Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Steven Zaillian. Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Kathrine Narducci, Welker White, Jesse Plemons, Jack Huston, Domenick Lombardozzi, Paul Herman, Louis Cancelmi, Gary Basaraba, Marin Ireland, Sebastian Maniscalco, Steven Van Zandt, Lucy Gallina, Bo Dietl, Aleksa Palladino, Jim Norton, Daniel Jenkins, Paul Ben-Victor, Patrick Gallo, Jake Hoffman, Barry Primus, Vinny Vella, John Cenatiempo, Action Bronson, Danny A. Abeckaser, India Ennenga, Kate Arrington, John Scurti, Louis Vanaria. (R, 208 mins) A few years ago, it would've been ludicrous to imagine that the most eagerly anticipated film of the year would be a Netflix Original, but here's THE IRISHMAN, Martin Scorsese's long-in-the-works return to his gangster movie glory days of GOODFELLAS, and his first collaboration with Robert De Niro since 1995's CASINO. It's the most ambitious undertaking of Scorsese's career, a story that spans nearly 60 years, with a budget said to be $160 million but possibly as much as $200 million, and a year-and-a-half of post-production that utilized extensive CGI technology to "de-age" the film's stars, allowing them to play their characters as younger men. In various stages of development since 2007, THE IRISHMAN is based on Charles Brandt's 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses, which chronicled mid-level, Philly-based Irish mobster and labor union figure Frank Sheeran's post-WWII rise from truck driver to right-hand-man and trusted muscle of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. Years later, an elderly Sheeran (1920-2003) would claim to be directly involved as the reluctant trigger man in Hoffa's still-unsolved 1975 disappearance and certain murder. Sheeran's story remains speculative and with no body ever found, it isn't any more or less plausible than Hoffa being buried in the end zone of Giants Stadium, but THE IRISHMAN takes the Sheeran-Hoffa story and turns it into an often profoundly moving examination of friendship, regret, betrayal, guilt, and mortality. It's a film that Scorsese only could've made at this point in his life. THE IRISHMAN is the gangster genre seen through the eyes of life experience, a stark contrast with the brash cockiness of 1973's MEAN STREETS or 1990's mob-glorifying GOODFELLAS, arguably the most influential gangster movie ever made. In hindsight, CASINO's third act, where Ace Rothstein's Vegas dream collapses and everything goes to shit, definitely hints at things to come in THE IRISHMAN, but this latest film largely serves as Scorsese's UNFORGIVEN by way of that devastating deathbed monologue Jason Robards gives at the end of Paul Thomas Anderson's MAGNOLIA. The characters in the world of THE IRISHMAN aren't rich guys with a luxurious lifestyle. There's no glitz or glamour here. And whether they're whacked or somehow make it to old age, they all die alone.
Running just two minutes shy of three-and-a-half hours, THE IRISHMAN opens with an 83-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sheeran (De Niro) in an assisted living facility, breaking the fourth wall to tell his story. He uses the framing device of a flashback to a 1975 weekend where he and his wife Irene (Stephanie Kurtzuba) are traveling with Sheeran's longtime friend Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and his wife Carrie (Kathrine Narducci) to a wedding in Detroit. The trip--mapped out in great detail by Sheeran and prolonged by the wives' frequent smoke breaks since Russell doesn't allow smoking in his car--takes them across Pennsylvania to Toledo and north to Detroit, and along the way, Sheeran spots the very location where he first met Russell 30 years earlier, when his truck broke down and Russell was a good samaritan stranger who helped him fix it (this means THE IRISHMAN is set up as flashbacks-within-flashbacks, and at one point, by my count, Scorsese goes four flashbacks deep as Sheeran recalls an incident killing some German officers in Italy during WWII). After the war, Sheeran found employment as a truck driver and got involved in some minor skimming and side deals involving some steaks with mob bosses on his route, including Frank "Skinny Razor" DiTullio (Bobby Cannavale), an underboss with powerful Philly capo Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel). When Frank gets busted by a supplier for a missing shipment, he's successfully defended by lawyer Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano), who introduces him to his mob boss cousin Russell--small world--the very man who helped him out a couple of months earlier. Sheeran starts working for Russell as a bagman and hit man, which eventually brings him into the orbit of Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), the controversial head of the Teamsters, who has connections with Bufalino crime family and likes that Sheeran is one of his own in the Teamsters brotherhood.
What follows is a labyrinthine saga involving labor unions, the FBI, the CIA, Castro, JFK, Richard Nixon, E. Howard Hunt, Watergate, and everything in between. Hoffa becomes a target of JFK's brother and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (Jack Huston) and refuses to lower the Teamsters' building's flag to half-staff following JFK's assassination. Hoffa is eventually convicted of jury tampering and goes on a scorched earth campaign against Teamsters rivals Frank Fitzsimmons (Gary Basaraba) and Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano (Stephen Graham). Once he's released and given a Presidential pardon by Nixon in 1971, Hoffa, with Sheeran at his side, attempts to regain control of the Teamsters, which seals his fate with both the union and their mob partners. By 1975, it's decided by the powers that be that Hoffa, who confidently boasts to Sheeran that he's untouchable ("I know things they don't know I know!"), is a problem that needs to go away.
For its first hour or so before the Hoffa plot kicks into gear, THE IRISHMAN feels like a Scorsese victory lap of sorts, a greatest hits package with a "Hey, the band's back together!" vibe with a familiarity that's predictable yet welcome. There's the rapid-fire editing (Thelma Schoonmaker still the best in the business), the voiceovers, the music (drink every time you hear The Five Satins' "In the Still of the Night" and you'll be unconscious before Pacino even appears) and everything else that says "vintage Scorsese." He also includes shout-outs and callbacks not just to his earlier films but those of his stars. You'll spot the overwhelming remorse inherent to both Pacino's Michael Corleone, haunted throughout THE GODFATHER PART III after ordering his brother Fredo's death at the end of THE GODFATHER PART II, and De Niro's aging Noodles and the guilt over ratting on his friends in Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Hoffa's false sense of invincibility recalls Pacino's Tony Montana in Brian De Palma's SCARFACE and his doomed Carlito Brigante in De Palma's CARLITO'S WAY. There's even a fleeting appearance by Dave Ferrie (Louis Vanaria), the terribly-toupeed Lee Harvey Oswald acquaintance that Pesci played in Oliver Stone's JFK. It's also this stretch of the film where the CGI de-aging is most obvious, and while it plays better in motion on the screen than individual still shots would initially indicate, it doesn't always work (and even with all the digital trickery, there is nothing more distracting in THE IRISHMAN than Scorsese's inexplicable casting of rapper/chef Action Bronson as a casket salesman). Fortunately, the scenes with 76-year-old De Niro playing a 25-year-old Sheeran (with Pesci calling him "kid") are brief, and no matter how much the lines on his digitally-tweaked face are smoothed, he's still walking like a guy in his mid 70s. But once Sheeran hits his 40s and 50s, the effect is much less jarring and your eyes make the necessary adjustments, even if De Niro's eyes too often look like Johnny Depp's Whitey Bulger contact lenses from BLACK MASS. The de-aging of Pesci and Pacino is significantly less drastic since they aren't at any point required to portray themselves 50 years younger: 79-year-old Pacino plays Hoffa from his 40s to his death at 62, and 76-year-old Pesci plays Bufalino from his 40s to his death at 91.
THE IRISHMAN probably doesn't need to run 208 minutes, but with Scorsese and this cast, it's not exactly wasted time (one wishes Keitel had more to do, though he does get one great scene reminding a young Sheeran that he fucked up and Bufalino basically saved his life). It's such pure cinematic joy seeing De Niro, Pacino (his first time working with Scorsese), and Pesci inspired and doing their best work in years that they're instantly forgiven for the likes of DIRTY GRANDPA, HANGMAN, and 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG. De Niro carries the emotional weight and is in nearly every scene, and Pacino does his shouty Pacino thing but keeps it in check and accurate to the character (and he's a more credible Hoffa than the prosthetic nose attached to the face of Jack Nicholson in 1992's HOFFA). Another complex performance comes from an unexpected source: as the soft-spoken Bufalino, the semi-retired Pesci, in just his third film appearance in 20 years, plays it subdued and totally against type, often as the voice of calm even when he's being ruthless and manipulative. It's a smart approach for a film that already has a bloviating Pacino, but by dialing down the "Funny how?" routine that defined his volatile performances in GOODFELLAS and CASINO, Pesci makes Bufalino even more subtly intimidating. That feeling is never more apparent than in his interactions with Sheeran's daughter Peggy (Lucy Gallina as a child, Anna Paquin as an adult), who is never receptive to "Uncle Russell"'s affections no matter how hard he tries. She knows what he and her father do for a living and lets them know it with her silence, and in his reactions, Bufalino is both angry and hurt. There's been some criticism leveled at Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian (SCHINDLER'S LIST, GANGS OF NEW YORK) for giving Peggy almost no dialogue, but that ends up being another example of film writers and bloggers missing the point to score woke cred--Peggy's silence and her withering glares are reminders of their criminal misdeeds. Bufalino is a cold, calculating, powerful mob boss who desperately wants Peggy's approval and will never have it, much like Sheeran will never be granted forgiveness after an adult Peggy can instantly see in her father's demeanor and his nervous drinking that he had something to do with Hoffa's disappearance. She can see it when the news breaks on TV, registering her disgust that it's been several days and he has yet to even call Hoffa's wife Jo (Welker White, so memorable as Lois in GOODFELLAS, refusing to go on Henry Hill's drug run without her lucky hat). When she finally spits out a terse "Why haven't you called her?," it cuts right through Sheeran.
THE IRISHMAN is always compelling, but it's a slower and more meditative piece than GOODFELLAS or CASINO. In many ways, it can be seen as a spiritual relative to De Niro's own 2006 directing effort THE GOOD SHEPHERD, though it's not somber and serious all the time (there's a great running gag where each new gangster character is introduced with a caption detailing when and how he was eventually killed). It really becomes something special in the last half hour when age, time and guilt take their toll on Sheeran. This home stretch packs an emotional wallop and helps put a lot of what's happened over the preceding three hours into perspective. And it's that perspective that a younger Scorsese wouldn't have had the life experience to create circa MEAN STREETS or GOODFELLAS. Ranging in age from 76 to 80, Scorsese, De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, and Keitel all appear to be well and with hopefully much more to give (even though this feels like the perfect career capper for all the major players), but at the same time, there's the inevitable. They're still here but these are their autumnal years. They could've done a convincing job of acting that in their younger days, but their advancing ages and their own sense of mortality give THE IRISHMAN a poignancy and an added resonance--for them and for the fans who have followed them over the decades--that just isn't there in any of their past gangster films.
VICE (US - 2018) Written and directed by Adam McKay. Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Tyler Perry, Jesse Plemons, Alison Pill, Lily Rabe, Eddie Marsan, Justin Kirk, LisaGay Hamilton, Bill Camp, Don McManus, Shea Whigham, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Fay Masterson, John Hillner, Paul Yoo, Joseph Beck, Tony Graham. (R, 132 mins) ANCHORMAN director and Will Ferrell BFF Adam McKay took the leap to "serious filmmaker" with 2015's THE BIG SHORT, an angry and irreverent autopsy of the housing market collapse. He takes the same approach and nets less consistent results with the Dick Cheney biopic VICE, which covers the life of George W. Bush's vice president from his days as a hard-drinking college dropout and all-around fuck-up in 1963, through the events of 9/11 to his heart transplant in 2012. Regardless of how one feels about Cheney and where you stand politically, the one thing everyone can agree on in these more-divisive-than-ever times is that Christian Bale completely disappears onscreen and all you see is Dick Cheney. Sporting Oscar-worthy makeup and an extra 45-50 lbs, the Oscar-winning actor, known for his startling transformations in past films like THE MACHINIST, THE FIGHTER, and AMERICAN HUSTLE, absolutely becomes Cheney. Bale carries VICE on his shoulders, and it's a good thing he does, because without the level of obsessive, Day-Lewisian dedication in his performance/metamorphosis, the film's shortcomings and inconsistencies would be a lot more glaring than they already are.
Counting Ferrell and Brad Pitt among its producers, VICE is entertaining, but McKay too often succumbs to Michael Moore agitprop with all the subtlety of a jackhammer or, perhaps, Ron Burgundy. Tonally, it's all over the place, with the grim seriousness of 9/11 juxtaposed with the kind of meta jokes that wouldn't have been out of place on something like MR. SHOW or FUNNY OR DIE (like a focus group stopping the movie to address its liberal bias). There's a ruthless, Lady Macbeth quality to Lynne Cheney, played here by Amy Adams, leading to Adams and Bale playing an entire scene in emphatic, scenery-chewing Shakespearean dialogue. McKay also takes the story into a hypothetical direction about 40 minutes in, just prior to Cheney accepting an offer to be Bush's VP where he, Lynne, and their extended family live happily ever after as historical footnotes, never to be heard from again as an inspiring score cue swells and the closing credits begin rolling before abruptly resetting and bringing the film back to reality. There's a scattershot, throw-everything-at-the-wall approach to VICE that's worked for McKay in the past (ANCHORMAN, THE OTHER GUYS) and has also completely backfired (ANCHORMAN 2). It splits the difference here because it is funny, but the comedy only spotlights the fact that VICE is never sure what it wants to be. Bale is diving into this and losing himself in the way he deftly captures everything about Cheney physically and psychologically, while Adams is stuck playing a one-dimensional Lynne Cheney who's defined almost exclusively by her shrewd opportunism and the Cheney image (when their daughter Mary, played by Alison Pill, comes out as gay, it's Dick who immediately embraces her and offers his support while Lynne stands there, already questioning how this affects Dick's political career). Others are doing convincing impressions that look like SNL on a good night, like Steve Carell's obnoxious and loathed-throughout-DC Donald Rumsfeld, Tyler Perry's Colin Powell, Eddie Marsan's Paul Wolfowitz, and Sam Rockwell's George W. Bush, seen here as an easygoing goofball who only seems to be in politics to earn his dad's respect.
There is a clever framing device involving an onscreen narrator (Jesse Plemons), and the story jumps back and forth through the years, chronicling Cheney's time as a protege of presidential adviser Rumsfeld in the pre-Watergate Nixon White House, and his eventual return as White House Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford (Bill Camp) in the 1975 "Halloween Massacre," a gig he gets after swooping in to scavenge for table scraps left by everyone tainted by the Watergate fiasco. He's also the Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush and the film glosses over his tenure as CEO of Halliburton before he's persuaded to be George W. Bush's running mate. Throughout VICE, Cheney is accurately depicted as a Machiavellian mover and shaker, fixated on finding loopholes and reinterpretations to skirt around the Constitution and the law to find ways to grant the executive branch previously untapped levels of power, secrecy, and unaccountability. He's always working behind the scenes, quietly plotting, and never drawing attention to himself, qualities that come into play when he manipulates the younger Bush into letting him take on a much more significant role in policy and day-to-day operations than VPs have historically played ("The president and I have an understanding," he says whenever someone asks him if he's overstepping his boundaries).
The film's second half focuses almost entirely on the post 9/11 era, with the the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, "enhanced interrogation," Cheney's vengeful outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, and other decisions that resonate to this day (the infamous incident where Cheney shot a guy in the face is also shown, along with a reminder that the only apology that ever came from it was from the victim to Cheney), but therein lies the core problem with VICE: you're not going to leave the theater knowing anything you didn't already know going in. And to that end, it's rather shallow and superficial, and lacking the focused rage of THE BIG SHORT (the most vicious jab is aimed not at Dick Cheney, but at the apathetic and easily-distracted general public, and it comes at the very end, so stick around for that stinger that comes early in the closing credits). It's a triumph of makeup and a testament to Christian Bale's many gifts as an actor and his complete devotion to his craft. He makes efforts to show Cheney's human side and doesn't play him a cartoonish Bond villain, but a long, "no apologies" monologue near the end might make you wonder if this wouldn't have made a more insightful film if it was a one-man show like James Whitmore as Harry S. Truman in 1975's GIVE 'EM HELL, HARRY! or Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon in Robert Altman's 1984 film SECRET HONOR.
HOSTILES (US - 2017) Written and directed by Scott Cooper. Cast: Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Ben Foster, Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, Adam Beach, Stephen Lang, Scott Wilson, Timothee Chalamet, Q'orianka Kilcher, Peter Mullan, Jonathan Majors, Bill Camp, Paul Anderson, Ryan Bingham, Tanaya Beatty, Xavier Horsechief, John Benjamin Hickey, David Midthunder, Robyn Malcolm, Boots Southerland, Scott Shepherd. (R, 135 mins) Based on an unpublished novel written by veteran screenwriter Donald E. Stewart (JACKSON COUNTY JAIL, MISSING, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER) way back in the 1980s (Stewart died in 1999, but still gets an executive producer credit here), HOSTILES is a western that works despite being torn between revisionism and genre standards. Written and directed by Scott Cooper (CRAZY HEART), HOSTILES reunites the filmmaker with his OUT OF THE FURNACE star Christian Bale, and while it has moments that aspire to the likes of pre-self-parody Terrence Malick and something like Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN (even stealing the "killed everything that's walked or crawled" line) or Andrew Dominik's THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, it ultimately leans more toward the OPEN RANGE and the remake of 3:10 TO YUMA side of things. And there's nothing wrong with that because those were fine westerns, and while the languid pacing likely won't bother fans of revisionist westerns, the more commercial, mainstream moviegoers may get a little fidgety. HOSTILES was acquired by Byron Allen's upstart Entertainment Studios, and after the surprise summer hit 47 METERS DOWN and last fall's social media bomb FRIEND REQUEST, Allen clearly intended HOSTILES to be his ticket to the Oscars. It was given a limited rollout at Christmas 2017 and finally expanded nationwide a month later, but it was all for naught. It's a very good movie, probably Cooper's most accomplished yet (and a nice rebound from the disappointing BLACK MASS, the Whitey Bulger biopic starring a pair of ice blue contact lenses resting on the corneas of Johnny Depp), but it obviously didn't connect with the Academy, netting a grand total of zero nominations.
A veteran of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, about-to-retire US Army Capt. Joseph Blocker (Bale) is a respected leader with no love for Native Americans, viewing them as "savages" and "animals." He's assigned by his commander (Stephen Lang), under orders from President Benjamin Harrison, to lead a military escort for imprisoned tribal chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family from New Mexico back to his tribal land in Montana. Yellow Hawk has cancer and his days are numbered, and as a goodwill gesture, the President has granted the aging chief's final wish to die and be buried on his land. Having faced Yellow Hawk in battle and losing several men under his command to him, Blocker initially refuses the order until he's threatened with a court-martial and the loss of his pension. Blocker is accompanied by the most trusted soldiers under his command--Sgt. Metz (Rory Cochrane) and Major Woodson (Jonathan Majors)--along with West Point graduate Lt. Kidder (Jesse Plemons), and fresh-faced, French-born rookie Pvt. DeJardin (Timothee Chalamet). As soon as they're far enough from the base, bitter Blocker drops the niceties, grabs a pair of knives and challenges Yellow Hawk to a fight, only to be stoically rebuffed when the chief tells him he isn't afraid of death. Instead, Blocker orders Yellow Hawk and his family--son Black Hawk (Adam Beach), daughter-in-law Elk Woman (Q'orianka Kilcher), grandson Little Bear (Xavier Horsechief), and daughter Living Woman (Tanaya Beatty) to be chained for the duration of the trip. Shortly into the journey, they encounter shell-shocked widow Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), who just saw her husband scalped and three children murdered by Comanche warriors in an almost unbearably grim and brutal opening sequence. Rosalie joins them, and with those Comanches still in the vicinity, Blocker is ultimately forced to accept the help of sworn enemy Yellow Hawk, and that's before things get even more complicated when a stop at the next military outpost results in them adding three additional members to the party--two officers escorting Sgt. Wills (Ben Foster), a prisoner due for execution who, conveniently enough, used to be under Blocker's command.
There's no shortage of formulaic elements to HOSTILES, starting with the "one last job" motif as Blocker is set to retire once he's finished escorting Yellow Hawk to his tribal land. And, of course, they're determined to make it there if they don't kill each other first! But there's some interesting character development throughout, primarily with the arc of Bale's Blocker. It's obvious that he and Yellow Hawk will come around to reaching a mutual respect with the understanding that battle was battle, that was then and this is now. But the soldiers accompanying Blocker ultimately symbolize the stages of that arc, with DeJardin representing the youthful naivete of a young Blocker before experiencing the horrors of war; the ruthless, racist Wills serving as Blocker's dark side, reminding him of what a vicious killer of "redskins" he used to be; upstanding and loyal Woodson demonstrating his capacity for empathy; and Metz exemplifying the ability to change and recognize and correct the errors of the past. Metz starts out reminiscing about the good old days of scalping "savages" but he's the first to give a peace offering to Yellow Hawk on the journey and apologize for the things that happened to him and his people. Granted, Metz's abrupt come-to-Jesus moment is one of the film's missteps, handled in a clumsily heavy-handed and melodramatic way by Cooper. The fleshing out of Bale's character does come at the expense of Pike's, who's endured an inconceivable tragedy yet her stages of grief are given somewhat of a short shrift. Still, at the end of the day, these are minor quibbles for an overall excellent film that runs the gamut from some truly stomach-turning violence to powerful moments of genuine heartbreak and emotion. It's got a terrific cast of character actor ringers (Studi can play this kind of role in his sleep, but he does it better than anyone), beautiful imagery from cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi (THE GREY), and some nicely complex characterizations that help elevate the film's more cookie-cutter elements into something a little more ambitious.
THE DISCOVERY (US/UK - 2017) Directed by Charlie McDowell. Written by Charlie McDowell and Justin Lader. Cast: Jason Segel, Rooney Mara, Robert Redford, Jesse Plemons, Riley Keough, Ron Canada, Mary Steenburgen, Wendy Makkena, MJ Karmi. (Unrated, 102 mins) Watching the Netflix Original film THE DISCOVERY, it seems completely feasible than director/co-writer Charlie McDowell (son of Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen) and writing partner Justin Lader (they previously worked together on the 2014 Mark Duplass indie THE ONE I LOVE) came up with a killer opening sequence and struggled to build a story around it. The first five minutes of THE DISCOVERY would make a great short film. A few years in the future, controversial physicist Dr. Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) is being interviewed by a TV news journalist (Steenburgen) on the one-year anniversary of what's come to be known as "The Discovery." Harbor is a household name the world over for finding irrefutable, scientific proof of the afterlife, demonstrating that the spirit breaks down measurable brain waves to a subatomic level as those particles venture to another plane of existence beyond our reality. Upon his presenting The Discovery to the world, death became the ultimate reward. People with terminal illnesses welcomed their diagnosis. The global suicide rate skyrocketed, as people had proof of what they now "know" is a better world waiting for them and they voluntarily check out to expedite their journey to that better place. Everyone from the homeless to the depressed to Hollywood celebrities and sports heroes started taking their own lives, with over a million suicides in the first year. As the interview goes along, one of the news crew's production assistants interrupts to say "Thank you, Dr. Harbor, for my fresh start," turns a gun on himself and blows his brains out on camera.
A year after that, Harbor is running a research facility in an isolated, gothic-looking compound in a remote Rhode Island seaside town, and is visited by his estranged son Will Stevenson (Jason Segel), a neurologist who started using his late mother's maiden name to distance himself from The Discovery. Harbor is working with his other son Toby (Jesse Plemons) and longtime research assistant Cooper (Ron Canada), with the compound staffed by Harbor acolytes, all failed suicides who now view Harbor as some kind of messiah. Will is visiting in a hapless attempt to persuade his father to stop experimenting with the afterlife, feeling tremendous guilt about the whole situation because the incident that inspired Harbor's research--a near-death experience Will had as a child--was embellished by a young and mischievous Will, who told his parents he "saw things" while he was flatlined. Harbor entertains no thoughts of abandoning his research. He's actually had a new breakthrough: a machine that can record the images seen by the recently deceased. Harbor needs a cadaver, which leads to Will, Toby, and Isla (Rooney Mara), a woman Will met on the ferry and later saved from a suicide attempt, stealing a corpse from a local hospital. Hooking the body up to the machine yields no results, but while dismantling the wires and electrodes alone, Will sees blurred images on a monitor that must be what the dead man is seeing in his afterlife. Keeping this secret from his father, Will and Isla, both damaged souls (he blames his mother's suicide on Harbor, she fell asleep and her five-year-old son vanished, never to be seen again), begin a tentative, hesitant romance while getting to the truth of the images seen in the video of the dead man's afterlife.
THE DISCOVERY falls apart right around the time Will, Isla, and Toby decide to steal a corpse from the morgue, with the lone attendant complaining "I'm doing the work of five people!" as if that's sufficient excuse for making it look that easy to wheel a dead body out of a hospital. With a premise that's crying out for someone like PRIMER and UPSTREAM COLOR auteur Shane Carruth, there's numerous directions THE DISCOVERY could've gone: a philosophical, existential FOUNTAIN mode Darren Aronofsky-meets-circa TREE OF LIFE Terrence Malick mind-bender; a love story that traverses Heaven and Earth in a more scientific take on Wim Wenders' WINGS OF DESIRE and FARAWAY, SO CLOSE; a sci-fi variant on Paul Thomas Anderson's THE MASTER; a post-Duplass mumblecore drama; and even a horror route, with the inherent creepiness of the garbled video transmissions of the afterlife having an undeniable John Carpenter/PRINCE OF DARKNESS aura about them. But in McDowell's hands, the film doesn't take any of these paths. It just stands there, confused, until a cliched twist ending that plays out like Charlie Brooker adapting Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" as an episode of BLACK MIRROR. Segel and Mara do what they can with their mopey characters (judging from her appearance here, it looks a lot like Mara's Isla was written with ANOTHER EARTH's Brit Marling in mind--this seems like the kind of project in which Marling would script and star). In one of the least-engaged performances of his career, Redford seems to have dropped by for a few days of shooting and is stuck with the film's most impenetrable and inconsistent character. Initially presented as a committed, principled man of science, Harbor isn't interested in God or religion and just looks at the hard facts, but by the second anniversary of The Discovery, he's either a manipulative cult leader or a mad scientist--the movie can't seem to decide, but Redford never adjusts his performance either way. It's a role that seems more fitting for McDowell's dad Malcolm, and Redford just looks bored, fidgety and uncomfortable throughout, like he realized after his first day on the set that this was a dud and it was too late to back out of it. For a star of his magnitude, Redford's onscreen appearances were relatively sparse from the 1980s to the 2000s as he focused his creative energies on directing and Sundance, but in the last seven years, he's been more visible than in past decades, even having fun in big-budget special effects movies like CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER and PETE'S DRAGON, the kind of tentpole projects he would never do in his heyday. A living legend at 80, Redford has nothing to prove to anyone, but if THE DISCOVERY is any indication, it would perhaps behoove him to go back to being a little more picky about his acting gigs in his emeritus years. McDowell concocts an intriguing premise with THE DISCOVERY but just doesn't know what to do with it, leading to a dull, dreary misfire that does little to combat the stigma that most Netflix Original films debut there for a reason.
