fresh," and "D-Money") that everyone calls out as complete bullshit. At first, Dan seems sad and a little pathetic, not unlike Ricky Gervais' David Brent on THE OFFICE, but the more the film goes on, especially after the L.A. section, the more unsympathetic you'll feel to the point of possible repulsion. Cringe comedy has to be funny while making you uncomfortable, but Dan becomes such an unlikable asshole that the cringe factor never gets to take hold and you start feeling sorry for Oliver, who's the far more interesting character and didn't ask for any of this. Marsden is terrific as Oliver, who also has his own insecurities ("I peaked in the 11th grade," he says regarding his failed pursuit of Hollywood fame, and he also haplessly tries to impress Dan by pretending to know Dermot Mulroney when they spot him in a bar) and vulnerabilities that he tries to mask by doing things like dispensing sage advice to Zach about how to maneuver his way through a three-way. But Black's performance becomes so over-the-top and off-putting that you keep rooting for Dan's life to completely collapse, and I'm not sure that was the intent of the writing/directing team of Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel. As Dan grows increasingly desperate and more hostile, I kept thinking of the nuances that an actor like, say, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman could've brought to the character (he would've been perfect for this). Black isn't able--at least not in his performance here--to explore the dark places that THE D TRAIN wants to go, and the film never finds the right tone, trying to go in one direction but being pulled in another by Black doing his "Jack Black" thing. It also doesn't seem to make much sense that 45-year-old Black and and 41-year-old Marsden would be high school seniors in 1994. Why not make it a 25-year reunion? And maybe this is being pedantic, but why is Quarterflash's 1981 hit "Harden My Heart" being played at a Class of 1994 reunion? What 18-year-old in 1994 was listening to Quarterflash? And the morning after the reunion, Stacey tells Dan that he needs to take Zach to school. What class reunion takes place on a weeknight or a Sunday? (R, 101 mins) TRUE STORY (US - 2015)
There's a fascinating film to be made of the facts behind TRUE STORY, but the result here is a lifeless and formulaic psychological thriller-turned-forgettable courtroom drama. In 2002, New York Times journalist Michael Finkel was fired after fudging some facts and creating composite characters for an investigative piece. At the same time, American fugitive Christian Longo was in Mexico, evading murder charges for the deaths of his wife and three children. When Longo was apprehended, he had been using the name "Mike Finkel," and passing himself off as a reporter. Finkel and Longo had no connection and had never met, and when word got back to Finkel that someone on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list was using his name as an alias, he reached out to a jailed Longo, who was in Oregon awaiting trial. So began a relationship that's somewhere between man-crush and co-dependency of sorts that carries on to this day (the film says the men still talk on the first Sunday of every month), one that saw Longo manipulating Finkel and the disgraced Finkel using the case to nab a book deal and revitalize his career. There's a lot of talk in the prison visitation scenes between Finkel (two-time Academy Award-nominee Jonah Hill) and Longo (Academy Award-nominee James Franco) but none of it really goes anywhere. Longo keeps insisting he's innocent, which secures Finkel's book deal, but then pleads guilty to two of the murders, and not guilty to the other two in what's perceived as a blatant attempt to confuse the jury and cause a mistrial. Longo has been diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder, but TRUE STORY doesn't really explore that. In fact, once director Rupert Goold keeps the focus on their one-on-one discussions, the film isn't really about much of anything. There's no suspense in the courtroom sequences, which are anchored by Franco giving a long and rambling Longo monologue, and Finkel comes off as too sloppy in his ambition and too gullible to be taken seriously. Because they have a nice natural rapport and have been friends for years, Hill and Franco--a dramatic pairing that, thanks to their extensive comedy history, still feels like stunt casting even though they have three (yes, three) Oscar nods between them (and a single wink from Franco as Longo smiles at Finkel after the verdict is read almost salvages things)--do good work with what they're given, but the Brad Pitt-produced TRUE STORY just never catches fire. (R, 99 mins)
