Opened 40 Years Ago: THIEF (3/27/1981)

 

THIEF opening in Toledo, OH on 3/27/1981

On DVD/Blu-ray: USS INDIANAPOLIS: MEN OF COURAGE (2016) and THE HOLLOW POINT (2016)

USS INDIANAPOLIS: MEN OF COURAGE
(US - 2016)

The story of the USS Indianapolis is familiar to anyone who's seen JAWS, where Robert Shaw delivers arguably the greatest monologue in film history as salty shark hunter Quint recounts his experiences on the doomed ship near the end of WWII. After completing orders to deliver the materials for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, the Indianapolis, without sonar and with no customary escort due to the top-secret, classified nature of the mission, was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-58 between Tinian and Okinawa. It sank within 12 minutes, as Captain Charles Butler McVay ordered the crew to abandon ship, leaving them stranded for five days in shark-infested waters. Of the 1196 on board, nearly 300 died in the initial attack. Of the remaining 900 left in the water, only 317 survived, the rest dying from dehydration, saltwater poisoning, drowning, and, as JAWS fans know, shark attacks.  It's a horrific tragedy that deserves a more dignified presentation than USS INDIANAPOLIS: MEN OF COURAGE. The 1991 CBS TV-movie MISSION OF THE SHARK, with Stacy Keach as McVay, did a better job with the limited expectations of being a made-for-TV movie. This film, starring Nicolas Cage as McVay, is undoubtedly sincere in its intentions but can't overcome a trite, cliched script and rock-bottom visual effects that makes it look like an Asylum production debuting on Syfy. The explosions are laughable and the CGI sharks jump out of the water looking like deleted SHARKNADO files e-mailed to director Mario Van Peebles.

The film is divided into three sections, with the interminable opening act devoted to the camaraderie and ballbusting among an interchangeable and impossibly dull group of sailors, focusing on two--wholesome, all-American Bama (Matt Lanter) and gregarious D'Antonio (Adam Scott Miller), who does everything short of yell "Hey, you's boys wanna play some stickball?" to let you know he's from Brooklyn--who fall in love with the same woman (Emily Tennant). The second is the sinking of the ship and the five days stranded in the water, where Van Peebles turns the film into a cheap jump-scare shark attack horror movie, and third is a courtroom drama when the Navy, looking for someone to scapegoat for their failure to answer multiple distress calls (they thought it was the Japanese trying to deceive them), decides to court-martial McVay, saying he could've "zig-zagged" the ship to avoid the torpedoes. McVay's story is a sad one--he committed suicide in 1968 after over two decades of harassment and death threats by the families of the dead sailors even though he was fully supported by the survivors as well as by I-58 commander Mochitsura Hashimoto (Yutaka Takeuchi), who testified that there was no way McVay could've avoided the torpedoes. McVay and the men aboard the USS Indianapolis deserved something a little more polished and professional-looking than a WWII movie that looks like it was directed by Anthony C. Ferrante. The writing isn't much better--try not to laugh at the torpedoes hitting the ship a nanosecond after a guy playing dice in the mess hall rolls snake eyes. Or at decisions being made in darkened and ominous film noir-lit rooms filled with cigar-sucking fat cats ("War's good for business, and business is good for America!"). Or at McWhorter, the Chief Petty Officer played by Tom Sizemore in what's apparently an extended tribute to William Bendix (and of course, McWhorter's wife just had a baby that he describes as "nine pounds of rompin' stompin' dynamite!" which is code for "McWhorter's never going to meet his kid"). There are scattered moments where USS INDIANAPOLIS rises above its schlocky, Redbox-ready nature: Thomas Jane does some nice work in a small role as Lt. Adrian Marks, the pilot who disobeyed orders and made a daring water landing to rescue as many survivors as he could, and Cage, who's subdued and surprisingly restrained throughout, shares a scene with Takeuchi very late in the film where both actors are demonstrating such raw emotion that they almost convince you that they're in a better movie. With more money, a better script, a supporting cast of actors that you could actually tell apart, more directorial flair (Van Peebles' heart may be in the right place, but his bland direction is pure clock-punching and irrefutable proof that his NEW JACK CITY and POSSE days of being a filmmaker of note are long gone), and a time machine to go back to around 2000 when Nicolas Cage movies were still major events, the well-meaning USS INDIANAPOLIS could've been a strong WWII movie instead of what has to be the cheapest-looking $40 million movie ever, looking like total amateur hour despite having 30 credited producers and the participation of RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION cinematographer Andrzej Sekula. (R, 130 mins)


THE HOLLOW POINT
(US - 2016)

There's absolutely no reason why this shouldn't be a nifty little desert noir B-movie in the vein of '90s video store mainstays like RED ROCK WEST and BLACK DAY BLUE NIGHT, but the barely-released THE HOLLOW POINT just never gets its shit together. Content to churn out a nearly decade-too-late ripoff of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego (APOLLO 18, OPEN GRAVE) and first-time screenwriter Nils Lyew waste an inspired and entertaining performance by the great Ian McShane in total Al Swearengen mode as Leland Kilbaught, a gruff, grubby, hard-drinking, burned-out sheriff of Los Reyes County, right along the Arizona-Mexico border. Kilbaught's got a reputation among the locals for not really caring much about the rules, and after he shoots Clive Mercy (Nathan Stevens) in the head during a traffic stop, he's relieved of his duties and new sheriff Wallace (Patrick Wilson) is sent in to replace him. Kilbaught knows what Clive was up to--running armor-piercing ammo into Mexico as a flunky for a cartel operation. Clive's equally hapless loser brother Ken (David Stevens) ends up killing a mid-level cartel figure after a botched ammunition run before skating back to Los Reyes County and hiding out. Complicating matters is that Wallace, who's from the area and couldn't wait to get away, knows his ex-wife Marla (Lynn Collins) is hooked up with Ken, which puts her at serious risk when the cartel sends unstoppable killing machine assassin Atticus (John Leguizamo as Javier Bardem) to find Ken and kill anyone who knows him, including Marla and sleazy used car dealer Shep Diaz (Jim Belushi), who also has connections to the cartel.

Other than a truly startling moment when Atticus hacks off Wallace's right hand with a machete, the only thing THE HOLLOW POINT has going for it is McShane, who single-handedly saves it from total oblivion. Lyew's script is an incoherent mess, Lopez-Gallego, who also serves as his own editor, couldn't generate any dramatic momentum if his career depended on it, occasionally resorting to stupid POV shots like the one from inside a spinning washing machine at a laundromat. The entire film is so sloppily-constructed that we never get a full grasp of who's who or why they're even in danger. Leguizamo is just Anton Chigurh with a better haircut and Belushi, sporting a cheap suit and a hideous combover, can play this kind of obnoxious shitbag in his sleep. But McShane valiantly tries to save the day, with his gravelly line readings and snide deliveries of mellifluously poetic bon mots like "You are not an unfortunate man...you're an auspicious parasite!" and "Buenos Diaz!" He seems to be having a blast playing this character, making it almost criminal that his efforts are squandered on such an uninspired and otherwise completely forgettable project. (R, 97 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: AMERICAN HONEY (2016) and THE WHOLE TRUTH (2016)

AMERICAN HONEY
(US/UK - 2016)

British filmmaker Andrea Arnold comes from the Mike Leigh and Ken Loach school of kitchen sink cinema, with films like 2006's RED ROAD and 2009's FISH TANK capturing the harsh and gritty world of lower-income and disenfranchised UK residents. Even her 2011 period adaptation of WUTHERING HEIGHTS was able to fuse Arnold's gritty vision to the Bronte classic. AMERICAN HONEY finds Arnold focusing on America, its impoverished, its socioeconomic inequalities, and like many foreign-born directors, she manages to vividly depict the look and feel of the "heartland" of middle America in ways that sometimes only outsiders can. Shot in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri, AMERICAN HONEY, like FISH TANK before it, has a non-professional Arnold discovery in the lead role. Houston native Sasha Lane was on spring break with friends when Arnold spotted her on a beach. Lane has moments where she shines, but fails to make the impact that Katie Jarvis did in FISH TANK. Part of the reason is that Jarvis' character was aggressive and in-your-face and that the debuting actress was a force of nature (Arnold approached Jarvis on a street where she saw the enraged young woman tearing her boyfriend a new asshole and knew she had the actress FISH TANK needed). Lane's Star is more of a passive observer throughout AMERICAN HONEY, taking in the sights and sounds of America, and while she finds herself on this journey, it's just not a very interesting one. 18-year-old Star leaves her dysfunctional home where she's sexually abused by a man we assume is her stepfather (it's never made clear) to join a free-spirited, vagabond magazine sales crew run by the stern, money-driven Krystal (Riley Keough). It's a rambunctious group of misfits prone to bacchanalian partying after hours but they take their jobs seriously as they travel by van from city to city, especially Jake (Shia LaBeouf), Krystal's top seller and master bullshit artist. Star falls for the charismatic--at least in the context of this film--Jake despite warnings from Krystal to stay focused on her work.

Shot almost completely handheld for maximum immediacy in Arnold's preferred aspect ratio of 1.33:1, AMERICAN HONEY finds hypnotic imagery in the utterly normal, with scenes in a K-Mart, non-descript convenience stores, skeezy motels, on desolate highways, and other locations providing a document of the sameness of the American landscape like Terrence Malick's otherwise forgettable TO THE WONDER. There's some effective scenes scattered throughout but with long sequences on the road and about ten too many mag crew sing-alongs, the meandering-by-design AMERICAN HONEY muddles its message and overstays its welcome by a good 45 minutes. While neophyte Lane acquits herself as best she can, Star simply isn't an interesting enough character to justify such a bloated and self-indulgent running time. (R, 163 mins)



THE WHOLE TRUTH
(US - 2016)

A throwback to the kind of John Grisham courtroom dramas that were opening every other week in the 1990s, THE WHOLE TRUTH is one of the dullest films of its kind, a sleepy shrug of a thriller that can't even be bothered to embrace some of its more tawdry elements. Lionsgate knew they had a dud on their hands, sitting on this for two years before giving it a stealth VOD burial, even with a cast headlined by Keanu Reeves and Renee Zellweger, in her first screen appearance in six years. Set and shot in the usual Lionsgate stomping grounds of Louisiana, THE WHOLE TRUTH has Reeves (a last-minute replacement for Daniel Craig, who wisely bailed) as Richard Ramsay, a cynical defense lawyer representing Mike Lassiter (Gabriel Basso), a 17-year-old on trial for the murder of his wealthy father Boone (Jim Belushi), who happened to be Ramsay's best friend. The film opens in the courtroom, the trial already in progress, with flashbacks filling in the backstory as witnesses testify. A picture is painted of Boone as a bullying, physically abusive, philandering drunk and all-around asshole who deserved the knife Mike confessed to plunging in the middle of his chest in a fit of blind rage. Friends and acquaintances tell of Boone's cruel and humiliating treatment of his wife Loretta (Zellweger), and even darker details are revealed when Mike eventually takes the stand, but is the whole truth being withheld? And could a major character be hiding a deep, dark secret that will be revealed in a thoroughly ludicrous twist ending? SPOILER: Yes.

I have to admit, when I woke up the day I watched THE WHOLE TRUTH, it's safe to say that one of the things I least expected to see before my head hit the pillow that night was a nude Jim Belushi violently restraining Renee Zellweger's arms and anally raping her against a marble banister. Mike's best buddy next door also spies on Loretta in the shower (a game Zellweger going all in after her extended sabbatical), and we discover that Ramsay's co-counsel Janelle Brady (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) lost her job at her last firm after having a torrid affair with a married lawyer and went off the deep end as a crazy, obsessed psycho stalking him and his family. These are unabashedly sleazy elements that should be accentuated to a point but get thrown on the backburner by director Courtney Hunt, making her first film since 2008's acclaimed FROZEN RIVER, which earned her a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination as well as a Best Actress nod for Melissa Leo. The FROZEN RIVER Courtney Hunt isn't who showed up for this uninspired yawner. Hunt's also kept busy by directing a few episodes of LAW & ORDER: SVU, and even those have more flair and style than the static, sleep-inducing THE WHOLE TRUTH. The script is credited to one "Rafael Jackson," who's really Nicholas Kazan, the son of the legendary Elia Kazan and the writer of such revered films as 1982's FRANCES, 1986's AT CLOSE RANGE, and 1991's REVERSAL OF FORTUNE. Kazan hasn't scripted a film since the 2002 Jennifer Lopez thriller ENOUGH, and it should speak volumes that he had his name removed from THE WHOLE TRUTH but left it on ENOUGH (odd trivia bit: after the abysmal EXPOSED, this is the second 2016 Keanu Reeves thriller dumped on VOD by Lionsgate where he was an eleventh-hour replacement for another actor--Philip Seymour Hoffman was supposed to star in EXPOSED but died shortly before production began--and one of the key creative personnel had their names removed from the finished product). You don't generally see things like THE WHOLE TRUTH much anymore. Reeves (who's terrible), Zellweger, and Belushi (who's quite convincing as a total shitbag) could've headlined this in 1998 and it would've been exactly the same movie--age doesn't make Reeves any more believable as an attorney--only back then it would've cleaned up at the box office for a week until the bad word of mouth got around. Courtroom dramas are a tried-and-true formula that's tough to screw up. It's too bad THE WHOLE TRUTH bungles it from the start, never finding its way and lacking the courage to embrace its inherent pulpy Southern trashiness. (R, 93 mins)

Retro Review: NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET (1987)

For this blog's regular readers--a number that is coming perilously close to double digits--"Retro Review" will be shorter, less-detailed reviews of older (2015 and back) movies that I'm either looking at again or seeing for the first time. I'm still doing the regular new theatrical and DVD/Blu-ray reviews and the infrequent "Cult Classics Revisited" and other longer pieces, but with my regular day job, I simply don't have the time to write as many of those longer (sometimes too long) pieces as I'd like to, but I don't want to taper off on my writing. In other words, I think something is better than nothing, and honestly, sometimes there's just not much to say. 



NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET
(US - 1987)

A disjointed buddy-cop movie that feels like it was made up as it went along, NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET was Cannon's quickly-made attempt to beat LETHAL WEAPON to theaters, which it did by a week, despite switching directors at some point late in production. Veteran journeyman Jack Smight (HARPER, DAMNATION ALLEY) is the credited director, but Roger Corman alumnus Steve Carver (AN EYE FOR AN EYE, LONE WOLF MCQUADE) ended up doing reshoots and finishing the film after Smight either quit or was fired. Along with Gail Morgan Hickman (who scripted the 1976 Dirty Harry entry THE ENFORCER), Jim Belushi was one of four credited screenwriters and was originally set to star, though he ended up being replaced by Robert Carradine--the same year he reprised his signature role in REVENGE OF THE NERDS II: NERDS IN PARADISE--as loose-cannon, no-rules L.A. cop Ray "Berserk" Berzak. Billy Dee Williams is Frank Hazeltine, Berzak's long-suffering, jazz-loving partner who's constantly dealing with Berzak's annoying antics, ranging from chasing off his ladies by pretending to be gay or through his obsessive pursuit of DaCosta (Barry Sattels), a BFF of the mayor and a prominent businessman that "Berserk" is convinced runs the city's drug business, with help from someone deep inside the LAPD.

The story is on the episodic side and meanders from set piece to set piece, with an emphasis on obnoxious comedy, like Berzak stalking his ex-wife (Valerie Bertinelli in one of her very few appearances on the big screen) and chasing off her current beau by implying that she has AIDS.  In addition to pretending to be gay, Berzak also cock-blocks Hazeltine by telling a bullshit story about him wasting a nine-year-old boy who was wielding a toy gun and subsequently disposing of the body. Definitely not for those susceptible to microaggressions, but it's entertaining if you're in a stupid enough mood or a completist of '80s cop movies where two mismatched cops have to work together to bring down the bad guys...if they don't kill each other first!  Also with Doris Roberts as Berzak's nagging mom, Bobby DiCicco, Mykel T. Williamson, Sunset Strip icon Bill Gazzarri, and Peter Graves as Berzak and Hazeltine's perpetually aggravated captain, who of course threatens to bust the troublemaking duo down to traffic if they don't get with the program. NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET bombed in theaters, landing in 15th place (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS opened the same weekend) and not even sticking around for a second week to give LETHAL WEAPON any competition, thus depriving us of any further Berzak & Hazeltine adventures. Smight (1925-2003) directed one more film, 1989's little-seen INTIMATE POWER, before retiring from the business. (R, 101 mins)