In Theaters: THE COMMUTER (2018)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

In Theaters: THE SHALLOWS (2016)

THE SHALLOWS
(US - 2016)

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Written by Anthony Jaswinski. Cast: Blake Lively, Oscar Jaenada, Brett Cullen, Sedona Legge, Angelo Josue Lozano Corzo, Jose Manuel Trujillo Salas. (PG-13, 86 mins)

THE SHALLOWS doesn't give JAWS any cause for concern about losing its place as the greatest shark movie ever, but it gets the job done as mindless summer entertainment and the kind of relatively low-budget film ($17 million--pocket change by today's industry standards) that can quietly become a very profitable sleeper hit. It's handled in the best B-movie fashion by director Jaume Collet-Serra, who's become a reliable genre craftsman in the last several years with 2009's underrated and insane ORPHAN, and a pair of enjoyable Liam Neeson vehicles with 2011's Hitchcockian UNKNOWN and 2014's NON-STOP. Keeping the film lean and fast-moving (the closing credits start just shy of the 80-minute mark), Collet-Serra and screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski (the terrible VANISHING ON 7TH STREET) plow through the exposition as quickly as possible and get to the heart of the surfer vs. shark story.

Still mourning her mother's death from cancer and seeking some kind of closure, med school dropout Nancy (Blake Lively) is ditched by her hard-partying friend and opts to go alone to an isolated Mexican beach that her mother visited while pregnant with her. An experienced surfer, Nancy rides some waves, enjoys the scenery, and briefly chats with a pair of nice locals who soon head back to the shore. Of course, that's just about the time Nancy is bitten and dragged under the water. She gets free, climbing onto a nearby decomposing whale carcass floating in the water. The shark, a great white, rams the carcass, throwing her off and sending her swimming for a nearby rock formation sticking out of the water. From there, it's Nancy vs. the great white, one trying to outsmart the other as Nancy fashions a tourniquet from her wet suit to stop the profuse bleeding from the bite on her leg (a great excuse for Collet-Serra to show off Lively in the skimpiest swimwear this side of Jacqueline Bisset in THE DEEP, at least until the gangrene makeup gets applied), which she holds together using her earrings as makeshift stitching. She finds an unlikely sidekick in an injured seagull she dubs "Steven Seagull." A few other characters wander into the water despite Nancy screaming "Shark!" and of course, they usually end up as dinner. As the tide comes in, Nancy needs to get off the rock as the persistent shark just endlessly circles her, almost sending Nancy a message that it's got nowhere else to be and she's got nowhere to hide.

THE SHALLOWS is a high-end junk movie that knows it's a junk movie. Lively makes a strong and believable heroine and for the most part, the CGI effects are pretty good (the shark is much more convincing here than the technology allowed in, say, 1999's DEEP BLUE SEA, a wild and fun shark flick completely undone by primitive CGI work that was unconvincing then and simply embarrassing now). Structurally similar to OPEN WATER, THE SHALLOWS is a lot prettier to look at, not just with Lively but with some crystal clear blue ocean off the coast of Queensland, filling in for Mexico. There isn't much depth and there isn't whole lot to say with this--it's a classic case of "It is what it is," and it works. It's not trying to be another JAWS, though it certainly acknowledges its influence, from the always-unnerving shots of the shark fin protruding from the water to giving Lively her own Roy Scheider last word when she finally gets the shark where she wants it. However, it's a sign of the times that the comparative gentlemanly elegance of "Smile, you son of a bitch!" has given way to the more blunt and verbally economical "Fuck you!" but I suppose it's an appropriate farewell.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE HARVEST (2015); EXTINCTION (2015); and UNFRIENDED (2015)

THE HARVEST
(US - 2015)

THE HARVEST is one of those intense thrillers that has you on the edge of your seat until you start thinking about it and it promptly falls flat on its face. Shown at festivals in 2013 but unreleased until its stealth VOD premiere two years later by IFC, it's also the first new film in over a decade by HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER and WILD THINGS director John McNaughton, whose last film, the obscure Bill Murray comedy SPEAKING OF SEX, sat on the shelf for seven years before going straight-to-DVD in 2007. In a rural, wooded area, a sickly 13-year-old boy named Andy (Charlie Tahan) is housebound and under the constant care of his overbearing, overmedicating doctor mother Katherine (Samantha Morton) and his passive, weak-willed father Richard (Michael Shannon). Andy is homeschooled, has never been outside of the house, and is surprised when his first friend comes knocking at his window. Maryann (Natasha Calis) is a feisty orphan who just moved in with her grandparents (Peter Fonda, Leslie Lyles) across the nearby creek. The two lonely kids enjoy playing video games, but the possessive Katherine is threatened by Maryann, and after a conversation with the grandparents, it's decided that Maryann is no longer welcome to visit Andy. That doesn't stop her, and as the observant Katherine sees evidence that Maryann is still visiting, she goes off the deep end, unable to give Andy any freedom despite protests from Richard to let the dying boy have as normal a life as possible in what little time he has left.

Something odd is going on in the house and what sounds like a fusion of coming-of-age and disease-of-the-week dramas makes an abrupt switch in direction with a doozy of a midway plot twist that unfortunately backs first-time screenwriter Stephen Lancelotti into a corner from which he can't claw his way out. The implausibilities abound--how is Maryann able to so easily sneak in and out of the house, and once she finds what she finds, she exclaims "Nobody believes me!" but we only see her tell her incredulous grandparents. Grandpa says "stay off the computer," then when she pleads with him later about what's really going on in the house, does he call the police? No, he tells her to "follow your heart." What? THE HARVEST has no idea what to do with Fonda's character, who starts out the film as a rock for his grieving granddaughter and quickly turns into a useless old fool, giving the actor literally nothing to do but parody himself and mutter "Far out!" a couple of times. Calis and Tahan are fine, even though it feels like they're 13-and-14-year-olds playing characters who should be eight or nine. Shannon is terrific in a rare restrained, sympathetic performance--watch him in one scene where he contorts his upper body and looks to be in agony trying to avoid hugging the bonkers Katherine. It's Morton who rules THE HARVEST, with a terrifying, mad performance as the off-her-rocker mother desperately clinging to her control over a child for reasons that only become clear later on. Fast-paced and gripping, THE HARVEST is nonetheless too dumb to be taken seriously, wrapping up with one of the more frustratingly inane closing shots in recent memory, one that looks like a hasty reshoot a year after the rest of the movie was finished. (Unrated, 104 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)


EXTINCTION
(Spain/Hungary - 2015)

This week's new zombie movie is the European-made EXTINCTION, which valiantly tries to bring an emphasis on characterization to the proceedings, but gets so bogged down in tedium and belaboring its points that it's a full 90 minutes before the creature mayhem even gets rolling. Directed and co-written by Miguel Angel Vivas (KIDNAPPED) and produced by frequent Liam Neeson director Jaume Collet-Serra (UNKNOWN, NON-STOP, RUN ALL NIGHT), EXTINCTION's prologue briefly goes into the initial zombie outbreak before cutting to "Nine Years Later." The world is now a frozen apocalypse with scant few human survivors, the plus side being that the extreme climate change wiped out the zombie population and killed the undead infection. The first hour and change primarily deals with a still-seething feud between a pair of neighbors in the middle of iced-over nowhere: bearded, long-haired Patrick (LOST's Matthew Fox) hunts for food with his loyal dog, while next door, overprotective Jack (BURN NOTICE's Jeffrey Donovan) helicopter parents his spunky, starting-to-rebel nine-year-old daughter Lu (Quinn McColgan). Patrick and Jack have a past--they were on a bus in the prologue, with a woman named Emma (Valeria Vereau) and a crying infant. When the bus was sieged by rampaging zombies, Emma was bitten and Patrick killed her before she turned. Jack has never been able to forgive him and forbids Lu to speak to him.

It seems hard to buy that this level of grudging tension and neighborly hatred could go on for nine years--almost as hard as it is to buy Lu eating a box of Froot Loops that looks like it was just brought home from the grocery store. When Patrick is out scavenging for food and encounters an evolved version of the zombies--able to withstand the cold but hobbled by blindness--the men set aside their differences to battle the approaching creatures and protect Lu, who's clearly the center of a pre-zombie outbreak babydaddy dispute. Even with its frequently shoddy greenscreen work, it's hard to dismiss EXTINCTION's efforts to do something different in an absurdly played-out genre, but it doesn't do itself any favors by pulling a Gareth Edwards and keeping the zombies offscreen as much as possible (for most of the film, there's one zombie and Patrick has him chained up outside). And when they do finally arrive, they seem to have sprinted in off the set of Neil Marshall's THE DESCENT. The film's sympathies clearly lie with the more proactive and heroic Patrick, who wins the respect of Lu, who seems to realize that Jack is a bit of an asshole and a coward, especially when his first reaction when the zombies attack is to try and pre-emptively shoot Lu in the head. Young McColgan is a scene-stealer, especially in a really nice bit where she traps a zombie in a downstairs freezer and allows herself a brief smile, marveling at her own ingenuity and badassery. More moments like that, and less of a pouting, butthurt Jack scowling at Patrick might've made some improvements. There's a solid 90-minute movie hiding somewhere in the bloated two-hour one that got released. (R, 113 mins)


UNFRIENDED
(US - 2015)

An ambitious stunt that sticks to its game plan but still really works only once, UNFRIENDED is a real-time social media fright flick that plays out on a multi-window Skype session. Nacho Vigalondo's OPEN WINDOWS attempted this with hapless results, and while UNFRIENDED is much more successful at adhering to and exploiting the gimmick, they payoff isn't quite worth the buildup. A year after the tragic death of high school student Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman), who committed suicide after a humiliating video of her was posted to YouTube, her group of friends are taunted during a group chat on Skype by a blank-icon user going by the name "Billie227." All attempts to ditch the intruder fail, and Billie seems to have insider knowledge about all of them. As Billie Facebook messages Blaire (Shelley Hennig), who at one time was Laura's best friend, the stakes are raised, secrets are revealed, and people start dying. Director Leo Gabriadze (a protege of producer Timur Bekmambetov) and screenwriter Nelson Greaves hint at things under the surface, whether it's lip service being paid to the issue of cyberbullying or some dark secret involving an incident with Laura's uncle when Laura and Blaire were younger, but they also do an admirable job cranking up the tension, making harmless sounds like text message and chat alerts come off as nerve-wracking and dread-inducing. As Billie starts to mercilessly expose the wrongdoings and hypocrisy of Blaire and her friends--both to Laura and to one another--it's clear that everyone has secrets and the bonds of friendship are tenuous at best, as evidenced by the nail-biting game of "Never Have I Ever." It's an often bleak and misanthropic film (kudos to the filmmakers for going for the R rating), but it's one that should've dug a little deeper instead of going the easy route of everyone shouting over one another, climactic jump scares, and tilted BLAIR WITCH camera angles. It's also another horror film where the "teenagers" are played by actors in their mid-to-late 20s and looking it. But for the most part, UNFRIENDED is better and more compelling than it has any right to be, and has enough good things going for it that its shortcomings are all the more frustrating. So many genre films of a reality-based style (faux-doc, found-footage, etc) start cutting corners and cheating as soon as they can, but UNFRIENDED establishes its rules and sticks to them. The real-time element is believably-handled and Gabriadze never once strays from the central position of having the camera planted on Blaire's laptop, from her POV (that was where Vigalondo dropped the ball with OPEN WINDOWS--he couldn't wait to get the action away from the laptop), and the whole film really does look like it was pulled off in one take in real time. Of course, a pretty good thing always has to be ruined: UNFRIENDED 2 is coming in 2016. (R, 83 mins)

In Theaters: RUN ALL NIGHT (2015)

RUN ALL NIGHT
(US - 2015)

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Written by Brad Inglesby. Cast: Liam Neeson, Ed Harris, Joel Kinnaman, Common, Vincent D'Onofrio, Nick Nolte, Bruce McGill, Genesis Rodriguez, Boyd Holbrook, Holt McCallany, Rasha Bukvic, Patricia Kalember, Beau Knapp, Lois Smith, Aubrey Joseph, Daniel Stewart Sherman, James Martinez. (R, 115 mins)

Jimmy Conlan (Liam Neeson) is introduced as a booze-soaked butt of jokes among the other Irish mobsters in the neighborhood bar. He's a nickel-and-dimer, a flunky for Danny Maguire (Boyd Holbrook), the spoiled, coke-snorting, Joffrey-like son of NYC Irish mob kingpin Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). It's Shawn's sense of loyalty and friendship that keep Jimmy around, with the boss regularly reminding the drunk Jimmy of all their glory days and how at the end, they'll cross that final line together. Jimmy was once Shawn's right-hand man and most ruthless enforcer, and now Jimmy can't sleep at night, haunted by the faces and the memories of those he's killed. While Shawn's affection for Jimmy is sincere, it's telling that he keeps him at a distance when it comes to business, instead opting to pawn him off as a gofer for perpetual fuck-up Danny, the kind of insufferable, sociopathic brat who expects to be given everything because of who his father happens to be. A disrespected sad sack reduced to dressing up as Santa for a Maguire Christmas party so Danny will loan him $800 to get his furnace fixed, Jimmy has seen better days.

NEESON!

He gets his obligatory One Last Shot at Redemption when a domino effect of plot conveniences force him to step up and take action to protect his estranged son Michael (Joel Kinnaman), his pregnant wife (Genesis Rodriguez) and the two granddaughters he's never met. Michael, an honest family man who wants nothing to do with his father or his criminal legacy, witnesses childhood friend Danny kill a powerful Albanian heroin dealer (Rasha Bukvic) over a deal that went south. Word gets out that Danny is after Michael, so Shawn sends Jimmy to make sure Michael doesn't talk to the cops. Danny tracks down Michael and is about to kill him when Jimmy walks in and shoots him dead. He immediately informs Shawn what happened ("He was about to kill Michael...I had to do it"), but no matter how justified it was, Shawn has lost his only son and will not rest until Jimmy loses his. Mobsters and corrupt cops conspire to frame Michael for the Albanian's murder, and as the media attention grows, Shawn's inner circle of gangsters, unstoppable freelance hitman Price (Common), and the last honest cop in NYC (Vincent D'Onofrio) close in on Jimmy and Michael, putting them in a position where they must set aside their differences and survive the night...if they don't kill each other first!

NEESON!

A major improvement over January's lackluster TAKEN 3, RUN ALL NIGHT is the busy Neeson's third teaming with director Jaume Collet-Serra (UNKNOWN, NON-STOP). Collet-Serra's key to success with Neeson seems to be that the stories are frequently as ludicrous as something Luc Besson would cook up for TAKEN, but he gives Neeson enough breathing room to flex his acting muscles. Whether he's presenting Neeson as an amnesia victim in UNKNOWN or a paranoid, alcoholic air marshal in NON-STOP, Collet-Serra understands that Neeson is a real actor and works some moderately challenging characterization into the actor's now-standard action-movie badass routine. There's actually a lot of similarities between Jimmy Conlan and Neeson's Ottway in THE GREY, and like THE GREY, Neeson is surrounded by a top-notch supporting cast--there's also Holt McCallany and Bruce McGill as Maguire mob guys, and a one-scene bit by a more-grizzled-than-usual Nick Nolte as Jimmy's older brother--but the most pleasure comes from watching him play off a steely-as-ever Harris. While he can bellow and rage like the best of them, Harris has always been one of those actors who can also speak volumes with just a look, and he does a terrific job of conveying that sense of friendship just with the way he looks at Jimmy with a combination of fond memories for days gone by and pitying sympathy for what Jimmy is today. They're both outstanding in their later scene together, where they have what's essentially their own version of the HEAT diner meet in a swanky restaurant, each vowing to do what they have to do regardless of the respect and love they have for one another.

HARRIS!

RUN ALL NIGHT's strengths lie with Neeson and Harris, and it's too bad they don't have more scenes together. The father-son issues and bickering between Jimmy and Michael are played well enough by Neeson and Kinnaman (THE KILLING, ROBOCOP), but you've seen it all before. The only major misstep with the casting is Common's high-tech hitman seemingly wandering in from the nearest TERMINATOR audition. He doesn't appear until over an hour into the film, but he never quite gels with his surroundings, and we don't learn enough about him for his showdown with Jimmy to have much resonance beyond the visceral thrill of watching Neeson do his Neeson thing. The script by Brad Inglesby (OUT OF THE FURNACE) errs in the way it abruptly makes Common's Price the chief adversary when the emotional impact lies with the broken bond between Jimmy and Shawn. One other major stumble is a badly-edited car chase early on, assembled in the now-standard way of entirely too much CGI augmentation in a quick-cutting blur with frequent close-ups of a grimacing Neeson clutching the wheel, making constipated faces like he's driving a car at high speed through Times Square. Nitpicking asdie, RUN ALL NIGHT is slick and satisfying entertainment for Neeson's base, the kind of undemanding but compelling actioner that you'll happen upon and end up watching several times as it finds its permanent home in constant rotation on the various HBO channels for the next two decades.

On DVD/Blu-ray: IRONCLAD: BATTLE FOR BLOOD (2014), ANNA (2014) and THE DAY OF THE SIEGE: SEPTEMBER ELEVEN 1683 (2014)

IRONCLAD: BATTLE FOR BLOOD
(UK/Serbia - 2014)

2011's IRONCLAD was a $25 million medieval epic set during the 13th century First Barons' War that had a SEVEN SAMURAI-type band of Knights Templar fighting to defend Rochester Castle from the forces of England's tyrannical King John, exacting revenge on the noblemen who forced him to sign the Magna Carta. It had a cast of solid pros--James Purefoy, Brian Cox, Kate Mara, Derek Jacobi, Charles Dance, and a scenery-chewing Paul Giamatti as the despicable King John--but nevertheless went straight to DVD in the US, where it developed a small cult following once it started streaming on Netflix. It's a nicely-done, blood-splattered adventure saga that suffers from too many scenes of Purefoy and Mara gazing longingly at one another, but as far as battle sequences and sword-induced carnage were concerned, IRONCLAD delivered. Proving that no film is too unknown to warrant a sequel, director/co-writer Jonathan English returns with IRONCLAD: BATTLE FOR BLOOD, which, unlike its predecessor, actually made it into a few US theaters. That seems odd, since it has almost no recognizable faces except for Michelle Fairley--best known as GAME OF THRONES' Catelyn Stark--and a few of her third-and-fourth-string THRONES co-stars looking for work since they've been killed off of the HBO series. More of a spinoff than a direct sequel, IRONCLAD: BATTLE FOR BLOOD takes place five years after the events of the first film and only has one minor character reappearing--Guy the Squire--and he's not even played by the same actor (Tom Austen replaces Aneurin Barnard). Guy the Squire is paid a visit by his cousin Hubert De Vesci (Tom Rhys Harries) when the De Vesci castle is attacked by a rogue band of Scottish rebels led by the ferocious Maddog (Predrag Bjelac). Maddog's son (Ljubomir Bulajic) is killed in the initial battle and Hubert's father, Lord Gilbert De Vesci (David Rintoul) loses an arm. Knowing Maddog's revenge attack is a matter of When and not If, Gilbert sends Hubert to secure the services of mercenary Guy who, as expected, is able to assemble the requisite ragtag group of mismatched warriors who band together before the climactic battle at an abandoned warehouse.  Wait. Hold on. No. No, there's no abandoned warehouse. My apologies. I was confusing my cliches. Please excuse me.

English seems to have regressed since the first IRONCLAD.  This new film looks cheap and clumsy, and it might not had English elected to shoot it in a competent or even remotely watchable fashion. Every scene is a dizzying, headache-inducing blur of the worst kind of shaky-cam. He goes so overboard with it--even in scenes where people are just talking or standing around--that you could be forgiven for assuming the DVD or Blu-ray was defective. There are very few moments in the film where the camera is held steady, and after a while, it starts to resemble medieval found footage. It's a stunningly numb-skulled decision by a director to fix what wasn't broken. Sure, IRONCLAD had some shaky-cam but it wasn't so much that it was a deal-breaker. Here, it's just overwhelming and does nothing to justify a project that already doesn't have much reason to exist. IRONCLAD has found a small cult following and while it's not an unsung classic or anything, it's certainly worth seeing once, if only for Cox's spirited performance and Giamatti's vein-popping histrionics. All you'll get from IRONCLAD: BATTLE FOR BLOOD is a migraine. (Unrated, 108 mins)



ANNA
(Spain/US - 2014)

Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra (ORPHAN, UNKNOWN, NON-STOP) produced this lackluster mystery that melds psychic phenomena with the usual--and completely predictable--twists and turns. The premise sounds like the set-up for a high-concept CBS procedural: "memory detective" John Washington (Mark Strong) works for an organization called Mindscape (the film's original title), whose investigators are able to infiltrate the memories of their subjects and witness the things they've seen.  Of course, Washington, like most rumpled cops with bleary eyes, perpetual three-day stubble, and a utility bill with a huge "Past Due" stamp visible on his cluttered coffee table in front of the couch where he passes out every night, has some baggage that's placed him on an extended leave of absence--in this case, a dead child and a wife who committed suicide--but he needs the money and tells his boss Sebastian (Brian Cox) that he wants back in the game. Sebastian gives him the easy gig of investigating Anna (AMERICAN HORROR STORY's Taissa Farmiga), a rich teenager with psychological issues and vague psychic abilities, who's gone on a hunger strike and is kept locked in a room under surveillance by her boozing mom (Saskia Reeves) and her sneering stepfather (Richard Dillane), who has a habit of sleeping with the help. Arriving at Anna's family home, the kind of sprawling, gothic, spiral-staircased mansion specifically designed to contain generations of secrets and lies, Washington's job is simply too find Anna's reasons for her self-harm and get her to eat. But as he spends more time with her and they get to know each other, he starts finding bits and pieces of a complex puzzle that he becomes obsessed with putting together.  And someone should, because director Jorge Dorado and screenwriter Guy Holmes sure don't seem up to the task.

ANNA gets off to an intriguing start as a sort of supernatural MANHUNTER, and it's nice to see veteran character actor Strong, whose one-season-and-done AMC series LOW WINTER SUN failed to become the network's next BREAKING BAD, in a leading role, but this film is a disjointed, incoherent, badly-paced mess. It feels like vital scenes are missing, especially near the end, which is completely rushed and makes little sense.  Further evidence to suggest haphazard editing: prominently-billed Noah Taylor doesn't appear until the very end, seated at a table talking with Strong, but is listed quite high in the "Cast in order of appearance" roll at the end.  There's also a guy credited as "Mr. Taylor's body double," but there's nothing about their scene that would require a body double, indicating that an entire plot thread involving his character was left on the cutting room floor. It's hard to believe someone with the sharp skills of Washington, regardless of how burned-out he is, would be gullible enough to get tripped up in the situation that develops, and never seeing how he's been duped until it's too late. There's signs of a decent thriller lurking somewhere in here, but that's not what got dumped on just ten screens in the US. (R, 99 mins)



THE DAY OF THE SIEGE: SEPTEMBER ELEVEN 1683
(Italy/Poland - 2012; US release 2014)

This chronicle of the Battle of Vienna is so concerned with scoring cheap political points that even its title is flagrantly misleading:  the final battle took place on September 12, 1683, but why let well-documented historical facts get in the way of being able to crassly draw false parallels to a world-changing tragedy?  Italian director Renzo Martinelli has been making films for several years now with the backing of the Northern League, the far-right political party that in many--but not all--ways is Italy's version of the Tea Party. THE DAY OF THE SIEGE: SEPTEMBER ELEVEN 1683 was co-produced by the Polish Film Institute and was originally conceived as a tribute to King Jan III Sobieski, whose army was largely credited with defeating the Ottoman Empire forces in their quest to establish Islam in the west. That premise was enough get famous but not-exactly-A-list Hollywood actors like F. Murray Abraham, Harvey Keitel, and Jim Caviezel onboard. Abraham and Keitel both starred in Martinelli's fervently anti-Islam (and completely terrible) THE STONE MERCHANT (2007) and Abraham starred with Rutger Hauer in the director's SWORD OF WAR (2009), which co-star Cecile Cassel publicly denounced once she realized that Martinelli was making a Northern League propaganda film disguised as a historical epic (the fact that then-Northern League leader Umberto Bossi was hanging around the set and had a cameo might've been the first tip-off). Apparently, the involvement of the Northern League and the politics inherent in the SIEGE script were enough to prompt Keitel to bail, and you know your agitprop might be skewing a little too far to the right when even outspoken Hollywood conservative Caviezel feels the need to distance himself and drops out of the project. Abraham stuck around, either out of a sense of professional obligation or, considering this is his third appearance in a Martinelli project, he either likes the guy, agrees with his views, both, or neither. Maybe a job's a job for Abraham, who seems to be working now more than ever on TV and in supporting roles in Hollywood movies, but he's had a rather lucrative and busy side career in Italy for nearly 30 years. Many of Abraham's Italian TV and film projects have never received US distribution, but his Italian credits very likely outnumber his Hollywood ones at this point. For years, prior to the post-JERRY MAGUIRE career self-immolation of Cuba Gooding, Jr., Abraham was the poster boy for the so-called "Oscar jinx" after his Best Actor win for 1984's AMADEUS failed to make him a movie star and instead made him a punchline, and that's not fair. Abraham is a great character actor, but he was never going to be a Hollywood A-lister. AMADEUS was that once-in-a-career, lightning-in-a-bottle gift that very few jobbing actors like Abraham get. Balancing Hollywood gigs with a secret Italian career was more common for aging actors of the 1960s and 1970s than it is today. Still, for a guy like Abraham (and Keitel, and the late Tony Musante and Ben Gazzara--both of whom made their final appearances in a 2013 miniseries for Italian TV--character actors who also have extensive European careers that American audiences know nothing about), the idea of a lead role in an Italian epic, even if it's mostly bankrolled by a party of the country's most vehement xenophobes, was probably hard to turn down.

In Turkey, Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa (Enrico Lo Verso, in what I assume was supposed to be Caviezel's role) is entrusted with expanding the Ottoman Empire and its practice of Islam into Europe. Revered monk Marco D'Aviano (Abraham) can't convince his flock that he's just a man, even though he's seen performing miracles on more than one occasion. D'Aviano tries to spread the word of God and Christianity as armies assemble to thwart Kara Mustafa after the monk sees a comet and insists it's a threat from Islam (a good second guess would be a shitty special effect worthy of an Al Bradley joint).  D'Aviano barely secures the reluctant commitment of fey, cowardly King Leopold of Austria (Piotr Adamczyk), and even get a feisty duchess (Alicja Bachleda-Curus of ONDINE) to join the battle. They're eventually joined by the mighty forces of Jan III Sobieski (renowned filmmaker and occasional actor Jerzy Skolimowski, in what was likely Keitel's part), for the completely incoherent and ineptly-assembled final battle, filled with amateur-night CGI and greenscreen and cannonballs causing more explosions than all of Antonio Margheriti's films combined. It's all rather numbing and dull by the end, and quite distasteful not just in its dishonest invocation of 9/11 but also in the way that all of the Turkish characters are portrayed as swarthy and untrustworthy, especially the opportunistic Abu'l (Yorgo Voyagis), who allows his Christian girlfriend to be violated by animalistic "Allahu Akbar!"-chanting troops in order to appease his Islamic cohorts. And for a film that's ostensibly about Jan III Sobieski and his army's triumph, the Polish end of the story gets completely relegated to the sideline, with Skolimowski not even appearing until 80 minutes in to give the script enough space for Martinelli's Christian proselytizing and Islam-bashing. Abraham gets to sink his teeth into a few spiritual monologues (make a drinking game out of how many times he cries "I am but a simple monk!") and Bachleda-Curus gives her scenes enough of a spark that you wish she was in it more, but most of the actors are badly dubbed with inappropriate voices, especially Skolimowski, whose dubber's final declaration of "Damn you, Kara Mustafa!" doesn't even match his lip movements and is obviously not what he said on-set.  Most disheartening of all is seeing the ageless Claire Bloom (Chaplin's LIMELIGHT, THE HAUNTING--yes, that Claire Bloom) squandered in a one-scene cameo as D'Aviano's mother. That's right:  Claire Bloom as F. Murray Abraham's mom.  Martinelli may fancy himself the Northern League's Ridley Scott, but with that kind of ridiculous casting, slipshod filmmaking, and bush-league visual effects, he's really just Italy's Uwe Boll. (R, 120 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)

In Theaters: NON-STOP (2014)

NON-STOP
(US/France/UK - 2014)

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.  Written by John W. Richardson, Chris Roach, and Ryan Engle.  Cast: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Michelle Dockery, Scoot McNairy, Nate Parker, Corey Stoll, Linus Roache, Anson Mount, Shea Whigham, Lupita Nyong'o, Omar Metwally, Jason Butler Harner, Frank Deal, Corey Hawkins, Jon Abrahams. (PG-13, 106 mins)

No one expected 2009's TAKEN to turn the now-61-year-old Liam Neeson into the modern-day Charles Bronson and an icon of AARP asskickers (how is he not in EXPENDABLES 3?), but he's carved a niche for himself at a time when most actors his age are settling into character parts and elder statesman roles.  Sometimes, as in the case of Neeson and Kevin Costner, star of last week's 3 DAYS TO KILL, which looks and feels like it was written for Neeson, a good actor can dabble in both.  Neeson's latest is NON-STOP, and a cursory glance at the poster art and the trailer might suggest it's TAKEN ON A PLANE but that's an incorrect assumption.  True, it probably wouldn't exist had TAKEN never happened, but in the hands of underrated director Jaume Collet-Serra, it plays a lot like a Hitchcockian "wrong man" situation in the era of post-9/11 security and technology.  Collet-Serra, a former music video director, has turned into a solid suspense craftsman after an inauspicious debut with the 2005 remake of HOUSE OF WAX, where he was saddled with the then-ubiquitous Paris Hilton in co-starring role.  But even in retrospect, HOUSE OF WAX shows a method to Collet-Serra's madness:  as a filmmaker, he's rooted in the classics, even if HOUSE OF WAX was a dumb remake of a beloved horror film (1953's HOUSE OF WAX, itself a remake of 1933's THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM).  After the barely-seen soccer sequel GOAL II: LIVING THE DREAM (2007), Collet-Serra established his bona fides with 2009's ORPHAN, a BAD SEED-inspired thriller with a deliriously gonzo plot twist that has to be seen to be believed, and 2011's UNKNOWN, his first teaming with Neeson, where the star found himself in the middle of another classic old-school suspense thriller standard:  a man waking up from an accident to find that those closest to him have no idea who he is and that he's being pursued by killers for reasons he doesn't know or can't remember.

NEESON!

Like TAKEN's absent-dad-trying-to-make-good Bryan Mills and THE GREY's suicidal John Ottway, NON-STOP's Bill Marks is another flawed Neeson hero with a certain amount of baggage.  Marks is a Federal Air Marshal with alcohol and money problems.  Of course, his wife and kid are out of the picture and all he's got is his job and he's barely holding on to that.  Haggard and bleary-eyed, Marks boards his latest assignment, a flight from New York to London that's so routine that he thinks nothing of downing a shot beforehand, keeping a flask in his jacket pocket, attempting to order a gin & tonic from flight attendant Nancy (DOWNTON ABBEY's Michelle Dockery), who knows he's on the job and brings him water instead, and occasionally heading to the restroom to smoke.  It's business as usual until Marks gets a text from someone onboard the plane demanding $150 million or a passenger will be killed every 20 minutes.  The spoilers start pretty quickly, so to recount any more of the plot would do a disservice, but with each new development and each new corpse, it becomes clear to Marks--and only Marks--that someone among the passengers is trying to frame him and orchestrate this elaborate scenario as a hijacking by an angry, bitter, paranoid alcoholic who can't be trusted with the lives of innocent people.

NEESON!

There's little new or innovative here, but for a good chunk of its duration, NON-STOP is exactly that in terms of nail-biting suspense.  It's great fun watching an appropriately disheveled-looking Neeson grow increasingly desperate and angry when everyone--the pilot (Linus Roache), a second marshal (Anson Mount), his TSA boss on the ground (Shea Whigham), Jen (Julianne Moore), the woman sitting next to him, and even the sympathetic Nancy--dismisses the situation as Marks' imagination run wild or just presuming he's on yet another bender ("Really, Bill?  How many have you had today?").  When Collet-Serra focuses on these interactions--Marks' frazzled paranoia as he looks more guilty by the minute and loses the confidence of the flight crew (he's eventually denied access to the cockpit after the pilot demands his badge and gun), the increasingly irate passengers plotting to subdue Marks and take over the plane--NON-STOP is tremendously entertaining.  Of course, numerous passengers--a hot-headed, homophobic NYC cop (Corey Stoll), a software programmer (Nate Parker), a nerdy schoolteacher on his way to Amsterdam (Scoot McNairy), a Muslim doctor (Omar Metwally), Jen, who was peculiarly adamant about getting a window seat and was hesitant to discuss her career with Marks, and even the co-pilot (Jason Butler Harner), seen by Marks shiftily whispering to his secret girlfriend Nancy--are presented as possible villains, but all the evidence seems to point to Marks.   Things do grow more implausible, but when done right, that can be part of the fun. 

NEESON!

The plot turns and plot holes that abound late in NON-STOP are a bit too silly and nonsensical to overcome, but what really dampens the finale is the usual shitty CGI.  Again, it's difficult to discuss without spoiling the plot, but it's another case where something that should look spectacular looks like it was taken from a video game on short notice.  Admittedly, my complaining about cut-rate CGI is pretty much beating a dead horse at this point, but there's no reason for AIRPLANE! to have more convincing visual effects in 1980 than NON-STOP does today.  Even a scene on the runway is obviously done with a greenscreen.  Really?  You can't even drag the actors out to a runway and shoot it for real anymore?   Some say it doesn't matter, but when the artifice sticks out like a sore thumb in 2014, it does matter.  Or, if you can't do it for real, can you at least make it look convincing?  It can be done.  You'd be surprised how many streets and backgrounds and buildings in movies and TV are CGI or greenscreen effects.  But when time and care are put into it, you can't tell. The best CGI doesn't draw attention to itself.  I get that CGI is here to stay, but quit half-assing it.  When it stops taking me out of the movie, I'll stop bitching.  Until Collet-Serra basically steps aside to let the CGI team take over, NON-STOP is quintessential post-TAKEN Neeson, right down to the usual "particular set of skills" gravitas inherent in selling-point lines like "I'm not hijacking this plane...I'm trying to save it!" that sound awesome when said by Liam Neeson. It's not perfect, but it's Neeson, he's bellowing, and he's kicking the shit out of people.  Not even some subpar CGI can ruin that.

NEESON!