THE OLD GUARD (US - 2020) Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. Written by Greg Rucka. Cast: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Harry Melling, Van Veronica Ngo, Anamaria Marinca, Joey Ansah, Natacha Karam, Mette Towley, Michael Ward, Shala Nyx. (R, 125 mins) Based on the comic book by Greg Rucka (Whiteout) and Leandro Fernandez, the Netflix Original film THE OLD GUARD is a high-concept superhero saga, an origin story of sorts that, at the end of the day, feels like a two-hour pilot for a streaming series. Charlize Theron is Andy, the leader of a quartet of mercenaries that includes Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), and Nicky (Luca Marinelli). They're contacted by ex-CIA official Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) for an assignment in South Sudan rescuing a group of young girls who have been abducted. They arrive to pull off the job only to find there are no kidnapped girls and it's a set-up. They're ambushed and all four are mowed down in a hail of machine gun fire. But wait...it takes a minute or two, but the bullets begin to pop out, the wounds begin to close, and they regain consciousness, catching their killers off guard and massacring the whole lot. Yes, there's the hook: they're immortal and they've been there at crucial moments throughout history, often silently saving humankind in the process.
At the same time, US Marine Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne of IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK) is part of a unit in Afghanistan apprehending a wanted insurgent who proceeds to slash her throat. She's presumed dead but by the next day, is fine and there isn't even a scratch on her neck. She's shunned by everyone at the base and she's given transfer orders to be observed at a hospital in Germany. As she's waiting to leave, she's apprehended by Andy who, along with others, sensed her newfound immortality in their dreams. It happens suddenly, without warning, and they've all experienced the process. Booker was the last one, and he joined the team shortly after the War of 1812. Joe and Nicky hail from the Crusades, and Andy, once revered as Andromache of Scythia, is in the ballpark of 6000 years old. There have been others over time, most notably Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo), who formed a bond with Andy as their immortality led to accusations of witchcraft, resulting in Quynh being chained up, locked in an iron maiden and dropped to the bottom of the ocean, where she's remained, alive and trapped, for 500 years. Their superpowers have a limit--they can live centuries upon centuries and their wounds will heal, but they can't escape a situation such as that if captured. Even the immortality has its limits: Andy's wounds and injuries are starting to take longer to heal, and while they may live thousands and thousands of years, they still won't live "forever."
A lot of THE OLD GUARD is dedicated to establishing the rules and the extent of their immortality (Booker: "Just because we keep living doesn't mean we stop hurting"), and to Andy becoming a reluctant mentor to stubborn Nile, who takes a long time to accept her new reality. The villain is Merrick (Harry Melling, best known as Dudley Dursley in the HARRY POTTER films), a dickish, Martin Shkreli-like pharma bro CEO who wants to capture The Old Guard and run tests to crack their genetic code so he can unlock the key to immortality. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood (LOVE AND BASKETBALL) keeps things moving at a fast clip, and there's plenty of well-crafted action sequences, but at the same time, its essential story structure doesn't really differ from what's really just a slightly tweaked X-MEN formula at its core. Where THE OLD GUARD does stand out from the crowd is that it's the first comic book movie of its kind to be directed by a black woman, and that Joe and Nicky are a couple, some welcome and refreshingly nonchalant inclusivity that would've caused a shitstorm of outrage even as recently as even a decade ago. Those factors aside, it's pretty standard-issue stuff. Seemingly arbitrary factors keep coming into play, and characters are prone to barking things like "This is what we do!" and "This is who you are now!" Of course, one of The Old Guard will betray the group, though the reasoning and the outcome are different than what you expect. The actors are fine, and Theron is always solid in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and ATOMIC BLONDE action mode. THE OLD GUARD is fine, I guess. It's an enjoyable enough Netflix stream if you're sitting inside with the AC on an oppressively hot day or just avoiding the general public since there's too many dumbshits walking around without masks.
Considering the 20-year sabbatical he took between 1978's DAYS OF HEAVEN and 1998's THE THIN RED LINE, Terrence Malick has been surprisingly prolific since his return, especially in the last decade: his latest film, A HIDDEN LIFE, is his fifth feature since 2011. But it's been an increasingly divisive decade for Malick fans, and even his most devout apologists started turning on him after 2017's atrocious SONG TO SONG, where the filmmaker's embrace of rambling, ethereal voiceover and growing disdain for any semblance of narrative storytelling or forward momentum reached their absolute nadir. Perhaps even Malick felt he'd disappeared a little too far up his own ass with SONG TO SONG, as A HIDDEN LIFE marks a return to actual scripted narrative and conventional storytelling, displaying a side of Malick we haven't seen since 2005's THE NEW WORLD and parts of 2011's THE TREE OF LIFE. That doesn't mean he's completely changed his ways. He's still as meticulous and obsessive as ever: A HIDDEN LIFE, originally titled RADEGUND, was shot back in 2016 as Malick spent nearly three years tinkering with it and tweaking it in the editing room, during which time two of its cast members died (Michael Nyqvist in June 2017 and Bruno Ganz in February 2019). Set from 1939 to 1943, the film is based on the true story of Franz Jagerstatter (August Diehl), a farmer in Radegund, Austria. He's a good, honest man who's happy with his simple life, tending to his fields, doing handyman work at the local church, and spending time with his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner) and their three daughters. But Austria is in a time of turmoil. War is ramping up throughout Europe and able-bodied men are being drafted to serve under Hitler. Much of the Radegund locals--including its Hitler-loving mayor (Karl Markovics) pledge blind allegiance, while Franz, troubled by the Nazi ideology, dutifully goes to church for guidance but gets nothing from the Bishop (Nyqvist), all the while defiantly trying to remain in apolitical detachment.
He's conscripted and goes through the military training, and is then sent home until he's called to serve. That day comes, and he refuses the required oath of allegiance to Hitler. Franz going on the record as a conscientious objector quickly gets around Radegund, as former friends ostracize the Jagerstatters, and no one, not even Radegund priest Father Furthauer (Tobias Moretti) can convince him to simply go along to get along. Franz is eventually hauled away to prison to await trial, where he's regularly beaten and tortured, even refusing a request by a Nazi captain (Matthias Schoenaerts), who promises to dismiss the charges, end his incarceration, and give him a non-battlefield office job if he simply signs the oath to Hitler. Franz Jagerstatter never backed down and never gave in, and would eventually be found guilty before a tribunal and executed on August 9, 1943. As one expects, A HIDDEN LIFE is stunningly beautiful, especially the scenes around the Jagerstatter farm, shot in the mountains of northern Italy. This probably looked great on a big screen, but the film got lost in the shuffle of Disney taking over 20th Century Fox, and something that would've gotten a certain Oscar push in any other year ended up stalling on 151 screens at its widest release, grossing under $2 million. It's nice to see Malick meeting a weary audience halfway by embracing relatively standard storytelling again while still giving himself room to indulge his usual tropes and obsessions (slow walks through fields, long, contemplative, philosophical voiceovers, this time as epistolary narration in letters between Franz and Fani). But at a career-long 174 minutes, it's simply too long, especially when he keeps the bigger picture at a distance to get into the heads of Franz and Fani, and you can almost see Diehl desperately wanting to break out with an Oscar-caliber performance but Malick's methodology keeps him pinned down. He does what he can when it's allowed, and Ganz has a great moment later on as the head of the tribunal, his sad face speaking volumes after he privately tries to get Franz to just sign the oath and be done with it, maybe even silently admiring the young man's conviction even though he has no choice but to sentence him to death. After years of increasingly self-indulgent drivel, A HIDDEN LIFE is a step in the right direction for Malick, whose next film, the Biblical drama THE LAST PLANET (starring Schoenaerts) is currently in post-production, which means we'll see it sometime in 2023. (PG-13, 174 mins) THE SONG OF NAMES (Canada/Hungary - 2019)
Another barely-released prestige project that came and went with little fanfare during the 2019 awards season (Sony got it on 182 screens at its widest release), THE SONG OF NAMES is an earnest but empty period drama that jumps back and forth between 1939. 1951, and 1986. In London in 1951, 21-year-old Polish-born violin prodigy Dovidl Rapoport (Jonah Hauer-King) is set to make his much-anticipated debut performance before a sellout crowd that will be broadcast on BBC radio, but he never shows up, and neither his manager Gilbert Simmonds (Stanley Townsend), his son, Dovidl's best friend Martin (Gerran Howell), nor Martin's girlfriend Helen (Marina Hambro), know where he is. We learn that Dovidl has lived with the Simmonds family since 1939, when his Jewish father left him in the care of impresario Gilbert to let him study the violin and be safe as Hitler's Germany began its conquering rise to power. Young Martin (Misha Handley) is resentful of Dovidl (Luke Doyle), whose pre-teen arrogance, self-proclaimed musical genius, and the attention he gets from Gilbert is initially a source of conflict, though the two boys eventually form a bond and become the best of friends. In 1986, Martin (Tim Roth) is a classical music talent scout in London, and while judging an otherwise routine talent show at an area school, he sees a student using a very particular and unique way of applying rosin to the bow that is identical to what he watched Dovidl do countless times when they were children. Only then does he realize how Dovidl's disappearance has quietly gnawed at him for 35 years, and he switches to amateur sleuth mode--going from London to Warsaw to NYC--to find out what happened to him.
Second-billed Clive Owen's name is above the title with Roth's, so it's not really a spoiler to say that 1986 Dovidl will eventually appear much later, but the first hour and change is spent on Martin chasing a series of coincidental leads that get increasingly more contrived with each new clue. Based on a 2002 novel by Norman Lebrecht and scripted by Jeffrey Caine (a 2005 Adapted Screenplay Oscar-nominee for THE CONSTANT GARDENER), THE SONG OF NAMES telegraphs too many of its reveals so that nothing that happens is particularly surprising, especially in the way 1986 Helen (Catherine McCormack), Martin's wife of over 30 years, really doesn't want him to waste his time tracking down Dovidl. 1951 Dovidl grows more and more concerned over the fate of his family, from whom he hasn't heard in years, fearful that they were among the dead at Treblinka, and it's in these scenes that director Francois Girard (THIRTY TWO SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD, THE RED VIOLIN) fares best, with a devastating sequence that's diminished somewhat by the ludicrous way Dovidl gets to where he goes to discover the truth. The same incredulity applies to 1986 Martin just walking into a small violin repair shop in Brooklyn, where the owner (Saul Rubinek) just happens to still have the address of an anonymous caller who never gave his name but inquired about selling a particular violin four years earlier. That scene with 1951 Dovidl's discovery--and the origin of the film's title--is an emotional wrecking ball, but THE SONG OF NAMES trudges on for another half hour before its big soap opera reveal that isn't even a surprise by that point. The younger actors do a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting, as Roth essentially just plays detective and listens to people talk about Dovidl, while Owen really isn't onscreen long enough to make much of an impression. (PG-13, 113 mins)
Originally titled KURSK, the Luc Besson-produced THE COMMAND is a strangely inert dramatization of the Kursk disaster in 2000, when two explosions--one small, followed by a second large enough to register on the Richter scale--sank a nuclear-powered Russian submarine that was part of a training exercise on the Barents Sea. Of the 118 officers onboard, 23 initially survived the explosions but all perished within the next couple of days due in large part to the inexcusably slow response of a Russian government desperate to save face and avoid national humiliation. The Russian Navy even stubbornly refused offers of rescue assistance from both England and Norway, who had ships in the vicinity that could be there in a matter of hours. The Kursk disaster was a huge embarrassment for Vladimir Putin, who became president just four months earlier and was roundly criticized for his handling of the tragedy. Adapted from Robert Moore's 2002 book A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy by screenwriter Robert Rodat (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN), THE COMMAND doesn't have the courage of its convictions--or the 118 men who died--in its decision to make no mention of Putin at all, instead letting faulty, outdated equipment take the blame and the fictional composite Admiral Petrenko (Max von Sydow) serve as the villain, an old guard, bureaucratic company man overruling fleet commander Admiral Grudzinsky (TONI ERDMANN's Peter Simonischek), refusing help from British Commodore Russell (Colin Firth), and holding press conferences where he's forced to shout down angry wives and order them removed from the room when they start making a scene. Despite the kid-gloves treatment of Putin, it's these scenes that are the strongest in THE COMMAND, with the mutual respect between Russell and Grudzinsky tossed aside when Grudzinsky is removed from the situation after he goes rogue and takes England and Norway up on their offers to assist with a rescue. That rescue never happens because Petrenko decides Russia's honor--and the guarding any potential military secrets the rescuers might encounter--takes precedence over human lives ("They know what they signed up for," an unknown voice is heard saying over the phone). That voice is as close as THE COMMAND gets to a Putin appearance, as all scenes involving the president, reportedly a major supporting character in Rodat's script, were tossed in the shredder before shooting even began.
The submarine sequences aren't exactly the second coming of DAS BOOT, largely because we already know the outcome. There's some rudimentary characterization in the early going with a rushed wedding sequence that evokes memories of THE DEER HUNTER while showing the relative poverty of the Russian military in the way the officers make so little money that they have to pawn their watches to pay for champagne for the reception. Once on the sub, actors like Matthias Schoenaerts and August Diehl do solid work as men displaying valor and fighting to stay alive (and Schoenaerts goes above and beyond, holding his breath in a long scene underwater), but it's the scenes above water, with Schoenaerts' pregnant wife (Lea Seydoux) being coldly stonewalled at every turn in her search for news, that have a more dramatic impact. With an abundance of dodgy greenscreen and video-gamey CGI, it's clear that director Thomas Vinterberg (who worked with Schoenaerts on 2015's FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD) has ventured as far as he can from the minimalist "Dogme '95" movement he co-founded with his much more controversial friend Lars von Trier. But he still indulges in pointless wankery like the first 20 minutes of the film being in a windowboxed 1.66 aspect ratio, then opening up to 2.35 for the next 80 minutes before returning to the windowboxing for the last act. It might make artistic sense if there was a rhyme or reason to it--like one aspect ratio for the submarine scenes and another for above water--but that's not the case. Filmed in 2017, THE COMMAND also suffers from inadvertent bad timing in its eventual straight-to-VOD US release, as the harrowing HBO miniseries CHERNOBYL did an infinitely more effective job of depicting the indifference of the Russian government to the suffering of its people in a devastating tragedy. The late Michael Nyqvist (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, JOHN WICK) succumbed to cancer during production, and while Vinterberg said the actor completed his scenes before his death and initial festival screenings mentioned him being in it, he appears to have been cut from the final release despite his name remaining at the very end of the closing credits cast crawl. (PG-13, 119 mins)
EL CHICANO (US - 2019)
Advertised as the first Latino superhero movie, EL CHICANO attracted some attention during its brief theatrical run when producer/co-writer/internet tough guy Joe Carnahan (NARC, SMOKIN' ACES, THE GREY) read some negative reviews and promptly began attacking those critics on social media. He ended up deleting his Twitter account and eventually admitted he was "punching down" to generate publicity for the movie. A dick move that's pretty much on-brand, but it didn't help, as it opened in 11th place and topped out at 605 screens, grossing just over $1 million. In the end, EL CHICANO is hardly a barrio BLACK PANTHER, as Carnahan and director/co-writer Ben Hernandez Bray (a veteran stuntman and the second unit director on several Carnahan films) don't really do anything interesting beyond setting their story in East L.A. In a prologue set 20 years ago, twins Diego and Pedro and their friend Jose witness masked avenger El Chicano brutally murder Jose's father, crime lord Shadow (Emilio Rivera). In the present day, Diego (Raul Castillo) is a dedicated cop long-estranged from Pedro, who chose a life of crime and has just committed suicide shortly after being paroled. Diego and his hothead partner Martinez (Jose Pablo Cantillo) are told by an informer (Noel Gugliemi) that Pedro didn't kill himself, but rather, was part of a massacre orchestrated by Jose, who took over his father's East L.A. empire and now goes by Shotgun (David Castaneda). Diego discovers a trail of clues that Pedro has left for him, revealing a storage unit where Pedro kept everything he needed for his plan to resurrect the long-dormant legend of "El Chicano" and rid the area of the likes of Shotgun once and for all. Unable to nail Shadow by the book and watched over by his no-bullshit captain (George Lopez), Diego is inspired to pick up with Pedro left off and become the new El Chicano, especially when Shadow partners with Mexican cartel boss El Gallo (Sal Lopez) and his son Jaws (Roberto Fabian Garcia, aka Chicano rap star Mr. Criminal, who also performs the theme song) to tighten his stranglehold on the area.
The hard-R EL CHICANO, which also counts Carnahan bro Frank Grillo as a co-producer, gets off to a decent start, but soon becomes a rote checklist of genre cliches and imagery swiped from other comic book and graphic novel films. It leans heavily on THE PUNISHER and especially THE DARK KNIGHT by the end, which sets up a sequel that looks pretty doubtful given the tepid response from critics and audiences. Castillo does a decent Christian Bale impression in his stoical performance, but Castaneda doesn't get the space to create a complex character like he did in the JCVD thriller WE DIE YOUNG. The familiar faces in the supporting cast aren't put to good use--Rivera and Gugliemi are killed off shortly after they appear, Aimee Garcia (GEORGE LOPEZ, DEXTER) is wasted in a thankless role as Diego's wife, and Mexican telenovela star and El Chapo bestie Kate del Castillo turns up at the end to set up that unlikely sequel. (R, 108 mins)
BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK (US - 2019)
Having cut her teeth on horror anthologies starting with a producer credit on V/H/S, writer/director Roxanne Benjamin helmed one of strongest segments of SOUTHBOUND and the weakest of XX. She splits the difference with her feature-length debut BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK, which takes a terrific premise and doesn't really do anything interesting with it. Relative newcomer Karina Fontes is well-cast as Wendy, a part-time summer guide at the fictional Brighton Rock National Park (the film was shot in Idyllwild, CA). Wendy doesn't take the job as seriously as she should--she's always late for work and is considered a lightweight "indoor kid" by her more experienced colleagues--and as the season's winding down into fall, she decides to prove to the naysayers, namely her friend Maya (Emily Althaus), that she can hack it by offering to take Maya's assignment for the day: switching out seasonal signs and postings along one of the park's rougher trails. Wendy is absent-minded and easily-distracted, so of course she misplaces her map, gets lost, and wanders off the trail. She sends a selfie to Maya from the peak of a rock formation, to which Maya replies "Who's behind you in the pic?" Wendy sees what she's talking about in a nearby ravine: a dead body. She tries to call for help but killed her phone battery taking selfies and playing '80s music (Oingo Boingo and Expose on the soundtrack) while she danced along the trails all day, and she's in a remote area where radio reception is poor. What she manages to ascertain is that it's getting dark, they don't know where she is, and she's to stand guard over what might be a crime scene until the authorities can start looking for her in the morning. Then affable but vaguely sinister hiker Red (Casey Adams) shows up.
The initial set-up of BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK seems primed for an effective survivalist B-movie where "indoor kid" Wendy grows up and sees what she's made of. While it's no fault of Fontes, who does a good job in what's effectively a solo show after the first ten minutes (the only established cast member is veteran character actor John Getz, seen briefly as a local sheriff), Wendy's hard to root for as she makes one dumb decision after another. Offended that her co-workers think she can't handle the trail--and they're absolutely right--she proceeds to do everything possible to make her predicament worse, with the low point being when she freaks out and thinks something's behind her and ends up misting herself with capsaicin bear spray. Benjamin wrings some suspense out of shadows, breezes, and other random nature sounds and uses some effective editing techniques, but once the premise is established, BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK just spins its wheels to an unsatisfying conclusion. (R, 87 mins)
THE MUSTANG (France/Belgium - 2019) Directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. Written by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Mona Fastvold, Brock Norman Brock and Benjamin Charbit. Cast: Matthias Schoenaerts, Jason Mitchell, Bruce Dern, Connie Britton, Gideon Adlon, Josh Stewart, Noel Gugliemi, Thomas Smittle, Keith Johnson. (R, 96 mins) Initially developed at the Sundance Institute (Robert Redford is among the truckload of credited producers), THE MUSTANG is the debut of French actress-turned-filmmaker Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADELE BLANC-SEC), and if you're a guy who likes a good UMBERTO D, BRIAN'S SONG or FIELD OF DREAMS man-weepie, then you're gonna want to see this one right away. Incarcerated at Nevada State Prison for the last 12 years, Roman Coleman (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. Only able to express himself through rage and violence, he's spent most of his prison time in solitary confinement, preferring to be alone and resorting to behaviors and actions that he knows will keep him isolated from the other inmates. "I'm not good with people," he mumbles the prison psychologist (Connie Britton), who's prepping him for his latest return to general population from solitary. She assigns him to work on the outdoor maintenance crew, shoveling piles of shit from the prison's horse-training program, funded by the state as a rehabilitation technique and to fill a demand for captured wild mustangs to be properly trained and groomed to sell at auction. The program is run by elderly rancher Myles (Bruce Dern), who's earned the respect of the inmates under his charge and repays it in kind, with inmate Henry (Jason Mitchell) designated the head trainer.
Roman is drawn to one horse in particular, who's kept in a locked stable and spends all day, every day kicking on the door in rage over his confinement. Myles gives Roman a shot at working with him, and it goes well for a while until Roman, furious over a disastrous visit from his estranged, pregnant daughter Martha (Gideon Adlon), takes his anger out on the disobedient horse, violently pummeling him with a series of punches. Myles has him thrown back in solitary as punishment, but he gets a second chance when he's called to help move some horses inside the prison kitchen when a dangerous storm approaches the area. Slowly but surely, Roman and the horse, who he names "Marquis," begin to bond, with Myles and Henry remarking that no one was able to break him until Roman came along. De Clermont-Tonnerre and her co-writers (including Nicolas Winding Refn's BRONSON collaborator Brock Norman Brock) aren't really dealing with complex metaphors or deep symbolism here, as it's quite obvious that Roman and Marquis are two sides of the same coin, kindred spirits who feel constantly trapped and violently lash out at anyone who tries to get close to them.
THE MUSTANG's strengths come not from its formulaic story arc but from its performances. Belgian actor Schoenaerts first began getting attention in art-house and foreign film circles with 2011's BULLHEAD and 2012's RUST AND BONE, and while he's made some impression with American audiences with roles in 2014's THE DROP and as Jennifer Lawrence's duplicitous uncle in 2018's RED SPARROW, THE MUSTANG might prove to be his English-language breakthrough. It's a very internalized performance, and as Roman, he's tightly-wound and seething, but with his eyes conveying the pain of regret and a complete inability to communicate. While he has frightening outbursts, it's in the quiet moments that Schoenaerts speaks volumes about this character, and you might be dead inside if you can keep it together at the pivotal moment when Roman and Marquis reach a mutual respect and understanding of one another. Schoenaerts gets solid support from Mitchell (STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON) and Dern, who's just perfect in a role that has him getting a little piece of Robert Duvall's "grizzled old coot" action. De Clermont-Tonnerre's messaging gets a little ham-fisted at times, and there's an underdeveloped subplot with Roman's shitbag cellmate (Josh Stewart from the COLLECTOR movies) forcing Roman and Henry to procure ketamine from the horse vet's office, but at its core, THE MUSTANG is an empathetic and compassionate character study of rehabilitation and redemption.
RED SPARROW (US - 2018) Directed by Francis Lawrence. Written by Justin Haythe. Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker, Ciarin Hinds, Joely Richardson, Bill Camp, Thekla Reuten, Douglas Hodge, Sakina Jaffrey, Hugh Quarshie, Sebastian Hulk, Sergei Polunin, Kristof Konrad, Sasha Frolova. (R, 140 mins) To get a feel of what RED SPARROW is like, imagine ATOMIC BLONDE if written by John Le Carre with an uncredited script polish by Joe Eszterhas and directed by 1990s Paul Verhoeven. It's probably not gonna fly with those constantly looking for something to be offended by, but it's nice to see a major-studio movie with A-list star diving unabashedly into hard-R territory with no reservations whatsoever. Sexually frank and often brutally, sickeningly violent, RED SPARROW is based on the 2013 novel by Jason Matthews, the first in a trilogy centered on Dominika Egorova, played here by Jennifer Lawrence, reunited with Francis Lawrence, the director of the last three HUNGER GAMES installments. As RED SPARROW begins in Moscow, Dominika is a rising star in the Bolshoi Ballet, but her career comes to an abrupt end when her dance partner lands on her left leg and shatters it in the middle of a performance. Left with a limp, depressed, and concerned about caring for her terminally ill mother Nina (Joely Richardson), Dominika is approached by her uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts), a high ranking deputy in Russian intelligence, who requests a favor that can maybe financially help with her mother's care expenses. Having caught the eye of shady businessman Dmitri Ustinov (Kristof Konrad), Dominika is to be the bait to lure him to a hotel room, where she's to switch his phone with another implanted with a tracking device. Vanya assures her there's no danger, but of course, Ustinov gets rapey and assassin Matorin (Sebastian Hulk) is forced to intervene and kill him, whisking Dominika away immediately after.
Vanya's bosses--including intelligence director Zakharov (Ciarin Hinds) and General Korchnoi (Jeremy Irons)--need Dominika to keep quiet by any means necessary. In order to spare her life and to provide care for Nina, Vanya sends Dominika to a "state school" (termed "whore school" by Dominika) where attractive male and female "sparrows" are trained in the ways of seduction, psychological manipulation, and espionage by the ominously-named Matron (Charlotte Rampling). Sparrows are taught to use their bodies to gain advantage, they're put through endless psychological and physical rigors, forced to submit to sexual demands and use their sexuality to gain power over an adversary. Dominika, renamed "Katya," butts heads with Matron, especially after she violently attacks a male sparrow during an attempted rape and then sexually humiliates him in front of the entire class when she intimidates him so much that he can't get it up. Dominika has already established that she has a capacity for extreme violence and uncontrolled rage--she finds out that the ballet accident was intentional and done so in order allow her partner's girlfriend to assume her spot in the ballet, and she promptly beats the shit out of both of them--and despite her strong-willed refusal to bend to Matron's will, Vanya pulls her out to give her a mission: get close to Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), a CIA agent on thin ice after a botched intel exchange in Gorky Park with a Russian mole who's been feeding info to the Americans. Nash goes off the radar but resurfaces in Budapest, where Dominika is sent to use her skills in order to find the identity of the mole.
The story takes many twists and turns with the obligatory shifting alliances, double-crosses, and people not being who they're thought to be, and while RED SPARROW doesn't really break any new ground as far as spy thrillers go, it's consistently intriguing, very well-acted, and filled with enough gasp-inducing shocks to keep your eyes glued to the screen, or wincing and looking away if Matorin is skinning someone. Sporting a quite convincing Russian accent, a stone-cold Lawrence is excellent and gets solid support from numerous standouts in the supporting cast, including Schoenaerts as the duplicitous Vanya who can barely hide his sexual desire for his late brother's daughter (can't wait to see him as Vladimir Putin in the inevitable Trump miniseries), Mary-Louise Parker as a US senator's corrupt chief of staff who's got plenty of blackmail baggage and is selling secrets to the Russians, and especially Rampling, who almost steals the film in her limited screen time as the stern, brittle Matron, a woman who's dead inside after giving everything she is to Russia and perhaps sees her younger self in the willful, stubborn Dominika (the sexual power games among the Sparrows-in-training also brings to mind the veteran actress' role in 1974's THE NIGHT PORTER). Though there are several uncomfortable scenes throughout, the knee-jerk response of the perpetually outraged seems to miss the point: Dominika is a strong heroine who proves to be several steps ahead of everyone, refusing to allow herself to be a victim and forcing anyone who wrongs her to pay dearly. Maybe it's because we're in an era where teenagers are the target audience and people have forgotten that movies for adults can still be a thing, but RED SPARROW is pretty strong stuff, with levels of sex, nudity, and violence that you really don't often see in mainstream, multiplex entertainment these days. While this is much more commercially accessible at its core, between RED SPARROW and last fall's MOTHER!, a post-Katniss Everdeen Lawrence (like the career choices made by TWILIGHT vets Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson and HARRY POTTER's Daniel Radcliffe) continues to demonstrate that she isn't complacent and isn't afraid to challenge herself and take some risks.
The finale to Uwe Boll and Brendan Fletcher's RAMPAGE trilogy is the clumsiest and preachiest yet. On the positive side, Boll seems to be walking back his gushing admiration for Fletcher's insane lone-wolf domestic terrorist Bill Williamson. Where the first sequel RAMPAGE: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT felt like a love letter to mass shooters, PRESIDENT DOWN at least admits that words and actions have consequences and by the end, Bill is most certainly the villain with a lot of blood on his hands. But the road there is paved with some welcome bits of old-school Boll idiocy that's not helped by the director struggling with his lowest budget yet. His German tax shelter heyday of being able to afford the likes of Ben Kingsley, Jason Statham, and Burt Reynolds a fading memory, Boll can't even corral cheap labor on the level of past RAMPAGE co-stars like Matt Frewer or Lochlyn Munro. Boll unsuccessfully tried to crowdfund the film--originally titled RAMPAGE 3: NO MERCY--on Indiegogo and Kickstarter but failed to meet his goal, leading to an inevitable YouTube meltdown excoriating fans for giving their money to Hollywood studios while not helping out important artists like Dr. Uwe Boll. So with a lot less money at his disposal, Boll relies heavily on flashbacks and stock footage from the first two films, and mainly has Fletcher's Bill posting YouTube rants from his hiding place in the middle of nowhere, which may be the perfect metaphor for 2016 Uwe Boll.
Long thought dead after the events of the previous film, Bill emerges from hiding to assassinate the President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense during a speech to Congress. Of course, how he manages to accomplish this is a mystery, since it happens offscreen. The FBI, vowing to get to the bottom of the assassinations, assigns two--yes, two--agents, Molokai (Steve Baran) and Jones (Ryan McDonnell) and a Bureau computer expert (Scott Patey) to run the investigation out of what looks like an underfunded police precinct. Bill manages to hack into their computer system with the help of a mole inside the FBI, and once Molokai and Jones (worst cop show title ever?) spot him on some surveillance footage outside the White House, he starts taunting them from his undisclosed location and threatening their families. Unfortunately, the agents are unable to convince their bosses that Bill is the culprit because a publicity-hogging ISIS claims responsibility for the assassinations, prompting the reactionary new Commander-in-Chief to round up all the Muslims and Syrian refugees in the US, close all the mosques, and nuke the Middle East "with the full support of Russia and China." The notion of an irrational, knee-jerk US President content with blowing up a good chunk of the world is an uncomfortably prescient notion that Boll completely sidesteps and never mentions again. There's no satire, no poking people with sticks--instead, the focus is on Molokai and Jones finding out where Bill is hiding and leading a raid where of course, Bill gets the edge on everyone, but Jones makes it easy by not even bothering to wear a bulletproof vest.
The message is muddled: Bill says he wants a world without violence in a film that opens with him shooting a random pedestrian in cold blood and concludes with him killing about a hundred FBI agents. Nothing here makes sense: why does Bill suddenly have a girlfriend (Crystal Lowe) and a kid? And how can he be presumed dead when he's actively posting videos to his YouTube channel to his legion of supporters? And when news of the assassinations of the President, VP, and Defense Secretary hits the wire, watch the only two news anchors seen in the film exclaim "Oh my God! The President is dead!" as the camera pans down to her reading the info off of a second page, as if that news a) would come over a teletype in 2016, and b) would be relegated to the second page. And are we to believe that the only two guys investigating the murder of the President, VP and Defense Secretary would exit a building and be confronted by one reporter? And it's one of the two news anchors we just saw? Boll ineptly inserts talking points about gun control and police brutality, but then he and Fletcher (they co-wrote the script together) go off on tangents about Hollywood's richest celebrities. There's jabs at Tom Cruise and Jennifer Aniston, and the murders of Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Mark Zuckerberg among others are announced over the course of the film. These bits sound less like legitimate grievances about tabloid culture and more like a case of sour grapes from Boll and Fletcher because they aren't in the club. Canadian actor Fletcher's been around since the late '90s and was in hits like AIR BUD and FREDDY VS. JASON, and some Canadian arthouse films. He's also made eight movies with Uwe Boll. Dude, maybe that's why you're not in the club. You were in THE REVENANT (notice that Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't make Bill's Hollywood shit list). Maybe take a break from Uwe and start hanging out with Leo or Alejandro Inarritu a little more. You'll have time: Boll was so angry about the lack of fan support for the funding of RAMPAGE: PRESIDENT DOWN that he announced it would be his final film. Indeed, a post-credits stinger finds a pensive Boll tipping his hat to the camera and walking into the sunset. If that's the case, let me just say that for all your many, many faults, you were certainly never boring, Dr. Boll. Thanks for everything. I guess. (Unrated, 100 mins)
A BIGGER SPLASH (Italy/France - 2016)
The first English-language work by acclaimed Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino reunites the director with Tilda Swinton, the star of his 2009 art-house breakthough I AM LOVE. Where that film showcased the director's adoration of all things Stanley Kubrick and Alain Resnais before settling into a sort-of Luchino Visconti autopilot mode (faux-Visconti is something THE GREAT BEAUTY director Paolo Sorrentino does a lot better), A BIGGER SPLASH feels a lot like the 1990s Bernardo Bertolucci that made THE SHELTERING SKY and STEALING BEAUTY. A remake of Jacques Deray's 1969 film LA PISCINE (released in the US as THE SWIMMING POOL), A BIGGER SPLASH is essentially one of these European films where some wealthy bourgeois types get together and things escalate into a powderkeg of unresolved issues and psychosexual mind games. Aging glam rock legend Marianne Lane (Swinton) blows out her voice on tour and has to take a significant amount of time off to recover from vocal cord surgery. She can only speak at a whisper and is convalescing on Pantelleria, off the coast of Sicily with her younger lover, photographer/filmmaker Paul De Smedt (Matthias Schoenaerts). Their days are spent lounging naked by the pool, getting massages, reading, and having a lot of sex until they get an unannounced visit from Harry Hawkes (Ralph Fiennes), Marianne's producer and ex-boyfriend, who's brought along Penelope (Dakota Johnson), the 22-year-old daughter he only recently found out he had. The boisterous, gregarious Harry brings a manic and disruptive presence to their quiet, idyllic getaway, even inviting a couple of other people--Mireille (Aurore Clement) and Sylvie (Lila McMenamy)--along, and it's clear that there's a past between these people that's still gnawing at both Harry and Paul. There's also numerous instances of Harry acting in a not-fatherly way with Penelope, and an uncomfortably close rendition of "Unforgettable" between the two at a karaoke bar creeps out Marianne enough that she confronts him, leading to Harry shouting "I'm not fucking my daughter!" in front of a bunch of people in the street. As Harry keeps professing his love for Marianne, Paul and Penelope go off exploring on their own, and anyone who's ever seen a movie before can see that things aren't going to end well.
Despite the serious subject matter, A BIGGER SPLASH is fairly lighthearted a lot of the time, right down to its slapsticky title that seems more fitting for a romantic comedy. It certainly doesn't portend the shift the story takes in the last 35 or 40 minutes, when an unexpected event occurs that gets the local police involved. A lot of this is due to a rambunctious performance by Fiennes, whose Harry is really a grating, insufferable asshole but the actor finds ways to make you like him and even feel sorry for him. Whether he's yammering on about his sexual exploits (it's suggested that Mireille and Sylvie, who may be mother and daughter, are among his conquests), humble-bragging about his uncredited contributions to the Rolling Stones' 1994 album Voodoo Lounge, or busting out the moves like Jagger while blasting their 1980 hit "Emotional Rescue" (a scene that must be seen to believed), Fiennes is the unabashed show-stealer here and even dominates the film when he's not onscreen. Working with screenwriter David Kajganich (whose credits include, of all things, the underrated 2009 horror movie BLOOD CREEK), Guadagnino leaves enough ambiguity to keep an audience discussing the events after the film is over, and manages to keep things focused even with the many changes in tone and some showboating filmmaking techniques in the early going, things that are mainly used when Fiennes is onscreen to accentuate what a loud jackass Harry can be. Guadagnino, Kajganich, Swinton, and Johnson are tentatively reuniting for the latest announced incarnation of the perpetually in-development remake of Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA. (R, 125 mins)
THE DARKNESS
(US - 2016)
With 2005's WOLF CREEK, Australian filmmaker Greg McLean seemed to be a new voice in horror, but that voice has had nothing to say for several years running. His follow-up film, the outstanding killer crocodile flick ROGUE, was buried by the Weinsteins, and McLean has yet to bounce back, with another six years passing before he resurfaced with the belated and over-the-top WOLF CREEK 2. Working with horror factory Blumhouse, THE DARKNESS is McLean's first Hollywood production and it couldn't possibly be any more predictably generic and lazy. During a family trip to the Grand Canyon, autistic Mikey Taylor (David Mazouz) finds some rocks with strange symbols and takes them as souvenirs. It isn't long before paranormal activity manifests itself back home, with Mikey talking to an unseen entity called "Jenny," and sooty handprints turning up all over the house. Dad Peter (Kevin Bacon, visibly bored) and Mom Bronny (Radha Mitchell) are too preoccupied to notice the supernatural goings-on or that their angry older daughter Stephanie (Lucy Fry) is bulimic and saving containers of her purgings under her bed as a way of acting out her resentment toward Mikey. After more shenanigans, like a possessed Mikey starting a fire and trying to kill his grandmother's cat, and all manner of standard-issue Blumhouse jump scares, Bronny discovers that some Anasazi curse has latched itself to Mikey and starts to believe this is some kind of karmic retribution over her past alcoholism (she falls off the wagon) and Peter's past infidelity (and he's tempted again by young intern at work).
Taking a page from THE EXORCIST in the way the demon enters a world in disarray, making it easy to possess Regan, McLean and co-writers S.P. Krause and Shayne Armstrong (the latter two co-wrote the Australian "sharks-in-a-supermarket" opus BAIT) toy with the idea of the demonic invasion of the home being a response to the various unspoken dysfunctions in the family. But they don't really do anything with it and everything is resolved too easily to get to the rote horror histrionics. Keeping your vomit in bags and tupperware containers under your bed is pretty odd, but hey, one visit to a therapist and moody, abrasive Stephanie is healthy and chipper. Instead, the filmmakers follow a Blumhouse checklist right down to the last-15-minutes introduction of a pair of eccentric demonology experts who do a quick drive-by exposition drop before an impromptu exorcism of the house. The film's twists and turns come straight out of Plot Convenience Playhouse. Is Paul Reiser only in this for a few scenes as Peter's fist-bumping, asshole boss just because the boss has a wife (Ming-Na Wen) who happens to have recently started pursuing an interest in Hopi Indian mythology? Well, that immediately qualifies her as an expert to advise Bronny after she figures out they're being haunted by a pissed-off Anasazi spirit. What are the odds? It's that kind of movie. THE DARKNESS plays like a Blumhouse sampler platter with a dash of INSIDIOUS and a scoop of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, but topped off with a generous sprinkling of some old-fashioned POLTERGEIST to make a total shit sandwich of a horror movie. It's a film that doesn't even try, and it's almost perversely impressive how it manages to go an entire 90 minutes without pursuing a single original idea. Where did THE DARKNESS go wrong? Who cares? Blumhouse and Greg McLean certainly don't. (PG-13, 92 mins)
THE LOFT (US/Belgium - 2015) Directed by Erik Van Looy. Written by Wesley Strick. Cast: Karl Urban, James Marsden, Wentworth Miller, Eric Stonestreet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Rachael Taylor, Isabel Lucas, Rhona Mitra, Valerie Cruz, Kali Rocha, Elaine Cassidy, Margarita Levieva, Kristin Lehman, Robert Wisdom, Graham Beckel, Dora Madison Burge, Ric Reitz, Kathy Deitch, Laura Cayouette. (R, 103 mins)
It's rarely a good sign when a movie arrives in theaters in 2015 sporting a 2013 copyright after being shot in 2011. THE LOFT's nearly four years on the shelf have been attributed to distributor issues, with its release date shuffled numerous times as the film went from Warner Bros. to Universal, then finally to the smaller Open Road. It's not a terrible movie by any means, though it comes up far short of the USUAL SUSPECTS-type twistfest that it desperately tries to be. What's here is generally entertaining, diverting trash that could actually stand to be a little more trashy instead of just piling on the red herrings and dropped plot threads with reckless abandon. It's the kind of movie that offers unintended laughs when five people are in a room knowing that one among them is a killer, and we get close-ups of the five regarding each other with shifty, squinty eyes, accompanied by a ludicrously melodramatic Big Reveal/Cliffhanger/"Dun-Dun-DUUUUN!"-style music cue.
THE LOFT is an almost shot-for-shot remake of the 2008 Flemish-language thriller LOFT, which still stands as Belgium's highest-grossing homegrown film. LOFT was remade in similarly identical fashion as the Dutch LOFT in 2010. The 2008 LOFT was helmed by Erik Van Looy (THE MEMORY OF A KILLER), who makes his English-language directing debut with THE LOFT. Van Looy was also pressed into service on the Dutch LOFT when its director, Antoinette Beumer, and five others were injured by falling scaffolding on the set, stepping in as an uncredited backup director for a couple of weeks while Beumer recovered from her injuries. I'm not sure what else Van Looy can wring out of this story that he hasn't already, but THE LOFT (shot mostly in Brussels) follows the template of Bart De Pauw's original 2008 script, adapted by Wesley Strick, whose screenwriting credits include CAPE FEAR (1991), FINAL ANALYSIS (1992), and THE GLASS HOUSE (2001): five married guys have a secret apartment they agree to use as a getaway to hook up with mistresses and one-night stands. The whole thing is the brainchild of successful architect Vincent (Karl Urban), who gives keys to his four buddies: Chris (James Marsden), Luke (Wentworth Miller), Marty (Eric Stonestreet), and Philip (Matthias Schoenaerts, who played the same role in the Belgian LOFT). The film opens with Luke showing up at the loft and finding a dead, blood-covered blonde handcuffed to the bed. Van Looy cuts back and forth between the five men trying to work their way out of the situation and being interrogated by skeptical detectives (Kristin Lehman, Robert Wisdom), and the events of the previous year, starting with Vincent proposing the idea of the loft. All of the guys are bored with their perpetually sour-faced, ballbusting, complaining and/or needy wives. Shrink Chris fancies himself a family man but falls hard for icy blonde Anne (Rachael Taylor), who's not only the mistress of a city councilman (Ric Reitz), but also the sister of a patient who committed suicide. Vincent steps out on his wife (Valerie Cruz) with a younger woman (Isabel Lucas), with whom Luke is obsessed. Gregarious Marty, the loud fat guy of the group, sees his marriage ruined by his indiscretion on a business trip with Vincent and Luke. And Philip, the younger half-brother of Chris, is a violent cokehead who marries into a rich family and is irrationally overprotective of his 20-year-old sister (Dora Madison Burge).
Of course, as these five dipshits try to figure out which one of them is responsible for the dead body in their party pad, long-simmering resentments and grudges boil over, usually involving creepy Luke and his seething jealousy over Vincent's way with women or someone making a passive-aggressive accusatory comment and getting a "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" in response. Or, one guy telling another "You're a sick fuck!" and getting "No, YOU'RE a sick fuck!" and a shove as a retort. It's hinted that Luke is a closeted homosexual who secretly desires Vincent, but that's quickly tossed aside (it's an interesting side note that Miller himself came out of the closet in 2013) because THE LOFT isn't daring enough to take it in that direction. The contrivances and conveniences come at a furious clip and it's all moderately entertaining enough, if a bit lacking in the courage to be anything but standard and safe. The resolution isn't so much unpredictable as it is ridiculous, with characters making one dumb, nonsensical decision after another just so Van Looy can keep the movie going. Say what you will about 1998's similar VERY BAD THINGS, but at least it had a sick-humored, anything-goes sense of adventure to it. By the time everything is explained, THE LOFT has nothing left to do but end with a whimper, offering up one of the weakest denouements in recent memory. THE LOFT is perfectly OK as the kind of movie you stop on while channel-surfing, and it'll no doubt have a long life on Netflix Instant and cable. But while it's always nice to see a '90s-style thriller on the big screen these days, it would've been a lot better if it didn't take itself so seriously, inadvertently serving as the perfect example of why these kinds of movies faded from popularity in the first place.
THE DROP (US/UK - 2014) Directed by Michael R. Roskam. Written by Dennis Lehane. Cast: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini, Matthias Schoenaerts, John Ortiz, Michael Aranov, Ann Dowd, Elizabeth Rodriguez, James Frecheville, Morgan Spector. (R, 107 mins)
Best-selling novelist Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island) scripted this adaptation of his short story "Animal Rescue" (also the film's working title) and moved the location from his usual haunt of Boston to the kind of blue-collar Brooklyn neighborhood that hasn't changed in decades. THE DROP is one of those low-key crime dramas from the FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE school that focuses on the "working-class stiff" element of the underworld, populated by guys who know guys with names like "Fitz" and "Sully" and barely scrape by as they nickel-and-dime their way through life. The characters in THE DROP have seen better days, and while some have made peace with their past and where it's taken them, others can't move on and do what they can do revisit a time that's never coming back. There's a profound sense of melancholy throughout THE DROP that's made even more poignant by the presence of the late James Gandolfini in his last film. Gandolfini, who died about three months after filming wrapped, isn't the central focus, but his presence--both his character and the actor himself--is felt in nearly every scene. Gandolfini was a distinctive actor who could also convey volumes with just a glance or a facial expression. Of course, he could also bellow like the best of them, and when he delivers the kind of line that a million other actors have delivered but sounds especially awesome when yelled by James Gandolfini ("What the fuck are you talkin' about?"), it's a joy for his fans to see that he went out with a good role in a good film that utilized him in the best possible fashion. He'll be missed.
THE DROP refers to a "drop bar," a rotating list of mob-owned bars in the Brooklyn area that serve as money drop-off and pickup points. Cousin Marv's is such a bar, and Marv (Gandolfini) still manages the place even though he was muscled out as owner a decade earlier when some Chechan gangsters took over. Now he answers to Chovka (Michael Aranov) and barely scrapes by serving shots to his dwindling number of regulars. His only regular employee is his cousin Bob (Tom Hardy). Bob is a quiet, introverted, church-going loner who shuffles around and only speaks when he absolutely has to. He has a kind heart, which gets him in trouble with Marv when he keeps giving free drinks to an area homeless woman, allowing her just a few hours each day to hang out in a quiet corner of the bar where she doesn't bother anyone. Bob's kindness extends to taking care of an injured, bloodied pit bull puppy he discovers in a trashcan in the yard of waitress Nadia (Noomi Rapace) on his walk home from work one night. The dog belongs to Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts), an intimidating neighborhood goon who used to date Nadia. Deeds beat the dog and threw it in Nadia's trash and keeps following Bob and showing up at his house demanding he turn it over to him. Deeds' stalking of Bob coincides with Bob and Marv getting some heat from Chovka after Cousin Marv's is robbed by a couple of masked gunmen who make off with $5000. Chovka wants his money and hasn't ruled out Bob and Marv pulling off an inside job, and Bob is also forced to contend with the skeptical detective (John Ortiz) investigating the robbery.
THE DROP is directed by Belgian filmmaker Michael R. Roskam, making his Hollywood debut. Roskam's arthouse breakthrough came with the brilliant 2011 film BULLHEAD, an Oscar-nominee for Best Foreign Language Film that featured a stunning performance by Schoenaerts, a gifted Belgian actor (he also played a similar Brooklyn tough guy role in this year's little-seen BLOOD TIES) who you can expect to be hearing a lot more from in years to come. Roskam does a terrific job of capturing a seedy side of Brooklyn that you don't see much of onscreen anymore in these days of hipster gentrification. The focus is more on character than action, and while the film isn't quite the mainstream audience alienator that something like, say, KILLING THEM SOFTLY was, it's certainly in that vicinity in terms of style and tone. In many ways, THE DROP feels a bit like something Sidney Lumet might've made in the late '90s or early '00s. It's a small-scale, simple little film that doesn't rely much on style, instead focusing on mood and atmosphere. This is a Brooklyn where homes have been in the family since post-WWII and sales of plastic furniture covers are still strong (and Marv still lives with his doting older sister, played by Ann Dowd). Hardy's performance is a case study in tightly-coiled tension, a time-bomb waiting to go off but doing so in a way that defies expectation. Like the film, Bob plays his cards close to the vest, and while he seems a little slow-witted at times and some even treat him as such, it comes to be seen as a defense mechanism. Bob has a past that he doesn't want to relive--note the calm and matter-of-fact way he deals with the discovery of a severed arm--and lives as solitary a life as possible to hold off the inevitable forces that he fears will eventually pull him back into that world. He never tries to be a hero until he's exhausted every other possible option. In LOCKE, Hardy played a pressured man boxed in by the confines of his car, but in THE DROP, his pressured character is boxed in by his own design. Rapace's Nadia is equally guarded about her own past, which includes Deeds as well as a nasty scar on her neck. They bond through the puppy, whom Nadia names Rocco, but both are shy, reserved, and hesitant to take anything further. Rapace played a somewhat similar role in last year's underappreciated DEAD MAN DOWN, and while she's a fine actress, she seems a bit miscast here, struggling and failing to hide her Swedish accent while Schoenaerts nails an absolutely perfect Brooklyn tone.
THE DROP will likely bore those looking for a gangster shoot-'em-up, and it's the kind of modestly-budgeted studio film that plays more like an indie. It's familiar, but overall, it's a fine film with an almost-throwback mentality to it. Roskam doesn't seek to break new ground in the crime genre and doesn't pretend his is the first film with a reluctant anti-hero pulled back into a life he's spent years trying to flee. While there are fleeting bursts of action and graphic violence, THE DROP is more concerned with being a compelling character piece and on that front, it's a success, anchored by the always-intriguing Hardy with excellent support from Schoenaerts and Gandolfini.
Directed by Guillaume Canet. Written by Guillaume Canet and James Gray. Cast: Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, James Caan, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, Matthias Schoenaerts, Lili Taylor, Noah Emmerich, John Ventimiglia, Domenick Lombardozzi, Yul Vazquez, Richard Petrocelli, Jamie Hector, Eve Hewson, Griffin Dunne, Olek Krupa. (R, 129 mins)
Since his 1994 debut LITTLE ODESSA, writer/director James Gray's films have always felt out of place with contemporary cinema. Initially lumped in with the post-RESERVOIR DOGS, Tarantino indie scene, the not-prolific Gray has established himself as more of a Sidney Lumet disciple with his gritty, character-driven, low-key NYC period pieces that frequently involve cops, criminals, and the blurred lines that separate them (most notably his underrated 2007 gem WE OWN THE NIGHT, set in the late '80s with connected club owner Joaquin Phoenix taking on his Russian mob friends after they shoot his cop brother Mark Wahlberg). BLOOD TIES seems like the movie Gray's wanted to make for the last 20 years, but alas, he only co-wrote it, as TELL NO ONE director Guillaume Canet fashions this French production as a loving throwback to the tough, hard-edged NYC cinema of the 1970s. It's a triumph of production design and visual detail as Canet and the crew flawlessly recreate 1970s Brooklyn, augmented by subtle examples of seamless, non-intrusive CGI done right. If only as much attention had been paid to the script.
A remake of Jacques Maillot's 2008 film LES LIENS DU SANG (RIVALS), which was set in 1979 Paris, BLOOD TIES opens in 1974 Brooklyn (with a bloody, brain-splattering shootout accompanied by the Ace Frehley version of "New York Groove," which wasn't recorded until 1978 but let's not nitpick because it's a terrific scene) and offers the old standby of the just-paroled con (Clive Owen as Chris) trying to stay straight. He's constantly butting heads with his resentful brother, NYPD cop Frank (Billy Crudup in the role Canet himself played in RIVALS), who gets him a job at a garage where he meets and falls for cashier Natalie (Mila Kunis), while trying to connect with his two kids and dealing with his bitter, hooker ex Monica (Marion Cotillard). Meanwhile, Frank has arrested low-level mook Scarfo (BULLHEAD's Matthias Schoenaerts), who owns a van that's been tied to a rash of robberies. Scarfo claims he's innocent and the whole thing is a set-up by a vengeful Frank, who used to be involved with his wife Vanessa (Zoe Saldana). As Chris struggles to stay afloat after a potential deal to open a snack stand with his ex-con buddy Mike (Domenick Lombardozzi) falls apart, he eventually accepts a job from mob-connected bar owner Fabio (Yul Vazquez) to rub out three rivals with the Famous Last Words caveat "I just wanna get back on my feet...I'm not gonna make a habit of this." Of course, one job leads to another and as the cops continue to keep an eye on Chris, who buys Natalie a beautiful engagement ring and is suddenly able to afford an expensive new TV for their ailing father (James Caan), Frank starts getting heat from his boss (Noah Emmerich) and the NYPD brass starts questioning his loyalty.
Released in Europe last year at 144 minutes, BLOOD TIES has been cut by 15 minutes for its dump-job of a US release (28 screens and VOD). Whether distributor Lionsgate made these edits with or without Canet's involvement is unknown, but at least in this incarnation, it feels rushed and incomplete. It aspires to be an epic, sprawling crime saga, but it suffers from an awfully choppy opening half-hour and a finale that feels too abrupt, and as a result, the film jumps all over the place and feels like a series of vignettes rather than a cohesive whole. What exactly is Chris? It's explained that he was in prison for a revenge killing when his girlfriend--presumably Monica--was raped and he offed the attacker. But once out, he becomes a hit man and later, out of nowhere, he's suddenly a pimp. The film takes place over a few months from late 1974 into early 1975 but the time element never feels right. Too much goes down in such a short amount of time. Also, there's numerous instances where people are congregated in a scene and behaving as if their last scene together didn't happen. There's one glaring instance of two scenes that seem to be out of order when Frank kicks temporary roommate Chris out of his apartment, and in the very next scene, Frank is outraged and storms out of the room when he's told by an NYPD honcho that unless he tells Chris to move out, he'll have to turn in his gun and badge. The large supporting cast gets little to do: Caan has a big, emotional speech that feels shoehorned in, and Cotillard and Schoenaerts finally get their own plot threads going around 100 minutes into the movie, as if the filmmakers suddenly remembered they were in it.
Is this something unique to the US cut or was this a problem in the European version as well? Even if the flow and the rhythm of the story are improved by those missing 15 minutes, it won't eliminate the predictable story elements and the cliched execution. How many times have we seen the ex-con sucked back into "the life"? How many times have we seen brothers on opposite sides of the law clash only to have the familial bonds reunite them? It's a great song, but at what point do we stage an intervention for a filmmaker who makes the conscious, straight-faced decision to use the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" for a scene where a junkie falls off the wagon and hits bottom? Canet indulges in some heavy Scorsese worship throughout BLOOD TIES, and it's fun early on when he shows Chris watching Monica walk away in slo-mo to Lee Moses' "Bad Girl" or late in the film when he's fleeing the cops and speeding from place to place like Ray Liotta's coke-addled Henry Hill in GOODFELLAS. Scorsese-worship can be a blast--David O. Russell's AMERICAN HUSTLE is recent proof of that--but someone needs to tell Canet that you can't have the camera slowly move in on the pensive visage of Clive Owen to the opening guitar riff of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" nearly 25 years after GOODFELLAS and expect to be taken seriously.
BLOOD TIES is a mess, but it's a beautiful mess, and the performances of Owen and Crudup (looking a lot like a younger Harvey Keitel here) are top-notch. Canet aims high and sometimes hits the mark (there's a kinetic energy to the opening shootout, and one late phone call between Chris and Frank has a gut-wrenching moment of clarity for both of them), and even with its copious cliches, there's a very good film trying to break out of the merely OK one in which it's trapped. It's pretty obvious that Gray was a gun-for-hire on this one, probably brought on to ensure that the dialogue had a genuine NYC feel to it instead of sounding awkwardly translated from French. Gray's films don't lean this heavily on cliches and convention, whereas Canet is a movie buff with an obvious affinity for 1970s crime flicks and wanted to make one of his own. That's great, and he certainly succeeded on a visual level and got the right attitude from his actors--this is a rare-for-these-days example of a 1970s-set film not looking like a bunch of out-of-their element, in-over-their-heads actors playing ironic hipster dress-up against a gaudy digital greenscreen--but the script just doesn't hold up its end of the deal.
