On Blu-ray/DVD: THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT (2019) and KING OF THIEVES (2019)

THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT
(US/Belgium - 2019)

Is there anyone who doesn't love Sam Elliott? He's a goddamn national treasure who's been a reliable presence in movies and on TV for 50 years, and he's one of those actors who's so consistently good that maybe we take him for granted. At any rate, the 74-year-old badass is enjoying a late-career renaissance that began with 2017's THE HERO, which didn't get great reviews but generated praise for Elliott as an ailing western star making amends with his family. He then received his first Oscar nomination for his work in Bradley Cooper's remake of A STAR IS BORN, but shot just before that (and released after) was THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT--the eclectic likes of John Sayles, Douglas Trumbull, and Lucky McKee are among its producers--which sounds like the kind of bizarre, bonkers movie that would venture into a revisionist history scenario akin to BUBBA HO-TEP and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. And it's...not. It's certainly sincere on the part of writer/director Robert D. Krzykowski, and he's to be commended for providing Elliott with a role that's tailor-made for him. And, in all fairness, the title delivers what it promises, but there seems to be a fundamental disconnect with the tone implied by a title like THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT and what's presented in the film.

For an hour or so, it's a serious, somber character study set in the 1980s, with elderly WWII vet Calvin Barr (Elliott) living a quiet life of small-town anonymity among family and neighbors who have no idea of the secret that's haunted him for 40 years: he was the trigger man (played in flashbacks by Aidan Turner) in a successful covert plot to take out Hitler (Joe Lucas), and the Allied forces and the German government subsequently covered it up. He also never got over Maxine (Caitlin FitzGerald), the schoolteacher and sweetheart he planned to marry but never contacted once he returned home from the war. He now spends his days with his dog, eating TV dinners, and going to the corner bar (and he's still able to handle three punks who try to steal his car), seemingly waiting to die. But his government calls on him again when an agent (Ron Livingston) informs him that a blood sample still on file at a military lab reveals him to be immune to a lethal virus spreading across Canada that's been traced the mythical Bigfoot (Mark Steger). The film abruptly switches gears to become a throwback '70s Bigfoot movie with Barr venturing alone into the Canadian wilderness to track and kill the creature. To get a feel of how much of an oddity this thing is, imagine Clint Eastwood spending the second half of GRAN TORINO hunting down the Loch Ness Monster. Elliott is terrific here as the melancholy Barr, but Krzykowski can only get away with subverting expectations to a point. Sure, the confrontation with Bigfoot has some action and grossout gore, but the Hitler section of the film is a bit of an anticlimactic dud, and the trite, facile symbolism (the pebble in Barr's shoe!) would generate dismissive eyerolls in a high school creative writing class. In the end, Elliott is the whole show here, and he's given the perfect intro, sitting alone at an empty bar looking down at his glass while Billy Squier's "Lonely is the Night" blares from the jukebox. If you took all the humor out of BUBBA HO-TEP, you'd still be left with the heartfelt and oddly convincing performances of Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK, so it wouldn't be a total loss. Similarly, THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT has the great Sam Elliott as its sturdy foundation, but no movie with that title should be this dour and downbeat. (Unrated, 98 mins)



KING OF THIEVES
(France/Germany/UK - 2018; US release 2019)

A chronicle of the 2015 Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary in London headlined by a cast of living legends is a film that almost seems impossible to screw up. Hell, it's even got guys from two of the most iconic heist thrillers with THE ITALIAN JOB's Michael Caine and SEXY BEAST's Ray Winstone. But KING OF THIEVES is an almost total misfire--the heist is glossed over, the characterizations thinly drawn, the police investigation a muddled, incoherent mess. It never generates any tension or suspense, the actions of the characters seem completely random, and when all else fails, it relies on the tired standby of old people doing old people things, like griping about technology ("What's an eBay?"), or in the case of Tom Courtenay's befuddled character, giggling after unexpectedly ripping a loud, bubbling fart in a pool. Despondent and bored after the sudden death of his wife (Francesca Annis), former criminal Brian Reader (Caine) is approached about taking part in a safe deposit break-in at Hatton Garden by safecracking young acquaintance Basil (Charlie Cox), who's got the keys and the alarm code. In what seems like the next scene, Brian's got his old associates rounded up and they're inside, posing as repairmen working on a gas line. There's Terry Perkins (Jim Broadbent), Kenny Collins (Courtenay), Carl Wood (Paul Whitehouse), and brutish Danny Boy Jones (Winstone), and tensions flare afterward when Kenny takes it upon himself to bring in a fence in the form of doddering, incontinent drunkard Billy "The Fish" Lincoln (Michael Gambon), who can hardly be trusted to keep his mouth shut. Brian announces he's out, and Terry and Danny proceed to systematically cut everyone else out of the take, with none of them realizing that they've been under police surveillance pretty much the entire time thanks to their careless actions during and after the burglary.

It's hard to believe any of these guys had careers as professional criminals considering the stupid decisions they make, from not even obscuring their license plates outside the building (and the youngster Basil is the only one who thinks ahead and wears a disguise) to Kenny being assigned lookout and immediately removing his hearing aid and dozing off to all of them talking loudly in public places about what they did. Director James Marsh (MAN ON WIRE, RED RIDING: 1980, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING) and screenwriter Joe Penhall (THE ROAD and the creator of the Netflix series MINDHUNTER) could've approached this from the angle of inevitable, fatalistic doom, but they don't do much of anything. It's part GRUMPY OLD MEN and THE BANK JOB until its abrupt shift in tone when Terry and Danny start going full post-Lufthansa Jimmy Conway with their rapidly escalating paranoia and incessant talk of getting rid of everyone. It's obvious that the filmmakers assumed they had the kind of cast where this thing could basically just make itself, but it's total letdown for everyone. The elder statesman of the ensemble at 85, Caine is effortlessly Caine, and has some poignant moments in Brian's initial grieving, shrugging in disbelief that he'll never see his wife walk into the room again and observing "When somebody dies, nothing prepares you for the silence of an empty house." But in no time at all, KING OF THIEVES becomes such a plodding, lifeless bore that unless you're a completist who has to see everything Caine does, there's little reason to bother with it. That is, unless you've been waiting to cross "seeing Jim Broadbent's ass" off your bucket list. (R, 108 mins)

In Theaters: THE GUNMAN (2015)

THE GUNMAN
(France/Spain/UK/US - 2015)

Directed by Pierre Morel. Written by Don Macpherson, Pete Travis and Sean Penn. Cast: Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Idris Elba, Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance, Jasmine Trinca, Peter Franzen, Sir Billy Billingham, Ade Oyefaso, Rachel Lascar, Sarah Moyle. (R, 115 mins)

Very loosely based on Jean-Patrick Manchette's 1981 novel The Prone Gunman, THE GUNMAN would appear, on the surface, to be 54-year-old Sean Penn's blatant attempt to get a head start hitching a ride on the post-TAKEN, Liam Neeson "aging action star" bandwagon. It even goes so far as to have TAKEN director and former Luc Besson protege Pierre Morel at the helm. Penn doing a straight-up action genre piece is a change of pace for the two-time Oscar-winner, but THE GUNMAN isn't really a TAKEN knockoff. It's more in line with last year's Pierce Brosnan actioner THE NOVEMBER MAN--a gritty, serious action thriller with a certain 1970s throwback feel to it. And with its globe-trotting locales and its protagonist being a hunted man, with filming taking place in London, Barcelona, Gibraltar, and Cape Town, it has more in common with the BOURNE movies than TAKEN. Co-producer Penn obviously had a significant hand in the somewhat disjointed script, sharing credit with journeyman script doctor Don Macpherson (his first big-screen writing credit since 1998's disastrous THE AVENGERS) and DREDD director Pete Travis, and it's pretty clear what the other guys wrote and what Penn contributed. Some have called THE GUNMAN a vanity project with Penn showing off his newly-ripped physique and shoehorning his humanitarian concerns into the story, but he mostly keeps the self-indulgence in check, at least until a whimper of an ending that's somewhat reminiscent--though not nearly as egregiously cumbersome--as Steven Seagal's environmental lecture and slide show presentation at the end of ON DEADLY GROUND. But until then, THE GUNMAN is mostly solid and diverting, similar in many ways to a 1970s conspiracy thriller with a vivid European vibe. The action scenes are coherently staged, the violence is brutal and often shocking, and a game cast of overqualified actors shine in well-written character parts, giving substance to what's essentially upscale DTV fare. THE GUNMAN is by no means a great movie, and perhaps Penn was given too much leeway to tailor it to himself, but it's nowhere near the catastrophe that the reviews and the opening weekend box office would indicate.

THE GUNMAN opens in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006, where Jim Terrier (Penn) is among the contractors working security for an NGO humanitarian effort to provide medical aid and construct an airstrip. Terrier's doctor girlfriend Annie (Jasmine Trinca) is part of the effort, but she doesn't know about the side job that Terrier and his mercenary buddies Cox (Mark Rylance) and Felix (Javier Bardem) have: to coordinate the assassination of the Congo's Minister of Mining at the behest of a multinational corporation that looks to face obstacles and lose profits if he remains in his present position. Terrier ends up being the triggerman, and flees to Europe after the job is done. Eight years later, he's back in the Congo, out of the assassination game and devoting himself full-time to aid work when three killers show up on a job site to take him out. Terrier's instinctive kill skills take over and he survives the attempt on his life and heads to London to warn Cox, now an executive with the very company that once hired them as killers, that he may be next. Terrier makes his way to Barcelona to meet up with Felix, who's now married to Annie. As Terrier and Annie's passion reignites, the attempts on his life continue, and it doesn't take long for him to realize that one of his old cohorts--Felix, Cox, or perhaps even his gregarious buddy Stanley (Ray Winstone), may be the party trying to orchestrate his murder.

Because of Morel's involvement and Penn's age, comparisons to TAKEN are inevitable, but those are surface, coincidental parallels. Penn has designed a star action vehicle to, in part, soapbox his own concerns--not always successfully, mind you--but he doesn't overplay it and turn it into a public service announcement with an overabundance of blood squibs. The action sequences are well-choreographed, the violence and bloodshed convincingly nasty, and Penn's performance, criticized by many as glum and self-serious, suits the story and the surroundings, especially in the way he's suffering from brain trauma and is bogged down by migraines and vomiting spells after some especially hard-hitting showdowns. This is not a wisecracking hero he's playing--he's a damaged guy with regrets who's starting to feel his age. Penn gets some sturdy support from the always-welcome Winstone and Bardem, and Tony-winning Shakespearean stage great Rylance (ANGELS AND INSECTS, INTIMACY) makes a rare appearance in a commercial genre film, and judging from his enjoyably hammy performance, seems to have taken the opportunity to reinvent himself as Richard Harris. Idris Elba turns up 80 minutes in for a glorified cameo as an Interpol agent who tells a drawn-out story with a treehouse metaphor. THE GUNMAN starts stumbling and bumbling on its way to a happy ending and it's probably a film best suited for a low-risk stream on Netflix. Nevertheless, Penn proves he does have potential for a Neeson-style action rebirth if he can maybe just lighten up a little and leave the issues and the statement-making out of it and just let a good action movie be a good action movie.

In Theaters: NOAH (2014)

NOAH
(US - 2014)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky.  Written by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel. Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, Leo McHugh Carroll, Marton Csokas, Madison Davenport, voices of Nick Nolte, Frank Langella, Kevin Durand, Mark Margolis. (PG-13, 138 mins)

Biblical purists aren't going to go for Darren Aronofsky's revisionist take on Noah's Ark, which is faithful to the point of including Noah and an ark.  At times seeming like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Bible, Aronofsky's NOAH succeeds as epic cinema and as part of the bigger picture of the filmmaker's work as a whole. One of Aronofsky's recurrent themes, from PI (1998), REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000), THE FOUNTAIN (2006), THE WRESTLER (2008) all the way to BLACK SWAN (2010), is the obsessive, frequently maniacal, and all-consuming nature of their protagonists.  In that respect, Russell Crowe's Noah is cut from the same cloth as Ellen Burstyn's Sara Goldfarb and her diet pills in REQUIEM, Mickey Rourke's Randy "The Ram" Robinson in THE WRESTLER or Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers in BLACK SWAN. To some degree, Aronofsky's characters are perpetually in a head-on descent into self-destructive madness.

Such is the case with Noah, a descendant of Adam & Eve's third son Seth.  Though "God" is never invoked, "The Creator" supplies Noah with a vision of the world's flooded end as punishment for man's sins.  Noah is entrusted to build an ark, to which The Creator will direct all of the world's animals to begin life anew after its watery destruction.  Noah spends ten years building the massive ark with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), their sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll), and adopted daughter and Shem's love interest Ila (Emma Watson), left barren from injuries sustained in a massacre of her people and rescued by Noah and Naameh years earlier. He also gets assistance from a group of fallen angels known as The Watchers, stone giants who resemble ancient Transformers with the voices of Nick Nolte and Frank Langella.  As the animals make their way to the under-construction ark (and a steam potion puts them in a state of hibernation), warrior-king and Cain descendant Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) decides to kill distant relative Noah and orders his army to take control of the ark in an attempt to survive The Creator's extermination of mankind.

Winstone!

But the massive flood is just the beginning, as middle child Ham is resentful of his brother's love of Ila and angry enough to be privy to the manipulation of Tubal-Cain.  And as the situation grows more dire, Naameh's request of a gift from Noah's grandfather Methusaleh (Anthony Hopkins) disrupts Noah's single-minded drive and pushes him to the point of homicidal mania.  So yes, to say Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel take some liberties with the source material is an understatement.   But a straight Biblical adaptation was never in the cards anyway, even before Paramount added disclaimers to the advertising that stated as much.  Obviously, one's devotion and attachment to the story will likely dictate the response, but personally, as someone who has no commitment to the Bible and whose church of choice is the big screen, I found NOAH to be exciting, ambitious filmmaking.  With THE WRESTLER and BLACK SWAN, Aronofsky kept things relatively low-budget after the brilliant THE FOUNTAIN proved to be a costly (and mismarketed) flop for Warner Bros.  Given the power granted to bottom-line-obsessed execs and focus-group mouth-breathers, the fact that Paramount gave Aronofsky $125 million to make NOAH and largely left him alone to make the film he wanted to make and disregarded the test audience feedback and released the director's preferred cut is a major miracle itself.  Aronofsky had been toying with the idea of helming a mega-budget epic, but turned down MAN OF STEEL and left THE WOLVERINE during pre-production, opting instead to wait until the time was right for NOAH.

"What a fool belieeeeeeves...."

Aronofsky takes a huge gamble in making Noah extraordinarily unlikable and practically deranged in the second half as he'll stop at nothing to follow through with The Creator's request (as the years go on, Noah's hair grays and at times, Crowe resembles a feral Michael McDonald).  Utilizing CGI and some of the same sort of minimalist visual trickery seen in THE FOUNTAIN, Aronofsky creates a visually stunning world in NOAH. The sequence detailing the onset of the flood while the ark is under attack by Tubal-Cain's men is terrifying to watch and jaw-dropping in its scope and a must-see on a large screen. Some of the stuff involving The Watchers is a little goofy (but I'm always up for some Nick Nolte grumbling) and sometimes, it feels a little too derivative of the LORD OF THE RINGS, but in an era when most multiplex movies are bland, uninspired, and interchangeable, NOAH is unique even when it's borrowing an occasional element here and there.  It's the strangest Biblical epic in years and so much of it could've gone so horribly awry, that even on those rare instances where something doesn't work, you're still admiring the chutzpah of the whole endeavor.  Even if you vehemently disagree with the out-of-the-box approach Aronofsky takes--and nothing's going to change your mind--the fact that NOAH even exists is proof that Hollywood might still give a shit about artistic vision.

In Theaters/On VOD: THE SWEENEY (2013)

THE SWEENEY
(UK - 2012; 2013 US release)

Directed by Nick Love.  Written by Nick Love and John Hodge.  Cast: Ray Winstone, Ben Drew, Hayley Atwell, Damian Lewis, Steven Mackintosh, Paul Anderson, Alan Ford, Steven Waddington, Kevin Michaels, Ronnie Fox, Caroline Chikeze. (R, 110 mins)

This big-screen version of the popular British TV cop show that ran from 1975-1978 didn't really win them over in the UK, but in the States, where it's much less familiar and without the baggage of appealing to a massive fan base, it can be appreciated more on its own modernized terms.  Aside from one legitimately great 15-minute action/chase sequence at the midway point, there's nothing at all inventive about the big-screen SWEENEY.  The script by director Nick Love (OUTLAW) and former Danny Boyle collaborator John Hodge (SHALLOW GRAVE, TRAINSPOTTING) recycles pretty much every "plays by his own rules" Hollywood cop movie cliche imaginable, but despite that, THE SWEENEY still entertains with action, suspense, humor, outstanding use of London locations, and the smart decision to just let the entire project rest on the broad shoulders of the great Ray Winstone, easily the burly badass bloke you'd most want on your side in a bar brawl.



Winstone!

Winstone is veteran detective Jack Regan, who leads an elite robbery investigation unit known as "The Sweeney."  Known for their disdain of proper procedure, laws, and basic rights in general, the Sweeney handle things their own way, often relying on clubs and beatdowns in the occasional instances when they aren't shooting first and asking questions never.  They're generally left alone because they get results, but uptight, desk-jockey Internal Affairs head Lewis (Steven Mackintosh) wants to bust Regan--not so much for his ways but rather, Regan is having an affair with Lewis' estranged wife Nancy (Hayley Atwell), who's also a member of the Sweeney.  When a woman is senselessly killed in a jewelry store heist, Regan recognizes it as the M.O. of past nemesis and international criminal Francis Allen (Paul Anderson).  An investigation leads them past Allen to a trio of Serbian nationals who have been carrying out jobs in the style of Allen, knowing it would get Regan's attention and draw him into their orbit.

Winstone!



Winstone!

THE SWEENEY works almost entirely due to the mighty screen presence of the perfectly-cast Winstone.  He even manages to sell the idea that the much-younger Nancy would be interested in him, though that's due almost as much to Mackintosh's performance as the prickly, weak Lewis.  Regan isn't a particularly nice or even a good guy on the surface (he steals gold bars from a bust in order to pay off his informant), but he gets the job done and he takes care of and looks out for his people.  He's got no use for bureaucrats who sit behind a desk all day and has no problem getting in the shit with those he supervises, so it's easy to see why he's so admired by the members of his team, especially second-in-command Carter (Ben Drew, better known as British rapper Plan B), who's torn between his devotion to Regan and being groomed for a bigger position with the force by the manipulative Lewis.

Winstone!  And other Sweeney!

Elsewhere, it's business as usual for a cop movie:  Regan is constantly being harangued by his company-man boss Haskins (HOMELAND's Damian Lewis), who prefers to look the other way like Harry Guardino did for Clint Eastwood in the DIRTY HARRY movies.  Despite constantly telling Regan to cool it and play it by the book, Haskins knows that won't happen and, to the surprise of no one, does what every boss of a maverick cop does:  shuts up and gets out of the way.  And Regan also joins the never-ending list of movie cops who solve the case and bring in the bad guys long after they're ordered to turn in their gun and badge and are suspended indefinitely.  The connect-the-dots cliches would be almost comical if Winstone wasn't so great in the lead.  But Love does a solid job throughout, and the big chase sequence right in the middle of the film, which has the Sweeney in a shootout with the three Serbians that turns into an epic foot chase--with guns blazing through Trafalgar Square, through parks, a museum, a library, and a parking garage--that easily rivals the ballsy intensity of the instant classic Guggenheim shootout in 2009's THE INTERNATIONAL.  The only other Love film I've seen is 2007's OUTLAW, and it was filled with endless jittery shaky-cam of the worst Tony Scott sort.  Love's definitely dialed that down significantly and as a result, THE SWEENEY is a much more accomplished film.  It's not high art and it's not particularly creative, but THE SWEENEY aims to entertain and succeeds.