Drably-shot and about as polished as someone's first DIY effort funded by successfully talking their dad into cashing out his 401k, the dreary, amateurish, and cheap-looking BEYOND THE LAW marks a reunion of sorts for Steven Seagal and DMX, the duo previously headlining 2001's EXIT WOUNDS, one of Seagal's last gasps of box office success. "Reunion" might be stretching it, since they don't have any scenes together here, making it quite possible that Seagal has no idea that DMX--or for that matter, Steven Seagal--is even in BEYOND THE LAW. Both have supporting roles, with the real star being Johnny Messner (returning for more Seagal duty after 2016's THE PERFECT WEAPON) as Frank Wilson, an alcoholic ex-cop who we can assume played by his own rules. He goes on a rampage of revenge after his son falls in with the wrong crowd and is killed by Desmond Packard (one-time Uwe Boll semi-regular Zack Ward, further away than ever from A CHRISTMAS STORY's Scut Farkus), the sniveling, dirtbag son of former crime boss-turned-legit businessman--and lemme check and make sure I get this name right--Augustino Finn Adair, played by a cigar-sucking Seagal with his usual N'awlins accent and total indifference to the proceedings. BEYOND THE LAW then turns into a DIPSHIT JOHN WICK--only with a slovenly drunk as its vigilante killing machine--as Wilson goes after Desmond, who's also mounting a challenge to topple his father and restart his old criminal empire (and we know Desmond is intense because he constantly flicks his Zippo while glaring menacingly), a plan probably egged on by his old man trying to tell him to straight up his act and muttering "I feel like I'm talking to a retarded child."
In his first film since spending a year in prison for tax fraud, DMX periodically turns up as Munce, the detective supposedly investigating the murder of Wilson's son (of course admonishing the enraged father with "Look, you're not a cop anymore!") but secretly on Desmond's payroll before he gets the clumsiest death scene since Michael Madsen in BLOODRAYNE. Written by DTV vet Chad Law (DRIVE HARD, CLOSE RANGE, JARHEAD 3) and director James Cullen Bressack (13/13/13 and some other very low-budget Asylum and Unearthed Films horror indies), who also throws in some incongruous jump scares when Wilson keeps imagining seeing his dead son, BEYOND THE LAW leaves no cliche untouched. You get B-movie drinking game staples like Wilson yelling "This ends tonight!" and Munce telling Wilson "You're not an easy man to find," to which Wilson mutters "Sometimes when you can't find a man, it's because he don't wanna be found," a philosophy that must explain Johnny Messner continuing to appear in modern-era Steven Seagal movies. But there's also some real head-scratchers, like Munce getting angry with Desmond because he's never seen GREMLINS ("It's a classic!") and--again, lemme make sure I get this name right--Augustino Finn Adair mumbling to his chief flunky that a meeting with a new "supplier" has to be postponed a day because "I gotta clean up my house." The kind of movie where someone in a bar orders a vodka shot and gets it in a regular-sized red plastic Solo cup because real shot glasses apparently weren't in the budget, BEYOND THE LAW might succeed in fooling some casual Seagal fans who haven't seen anything he's done since HALF PAST DEAD into thinking it's a belated sequel to ABOVE THE LAW upon a cursory glance at the Redbox kiosk. It also shamefully wastes veteran character actor Bill Cobbs as Wilson's fatherly friend, and DEATH WARRANT's Patrick Kilpatrick appears in a thankless role as a bouncer. (Unrated, 90 mins)
I SEE YOU (UK/US/UAE - 2019)
It's surprising that Saban Films didn't give I SEE YOU any kind of a push beyond an ambivalent VOD release. Maybe it's a little too much of a slow-burner for the multiplex, but it's filled with so many twists and turns and rugs being pulled out from under the viewer that you just know it's desperately hoping you don't question its implausibilities until it's over. It's best to go into this knowing as little as possible, but the basic set-up goes like this: in a greater Cleveland suburb, two young boys have gone missing in the woods, with the opening scene showing the second kid seemingly yanked off his bike by an unseen force. The focus shifts to an upper-class neighborhood and the Harpers, a well-to-do family fraught with the kind of simmering tension we haven't seen since HEREDITARY. Therapist mom Jackie (Helen Hunt) is popping pills and trying to repair the damage caused by a brief recent affair. Teenage son Connor (Judah Lewis) is bitter and resentful and wants nothing to do with her, and husband Greg (Jon Tenney) is dividing his time between the couch and the guest room and isn't quite ready to forgive her. Greg's preoccupied, however, since he's the lead detective in the disappearance of the two kids. Evidence is found in the woods that indicates a copycat of a case several years earlier where local boys were targeted by a now-incarcerated pedophile whose victims described him living in "a magic house that disappears." Strange things have been happening in the Harper house: the TV turns itself on, all of their silverware disappears, photos are missing from frames, and when Jackie returns home to find a repairman in the house, he claims a very polite young girl let him in.
At just around the midpoint, director Adam Randall (the British Netflix acquisition iBOY) and first-time screenwriter Devon Graye (an actor probably best known for playing the teenage DEXTER in flashbacks during the show's first two seasons and was later The Trickster on The CW's THE FLASH) deploy their first major twist, and from then on, you never know what to expect with I SEE YOU. It seems like it's not going to stand up under scrutiny, but there's always something happening that shifts your loyalties or puts things in a new perspective that you never saw coming. Yeah, maybe that one bit hinges on a garage door taking an improbably long time to close, but these are hiccups that you just have to roll with, because every time Randall and Graye make a decision that seems like too big of a leap, they manage to steady the ship, almost like they sense your incredulity and are saying "No, wait...just hear us out!" I SEE YOU doesn't go for jump scares and its bigger concern is a slowly mounting sense of eerie dread and unease, but at the same time, it's surprising that Saban didn't even try to sell it. It might've had potential to be a small word-of-mouth sleeper hit like SEARCHING, and it's got an Oscar-winning headliner in Hunt. I SEE YOU is a film that has to be taken on its own terms, and no matter how preposterous it gets on occasion, it's surprisingly effective and often genuinely chilling. (R, 98 mins)
THE COURIER (US/UK - 2019)
THE COURIER is the kind of dumb thriller that feels the need to accompany an aerial shot of an illuminated Tower Bridge at night with the caption "London, United Kingdom," and soon follows it with an establishing shot of the Washington Monument with the caption "Washington D.C." The opening credits play over quick shots of newspaper headlines that can't settle on whether its main villain is named "Manning" or "Mannings." It's also apparently the kind of movie that Gary Oldman does now, despite winning an Oscar for 2017's DARKEST HOUR, a title that, in retrospect, seems depressingly prophetic considering his 2019 had him in the unwatchable "support group for assassins" comedy KILLERS ANONYMOUS, the possessed yacht horror trifle MARY, and now THE COURIER, a straight-to-VOD DIPSHIT DIE HARD IN A PARKING GARAGE. Sporting a scarred face and an eye-patch like he took a wrong turn on his way to playing the bad guy in a JOHNNY ENGLISH sequel, Oldman puts in a couple of days work as powerful and bizarrely-accented NYC real estate mogul Ezekial Manning(s), who's under house arrest in his luxury penthouse overlooking Central Park while facing charges of fraud and murder, the latter witnessed by lowly office worker Nick Murch (Amit Shah) during Manning(s)'s last trip to London. Murch is under Interpol witness protection and en route to a secret location in London to give video testimony to a hearing in DC when the independently-contracted courier (Olga Kurylenko) hired to deliver the video link is ambushed by the agents, who are secretly on Manning(s)'s payroll with a plot to kill Murch and frame The Courier.
Or, make that "Courier? COUUURRRRRIIIIERRRR?!!!" as psycho Interpol agent Bryant (THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA's William Moseley, who's matured into an unbelievably terrible actor) keeps tauntingly calling her Luther-from-THE WARRIORS-style, adding other creative bon mots like "Run, rabbit, run!," "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" and "FFFFUUUUUUUCCK!" when the Courier gets the upper hand and takes it upon herself to keep Murch alive and take out the rogue agents one by one in a closed-off parking structure (it somehow took four screenwriters to come up with this shit), forcing Bryant to repeatedly call Manning(s) and inform him the job still isn't done. THE COURIER is just dull, predictable, and brain-dead from the start, and Kurylenko is a capable action star who deserves better material than the leftover table scraps of Milla Jovovich and Noomi Rapace. Dermot Mulroney also pulls some Bruce Willis duty, glowering and pacing around an office as a CIA honcho who may or may not be trustworthy (SPOILER: he's not). And then there's Oldman, who spends almost all of his screen time in one or two rooms of Manning(s)'s posh apartment, ordering the hapless Bryant to "Finish this!" while periodically doing some PROFESSIONAL-inspired shouting at his Ivanka-like daughter (Calli Taylor) and looking at his phone, perhaps waiting for his agent to call with something better than THE COURIER. (R, 100 mins)
THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (Spain/Belgium/France/Portugal - 2018; US release 2019) Directed by Terry Gilliam. Written by Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni. Cast: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgard, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro, Jordi Molla, Sergi Lopez, Rossy de Palma, Jason Watkins, Oscar Jaenada, Hovik Keuchkerian, William Miller, Paloma Bloyd, Will Keen, Jorge Calvo, Antonio Gil, Rodrigo Poison. (Unrated, 133 mins) Terry Gilliam is no stranger to overcoming obstacles and adversity in bringing his vision to life, whether it's running wildly over budget on 1989's THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, bitterly clashing with Universal studio head Sid Sheinberg on 1985's BRAZIL and Miramax's Harvey Weinstein on 2005's THE BROTHERS GRIMM, or being forced to completely overhaul 2009's THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS after Heath Ledger's sudden death midway through production. But those were walks in the park compared to Gilliam's Sisyphean ordeal in getting THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE made. A dream project he began mulling over around the time of BARON MUNCHAUSEN, THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE was conceived by Gilliam and frequent collaborator Tony Grisoni (the pair also worked together on 1998's FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS and 2006's TIDELAND) as a revisionist take on the classic Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote, and began shooting in September 2000 with beloved French actor Jean Rochefort as Don Quixote and Johnny Depp as Toby, a present-day marketing executive who gets sucked back in time to the 16th century and is mistaken for loyal sidekick Sancho Panza by the aging and insane knight-errant.
Jean Rochefort in Gilliam's unfinished 2000 version
On the first day of filming, the problems started: while completing some early location work in Spain, Gilliam discovered that the constant flights from a nearby NATO training base would render the sound unusable, necessitating post-production dubbing and sound effects. On the second day, a hailstorm and some intense flash floods destroyed some equipment and altered the appearance of the surrounding cliffs, forcing Gilliam to scrap all of the first day's work since the shots wouldn't match. On the third day, Gilliam was told that the production's insurance company wouldn't cover the cost of the damaged or lost equipment. Then some actors started bailing. On the fifth day, the 70-year-old Rochefort was in obvious pain, wincing during takes and unable to ride a horse. He flew to Paris to visit his doctor and was diagnosed with a double herniated disc that required immediate surgery. With no timetable set for the return of Rochefort--who never acted in an English-language film to that point and spent several months learning the language just for the role--Gilliam and Depp soldiered on, shooting whatever they could to work around his absence, but production was soon suspended. By November, the ailing Rochefort was still sidelined under doctor's orders and the French producers and their insurers--citing the flood damage and Rochefort's medical issues as "acts of God"--shut down the production for good two months into filming. This was chronicled in the 2002 documentary LOST IN LA MANCHA, directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe and intended to be a making-of for the eventual DVD release, but the production grew so chaotic and cursed so quickly that they were gifted with an opportunity to create their own feature film instead.
While working on other projects in the ensuing years, Gilliam always had DON QUIXOTE on the backburner. From 2003 to 2016, he made it to various stages of pre-production, with Robert Duvall, Michael Palin, and John Hurt attached as Quixote at certain points (production was nearly set to begin in mid-2015 but was halted once more when Hurt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer), along with Depp, Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, and Jack O'Connell as the time-traveling Sancho Panza stand-in. A falling out and protracted legal battle with Portuguese producer Paulo Branco (who later tried--unsuccessfully--to halt the film's release, the stress of which contributed to Gilliam suffering a minor stroke in May 2018), and the implosion of a distribution deal with Amazon almost derailed the film again in 2016, but shooting finally began--finally, for real--in March 2017 with Gilliam's BRAZIL star Jonathan Pryce, who was originally cast in another role back in 2000, as Quixote, and Adam Driver as Toby. Gilliam and Grisoni had plenty of time to revise and restructure the story, and much like AVATAR had been brewing in James Cameron's head for so long that he used bits and pieces of it in other films over his career, longtime Gilliam fans will recognize familiar ideas and characterizations that may have surfaced in a similar form in his work over the last 30 years (there's more than a little of John Neville's Baron Munchausen and Robin Williams' Parry from THE FISHER KING in Pryce's portrayal of Don Quixote). But unlike Gilliam's 2014 film THE ZERO THEOREM, it doesn't play like a stopgap Gilliam's Greatest Hits package. THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE is the best thing Gilliam's done since 1995's 12 MONKEYS, and it's so near and dear to its maker's heart that you can sense his passion in every scene, almost like he can't believe it's finally being made. Or that after nearly 30 years of this being his white whale (the opening credits have a self-congratulatory "25 years in the making...and unmaking"), he'd have absolutely no excuse for not getting it right.
In Spain shooting a TV commercial, Driver's Toby is a former film school wunderkind who long ago succumbed to jaded cynicism, selling out to work in advertising. He's inspired when his obnoxious boss (Stellan Skarsgard) picks up a bootleg DVD from a gypsy peddler (Oscar Jaenada). It's Toby's award-winning student film from a decade earlier, a micro-budget, black-and-white version of Don Quixote that he shot in a nearby village, starring a cast of locals headed by simple, elderly shoemaker Javier (Pryce). Unable to focus on the TV commercial, Toby impulsively leaves the set and visits the village, which is still feeling the effects of the movie shoot from ten years ago: local innkeeper Raul (Hovik Keuchkerian) remains bitter over Toby telling his teenage daughter Angelica (Joana Ribeiro) that she could be a movie star, prompting her to run away in search of stardom that has only led a life as an escort for wealthy men; and Javier still remains in costume as a sideshow attraction, convinced he's Don Quixote. "Quixote" sees Toby and thinks he's Sancho Panza returning to serve as his faithful squire for more marvelous adventures in "chivalry."
Johnny Depp in the abandoned 2000 version
To say anything more would deprive you of the rambunctious and inspired mayhem that transpires, running the gamut from slapstick comedy to heartfelt drama (most notably, the time-travel element has been mostly jettisoned, with Gilliam having used it extensively in 12 MONKEYS and with the idea of alternate realities in THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, which really seems to have been a landing point for a lot of his initial QUIXOTE ideas). In a performance that would be generating awards buzz if this got any kind of release (it was given a one-night Fathom Events screening in theaters before heading to VOD on April 19, courtesy of Screen Media Films), Pryce is an absolute joy to behold. Watching him here, it's easy to imagine an alternate universe when Gilliam made this 25 or 30 years ago with a still-living Peter Sellers as Quixote. Pryce is matched by Driver, who spends much of the film in a state of sustained rage and confusion over the often absurdist plot turns that make this the funniest film Gilliam's done since his days in Monty Python.
Following the multi-decade nightmare of getting THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE out of his head and on the screen (Fulton and Pepe have also made their own sequel, HE DREAMED OF GIANTS, detailing the events following LOST IN LA MANCHA), Gilliam turns Quixote's saga into a very personal one that deals with the effects of the creative process and the sacrifices made in the name of art and integrity, whether it's an obsessive, ambitious filmmaker like young Toby blithely unaware of his impact on Javier and Angelica, or the cynicism and bitterness that can take hold when nothing goes right (Skarsgard's "The Boss" even casually tosses out "Act of God" as an excuse at one point, echoing the producers who shut the production down in 2000). It's a film that marches to the beat of its own drum, unafraid to go off on unexpected tangents and not really concerned with tying everything together, but always entertaining and never feeling self-indulgent. Considering the number of times he's faced insurmountable odds over his storied career, and let's be honest, some of it he brings on himself (re: THE BROTHERS GRIMM, why even get involved with a control-freak studio head known industry-wide as "Harvey Scissorhands" unless you're looking for a fight?), it's just nice to see this work as beautifully as it does and to see that ultimately, the struggle was worth it. THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (Gilliam dedicates it to Rochefort and Hurt, both of whom died in 2017) is just exuberant filmmaking on an grand scale, and the best buddy movie of 2019 so far.
THE DEATH OF STALIN (France/UK/Belgium - 2018) Directed by Armando Iannucci. Written by Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin and Peter Fellows. Cast: Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Jeffrey Tambor, Jason Isaacs, Michael Palin, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Rupert Friend, Paddy Considine, Adrian McLoughlin, Dermot Crowley, Paul Whitehouse, Paul Chahidi, Richard Brake, Diana Quick, Karl Johnson, Tom Brooke, Gerald Lepkowski. (R, 107 mins) Best known in America for creating the HBO series VEEP, Armando Iannucci has been one of the most respected names in British comedy for over 20 years. He co-created Steve Coogan's signature "Alan Partridge" character, seen in several British TV series and the 2013 film ALAN PARTRIDGE, and was the brains behind the scathing BBC political satire THE THICK OF IT. That was spun off into the hilarious 2009 film IN THE LOOP, both of which centered on the stunningly profane central performance of Peter Capaldi and more or less set the style and tone for VEEP. Iannucci stepped down as VEEP's showrunner after its fourth season, and he's back with his second feature film, THE DEATH OF STALIN, based on a 2017 French graphic novel by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin. The trademark Iannucci tone and endless, gloriously foul dialogue are here in all their glory, but THE DEATH OF STALIN is much darker than what we've seen from Iannucci in the past, largely because it depicts a series of actual events but runs them through its maker's uniquely skewed perspective and pitch-black comedy filter. This isn't just comedy of discomfort--it's comedy of unease. In less capable hands, it could've been an uneven and potentially tone-deaf disaster--after DR. STRANGELOVE, you can probably count on one hand the number of dark political comedies that are simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Perhaps it takes a cynical master of bullshit-calling like Iannucci to properly convey the unattainable heights of narcissistic sociopathy mixed the ego-driven, thorough incompetence displayed by the powers that be, with the resulting film being a vicious beatdown of dictatorial regimes embodying the adage of absolute power corrupting absolutely (the film was banned in Russia earlier this year after the Culture Ministry deemed it offensive), and though the film is set in the Soviet Union over 60 years ago, analogies can be drawn much closer to home in the here and now.
That's not to say it's all gloom and doom. THE DEATH OF STALIN has the expected uproarious quips and sarcastic one-liners that have become synonymous with Iannucci. In the Soviet Union in 1953, Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) is at the height of his dictatorial reign. He regularly draws up death lists, has people hauled off to gulags, routinely orders executions for minor infractions, and even those in his inner circle are constantly walking on eggshells so as not to have any comment be misconstrued in a way that will make this day their last as they live and die at the whims of a mercurial madman. When he dies suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage, the underlings and sycophants in his immediate orbit begin a war-like campaign of endless backstabbing, double-crossing, and shit-talking power plays as they jockey to assume power. Nothing is off limits and it doesn't matter how often they change policies or contradict themselves and everything for which the Union stands. In the hours and days following Stalin's death, his deputy secretary Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) is the next in line of succession and assumes temporary control, but other players are already plotting their next moves, namely the ruthless head of the NVPD secret police and security chief Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale) and wily, pragmatic Central Committee politico Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi). Malenkov immediately proves ineffective and indecisive, prone to easy manipulation by Beria and Khrushchev, with other Committee members Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin), Anastas Mikoyan (Paul Whitehouse), Nikolai Bulganin (Paul Chahidi), and Lazar Kaganovich (Dermot Crowley) caught in the middle waiting to see how things pan out. Others figuring into the chaotic proceedings include Stalin's daughter Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough), son Vasily (Rupert Friend), and highly decorated war hero Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov (Jason Isaacs), who helps Khrushchev lead the final coup to muscle out Malenkov and silence Beria for good.
The power struggle unfolds like a buffoonish chess game, with one of the unexpected highlights being the intentional decision to have the actors not attempt Russian accents and instead just talk like they talk. Hence, Buscemi is a wiseass Khrushchev who sounds like he's from one of the Five Boroughs, Tambor is an insecure Malenkov who talks like George Bluth, and Isaacs (channeling Capaldi's THICK OF IT persona) plays Zhukov like a Cockney thug in a Guy Ritchie movie. Once the political gamesmanship is underway, the insults and the ballbusting fly fast and furious, and Iannucci doesn't hesitate to play it blue, like Khrushchev dismissively responding to whiny Vasily pleading "I want to speak at my father's funeral" with a curt "And I wanna fuck Grace Kelly." There's also some more subtle jokes, particularly with some standout comedic timing by the great Palin, who's a joy as Molotov, getting long-winded and speechy during a vote that must be unanimous, and everyone around the table keeps raising and lowering their hands because they aren't sure what to do and need to keep up appearances. It's no spoiler to anyone who knows their history that Khrushchev ultimately emerged victorious in the plot to permanently succeed Stalin. That is, until he himself was ousted nine years later, having not learned what Iannucci shows in the closing scene at a concert being given by renowned and politically outspoken Russian pianist Maria Yudina (Olga Kurylenko), where new Soviet leader Khrushchev is oblivious to ambitious Leonid Brezhnev (Gerald Lepkowski) sitting diagonally behind him, looking over his shoulder, his wheels turning and another coup already being set in motion.
Though the title and the poster would indicate this is another by-the-numbers, Redbox-ready Nicolas Cage VOD actioner--and it gets off to a dubious start with video-burned opening credits straight out of a TV show-- VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY is a peculiar outlier in Cage's filmography, at least for this stage of his career. Cage originally planned to direct, something he hasn't done since 2002's little-seen SONNY, but at some point before shooting began, he handed the job off to veteran stunt coordinator and second-unit helmer Johnny Martin. Given Martin's pedigree, VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY is very light on action and stunts, which one might expect once you know it's based on Joyce Carol Oates' 2003 novel Rape: A Love Story (not hard to see why they went with a slightly more marketable title for the movie). For a while, after a shaky opening and the obvious budget deprivation on display, the Georgia-shot, Niagara Falls-set VENGEANCE does alright as a melancholy, low-key character piece until it gives way to overwrought, deck-stacking melodrama before the "vengeance" element kicks in. Taking a shortcut through the woods at night on their way home from a 4th of July barbecue, single mom Teena (Anna Hutchison of THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) and her 12-year-old daughter Bethie (Talitha Bateman) are attacked by four sub-literate, hillbilly yokels who physically assault Bethie and gang-rape Teena. Glum, burned-out (we know this because he moves pieces on a solitary chess board in his living room) cop and Gulf War PTSD case John Dromoor (Cage) catches the case and gets emotionally invested in it, still shell-shocked and trying to fill a void after the recent death of his partner during a botched arrest.
It looks to be an open-and-shut case, as the four rapists--all brothers--leave ample fingerprint and DNA evidence and are all identified by Bethie in a lineup, but their bitter, white trash mother (Charlene Tilton sighting!) makes her husband mortgage the house to hire slick, high-priced, Harley-riding defense attorney Jay Kirkpatrick (Don Johnson). At a preliminary hearing, Kirkpatrick tries to establish that Teena seduced the brothers, launching a town-wide smear campaign to slut-shame the victim, even questioning her competency as a parent. Kirkpatrick is also friends with the judge (Mike Pniewski), who overrules every objection from Teena's lawyer (Kara Flowers) and takes petty offense to grammatical errors in Dromoor's testimony ("It's 'my partner and I,' detective...not 'me and my partner'"). The brothers are released on bail and begin terrorizing Teena and Bethie, kill Teena's mother's (Deborah Kara Unger) cat, and intimidate witnesses, and then the judge moves the trial date up to give Teena's lawyer as little time to prep as possible. Seeing that Teena is getting a raw deal, Dromoor does what lone wolf cops in formulaic movies with the word "vengeance" in the title do. It takes about 75 of the film's 99 minutes for the vengeance to commence, but even after that, Cage turns in maybe the quietest performance of his career. He never even smiles. Johnson, who's become a great character actor in recent years (COLD IN JULY, BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99), delivers another terrific performance in a movie seen by no one. Hutchison and young Bateman are very good, at least until the script by TV vet John Mankiewicz (a writer on MIAMI VICE, a producer on HOUSE M.D. and HOUSE OF CARDS, and creator of the short-lived 1990s Jeff Fahey series THE MARSHAL) starts asking the audience to buy too many implausibilities. There's no way a judge would behave like this one does, and there's no way a defense attorney would sit there and let his clients leer at and threaten someone who's accusing them of the crime for which he's defending them, right there in court. By the end, VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY never lives up to its potential. It's too hokey and lacking in nuance and subtlety to be taken seriously, but it's too restrained and slow-moving to work as a dumb action thriller. It's earnest and well-meaning, but it can't reconcile its goals and decide what it wants to be. Cage and long-retired ONION FIELD and VISION QUEST director Harold Becker, who hasn't made a film since 2001's DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE, were among the producers. (Unrated, 99 mins)
THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM
(UK - 2017)
Based on Peter Ackroyd's 1994 novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, the Jack the Ripper-inspired British mystery THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM falls victim to some tedious stretches in its first half, but it gets better as it goes on. Even during its slow spells, it's a pleasure to watch just for the opportunity to enjoy the great Bill Nighy in a rare lead, brought in as a last-minute replacement for Alan Rickman, who hoped to make the film despite his pancreatic cancer diagnosis but was forced to back out when his health began rapidly declining just before filming began in October 2015 (Rickman died in January 2016). Of course Rickman would've been perfect (the film is dedicated to him), but Nighy is superb as Inspector John Kildare, a weary Scotland Yard official in 1890 London who gets the case of a serial killer known as "The Limehouse Golem" dumped in his lap. At the same time Kildare inherits the case, he finds a link to another involving stage actress Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke), accused of poisoning her husband John (Sam Reid). Kildare finds a journal with insane rantings that may implicate John as the Limehouse Golem, though the investigation leads to other suspects, including real-life figures like music hall comedian Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), novelist George Gissing (Morgan Watkins), and even Karl Marx (Henry Goodman). Partnered with constable George Flood (Daniel Mays), Kildare up-ends the Limehouse district to find proof John Cree is the killer, hoping that if Elizabeth is convicted of poisoning him, she can be spared execution for putting an end to the Golem's reign of terror.
Low-key despite some occasional flashes of splatter, THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM almost plays like an R-rated PBS mystery. Director Juan Carlos Medina and screenwriter Jane Goldman (KICK-ASS, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, both KINGSMAN movies) spend a little too much time in the first half on Leno's theatrical troupe, often veering from a murder mystery into a redux of Mike Leigh's TOPSY-TURVY. But once all the pieces are in place and everything involving Elizabeth's hellish upbringing and John's insane jealousy over her friendship with Leno and that her career is taking off while he languishes as a failed playwright is established, THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM takes off and becomes a riveting suspense piece, anchored by terrific performances from Nighy and Cooke (THE QUIET ONES). The production design and period detail are big pluses, with London looking about as gray, bleak, and grimy as it did in the 1979 Sherlock Holmes classic MURDER BY DECREE. It's not quite on the same level, but Nighy's Kildare--a complex character whose closeted homosexuality makes him the object of hushed scorn and dismissal among his colleagues, even though there's a cryptic moment where a sympathetic Flood whispers "I'm on your side"-- is ample proof that the actor would make a great Holmes. (Unrated, 109 mins)
GUN SHY (US/UK - 2017)
You probably won't find a worse comedy in 2017 than GUN SHY, a staggeringly awful adaptation of Mark Haskell Smith's 2007 novel Salty, which garnered some acclaim at the time for its Carl Hiaasen-esque comic mystery crossed with an Irvine Welsh sense of the grotesque. Smith co-wrote the screenplay, but everything that book reviewers liked about Salty appears to have been neutered into oblivion for GUN SHY. This is a film where it's abundantly clear that the endgame was a mystery for all involved. The humor here isn't clever, it isn't sly, it isn't raunchy...it isn't anything. The film plods along, gasping and wheezing to its conclusion without a single laugh or even a remotely humorous moment. Gags fall flat, the story goes nowhere, and the actors look completely stranded. It's not like there's a lack of talent here: Antonio Banderas and Olga Kurylenko are fine actors, and Simon West isn't an auteur by any means, but he's directed some entertaining movies (CON AIR, THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER, THE EXPENDABLES 2, THE MECHANIC), but GUN SHY is one of those rare instances where, whatever the intent was going in, nothing works. It's painfully unfunny and miserable to endure, and the only thing saving it from complete ruin is that Banderas actually seems to be enjoying himself. Between recent VOD duds like BLACK BUTTERFLY, FINDING ALTAMIRA, SECURITY, and now this, Banderas is due for either a new agent or an intervention.
Banderas is Turk Henry, former bassist/vocalist for the '80s hair metal band Metal Assassin, best known for their hit single "Teenage Ass Patrol." Kicked out of the band after his supermodel wife Sheila (Kurylenko) was deemed a "Yoko" by the other members, Turk's career and personal life are in the toilet. Now an emotionally needy, drunken recluse who still dresses like "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)"-era Steven Tyler, he hasn't left his Malibu mansion in two years, prompting Sheila to arrange a vacation to Turk's native Chile in an attempt to boost his spirits. Once there, she's kidnapped by a group of neophyte pirates who think they've struck gold and try to extort a huge ransom when they realize she's Turk Henry's wife. Turk's manager sends his assistant Marybeth (Aisling Loftus) and Clive Muggleton (Martin Dingle Wall), a Crocodile Dundee-like Aussie mercenary with impossibly white teeth and a serious shellfish allergy, to help Turk negotiate with pirate leader Juan Carlos (Ben Cura). US Homeland Security gets wind of the kidnapping and sends ambitious CIA agent Ben Harding (Mark Valley), who's quick to label it a terrorist act in order to boost his profile to his superiors. What follows is a lot of shameless mugging and dead air as entire sequences go by with nothing even remotely amusing, unless you count a vomiting llama, Turk getting bitten on the dick by a snake, Turk trying to dodge Harding by dressing in drag, a clueless Turk calling his GPS a "CGI," and mispronouncing easy words, like "tore-toys" for "tortoise." The novel had the vacation taking place in Thailand, with a hapless, shaggy dog Turk getting involved in busting a sex trafficking ring. Here, he's just a bumbling buffoon making an ass of himself in Santiago. There's no attempt at political satire, no attempts at physical comedy, and no attempt at any INHERENT VICE or BIG LEBOWSKI-style absurdist noir humor. No, the only thing the makers of GUN SHY had was "Antonio Banderas dressed up like a hair metal singer" and they just assumed everything would work itself out. GUN SHY is so lazy that it doesn't even have any insider, THIS IS SPINAL TAP-style jokes about the music industry. There's nothing here, though Banderas, not an actor known for his comedic skills, looks like he's having fun despite his helpless, idiotic character having absolutely nothing to do. As if GUN SHY wasn't oppressive enough, it pads out the running time by including four endings, two music videos during the closing credits, and three (!) post-credits stingers, as if anyone watching this would think "Wow, I had such a blast with these characters...just keep giving me more!" This is stunningly bad. (R, 92 mins)
This wildly-acclaimed Austrian import ("The rebirth of Austrian horror," one blog emphatically declared ) was hailed as a new genre classic by the horror scenester echo chamber when it opened in limited release and on VOD in September of this year. Sure, there's an occasional BABADOOK or IT FOLLOWS where the hype is justified, but accolades of this sort might carry more weight if those same scenesters didn't say that about every new indie horror movie that comes out (remember every Ti West movie? Or when everyone said STARRY EYES was the next classic? Remember how everyone was pumped about THE GALLOWS and then it was actually released?). GOODNIGHT MOMMY gets an extra love tap with the kid gloves since it's a subtitled foreign film, as if that lends it a classy sheen to help deflect the rote predictability of the entire endeavor. There's some baiting-and-switching and a big twist of a reveal at the end, but anyone not declared legally brain-dead will be able to call it by the ten-minute mark, so all that's left to do is sit and wait. Then the twist comes--and it plays out just as you predicted--and the movie's over. Giving off the stench of bargain-basement Michael Haneke, GOODNIGHT MOMMY has an interesting and disturbing set-up, but the writing/directing team of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala switch gears almost immediately, turning the film into another tired "evil children" piece that just spins its wheels and turns into a stultifyingly tedious waste of time. When their mother (Susanne Wuest) returns home from having some kind of vague cosmetic surgery, nine-year-old twin brothers Elias and Lukas (Elias and Lukas Schwarz) are alarmed by her increasingly erratic behavior--she's prone to mood swings, demands total silence, and won't even acknowledge Lukas--and come to believe the woman whose face is covered in gauze and bandages (an admittedly unsettling image) isn't their mother. So far, so good, but then the sinister element of "Who is this woman?" is up-ended as the bandages come off and the boys go to extreme measures to get this person who looks exactly like their mother to confess her true identity, morphing into a rote "creepy kids" movie, even if it's the sensitive Elias acting under the direction of the persuasive and domineering Lukas. The twist is so embarrassingly easy to see that you figure there has to be something more, but there isn't. That is, unless you count the boys super-glueing their mother's mouth and eyes shut and blood gushing all over the place when they try to cut her lips open. A film that almost sets a land-speed record for going from intriguing to actively pissing me off, GOODNIGHT MOMMY can't even get much out of its ominous, middle-of-nowhere setting in a huge house straight out of a classic giallo. Come on, bloggers and horror fanboys. Your hype and fawning praise are meaningless if you don't start being a little more discerning and a little less concerned with keeping the free shit coming. (R, 100 mins)
MISSISSIPPI GRIND
(US - 2015)
For a while, the gambling drama MISSISSIPPI GRIND, the latest from the writing/directing team of Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck (HALF NELSON), seems like a shaggy dog road movie that doesn't appear to be ambling to anywhere in particular. But it carries itself like a '70s character study along the lines of its two primary 1974 influences: you could argue that it's a loose remake of Robert Altman's CALIFORNIA SPLIT, but it also owes a lot to Karel Reisz's THE GAMBLER, right down to the brief presence of veteran filmmaker and GAMBLER screenwriter James Toback in a rare acting role. With his slumped shoulders and dark cloud perpetually hovering over his head, Ben Mendelsohn straddles the line between good-natured but unlucky sad sack and sketchy, self-serving shitbag as Gerry, a down-on-his-luck real estate agent who owes money all over Dubuque. With his soft-spoken but serious loan shark (Alfre Woodard in some unexpected casting) tells him the clock's ticking, Gerry hits the road with new acquaintance Curtis (Ryan Reynolds), a confident and gregariously likable guy he recently met at a seedy dive of a casino, the kind of effortlessly smooth talker who loves to tell stories and has everybody at the poker table laughing. Once he meets Curtis, Gerry coincidentally starts winning and is convinced Curtis is his good-luck charm ("You're my leprechaun!"). Gerry splits town, helping himself to $200 in his employer's petty cash fund, dragging the goes-where-life-takes-him Curtis (Curtis to Gerry: "What? You have a job?") on a road trip to Memphis and through Little Rock to New Orleans, by which time Gerry presumes to have earned enough money to invite himself to a secret poker game with a $25K buy-in hosted by Tony Roundtree (Toback), a big-time gambler he only knows of through Curtis' second-hand stories.
Things obviously don't pan out, as Gerry is a character played by Ben Mendelsohn, who's sort-of cornering the market on dodgy, untrustworthy skeezes and small-time scam artists (ANIMAL KINGDOM, KILLING THEM SOFTLY, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, LOST RIVER, and the Netflix series BLOODLINE). Like the Altman film it models itself on, MISSISSIPPI GRIND is about the interaction between the two main characters and how their bond brings out the best and worst in one another. Gerry is a hopeless, reckless gambler who loves the thrill of the bet but is terrible at it. So is Curtis, but his confidence carries him and compared to Gerry, he knows when to walk away. Curtis, whose financial solvency is never really explored, mainly just likes talking to people and finds poker tables are the best place to people-watch. He goes along with Gerry initially because he's got nothing else going on but eventually because he just likes him, and if Gerry believes Curtis is the source of his luck, then so be it. It's hard to get a read on Curtis, and that's by design. Reynolds again proves himself to be a much better actor than his detractors would ever be willing to admit (he was a last-minute replacement for Jake Gyllenhaal, who was delayed on another project), and he's a good match with Mendelsohn, who gets to show different shades of his character as the film progresses. He's funny and likable one moment, desperate and pathetic the next--nowhere is this more apparent than in a very uncomfortable reunion with his embittered ex-wife (Robin Weigert). Sienna Miller and Analeigh Tipton are saddled with underwritten and rather superfluous supporting roles as hookers-with-hearts-of-gold who capture the attention of Curtis and Gerry respectively, but other than that and an ending that's sufficient but does wrap things up a little too neat and tidy, MISSISSIPPI GRIND is an engaging, slow-burner throwback character piece that would've been right at home if it had opened 40 years ago instead of today, on just 46 screens for a total gross of $130,000. (R, 109 mins)
MOMENTUM
(US/South Africa/Spain - 2015)
The kind of movie where an establishing aerial shot features the Capitol Building in the foreground and the Washington Monument in the background and still feels the need to include the caption "Washington, D.C.," MOMENTUM is cliched almost to the point of parody. It has a hissing, snarky villain who, just before he's about to off the hero, opts to give an endless, condescending speech instead. You'd be correct in assuming a bad guy like that is also prone to hackneyed chess analogies that come back to bite him in the ass, as he of course gets the upper hand on the hero and sneers "Check!" which is pretty much an open invitation to that hero to declare "Checkmate!" just before killing him. And that's exactly how it plays out. Nevertheless, once it gets settled in after a clunky and confusing opening, MOMENTUM is stupid but reasonably entertaining action movie junk food. It's complete garbage, but it's energetic and has a pair of fun performances at its core, plus one seriously slumming surprise guest star who's not featured in the trailer, the poster art, or in any of the promotional material, and who couldn't possibly have been on the set for more than half a day, literally phoning in his performance from behind a desk.
After a botched Cape Town bank robbery where one of the criminals, Alexis (QUANTUM OF SOLACE's Olga Kurylenko) loses her mask in front of a lobby full of witnesses, a cleanup crew of hired killers led by the gleefully snide and sardonic Mr. Washington (James Purefoy) is dispatched to eliminate the entire team. Alexis had plans to disappear after this One Last Job, but now she's fighting for her life with Washington and his goons in hot pursuit. The killers are in the employ of a corrupt US senator (Morgan Freeman...yes, that Morgan Freeman), who's secretly planning a terrorist attack in Chicago in order to start a new war and secure a huge defense contract, with his entire nefarious plan laid out on a flash drive that Alexis acquired in the bank job (why a US senator would save that on a flash drive and then go through the trouble of storing it in a safety deposit box in South Africa remains a mystery). Co-written by Adam Marcus (JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY, TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D) and directed by a debuting Stephen Campanelli, a veteran camera operator who's been part of Clint Eastwood's crew since 1995's THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (MILLION DOLLAR BABY and INVICTUS star and nice guy Freeman obviously doing a solid for Campanelli, who likely wasn't going to risk getting booted off the Malpaso payroll by asking Clint to play the senator), MOMENTUM knows exactly what kind of movie it is, and it's almost nonstop action after the clumsy first act. Kurylenko displays steely gravitas as a kickass heroine who walks away from CGI explosions like a pro (team her up with Milla Jovovich!), and a constantly smirking Purefoy is having a blast as Mr. Washington ("Oh, you magnificent bitch!" he yells at Alexis when she outsmarts him yet again), There's some brutal action sequences, some winking Eastwood homages (cue the "Do you feel lucky?" speech) and self-referential auto-critiques ("I've seen this in too many movies," Washington glowers as Alexis is doing exactly what he thinks she's doing) and an inspired bit where one bad guy's head is smashed apart with a kid's Tonka Truck. A late-breaking plot development involving Alexis' background as a rogue CIA superagent recruited from the Mossad would appear to set up a BOURNE-like franchise that likely isn't happening, considering the $20 million film went straight to VOD in the US and is currently making headlines for grossing the equivalent of $69 during its ten-screen theatrical release in the UK. It's enjoyable for what it is--wait for it to turn up on Netflix Instant and queue it up on a slow night expecting nothing and you'll be entertained. (Unrated, 96 mins)
The possibilities seem limitless when you think of the entertainment potential of Nicolas Cage playing a Louisiana politician embroiled in a sex scandal. But THE RUNNER, the Oscar-winning actor's latest straight-to-VOD trifle, demonstrates barely enough oomph to be classified as lukewarm. Playing like a really boring season of HOUSE OF CARDS whittled down to 90 minutes and missing all the good parts, THE RUNNER is set in 2010 just after the BP oil spill and offers Cage, with a wildly on-and-off N'awlins drawl, as Colin Bryce, a little-known New Orleans-based congressman who makes headlines after delivering an impassioned speech shredding BP during a televised hearing. A rising star with Senate ambitions crashes quickly when hotel security footage shows him in an elevator dalliance with the wife of a local fisherman. Bryce's PR-savvy wife Deborah (Connie Nielsen) has overlooked his past infidelities in their 25-year business arrangement of a marriage and is willing to stick with him as long as he doesn't resign and start back at square one. He does resign, she leaves him, and he stops just short of going full TIGHTROPE with New Orleans prostitutes (the camera pans down to a wad of bills and a couple of Trojans just to let us know he's safe about it) before a whirlwind romance with his married-but-separated consultant Kate Haber (Sarah Paulson). Bryce then rebuilds his career as a pro-bono attorney working on lawsuits against BP until his attempt to get back in politics forces him to realize that it's all about schmoozing lobbyists and greasing palms or corporate benefactors in the arena of political gamesmanship.
Who cares? Where's the story here? Where's the hook? As a drama, it's uninteresting, and as a character study, it doesn't even qualify as one-dimensional. You have to gladhand and sell part of your soul to be a politician? Thank you, writer/director Austin Stark for blowing the lid off that one. Cage plays it completely straight in a story that's begging for him to conjure some of his manic BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL - NEW ORLEANS craziness. I respect Cage wanting to play something straight, and it's probably not fair to criticize THE RUNNER for not being the film I wish it was, but if it offered anything substantive or even slightly intriguing, I wouldn't have to wish it was something else. What's most difficult in assessing THE RUNNER is that there's really nothing wrong with it in its presentation or its filmmaking: the performances are fine--there's also Wendell Pierce as Bryce's chief advisor and Peter Fonda as Bryce's alcoholic father, a beloved progressive 1970's New Orleans mayor whose legend casts a long shadow-- and there's nothing bad in Stark's direction, but there's just no meat to the story. THE RUNNER tries to be Cage's THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN, but there's two problems with that: nobody remembers THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN and the end result is about as exciting as watching Nicolas Cage watch C-SPAN. (R, 90 mins)
BIG GAME (Finland/UK/Germany/US - 2015)
With some more convincing visual effects and better distribution, the high-concept, dumb-but-fun BIG GAME could've been a decent-sized hit. Written and directed by Jalmari Helander (the Finnish holiday horror cult hit RARE EXPORTS), BIG GAME is short (the closing credits start rolling at 77 minutes), and it's the kind of movie that dads and their preteen sons would really enjoy. Instead, Anchor Bay rolled it out on a whopping 11 screens and VOD, even with star Samuel L. Jackson riding high on KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE and AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON. Jackson is strictly in paycheck mode--yes, he does get one obscured-by-an-explosion "motherfucker"--as lame-duck US President William Alan Moore, dealing with declining approval ratings and a calculated effort by his opponents to smear him as "wimpy." He's already survived one assassination attempt, which left a bullet lodged near the heart of his top Secret Service agent Morris (Ray Stevenson). Moore is on his way back from a summit when Air Force One is shot down over the mountains of Finland. Morris, bitter about taking a bullet for a man he perceives to be a spineless coward, sabotaged the parachutes of the other agents and is revealed to be in cahoots with psychotic terrorist Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus) in a plot to kill the President. Moore's escape pod is discovered by 13-year-old Oskari (RARE EXPORTS' Onni Tommila), who's hunting in the forest alone to prove his manhood to his father and the small village's close-knit hunter-gatherer types. Oskari steps up to help the President and get him through the forest to show his father he's a worthy outdoorsman and the President shakes off his wussiness to take on Morris, Hazar, and their associates who will stop at nothing to eliminate him.
Sort-of like a family-friendly OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, BIG GAME is the very definition of a harmless diversion. Jackson isn't very convincing playing a doormat, and may have only signed on for the free trip to Helsinki, but he has a nice rapport with young Tommila. Stevenson and Kurtulus are pretty one-dimensional bad guys (Stevenson seems to be amusing himself by doing an Alec Baldwin impression), but you also get a character actor summit back home, with Victor Garber as the VP, Jim Broadbent as a CIA terrorism expert, Felicity Huffman as the CIA director, and Ted Levine as the Joint Chiefs chair. Helander pulls off a couple of imaginative action sequences--one involving Moore and Oskari huddled inside a runaway freezer--that succeed in spite of some greenscreen work that looks rushed. The kind of movie where no one can off a bad guy without a snarky quip of some kind, BIG GAME is brainless fun if you're in the right mood, and an earnest attempt at showing us what a low-budget Finnish Jerry Bruckheimer production might look like. (PG-13, 87 mins) THE WATER DIVINER (US/Australia - 2014; 2015 US release)
It doesn't seem like that long ago that an Oscar-winning actor like Russell Crowe making his narrative directing debut with an epic period piece would've been instant awards-season material. Indeed, THE WATER DIVINER was a big Christmas Day 2014 opening in Australia and other parts of the world, but Warner Bros. sat on it for several more months in the US before giving it a limited release on just 385 screens in April 2015, making it the Oscar-winning actor's least-seen film since 2009's instantly obscure (and deservedly so) TENDERNESS. It's that awards season presumptuousness that's the first step in hindering the film, which leisurely strolls out of the gate and unfolds at the speed of Merchant-Ivory, seemingly already assuming it's an Oscar front-runner. Set in 1919, the film also stars Crowe as Joshua Connor, a rugged Australian farmer and father of three sons who were killed on the same day in the Battle of Gallipoli four years earlier. Connor's still-grieving wife Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie) has lost her grip on reality and still talks about their sons as if they were boys, fixing their shoes and darning their socks, and even insisting that Connor read a bedtime story to them in their empty room at night. After Eliza commits suicide, Connor heads to Turkey to recover the remains of his boys and bring them home to be buried next to their mother. The Gallipoli battle site is declared off limits by occupying British forces, but Connor finds an unlikely ally in Major Hasam (Yilmaz Erdogan of ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA), a leader for the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli but now working as a Turkish liaison with the Australia-New Zealand ANZAC forces on locating and identifying remains at the battle site's mass burial. At his hotel in Istanbul, Connor also bonds with proprietor Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and her young son Orhan (Dylan Georgiades). Ayshe, who also lost her husband at Gallipoli, initially resents the Australian "enemy" but comes to sympathize with him upon learning that he's lost his wife and his sons, and their growing friendship stirs resentment in Omer (Steve Bastoni), Ayshe's controlling brother-in-law to whom she has essentially been handed over as property and is arranged to be married when she decides her grieving period is over.
Crowe's film is sincere but inert and predictable, from the mutual, it's-nothing-personal-just-war understanding and respect that Connor and Hasam come to as they become friends, to the slowly blossoming romance between Connor and Ayshe. THE WATER DIVINER takes a turn for the silly when Connor's keen ability for locating ground water becomes a Spidey Sense of sorts when he uses it to ascertain the exact spot where his sons were killed. It's also hard to buy Connor's flashbacks to Gallipoli events that he couldn't possibly be remembering but rather, sees them as paranormal visions. Are screenwriters Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios trying to take the leap that Connor's talent for water divining leads to something more spiritually divine? If so, it doesn't work. The cramming in of the romantic subplot is soap-opera material at best, especially with a ludicrous dinner-by-500-candlelights scene that's unintentionally hilarious, as are some terrible CGI explosions that look like they were done using an app on Crowe's iPhone. The ending is weak, rushed, and unsatisfying, though there are moments throughout where the film almost pulls it together before bumbling and stumbling again. Crowe's performance is fine, and he has a good "buddy" chemistry with Erdogan, and when sequences aren't being thwarted by too-obvious greenscreen backgrounds, the location shooting in Australia and Turkey looks very good thanks to regular Peter Jackson cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, whose last film this was--the 59-year-old Oscar winner for FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING died of a heart attack just three days after the film's US opening. At the end of the day, THE WATER DIVINER is a well-intentioned but leadenly-paced and meandering misfire. (R, 111 mins)
Directed by Roger Donaldson. Written by Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek. Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Luke Bracey, Olga Kurylenko, Bill Smitrovich, Will Patton, Caterina Scorsone, Amila Terzemehic, Lazar Ristovski, Mediha Musliovic, Patrick Kennedy, Eliza Taylor, Tara Jevrosimovic. (R, 109 mins)
Pierce Brosnan has dual purposes with THE NOVEMBER MAN: 1) to remind everyone that yes, he was once James Bond, and 2) to hitch a ride on the "aging action guy" bandwagon with his own Liam Neeson-esque action vehicle. The now 61-year-old Brosnan played 007 in four films: GOLDENEYE (1995), TOMORROW NEVER DIES (1997), THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999), and DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002). All were huge hits and Brosnan was a popular 007 at the time, but in the years since his departure from the role, his stock among fans has plummeted. There was a time many years ago that George Lazenby was everyone's least favorite Bond, at least until some point in the 1980s when those who dismissed his lone Bond outing, 1969's ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, finally got around to actually watching it and found it was one of the best films in the series and easily ranked alongside the best of the undisputed greatest of all Bonds, Sean Connery. And when Brosnan was firmly ensconced in the role, Bond fans usually never passed up an opportunity to bash the short-lived Timothy Dalton era (1987's THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS and 1989's LICENCE TO KILL). But once Daniel Craig took over with 2006's CASINO ROYALE, there seemed to be a resurgence of interest in the Dalton films, especially LICENCE TO KILL, which was the most violent 007 film up to that time, with Dalton's Bond uncharacteristically cold, unsympathetic, and hell-bent on revenge. In the late '80s, Dalton was criticized for many of the same reasons Craig would be praised two decades later.
So now, all these years later, with one-and-done Lazenby having earned everyone's respect, fans finally showing appreciation for Dalton's tenure, and we all seem to be cool with the relative lightheartedness of the Roger Moore years, Brosnan has become the odd man out and the Bond that people now suddenly don't like. None of his films are anyone's idea of an essential Bond, though GOLDENEYE is very good and comes the closest. The negativity toward Brosnan probably stems from DIE ANOTHER DAY supplanting 1979's MOONRAKER as the world's least-favorite Bond film, with its terrible CGI, the invisible car, and the Madonna cameo. DIE ANOTHER DAY is terrible, but it's not Brosnan's fault. He was always a good mix of Connery and Moore, playing it mostly straight but able to deliver a corny, smutty double entendre with the panache of Moore at his most winkingly self-aware ("I thought Christmas only came once a year," Brosnan's 007 smirks before another round with Denise Richards' sexy nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH). I'm not sure why we have to have a worst Bond or why it's Brosnan's turn to hold the dishonor--all of the Bond actors had their stumbles. Have you seen 1967's YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE lately? Connery isn't even hiding his utter boredom with the entire project and it's without question his worst performance as 007. And sure, Moore scraped bottom with MOONRAKER but you can't dismiss THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) or FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981). The point is, the idea of Brosnan in another spy thriller is a great idea. Yes, there's the 007 connection, but it's something that fits him well and he's good at it.
By that same token, it's impossible to not draw comparisons, but THE NOVEMBER MAN starts out by working hard to distance Brosnan from his 007 years. Based on the 1987 novel There Are No Spies, the seventh book in the "November Man' spy series by Bill Granger, THE NOVEMBER MAN opens with CIA killing machine Peter Devereaux (Brosnan) and his youthful protege David Mason (Luke Bracey) botching a job in Montenegro where Devereaux goes incognito as the US Ambassador to thwart an assassination attempt but failing to stop a stray bullet that manages to kill a small child. Five years later, Devereaux is in self-imposed exile in Switzerland but is Pulled Back Into The Game for One Last Job by gruff CIA chief Hanley (an enjoyably scenery-chewing turn by veteran character actor Bill Smitrovich). Devereaux's old Russian flame Natalia (Medina Musliovic) is a double agent working undercover for the CIA to dig up info on Gen. Arkady Federov (Lazar Ristovski), an infamous figure in the second Chechen War who's gunning to be Russia's next president. Natalia has information that ties Federov to human rights atrocities and child prostitution, and Devereaux is supposed to extract her and get her over the border into Finland. The job goes to shit when Federov figures out what Natalia's been up to and sends the military after her, but they're intercepted by none other than Simon, who has orders from Hanley's Langley-based boss Weinstein (Will Patton) to kill Natalia. He does, which starts a game of cat-and-mouse between teacher and pupil, with Devereaux on the run with human rights worker Alice Fournier (QUANTUM OF SOLACE Bond girl Olga Kurylenko)--whose name came up in some of Natalia's files--with the CIA, Mason, and lethal Russian assassin Alexa (Amila Terzimehic) in hot pursuit.
THE NOVEMBER MAN gets off to a relentlessly fast-paced start, with one exciting chase sequence after another. Journeyman director Roger Donaldson, who's done everything from crackling thrillers (1987's NO WAY OUT) to the worst blockbuster hit of the 1980s (1988's COCKTAIL) and everything in between (1995's SPECIES, 2000's THIRTEEN DAYS, and 2005's THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN), and previously worked with Brosnan on the 1997 volcano disaster movie DANTE'S PEAK, stages the action in an admirably coherent way, with nothing in the way of quick cuts and shaky-cam. Unlike the 007 films, THE NOVEMBER MAN is action of the hard-R variety, with bone crushing fights and copious amounts of blood and splatter. In a way, with its extreme violence and glimpses of the seamier side of Eastern Europe (this was shot in Belgrade), it brings to mind a very high-end Millennium/NuImage production that follows the Cannon ethos of the late '80s. Indeed, if Brosnan had hypothetically teamed up with Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to make his own knockoff 007 movie 25 years ago before he got the actual gig, modern technology aside, it probably would've come out looking a lot like THE NOVEMBER MAN, give or take a J. Lee Thompson, a Herbert Lom, or a Yehuda Efroni. Sure, it's routine and of course, it's got "Badasses walking away from explosions" if you're playing the action cliche drinking game, but for a good while, it's perfectly entertaining escapism. But about 3/4 of the way in, things starts falling apart. Plot conveniences abound, twists emerge out of nowhere, characters start knowing things they can't possibly know, behaving in contradictory fashion, and in one case, disappearing completely, and one new character is so arbitrarily and haphazardly shoehorned in for the climax that they practically scream "Hastily added during reshoots." And just when things should really get cooking, the film becomes hopelessly muddled and confusing and it feels like cuts have been made at random. Scenes seem to be missing. Devereaux addresses someone by another name at one crucial moment and, the way it's presented, he has no way of knowing that information. It's a shame, because for about 75 minutes, THE NOVEMBER MAN was looking like the kind of no-bullshit, throwback action flick that we don't see nearly enough of on the big screen these days.
Co-producer Brosnan, who bought the rights to the book after he was dismissed as 007 and first tried to put the project together back in 2006, carries the film like the old pro that he is, relishing a chance to engage in some mean, gritty action. He's quite believable as the cynical, weathered, seen-it-all type and he and Bracey (who has the Keanu Reeves role in the forthcoming POINT BREAK remake) play the bickering, back-and-forth ballbusting well, particularly when the experienced Devereaux gets the edge on Mason time and again. It's unfortunate that the last section of the film plays out in such a choppy and sloppy fashion. It's doubtful Granger's novel was written that way or that the script, credited to Michael Finch (PREDATORS) and Karl Gajdusek (OBLIVION), was constructed in that fashion. No, the late implosion of THE NOVEMBER MAN reeks of distributor interference and too many cooks in the kitchen and, as is usually the case in such situations, a perfectly good thing was spoiled.
Another entry in the post-TAKEN sweepstakes, the by-the-numbers ERASED allows Aaron Eckhart to channel his inner Liam Neeson as Ben Logan, an ex-CIA agent living in Antwerp where he's working as a consultant for a high-tech security firm. He's recently been joined by his estranged teenage daughter Amy (Liana Liberato) after the death of his ex-wife back in the States, and while they're taking baby steps, they aren't exactly getting along. Father and daughter set aside their differences quickly when they make an evening stop at Ben's office to find it completely empty, his e-mail account and phone records wiped, and the company headquarters in Brussels having no record of employment for him or his MIA co-workers. It would seem he's been...wait for it....hold on...you guessed it...ERASED!
What follows is a convoluted conspiracy involving a nefarious corporation hiring a none-too-wise Ben to inadvertently assist in a plot to arm a rebel faction in Mozambique in exchange for access to a lithium mine. But it allows Eckhart a chance to kick ass and shoot bad guys throughout Belgium, as he's pursued by an ex-lover and CIA black-ops colleague played by Olga Kurylenko, who's introduced dropping two Alka-Seltzers into a glass of water and chugging it so we know she's hard, driven, and on-the-clock 24/7. And, SPOILER ALERT, the first thing out of Amy's mouth when she realizes her father was once a government-contracted killer is "I don't even know who you are!" Feeling like the kind of cable-ready international programmer that should've debuted on Reelz, ERASED makes nice use of Antwerp and Brussels scenery and shows that Eckhart can be a formidable action guy, but this material is pretty second-rate, Arash Amel's predictable script is riddled with clichés, and NORTH FACE director Philipp Stolzl, a music video vet who's worked with artists like Madonna, Garbage, and Rammstein, really lets the pace lag at times. There is one unexpected noteworthy bit where Ben's car tumbles from an on-ramp and down to the highway below after a chase sequence, and you can tell they really let the car roll off because it looks as clumsy and awkward as something like that would look in real life. Sure, Eckhart is a much better actor than, say, Steven Seagal, but for the most part, there's nothing to differentiate the instantly-forgettable and aptly-titled ERASED from any of the countless other DTV black-ops conspiracy thrillers you've seen hundreds of times before, probably why it only managed to get a US release on just 51 screens. (R, 105 mins)
WRONG (France - 2012; 2013 US release)
WRONG is the latest film from French writer/director/musician Quentin Dupieux, who gave us RUBBER, arguably cinema's greatest "killer tire on a rampage" movie. WRONG is similar in its oddball nature with its Franz Kafka-meets-Michel Gondry-and-Charlie Kaufman sense of absurdist, nightmare whimsy as it follows affable Dolph Springer (Jack Plotnick) on a quest to find his missing dog, Paul. WRONG opens with a firefighter taking a dump in the middle of the street and quickly gives us Dolph dealing with oddball neighbors; a clock that goes from 7:59 to 7:60; an organic pizza joint with a clingy cashier (Alexis Dziena) who loves Dolph but gets him confused with his gardener Victor (Eric Judor) and gets pregnant, going from conception to labor in one day; a blank, empty, stamped envelope that arrives in Dolph's mailbox; Dolph going to his job every day in an office where there's a constant torrential downpour, even though he got fired three months earlier; a belligerent cop (Mark Burnham) who's far too eager to speak his mind; and a wealthy mystery man named Master Chang (William Fichtner) who knows the whereabouts of Paul. There's also a private eye (Steve Little) searching for the dog, using a new technology that involves recording onto cassette the subconscious memories of canine bowel movements, which of course gives us the line "I was able to access the turd's memories." Like RUBBER, WRONG is a prefab cult movie that's amusing for awhile until it stops being amusing and just becomes tedious and overly impressed with its own eccentricity. (Unrated, 93 mins)
