SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL (US - 2020) Directed by Peter Berg. Written by Sean O'Keefe and Brian Helgeland. Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Winston Duke, Alan Arkin, Iliza Shlesinger, Michael Gaston, Bokeem Woodbine, Marc Maron, James Dumont, Austin Post, Colleen Camp, Hope Olaide Wilson, Kip Weeks, Brandon Scales, Ayana Brown, Dustin Tucker, Rebecca Gibel, Alexandra Vino. (R, 110 mins) Mononymous Boston private eye Spenser was the subject of 40 novels by Robert B. Parker published from 1973 to 2011, as well as the inspiration for the 1985-1988 ABC series SPENSER FOR HIRE with Robert Urich in the title role and Avery Brooks as his buddy and partner Hawk, later followed by a trio of 1999-2001 A&E TV-movies with Joe Mantegna and Ernie Hudson. Following Parker's death in 2010, his estate commissioned mystery writer Ace Atkins to continue the Spenser series. Atkins has since written another eight Spenser novels, and it's his second, 2013's Wonderland, that's the basis of the Netflix Original film SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL, a very loose adaptation repurposed as an origin story, using little aside from the character names, incidental details, and the Boston setting, which is probably the biggest reason Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg were attracted to the project. Yes, it's another chance for Wahlberg, in his fifth collaboration with Berg, to indulge in his feckin' "Say hi to your mother for me" act, along with obligatory shout-outs to Dunkin and classic rock bands Boston and Aerosmith.
As the film opens, disgraced Boston cop Spenser is about to be paroled after serving a five-year stretch for beating the shit out of his asshole captain Boylan (Michael Gaston), with whom he was already butting heads when he showed up at his house unannounced to discuss a case and walked in on him in an act of domestic violence against his wife. Ex-boxer Spenser shacks up in Southie with his cranky, fatherly former trainer Henry (Alan Arkin) and has to share a room with Henry's latest protege Hawk (Winston Duke of BLACK PANTHER and US). It's a temporary arrangement, as he just wants to leave Boston behind, get a license to drive a big rig, and move to Arizona with his beloved, elderly dog Pearl (who's giving him the cold shoulder and has bonded with Hawk during her human's five-year absence), but fate intervenes. The next morning, breaking news reports reveal that now-Chief of Police Boylan has been killed and in no time at all, Spenser's former partner Driscoll (Bokeem Woodbine) is knocking at the door, checking his alibi. Spenser is persona non grata with all of his one-time colleagues and the first obvious suspect, though Boylan's killer is quickly revealed to be Terence Graham (Brandon Scales), a boy scout of a cop who had drugs and money stashed away in his home and his found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Graham's widow (Hope Olaide Wilson) insists her late husband is being framed and that his suicide was staged, and Spenser isn't buying the official Boston P.D. story either. He's almost instantly nosing around in places he doesn't belong, with an intimidating Hawk as an initially reluctant but soon enthusiastic sidekick as they uncover a tangled web of corruption involving drug trafficking, a shady racetrack land deal, some Aryan Nations assholes in the joint (among them Austin Post, aka Post Malone, really stretching as a guy named "Squeeb"), machete-wielding enforcers, a money-laundering hit man known as Tracksuit Charlie (James Dumont), and a ring of dirty cops that might...wait for it...goall the way to the top.
Co-written by Oscar-winning L.A. CONFIDENTIAL screenwriter Brian Helgeland (his first gig since 2015's Krays biopic LEGEND), SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL doesn't have an original idea in its head, but it's enjoyable-enough formulaic entertainment most of the way, with Wahlberg much more likable here than in his last two Berg films, with the ludicrous, pandering bullshit of PATRIOTS DAY and the abysmal, career-worst MILE 22. He and Duke make a fun team that's eventually joined by his hot-headed, tough-as-nails ex Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger, seemingly patterning her performance on Heidi Gardner's recurring SNL character "Angel, Every Boxer's Girlfriend from Every Boxing Movie Ever"). SPENSER gets some points docked for not giving a national treasure like Arkin something substantive to do, and Berg indulges in way too many classic rock needle-drops: it opens and closes with Boston's "Foreplay/Long Time," Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" plays during some destructive truck crashes and a subsequent shootout (the big rig Spenser drives is called "Black Betty," and the only surprise is that they didn't license Ram Jam), Foreigner's "Feels Like the First Time" blares when Spenser and Cissy have wild sex in a restaurant restroom, and Neil Diamond's 'Sweet Caroline" accompanies a brawl in a cop bar where Spenser is no longer welcome. SPENSER is an OK time-killer that moves fast, is never dull, has a handful of funny lines, and gets dumber the longer it goes on. Spenser's only been away for five years but he has no idea how computers and the cloud work? And don't miss one really hackneyed exposition dump when Spenser uncovers a secret recording made by Graham during a private conversation with Boylan, where Graham engages in the most "I'm clearly wearing a wire" line of questioning you'll ever hear, or later, when the criminal mastermind behind it all Facetimes Spenser and actually says "Be there in one hour...and bring me my drug shipment!" Who talks like that? C'mon, Helgeland. You're smarter than that.
MILE 22 (US/China - 2018) Directed by Peter Berg. Written by Lea Carpenter. Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Lauren Cohan, Iko Uwais, John Malkovich, Ronda Rousey, Terry Kinney, Carlo Alban, Sam Medina, Natasha Goubskaya, Chae Rin Lee, Emily Skeggs, Keith Arthur Bolden, Poorna Jagannathan, Peter Berg, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Sean Avery, David Garelik. (R, 93 mins) A fictional offshoot of actor-turned-director Peter Berg's "Mark Wahlberg: American Hero" trilogy, MILE 22 sees the duo hitting rock bottom and serves as irrefutable proof that whatever potential Berg might've had is gone and he's totally regressing as a filmmaker. LONE SURVIVOR was prone to military cliches but was a solid, well-acted film overall, and the underappreciated DEEPWATER HORIZON was even better, probably because it didn't paint Wahlberg as the sole hero and gave a lot of screen time to Kurt Russell and other actors, making it more of an ensemble piece. PATRIOTS DAY, Wahlberg/Berg's laughably simplistic take on the Boston Marathon bombing, which placed Wahlberg's completely fictional everyman cop as a tough-talking Johnny On-the-Spot who's magically at the center of all the action, even barking orders at FBI guys and government officials who hold off on making their next move until they consult with him, was a huge stumble, and MILE 22 finds the pair suffocating on the toxic fumes of their alpha male bullshit. This film is atrocious on nearly every level, from its confused plot to its quick-cut action sequences, which are over-edited to the point of sheer incoherence, to Berg functioning as less of a director and more of an enabler who's derelict in his duties, doing nothing to rein in his star, who turns in one of the most embarrassingly self-indulgent performances in recent memory. It's Mark Wahlberg imploding into bad self-parody by doing a ludicrously amped-up impression of "Mark Wahlberg," and that's long before another character actually says "Say hi to your mother for me." Imagine Jason Bourne as a loud, loathsome, motor-mouthed asshole and you'll get an idea of how insufferably grating an over-the-top Wahlberg is here. When John Malkovich yells "Stop monologuing, you bipolar fuck," one gets the impression that the line was unscripted.
Wahlberg is James Silva, the leader of an elite CIA black ops/counterterrorism unit called Ground Branch. He's supposed to be the best of the best, but as the opening sequence at a suburban American safe house of a rogue Russian terror cell and the subsequent 90 minutes demonstrate, a lot of colleagues seem to die on his watch. This isn't surprising seeing that he's almost like the perfect hero for the Trump era: a vein-popping anger management case and bellicose know-it-all prone to blowhard lectures that include long quotes from Wikipedia, frothing-at-the-mouth tantrums, dismissive insults to his colleagues, and endlessly yapping displays of bloated arrogance that make it hard to believe anyone would work under this prick, let alone lay down their lives for him. In an unnamed Asian country, nine containers of cesium have gone missing and Silva's team is activated by remote Overwatch commander Bishop (Malkovich) to deal with Li Noor (THE RAID star Iko Uwais), a cop and former Indonesian government agent who knows the worldwide locations of the missing cesium and wants asylum to the US in exchange for the information. This leads to a sort-of DIPSHIT GAUNTLET as Silva and his team, which includes Alice (Lauren Cohan as Milla Jovovich) and Sam (Ronda Rousey), have to safeguard and escort Li on a 22-mile trip across the city to the airport, all the while evading corrupt local cops charged with taking them out.
It speaks to Berg's clueless approach to MILE 22 that he has Uwais onboard and utterly squanders the opportunity by feeling the need to edit his action sequences into a scrambled, eye-glazing blur. THE RAID and its even better sequel THE RAID 2 were perfect showcases for the Indonesian action star, and Berg must be a fan since the last half hour of MILE 22 makes a sudden switch from DIPSHIT GAUNTLET to DIPSHIT RAID, with Silva, Alice, and Li trapped in a high-rise apartment complex as corrupt local cop Axel's (Sam Medina) goons try to corner and kill them. Working from a script by Lea Carpenter that should've been redacted in pre-production, Berg has made this film a loud, headache-inducing mess, with constant shaky-cam, bizarre camera angles, an over-reliance on close-ups, characters screaming at each other for no reason, and Wahlberg allowed to run rampant, unleashed, unchecked, and completely out of control, shouting at everyone and, in his more introspective moments, constantly snapping his wristband as a way of controlling his fury (it never seems to work). There's half-assed attempts at topicality with passing mentions of "collusion" and "Russian election hacking," and at character development with Alice in a custody battle with her ex-husband, an almost instantly-abandoned subplot that seems to exist only to give Berg some brief screen time as the asshole ex. Rousey's character has nothing to do but sit and watch Silva hurl her birthday cupcake across the room in a fit of rage like a toddler who can't find his binky, and Malkovich, sporting a distracting buzzcut wig and sneakers with a suit, tries out a mannered, halting, staccato delivery that suggests Christopher Walken having a stroke. The abrupt ending leaves the door wide open for a sequel, a presumptuous way to end things that's right in line with its abrasive hero's stratospherically-inflated sense of confidence even though almost everyone bites it under his command and he never sees the big plot twist coming. Cohan shows some action potential and Uwais gives it his best shot even though his work is repeatedly sabotaged by his director, but MILE 22 is just torpedoed from the start by Wahlberg in one of the most aggressively off-putting "hero" star turns you'll ever see in a major movie.
A passion project that Martin Scorsese's had in various stages of development since acquiring the rights to Shusako Endo's 1966 novel in the late '80s, SILENCE completes the legendary filmmaker's unofficial religious trilogy that began with 1988's THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST and 1997's KUNDUN. SILENCE was already made into a movie once with a 1971 Japanese adaptation, but SILENCE '16 again demonstrates Scorsese's recurring obsessions with faith and religion, themes that go back as far as his earliest films like 1968's WHO'S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR? and 1973's MEAN STREETS. Make no mistake--SILENCE is a horse pill. It's slow-moving and sometimes punishingly long at 161 minutes, which almost seems by design to put you in the mindset of his central character. It's the kind of visually stunning epic that you rarely see any more, equal parts Werner Herzog, Terrence Malick, and Francis Ford Coppola, but filtered through the uniquely singular vision of arguably the greatest living American filmmaker. It's the reality of getting movies made today, but it's hard to believe that a director of Scorsese's reputation and stature has to get funding from a truckload of production companies (including the unlikely involvement of VOD and Redbox B-movie dealmakers Emmett/Furla Films, taking a break from being a half-assed Golan & Globus for a rare bid at respectability) from four countries with 40 (!) credited producers. C'mon, Hollywood studios. This is Martin Fucking Scorsese. If he comes to you with a project, give him the money. His films tend to stand the test of time, if that even matters anymore. Sure, they can't all be TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, and GOODFELLAS, but can you name a terrible Martin Scorsese film?
In 17th century Macau, two Portuguese Jesuit missionaries, Father Sebastiao Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield, having a breakout 2016 and even better here than he was in his Oscar-nominated turn in HACKSAW RIDGE) and Father Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver) journey to Japan in search of their mentor Father Cristovao Ferreira (Liam Neeson). Ferreira's been missing for seven years, and a letter turns up in the hands of Bishop Valignano (Ciarin Hinds)--a letter the rogue Ferreira sent years earlier, indicating that he's apostasized, renouncing Christianity, leaving the priesthood and has no intention of returning from a missionary trip to Japan, where he's taken a wife and wishes to live a normal life. Instinctively concluding that this letter doesn't sound like the words of Ferreira, Rodrigues and Garupe insist on finding their teacher and embark on a trip that will draw obvious comparisons to Heart of Darkness and APOCALYPSE NOW, but also the grueling sort of quest that recalls Herzog's AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD and FITZCARRALDO, as well as Roland Joffe's THE MISSION. The missionaries will be double-crossed by guide Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozoka), will eventually be separated, and the story will focus primarily on Rodrigues. Rodrigues clashes with Inquisitor Inoue (a scene-stealing Issey Ogata), a powerful official hellbent on stopping the spread of Christianity in Japan, and willing to torture, crucify, and kill to do so (one harrowing scene has converted Japanese Christians crucified at sea, drowned by the incoming tide, then having their bodies set ablaze so they can't be given a Christian burial). Rodrigues will eventually find Ferreira and he isn't quite the Col. Kurtz-like madman you might be expecting. SILENCE is a difficult and challenging film that has definite slow stretches but it rewards the patient viewer. The script by Scorsese and Jay Cocks unfolds like a richly-textured novel, taking its time to build and establish the characters and get you in their heads, which makes the complete experience all the more powerful. Pitched by distributor Paramount as a major awards-season contender, SILENCE played well in NYC and Los Angeles but bombed hard when it expanded into wide release, relegated to one 9:55 pm showing per day when it finally made it to my area. It was almost shut out of the Oscars, earning just one nomination for Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography. It's not the kind of film that will appeal to casual moviegoers or even to casual Scorsese fans (though it explores recurring themes in his work, its style is more Terrence Malick than Scorsese). It's an often profoundly moving film about deeply committed faith, one that's philosophical without being preachy, and if you've followed Scorsese through the years, you'll recognize his passion and his concerns, his voice coming through even though it's somewhat of a stylistic departure for him. (R, 161 mins)
PATRIOTS DAY (US/China - 2016)
You might think it takes a special breed of asshole to bag on a movie that honors the victims and heroes of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, but it takes a special breed of asshole to create a bullshit composite character and make almost the whole thing about him. Composite characters are dramatic necessities in narrative chronicles of true events but here, it's a clumsy distraction that's alternately insulting and unintentionally hilarious. The last and by far the least of director/co-writer Peter Berg's unofficial "Mark Wahlberg: American Hero" trilogy (after LONE SURVIVOR and the underrated DEEPWATER HORIZON), PATRIOTS DAY has Wahlberg playing Tommy Saunders, a composite character created specifically for the film. Tommy, or as he'll be known from here on, "Tawmy," is a plays-by-his-own-rules homicide sergeant who played by his own rules one too many times and got temporarily busted down to patrolman. But he's free and clear and out of the doghouse after one more day--you guessed it--Patriots Day. Tawmy's got a bum knee but puts on a brace, plays through the pain, and does his jawb, and he's right there when the bombs set by the Tsarnaev brothers--Tamerlan (Themo Melikidze) and Dzhokhar (Alex Wolff)--go off. He immediately calls for backup and oversees the triage unit, and when FBI Special Agent Rick DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon) and Gov. Deval Patrick (Michael Beach) show up at the scene, they know that the only person they need to consult is, of course, Tawmy.
Tawmy's right there at the center of the action at the command center, taking charge and making sure everyone's on the same page, and thank Gawd he's there to inform DesLauriers how investigations work, imploring "Hey! Listen! I was hawmicide! Witnesses! We should talk to witnesses! Maybe somebody saw somethin'!" as everyone within earshot nods in agreement. Yeah, because I'm sure veteran FBI Special Agent Rick DesLauriers who, according to his FBI bio, has been an agent since 1987, has no fucking idea how to do his job, so props to Tawmy for being there to show him how it's done. Police Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman) also holds back on making any decisions until he runs things by Tawmy, who's given a special role in the investigation when DesLauriers asks "Hey, you know this area pretty well, right?" because obviously there's no way any other cawp knows more about Boston than Tawmy Saunders, Super Cawp! Because Tawmy can't be there for every break in the investigation without turning the film into outright fiction, when an FBI agent spots a possible suspect in Dzhokhar in surveillance footage, the first person DesLauriers alerts to this discovery is Tawmy. Later on, Tawmy's also the cop who first spots Dzhokhar hiding in a boat in a Watertown resident's backyard, and that's not long after a shootout between Watertown cops and the Tsarnaev brothers where one Watertown cop opens fire, shouting "Welcome to Watertown, motherfucker!" It's telling that the two best sequences in the film--Chinese college student Dun Meng's (Jimmy O. Yang) carjacking by and subsequent escape from the Tsarnaevs, and Tamerlan's American wife (Melissa Benoist) being interrogated by a sinister black ops agent (Khandi Alexander, killing it in just a few minutes of screen time)--are nail-biting set pieces that don't involve Wahlberg, at least until the Zelig-like Tawmy is the one who responds to Dun's 911 call, because of course he does. Why not just make an Altman-esque ensemble piece showing how all of these people worked together in pursuit of the suspects? PATRIOTS DAY pays a lot of lip service to the notion of a community coming together but in execution, it's almost all about Tawmy. I get that Tawmy is a symbol of "Boston Strong," but it just gets silly. Why clumsily straddle the line between paying reverent tribute and making a formulaic Mark Wahlberg vehicle, especially when the usually reliable actor responds by turning in what might be his career-worst performance (Tawmy sobbing on his couch and yelling "We're gonna get these motherfuckers!" is embarrassing)? It's hard to take the film seriously when Tawmy seems to be the only cawp who knows what he's doing, and one with enough juice to get lippy and bark "Who the fuck are you?" to an FBI guy. The real question is "Who the fuck is Tawmy?" (R, 133 mins)
EVOLUTION (France/Spain/Belgium - 2016)
The first film in over a decade by acclaimed INNOCENCE director Lucile Hadzihalilovic (she's married to IRREVERSIBLE director Gaspar Noe, edited his 1998 film I STAND ALONE and co-wrote his 2009 film ENTER THE VOID) is an impenetrable arthouse sci-fi/horror mood piece that feels like an aquatic UNDER THE SKIN and can best be described as what might've transpired if David Cronenberg remade THE LITTLE MERMAID. There's some memorable visuals (this was shot on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands) and a pervasive sense of ominous dread throughout, but it all seems to be an aimless, meandering voyage that doesn't really have anything in mind other than low-key and extremely slow-burning squeamishness. In a remote seaside village that seems to be frozen in time, young Nicolas (Max Brebant) is swimming and sees the body of a drowned boy with a bright red starfish attached to his navel. He tells his mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier), who dives in the area where he was swimming and only finds the starfish. There are no adult males in the village, which is populated only by young boys and their mothers, all plain and unemotional, with white eyebrows and their hair pulled back in tight librarian buns. The boys are fed a gruel-ish concoction of goop and worms and given a strange medicine in between visits to a local "hospital" where they're kept for observation and given ultrasounds by the female doctors and nurses. Nicolas becomes convinced that the village mothers are up to something and spies on them as the writhe naked in star-shaped formations, covered in a slimy film along the shore in the dead of night. Convinced his "mother," who has six suction-cup-like growths on her back, is not his mother, Nicolas is given an extended stay at the hospital, where he befriends strange nurse Stella (Roxane Duran), who decides to show him who--or more accurately, what--he really is. It's a lugubriously slow buildup to very little, but there's some effectively unsettling imagery along the way, with a droning score that really contributes to the escalating sense of unease. But mood and style aren't enough to get the job done with EVOLUTION, which ends up being some kind of asexual nightmare with a predictably ambiguous, hackneyed ending suggesting these creatures are about to walk among us. Some interesting ideas here, but EVOLUTION never comes together. (Unrated, 82 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
DEEPWATER HORIZON (US/China - 2016) Directed by Peter Berg. Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand. Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Kate Hudson, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O'Brien, Ethan Suplee, J.D. Evermore, Trace Adkins, James DuMont, Douglas M. Griffin, Brad Leland, Dave Maldonado, Peter Berg, Stella Allen. (PG-13, 106 mins) This riveting chronicle of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, which led to the worst oil spill in U.S. history, reunites LONE SURVIVOR star Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg. Berg shot this back-to-back with the upcoming PATRIOTS DAY, with Wahlberg as a cop working security detail on the day of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. These three Wahlberg/Berg collaborations tentatively form a loose trilogy of ordinary people finding themselves in extraordinary situations and summoning a fighting spirit from deep within to do whatever they need to do to survive. With AMERICAN SNIPER and SULLY, Clint Eastwood has also staked a claim to this territory, but Berg (who came onboard at Wahlberg's request after A MOST VIOLENT YEAR director J.C. Chandor quit over creative differences during pre-production) doesn't resort to Eastwood's hagiographic tendencies, nor do he and screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand have to pull a SULLY and invent a bad guy to manufacture dramatic tension. The tension is there from the start, when Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell), the installation manager contracted to run operations on the Transocean-owned semi-submersible oil rig, is arriving for a 21-day stint and already butting heads with corporate guys from BP, who had a longstanding lease on the Deepwater Horizon. The bad omens manifest before they even get on the rig, from a bird strike on the plane ride out, to Harrell--"Mr. Jimmy" to his loyal crew--superstitiously requesting that smug BP pencil-pusher O'Bryan (James DuMont) take off his magenta-colored tie.
Mr. Jimmy is irate over BP's cancellation of a standard cement test in order to cut costs. All over the rig, little things are malfunctioning and snowballing into bigger issues--the wi-fi, the smoke alarms, pieces of drilling equipment are showing their age or even breaking. Chief electronics tech Mike Williams (Wahlberg) stands by Mr. Jimmy in his mistrust of BP's assigned rig supervisor Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich), who thinks the gauges indicating too much pressure represents a fault in the gauge that's not a cause for concern. While most of the crew is in the mess hall celebrating Mr. Jimmy getting a safety award from O'Bryan, Vidrine and another BP rep, Robert Kaluza (Brad Leland) essentially bully senior rig worker Jason Anderson (Ethan Suplee) into proceeding with the drilling when the blowout preventer malfunctions and all hell breaks loose. It begins with a massive oil eruption followed by an explosion caused by gas leaking from damaged and aging valves. 11 people were killed in the tragedy, with 115 evacuated to the nearby supply ship Damon Bankston, captained by Alwin Landry (Douglas M. Griffin).
While any film of this sort takes some dramatic liberties, DEEPWATER HORIZON for the most part sticks with the events and the timeline as the disaster unfolded. It makes no attempt to mask its contempt for the years of systemic corner-cutting by BP, whose reps aboard the vessel are only concerned with getting the work done as quickly and cheaply as possible (and, it should be noted, they're the first ones scurrying to the lifeboats when the shit hits the fan), and Berg does a very good job of conveying that sense of encroaching dread over a compelling first 45 or so minutes where we meet the characters and get a strong sense of who they are as they go about their routines, often speaking their own shorthand and work jargon (like Eastwood, Berg understands the importance of this). It shows us that these are reliable people who know what they're doing as Berg has the camera follow them around as things get increasingly tense, shaky, and claustrophobic. The film is perhaps a bit too ham-fisted when it comes to Malkovich's cartoonishly malevolent depiction of Vidrine, using an over-the-top Louisiana drawl that illustrates what might happen if James Carville was cast as the next Ernst Stavro Blofeld. There's plenty of blame to throw to lay at the feet of BP and their negligent malfeasance without Malkovich slathering on the faux-folksy local color so thick that even the late, great Justin Wilson might politely request that he take it down a notch. The actor gets dangerously close to CON AIR mode here, and other than some scattered shots of the now-mandatory unconvincing CGI fire, it's the one big misstep the film makes.
Wahlberg is fine as Williams, who became the face of the heroic rescue, and his scenes with Kate Hudson as Williams' wife and young Stella Allen as their daughter have a believable, lived-in feeling of genuine affection that Berg wisely doesn't oversell like Vidrine's villainy. But the key character in DEEPWATER HORIZON is the no-time-for-your-bullshit Mr. Jimmy, who joins the ranks of USED CARS' Rudy Russo, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK's Snake Plissken, THE THING's R.J. MacReady, THE BEST OF TIMES' Reno Hightower, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA's Jack Burton, TANGO & CASH's Gabriel Cash, TOMBSTONE's Wyatt Earp, DEATH PROOF's Stuntman Mike, BONE TOMAHAWK's Sheriff Franklin Hunt, and THE HATEFUL EIGHT's John "The Hangman" Ruth in the annals of essential Kurt Russell characterizations. Russell is an actor who's generally liked by critics while at the same time never hailed as a great actor, and that's a shame. There's a Russell persona that the actor has perfected over the years, even in fantastical genre fare like his work with John Carpenter. Though he's proven his versatility, Russell excels at playing the kind of guy DEEPWATER HORIZON is all about: working men of ethics and principle with a strong sense of duty and a code of honor who get shit done. The Russell archetype is a quiet, thinking man's badass (Jack Burton being an exception) and even now at 65, with the lines in his aging face showing a leathery weariness that reminds one of Clint Eastwood, he's still showing everyone how it's done. Even spending the second half of the film hobbling around and blinded by glass in his eyes, Russell's Mr. Jimmy is a fearless leader. DEEPWATER HORIZON pays tribute to everyday working men who lost their lives on the job, and while it may be a Mark Wahlberg movie, the star and producer is smart enough to realize it's just as much a showcase for the underrated icon that is Kurt Russell.
Written and directed by Peter Berg. Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Eric Bana, Yousuf Azami, Ali Suliman, Alexander Ludwig, Jerry Ferrara, Sammy Sheik, Rich Ting, Dan Bilzerian, Rohan Chand. (R, 121 mins)
LONE SURVIVOR is an often visceral and unflinchingly brutal adaptation of Marcus Luttrell's 2005 chronicle of his time as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan. Played in the film by Mark Wahlberg, Luttrell was involved Operation Red Wings, a four-man operation to take out Ahmad Shah (Yousuf Azami), a major Taliban figure. As the title hardly warrants a spoiler alert, things didn't go as planned. Making their way into the remote Kunar Province mountains, Luttrell, Lt. Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch), and Matt "Axe" Axelson (Ben Foster) find themselves outnumbered and unable to contact the military base, and opt to secure positions higher in the mountains but they're stumbled upon by three goat herders. After deciding to cut them loose--the film presents it as a debate, but Luttrell has said Murphy made the call as per rules of engagement--the four SEALs make a run for it to wait for extraction but are soon overwhelmed by Shah's forces, who outnumber them 4-to-1.
Writer/director Peter Berg (THE RUNDOWN, THE KINGDOM, BATTLESHIP) handles this extended firefight sequence--which takes up about a third of the running time--quite well aside from an occasional over-reliance on shaky-cam. Berg takes the time to lay out the positions of the principles to give the audience the lay of the land and to watch the methodology at work. You'll be thoroughly convinced these four actors have been to hell and back, from the utterly convincing makeup work to the sounds of bullets tearing through flesh and bones slamming into rocks as the SEALs roll down a mountainside. Luttrell served as a technical advisor and Berg spent time with US forces in Iraq to observe them in action and make the depiction of the Red Wings ordeal as ultra-realistic as possible. He even included little details to honor the memories of those involved, like a shot of Lt. Cmdr. Erik Cristensen (Eric Bana) wearing Birkenstocks at the base. Cristensen was killed during an attempted rescue of Luttrell and a look at his Wikipedia page reveals that his mother requested he be buried wearing his ubiquitous Birkenstocks. It mostly works--there's a level of raw, take-no-prisoners ferocity here that doesn't approach SAVING PRIVATE RYAN levels but is easily in the same class as BLACK HAWK DOWN.
But to get there, you have to endure some frequently tiresome military clichés. Berg wants to honor these fallen heroes, and he succeeds, but the opening and closing narration by Wahlberg-as-Luttrell sounds like a bad high-school essay, especially when he's talking about a "fire within." The same goes for sniper Axe positioning himself and grunting "I am the reaper" or "You can die for your country, but I'm gonna live for mine!" or Luttrell's "I'm about to punch their time card." Of course, this is probably an accurate depiction but it comes off as tired, macho warrior chest-thumping more akin to a RAMBO movie. Fortunately, Berg keeps the jingoism to a minimum, especially in the last third when Luttrell is found and given shelter by Muhammad Gulab (Ali Suliman) and the members of a peaceful Afghani village who lay their own lives on the line, knowing the Taliban are after the American. These anti-Taliban Afghanis, living by a 2000-year-old code of honor, were instrumental in saving Luttrell's life and let's be honest, a lot of Hollywood depictions of Luttrell's experiences would've eliminated them entirely in order to spend more time waving the flag. Berg's script doesn't allow for much in the way of character development other than Murphy planning a wedding, Dietz trying to pick some interior design colors for his girlfriend back home, and Axe being married. Oddly enough, it's Luttrell who gets the least amount of character sketching. But it works--it's a BAND OF BROTHERS/"fuckin' A, bro!" film first and foremost, but knowing these men a little more might've given it greater emotional weight. While Wahlberg is fine, his breakdown in the climax feels, through no fault of his, like a lightweight revamp of a similar scene at the end of CAPTAIN PHILLIPS which represented arguably the best acting of Tom Hanks' career. Aided by an effectively minimalist score by post-rock outfit Explosions in the Sky, LONE SURVIVOR isn't a war movie classic, but it's good, accomplishing what it sets out to do, and does so in a way that honors the heroes--American and Afghani--of Operation Red Wings and its aftermath.
