Despite significant critical acclaim and spawning a huge radio and MTV hit with Madonna's "Live to Tell," AT CLOSE RANGE only made it to 83 screens at its widest release in the spring of 1986. Orion undoubtedly had a hard time figuring out how to sell this extremely dark, bleak, and depressing crime saga to a mainstream audience. Inspired by true events and set in rural Pennsylvania in 1978 (The Rolling Stones' "Miss You" and A Taste of Honey's "Boogie Oogie Oogie" make soundtrack appearances), the film follows delinquent Brad Whitewood, Jr (Sean Penn), who gets reacquainted with his white trash criminal father Brad Sr. (Christopher Walken), and is seduced into his dad's dangerous gang only to realize too late that he's in too deep and that not even bonds of family and blood mean a whole lot to Brad Sr if it gets in the way of his business. Brad Jr's situation is further complicated by his falling in love with farm girl Terri (Mary Stuart Masterson), with Brad Sr determined to stop them from running away together, especially after Brad Jr, his brother Tommy (Chris Penn)--who may or may not be Brad Sr's son--and their buddies (among them Crispin Glover and FRIGHT NIGHT's Stephen Geoffreys), are pinched committing their own half-assed burglary, get bailed out and promptly subpoenaed by the grand jury, with Brad Sr. stopping at absolutely nothing to keep the boys from telling what they know about his activities.
Though the similarities are on the surface, the presence of Glover arguably makes AT CLOSE RANGE a bit of a dry run for the even more hopeless, fucked-at-birth horrors of 1987's RIVER'S EDGE and, at least in terms of its presentation of lost youth and utterly worthless parenting, Larry Clark's Glover-less 2001 film BULLY. Brad Jr and Tommy drink, cause trouble, and deal weed, all out in the open as their mom (Millie Perkins, almost 30 years after THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK) and grandma (Eileen Ryan, Sean and Chris' mom) look the other way. The only person who attempts to instill some responsibility and discipline in Brad Jr. is his mom's blue-collar, working-man boyfriend (Alan Autry), who promptly gets dumped for his efforts. The opening hour is draggy and a bit meandering, but the more it goes on, the darker and more unsettling it gets, going from downbeat to suffocating as everyone feels the wrath of a housecleaning Brad Sr. Walken is unforgettable in one of his most powerful and surprisingly restrained performances, absolutely terrifying while significantly dialing down his eccentric Walkenisms and using them as sparingly as he ever would. His dead glare as you look in the eyes of a heartless sociopath who has zero hesitation about killing his own son is the stuff of nightmares. Make no mistake, Walken's Brad Sr is one the most chillingly diabolical monsters you've ever seen in this type of film, and that's saying something considering the same calendar year gave us Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth in BLUE VELVET. He's matched by Penn, and their final confrontation is almost overwhelmingly intense, especially in a moment of genuine terror on Walken's face when Penn switched prop guns just before the cameras rolled--Walken was obsessive about checking the safety of prop guns used in his scenes--and stuck an unchecked one right in Walken's face to get the response needed ("Whoa! Don't!"). Penn and Madonna were married at the time (this was also the year of SHANGHAI SURPRISE), and the film's biggest flaw is the incessant instrumental invocation of "Live to Tell," which sounds too 1986 contemporary for the otherwise accurate period setting (it was originally intended for the Craig Sheffer/Virginia Madsen thriller FIRE WITH FIRE but was nixed at the last minute and used here instead). The film was written by Nicholas Kazan (son of the legendary Elia Kazan) and directed by James Foley, who would direct Madonna in the 1987 bomb WHO'S THAT GIRL? before going on to better things with 1990's AFTER DARK, MY SWEET and 1992's GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS. Also with Candy Clark, Tracey Walter, David Strathairn, J.C. Quinn, R.D. Call, and a young Kiefer Sutherland as one of Tommy's buddies. AT CLOSE RANGE isn't mentioned a lot these days, but it stands the test of time as one of the most powerful films of the late '80s, and necessary viewing for Penn and Walken fans. (R, 111 mins)
Just two years after the already forgotten Ashton Kutcher-starring biopic JOBS, Danny Boyle's STEVE JOBS arrived to tell the Steve Jobs story once again. Based on the book by Walter Isaacson and adapted by Aaron Sorkin in a very Sorkin-esque fashion, STEVE JOBS takes a more experimental approach than most films of this sort. Boyle's film is essentially three long scenes, all taking place before major Jobs product launches in 1984, 1988, and 1998, each shot in, respectively, grainy 16mm, cinematic 35mm, and digital. The opening segment works the best and could almost function as a standalone short film, 40 minutes of dialogue-driven intensity as Jobs (an Oscar-nominated Michael Fassbender) prepares to introduce the world to the doomed Macintosh. He's furious about the "Hello" greeting not working and berates designer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) in front of everyone; he barely makes time for his old buddy Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), who just wants a shout-out to the Apple IIE that he designed; and he's incredibly cold and cruel to his ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) and five-year-old Lisa (played by Makenzie Moss in the first segment), the daughter that Jobs adamantly refuses to accept is his, even doing everything he can to avoid paying more child support even though Chrisann is going on welfare and he's worth $440 million. All the while, Jobs' long-suffering marketing manager and confidant Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet, also Oscar-nominated) valiantly tries to hold everything together.
The first segment works so well that Boyle and Sorkin essentially repeat it twice more. But as it goes, the dialogue becomes more forced and the Sorkinese more insufferable. The rapid fire delivery of the first segment turns into endless speechifying and pontificating and starts representing all of Sorkin's most grating tendencies. It's no secret that Jobs was kind of an asshole and that comes through loud and clear here, at least until the feelgood ending when he finally accepts Lisa as his daughter (played in the last segment by Perla Haley-Jardine, best known as young B.B. from KILL BILL, VOL 2) just as he's about to unveil iMac as he receives a standing ovation while a cloying, Coldplay-like song by the Maccabees plays on the soundtrack. Boyle should be above such manipulative horseshit. Why are tears streaming down Winslet's face in this scene? The 1984 and 1988 launches were total failures--Rogen's jealous Wozniak keeps wanting to know why Jobs gets all the glory, and frankly, you will too. STEVE JOBS is a film that keeps an impenetrable man at a distance and it's cold by design--the shift into crowd-pleaser territory doesn't mesh with what came before, and by the end, you realize the film is little more than a stagy THIS IS YOUR LIFE with echoes of THE GODFATHER in that Jobs is constantly pestered on the days of product launches by past associates coming to him like he's Vito Corleone doling out favors on his daughter's wedding day. Fassbender nails the "driven intensity" element even though he doesn't really look or sound like Jobs, and Winslet works some occasional magic with what's really a thankless role, but STEVE JOBS just fizzles after the dynamite opening 40 minutes, falling into a comfort zone and riding it out on autopilot. Not bad, but pretty overrated. (R, 122 mins)
TRUMBO
(US - 2015)
A much more traditional biopic than the repetitious STEVE JOBS, TRUMBO is a very entertaining--though undeniably softened and sanitized to varying degrees--chronicle of the Blacklist and the face of the "Hollywood 10," communist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (1905-1976). Trumbo (Bryan Cranston, Oscar-nominated in a magnificent performance), respected Hollywood writer (KITTY FOYLE, THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO) joins the CPUSA in 1943 and in the ensuing years, earns a reputation as a pro-working man troublemaker along with such Hollywood luminaries as Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg) and screenwriter pal Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.), a character invented for the film and a composite of five members of the Hollywood 10, the group of writers who were the first to be blacklisted and turned into industry pariahs at the dawn of the Cold War. Leading the charge against them before HUAC even calls them to testify are director Sam Wood (John Getz), Louis B. Mayer (Richard Portnow), John Wayne (David James Elliott), and the film's nominal villain, bitter, muckraking gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren). Cut to 1951, and needing to work after serving a year in prison for contempt of Congress, Trumbo offers his services to B and C studios and uses a variety of pseudonyms, often working on five scripts at once and popping amphetamines to keep going around the clock. Of course, it takes a toll on his family as devoted wife Cleo (Diane Lane) struggles to hold everything together until rumors abound that Trumbo was actually the uncredited screenwriter of the Oscar-winning ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953) and THE BRAVE ONE (1956), eventually leading to Kirk Douglas (Dean O'Gorman) and Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) breaking the blacklist by hiring Trumbo for SPARTACUS and EXODUS, respectively, and defiantly giving him credit under his actual name.
Trumbo's daughter Nikola (played in the film by Elle Fanning) served as a technical consultant, so of course, Trumbo's hardline communist stance is toned-down significantly for the film, and while it may tap dance around certain issues, Cranston is so good here that it's easy to overlook it. Adapting Bruce Cook's book Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter John McNamara and director Jay Roach (the AUSTIN POWERS trilogy, MEET THE PARENTS, GAME CHANGE) keep things moving briskly and get superb work out of their ensemble cast, particularly John Goodman, who makes every scene count as a bombastic B-movie producer who secretly hires Trumbo. It may take a somewhat simplistic view of a complicated subject, but as popcorn entertainment, it succeeds and never seems to revel in a sense of self-importance like STEVE JOBS. One wishes it didn't treat its subject with such kid gloves, but Cranston inhabits the role to such a degree that he wins over any doubts you might have. (R, 125 mins)
FORSAKEN (Canada - 2016)
Though they appeared in the same films on a couple of past occasions (1983's MAX DUGAN RETURNS and 1996's A TIME TO KILL), the Canadian western FORSAKEN marks the first co-starring pairing of Kiefer Sutherland with his dad Donald. A labor of love for the Sutherlands, with Kiefer bringing along his buddy Brad Mirman to script (he also wrote Kiefer's 1998 directing effort TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M.) and regular 24 director Jon Cassar to call the shots, FORSAKEN is an OK if undemanding western that almost plays like an old-fashioned '50s B oater with some modern F-bombs and a few enthusiastic blood squibs. Kiefer is John Henry Clayton, a Civil War vet, feared killer, and all-around bad guy who's put away his guns and is on his way back to his family home for the first time in ten years. Arriving to find his mother has since passed and his embittered reverend father (Donald) still resents him and everything he represents, Clayton tries to lay low, determined to live a peaceful life and prove that he's a changed man. Of course, that won't happen in a town where greedy robber baron McCurdy (Brian Cox, doing his best Al Swearengen impression) is forcibly buying up everyone's land so he can sell it to the inevitable railroad for a ridiculous profit. McCurdy's men, led by the weaselly Tillman (Aaron Poole), routinely bully and terrorize the landowners, much to the disapproval of the classy and sartorial Gentleman Dave (Michael Wincott), a more refined regulator who respects his adversaries, thinks reasoning can accomplish more and sends a better message than threats and cold-blooded murder, and only resorts to violence as an absolute last resort. Tillman and his mouth-breathing sidekicks never miss an opportunity to see how far they can push Clayton, despite Gentleman Dave's warnings that "You kick a dog enough, he's gonna bite."
Cliched dialogue like that abounds (Tillman when he first spots Clayton in the saloon: "Well, well, well...if it isn't John Henry Clayton!"), and the longer it goes on, the more FORSAKEN takes its cues from the likes of UNFORGIVEN and OPEN RANGE, and it can't help but feel like a lesser retread of both. Plus, it's extremely predictable and even by the standards of dumb underlings, the actions of McCurdy's men defy any kind of logic and reason, so much so that you wonder why McCurdy never dumps these clowns and lets Gentleman Dave do his dirty work for him in a much more diplomatic fashion. Still, it's a comfort-food kind-of western that goes down easy and doesn't aim for much more than straightforward entertainment. That may seem a little overly quaint coming on the heels of a revisionist genre assaults like BONE TOMAHAWK and THE HATEFUL EIGHT, but FORSAKEN seems content being what it is: a chance for a famous father-and-son to work together. Naturally, the scenes with Donald and Kiefer are what play best, and it's hard not to be sucked in when a distraught Clayton breaks down and his hard, stern father takes him in his arms, or when, later on, that hard, stern father tearfully admits "I was wrong about you." You see the scenes coming, but they carry some extra emotional resonance when you see a real-life father and son acting them out. They get some solid support from a supporting cast of friends like Cox, Wincott (who's very good here, playing an intriguing character who isn't a cardboard cutout and should've been given more to do), and Demi Moore as Clayton's one-time love who married another when he disappeared. Filmed in 2013 but only given a VOD and scant theatrical release in early 2016, FORSAKEN isn't even close to being the next great western, but it looks very nice and it's good to finally see the Sutherlands working together, and hopefully not for the last time. (R, 90 mins)
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Written by Janet Scott Batchler, Lee Batchler, and Michael Robert Johnson. Cast: Kit Harington, Carrie-Anne Moss, Kiefer Sutherland, Emily Browning, Jared Harris, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jessica Lucas, Joe Pingue, Sasha Roiz, Currie Graham. (PG-13, 105 mins)
In the 20 years since his 1994 debut SHOPPING, Paul W.S. Anderson has been an unabashedly style-over-substance filmmaker both reviled as a hack and a charlatan and praised as an unsung visionary. He first gained attention for 1995's video-game adaptation MORTAL KOMBAT, which led to SHOPPING getting a belated US release in 1996 courtesy of Roger Corman. EVENT HORIZON (1997) and SOLDIER (1998) quickly followed, but it was 2002's RESIDENT EVIL that seems to have set the course for his career. A hit worldwide, RESIDENT EVIL spawned its own sequel (2004's RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE) that Anderson handed off to the hapless Alexander Witt so he could instead focus on 2004's AVP: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR, a botched misfire that proved to the nadir of two legendary franchises, with one of the most tragically prophetic tag lines ("Whoever wins, we lose") ever plastered on a one-sheet. The miserable AVP essentially killed any momentum Anderson might've had going, and he's been fighting against the backlash since. Even as the terrifying EVENT HORIZON has found a significant cult following after being met with shrugs 17 years ago, and SOLDIER seems a bit better now than it did then, there hasn't been and likely will not be a reassessment of AVP. It's a terrible movie with almost no redeeming qualities, but it's well past the time to stop making it Anderson's albatross.
To his credit, Anderson soldiered on with the entertaining DEATH RACE 2000 reboot DEATH RACE (2008). He stayed peripherally involved with the RESIDENT EVIL films, with Russell Mulcahy (HIGHLANDER) helming 2007's RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION, but returned to direct 2010's brilliant RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE, a visual stunner in 3-D on the big screen, with an outstanding Tomandandy score. Anderson's been working exclusively in 3-D since, and he's proven to be one of the few directors to consistently use the frequently superfluous gimmick effectively. Anderson's 2011 reimagining of THE THREE MUSKETEERS boasted some astonishing production design but no one really needed a PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN-inspired take on Dumas, and 2012's RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION was OK but felt like AFTERLIFE leftovers. Anderson's had moments of greatness in his career but I don't know that I'd go so far as to call him a "visionary." One term that's often used to describe many of his films is "guilty pleasure," and I've even described them that way myself, as if it's necessary to justify enjoying an entertaining movie. But it begs the question: how many guilty pleasures does the guy have to make before he finally gets credit as a capable genre craftsman?
Anderson is back with POMPEII, a spectacular epic that opens in 62 AD with Roman general Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland) ordering the massacre of an entire Celtic settlement in Britannia. One boy, Milo, survives and is immediately abducted by slave dealers. 17 years later, the grown Milo (GAME OF THRONES' Kit Harington) is sold to gluttonous, Nero-like slave owner Graeceus (Joe Pingue) and sent with others to the majestic Pompeii, a city near the base of the mighty Mount Vesuvius. Milo immediately proves his worth by being a Horse Whisperer of sorts for the kindly Cassia (SUCKER PUNCH's Emily Browning), daughter of spineless Pompeii leader Severus (Jared Harris) and his wife Aurelia (Carrie-Anne Moss). He's also pitted against the champion slave warrior Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who's--wait for it--one victory away from winning his freedom (is there any chance they won't set aside their differences and form an unlikely alliance?). Meanwhile, Severus is dealing with a visit from now-Senator Corvus, who makes it quite clear that he intends to make Cassia his bride despite her obvious feelings for Milo, and all the while, like a giant symbol of the treachery and smoldering passion in the city below, Vesuvius churns, gurgles and burps, the hellfire within ready to boil over and explode, unleashing hell.
POMPEII is a silly and formulaic movie, but it's a lot of fun. Anderson is a director who uses extensive CGI but he puts care into it, ensuring that it doesn't look cartoonish like, say, Renny Harlin's recent THE LEGEND OF HERCULES. POMPEII boasts a $100 million budget, and it's pretty much all up there on the screen. While the CGI is unavoidable, there's also elaborate sets that really lend legitimate atmosphere and help convey the feeling of an ancient era. It still doesn't look as good as THE TEN COMMANDMENTS or SPARTACUS, but this is another time and for better or worse, CGI is just how it's done now, and to Anderson's credit, he doesn't cut corners in the visual presentation. The storyline and character arcs offer little in the way of surprises, but true to his style-over-substance methods, Anderson makes sure the audience gets what it came for: action, fight scenes, romance, outstanding visual effects, and even some humor (watch one particularly loathsome character get hit with a fireball that Vesuvius seems to be aiming right at him). Harington and Browning aren't the most dynamic leads and Moss has almost nothing to do, but veteran character actor Akinnuoye-Agbaje steals every scene he's in and he and Harington convincingly convey the camaraderie and mutual respect in their newly-formed alliance. They aren't quite Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode in SPARTACUS, but they do a nice job. The biggest misstep POMPEII makes is the horrible miscasting of Sutherland as Corvus. Given the pulpy nature of the project, Corvus is a character that doesn't demand full-blown self-parody but really needs some over-the-top scenery-chewing. Sutherland seems torn between playing it straight and hamming it up and ends up somewhere in an inert middle that never really works. If you're going to play a preening, pompous Roman senator and you opt to use a lisp and a vaguely Irish brogue, then you may as well just completely throw yourself into it. Ultimately, Sutherland never looks comfortable and his stilted performance--a Razzie nomination is inevitable--comes off like he's doing a restrained, monotone impression of Dr. Evil's ancient Roman ancestor. Not since Jason Robards' deer-in-the-headlights portrayal of Brutus in 1970's JULIUS CAESAR has a good actor come off so badly in this type of setting.
If you aren't a fan of Anderson's past work, this isn't likely to change your opinion, but if you can take his films at face value and just appreciate his newest effort for the commercial genre fare that it is, POMPEII makes for a good guilty ple...uh, I mean, entertaining popcorn movie that you shouldn't have to concoct excuses for enjoying.
