On Blu-ray/DVD, Special "Slumming Legends" Edition: HANGMAN (2017) and JUST GETTING STARTED (2017)

HANGMAN
(US - 2017)

Coming off like a shelved pilot for the dumbest CBS police procedural ever, the barely-released HANGMAN, aka DIPSHIT SE7EN, is easily one of the most idiotic, nonsensical, and intelligence-insulting thrillers to come down the pike in some time. There's no logic in its structure or how its characters obtain the clues that lead them to the next crime scene. They just go where the script needs them to go to advance whatever semblance of a plot the filmmakers have concocted. In a non-descript Southern city (this was shot in Georgia but might be New Orleans, as "House of the Rising Sun" is heard a few times because of course it is), former FBI profiler-turned-homicide detective Ruiney (Karl Urban) is assigned to babysit New York Times reporter Christi Davies (Brittany Snow), who's doing a ride-along for an investigative piece centered on her hometown. It isn't long before Ruiney stumbles onto the kind of elaborately-staged, time-intensive murder scene that only exists in movies and TV: a woman hanging outside a school with an "O" carved in her chest, and inside in a classroom, mannequins arranged like students, staring at the blackboard displaying the letter "O" in a ten-letter game of "Hangman." And carved into the teacher's desk?  The badge numbers of Ruiney and his retired ex-partner Archer (Al Pacino). Archer has nothing going on except sitting in his parked car people-watching and doing Latin crossword puzzles, so he ends up tagging along on the investigation, which gets more gruesome and exponentially illogical with each new victim and letter.

Where to even start? I guess this is as good a spot as any: why don't they ever try to solve the puzzle? The whole "Hangman" element is ultimately a moot point, and when the word is finally revealed, they don't even explain what it means. The word is Latin, but how does the killer know Archer enjoys doing Latin crossword puzzles? Ruiney is provided with a tragic backstory about his wife's unsolved murder, but it takes Christi catching a nanosecond glance at her file to see the huge "V" carved into Mrs. Ruiney's torso to conclude that she must've been the Hangman's first victim. How could Ruiney and Archer never put that together? Even Archer mumbles "I missed it!" Why? Because the plot needed him to be stupid. Why is such a high-profile serial killer case being investigated by just one active cop, one retired cop, and a "Pulitzer Prize-winning" (as she mentions numerous times) reporter who has no business traipsing through blood-splattered crime scenes? And how does the killer know Ruiney's and Archer's badge numbers? When they finally confront the killer, the Hangman has no idea who Archer is, but then confesses that his whole M.O. is based on a childhood incident involving Archer 20 years ago when Archer was, if the flashback and makeup job on Pacino is to be believed, a 57-year-old rookie patrolman. The story and the motivations don't even make sense from shot to shot, let alone with plot developments and character arcs over the course of the movie. 77-year-old Pacino looks so groggy and sleepy here that he could easily be doing that old Three Stooges trick of drawing eyes on his closed eyelids. He's also dusting off the same inconsistent "Foghorn Leghorn Goes to Mardi Gras" drawl ("He sod-swapped mah caah!") that he used in MISCONDUCT, another instantly-forgotten VOD clunker from a couple years back. It's easily the worst performance of his career, simply because he isn't even motivated enough to liven things up with some vintage Pacino shouting (even junk thrillers like 88 MINUTES and RIGHTEOUS KILL got a little boost from Pacino's unbeatable combo of random yelling and his crazy hair). Remember great Pacino cop vs. serial killer thrillers like SEA OF LOVE and INSOMNIA? Does Pacino remember them? A scowling Urban doesn't fare much better, but he at least does a passable job of looking awake. And if you don't find the story lazy enough, then check out a CGI train wreck midway through where director Johnny Martin (VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY) and the production design team don't even bother to stage any debris, metal, or anything resembling an accident scene. A train crashes into a car, there's a huge fake explosion, and then...there's nothing there except dirt and track. Even a 25 mph fender-bender will probably leave some plastic from a busted taillight. No one associated with this movie cares about anything. Over two decades after SE7EN, HANGMAN is still trying to scrounge for serial killer table scraps, but even a formulaic, by-the-numbers thriller has to have some kind of internal logic. This is just terrible storytelling, terrible filmmaking, and terrible acting from a slumming living legend who shouldn't have to resort to drek like this to get a lead role. (R, 98 mins)



JUST GETTING STARTED
(US - 2017)

Writer/director Ron Shelton hasn't made a feature film since the 2003 Harrison Ford/Josh Hartnett action-comedy HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE (you forgot all about that one, didn't you?). With that in mind, it's hard telling what prompted the maker of BULL DURHAM, WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP, and TIN CUP to end a 14-year big-screen sabbatical with something as generic and depressingly uninspired as the Christmas 2017 box- office bomb JUST GETTING STARTED. Starring in yet another geezer comedy after LAST VEGAS and the pointless remake of GOING IN STYLE, Morgan Freeman is Duke Diver, the freewheeling, fun-loving resident manager of Villa Capri, a posh retirement community in Palm Springs. He's got a pretty good gig: he's well-liked by everyone, treats the petty cash fund like his personal ATM, cleans up at his weekly poker game, and has a rotating cast of lovely retired ladies succumbing to his charms. His party comes to an abrupt end with the arrival of Suzie (Rene Russo), an internal auditor sent by the corporation that owns Villa Capri to take a look at Duke's creative accounting and fire him if necessary. But an even bigger annoyance to Duke is new resident Leo (Tommy Lee Jones), a wealthy mystery man in a ten-gallon hat who's spent time in the military, and regales Duke's lady friends--Roberta (Sheryl Lee Ralph), Lily (Elizabeth Ashley), and Marguerite (the late Glenne Headly in her next-to-last film; she died six months before the film's release)--by quoting Baudelaire and telling tales of his adventures in Machu Picchu. Duke and Leo begin a childish competition trying to one-up the other in chess, golf, weightlifting, and romance, with both vying for the attention of Johnny Mathis superfan Suzie, who finds herself falling for Duke's charms after he manages to get Mathis (playing himself) to play a gig at Villa Capri.

The GRUMPY OLD MEN-derived storyline eventually gets sidelined once the other plot is introduced: Duke is in witness protection. He's a former New Jersey mob lawyer who ratted out his boss and a hit's been put on him by that boss' vengeful wife (Jane Seymour). There's probably supposed to be some mystery as to whether Leo is the hit man, but of course he's not, as Shelton turns the film into a poor man's MIDNIGHT RUN, with Leo and Duke hitting the road and bonding as they evade the assassin sent after Duke. The comedic elements of JUST GETTING STARTED are so lackluster that the film never once displays any real amusement or spark of life. Sequence after sequence passes with jokes that don't land or weren't there in the first place. And the very premise doesn't stand up to any scrutiny: early on, Duke wins some local "Man of the Year" award and declines to go to the awards luncheon, presumably because he's in witness protection and doesn't want to risk being seen outside of his Villa Capri comfort zone. Makes sense. So why then, would he allow himself to be seen smiling at the camera in a nationally-broadcast Villa Capri TV commercial that Seymour's character happens to catch, thus setting the entire story into motion? And hasn't Palm Springs historically been a big mob hangout and vacation destination? What FBI handler would put him there in the first place?  Other than the unusual casting of Seymour--which Shelton squanders by completely forgetting about her--no one shines here, certainly not Freeman, Jones, and Russo, who have never looked more lethargic and ambivalent than they do here. Lots of things might read better on paper than they play out in execution. No one sets out to make a terrible film, but sometimes you can watch actors in a movie and you can see on their faces that they know it's just not working. But they're professionals, so they grit their teeth, do what they've been paid to do, and just get it over with. This is such an occasion, as JUST GETTING STARTED simply never does. (PG-13, 91 mins)

In Theaters: THE CIRCLE (2017)

THE CIRCLE
(France/UAE/US - 2017)

Directed by James Ponsoldt. Written by James Ponsoldt and Dave Eggers. Cast: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Karen Gillan, Bill Paxton, Ellar Coltrane, Patton Oswalt, Glenne Headly, Nate Corddry, Judy Reyes, Mamoudou Athie, Smith Cho, Amir Talai, Poorna Jagannathan, Eve Gordon. (PG-13, 110 mins)

Based on the 2013 novel by Dave Eggers, who shares screenplay credit with director James Ponsoldt (THE SPECTACULAR NOW), THE CIRCLE has a premise with such a short window of topicality that the movie adaptation feels dated just four years later. It doesn't help that TV shows like MR. ROBOT and BLACK MIRROR have already explored similar themes much more effectively, but THE CIRCLE loses the satirical elements of Eggers' novel and opts for a much more heavy-handed approach. What might've worked on the page doesn't work always work on the screen, as characters here don't have conversations as much as they drop exposition and make important speeches. Everything has to be simplified so the audience can stay caught up, then it starts glossing over things so much that the entire second half of the film is a complete mess. A lot of this was likely due to negative test screenings leading to extensive reshoots being done in January 2017, just three months before the film's release and long after filming wrapped in late 2015. The film goes in a completely different direction than the book, so much so that it's a safe assumption that the finished film isn't exactly a collaborative effort between Eggers and Ponsoldt.

Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is temping in customer service at the local water department when her Scottish college friend Annie (Karen Gillan) lands her an interview with her employer, The Circle. A Google-like tech empire in Silicon Valley, The Circle is always pioneering advances in social media and software dedicated to making people "connected." Their latest product launch involves "SeeChange," a tiny, round camera that can be placed anywhere and go unnoticed, utilizing GPS and facial recognition software and generating much in the way of moral and ethical dilemmas over privacy and surveillance. Circle founder and CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) claims that such advances are for the greater good of humanity, but loner Mae's gut reaction is one of apprehension. The mostly millennial employees base their lives around The Circle, living in dorm-like apartments "on campus," and participating in "suggested" activities on their off time with a fervent and almost cult-like devotion to their employer. Mae is passive-aggressively reprimanded by a Circle social media adviser for not taking part in the events and for going home to visit her parents--mom Bonnie (Glenne Headly) and dad Vinnie (the late Bill Paxton in his last film)--and she's somewhat alarmed that The Circle already knows her father is suffering from multiple sclerosis. Mae is chastised for taking a job with The Circle by her childhood friend Mercer (Ellar Coltrane of BOYHOOD), who hates texting and the internet and has no doubt condescendingly uttered, at least once in his life, "I don't even own a TV." Her friendship with Mercer falls apart after she shares a pic of his custom-made antler chandeliers and outraged millennials start following him around to harass him get in his face, and shout "deer killer!" After an incident involving her trespassing to go kayaking ends with her being rescued after being seen on a SeeChange camera aimed at the bay, Mae makes the ultimate commitment to The Circle: she goes "transparent," wearing a small camera 24/7 to document every moment of her life for Circle's 240 million members. This plot turn could've been a great BLACK MIRROR episode in the hands of Charlie Brooker, and it also recalls both Bertrand Tavernier's remarkably ahead-of-its-time cult film DEATH WATCH (1980) as well as Peter Weir's THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998), but once Circler comments turn up on the screen for most of the remainder of the film, it more or less starts to look like INSTAGRAM: THE MOVIE.

Mae's advance up the ladder at The Circle puts a strain on her friendship with Annie as well as her relationship with her parents, who are also required to install cameras at their house. Those cameras are taken offline when Mae's followers, seeing what Mae sees, accidentally catch a glimpse of her parents having sex with the aid of a penis pump for her disabled father, humiliating both of them. Mae also forms a muddled alliance with Ty Lavitte (John Boyega of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS), a legendary hacker who works for The Circle, designing a program that's been hijacked by Bailey and his business partner Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt) to spy on every Circle user and store all of their personal information, phone calls, e-mails, texts, etc. Much to Lavitte's disgust, Bailey and Stenton use this information to blackmail a senator (Eve Gordon) who's been publicly critical of The Circle, and with Mae's help, they even concoct a plan to tie The Circle into voter registration records and not only allow users to vote through their Circle account, but require them to be Circle users in order to vote ("The US government needs us more than we need them," Stenton says). There's some heady implications in a lot of what goes on in THE CIRCLE, especially the ultimate fate of Mercer as a scathing critique of social media hysteria, but Ponsoldt bungles it at every turn. THE CIRCLE is content to lecture the audience and too often comes off like it's taking an approach to technology that's equal parts Stubborn Luddite and Scared Old Man. What could've been a smart, topical critique of our reliance on technology and our willingness to sacrifice privacy and human interaction for convenience and a feeling of connection with the rest of the world comes off as smug and sanctimonious, complete with a laughably simplistic non-ending that has Mae staging a revolt against Bailey and Stenton and literally Pied Pipering her newly-woke colleagues out of a darkened, pitch black auditorium through an exit door, outside into the light. Watson is a capable actress but she's strangely one-note here. Boyega seems to have been affected most by the reshoots, looking like he spent his entire time on the set unsuccessfully trying to locate Ponsoldt, while Paxton musters what trace amounts of dignity he can with a penis pump and in another scene that requires him to piss himself. What little novelty this misfire offers comes from seeing Hanks and Oswalt atypically cast as quietly sinister villains, but neither seems to have spent more than a few days working on this, enough for one to surmise that when Bailey turns to Stenton at the end and says "We are so fucked," it's very possible that it was just Hanks talking to Oswalt without knowing the cameras were rolling. Altered extensively from Eggers' novel, THE CIRCLE is disjointed, already past its sell-by date, and completely unsure of what point its even trying to make.

Bill Paxton (1955-2017)