THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD (US/China - 2017) Directed by Patrick Hughes. Written by Tom O'Connor. Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Salma Hayek, Elodie Yung, Joaquim de Almeida, Richard E. Grant, Kirsty Mitchell, Sam Hazeldine, Rod Hallett, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Tine Joustra, Michael Gor, Barry Atsma, Tsuwayuke Saotome, Josephine De La Baume. (R, 118 mins) THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD tries to be a throwback to the ballbusting buddy/cop/action movies of the '80s, and its attempts to be 2017's answer to 48 HRS or MIDNIGHT RUN succeeds about 60% of the time. It's a film that gets by almost solely by riffing on the onscreen personas of its two stars, working from a script by Tom O'Connor (whose only previous writing credit is 2012's instantly forgotten Josh Duhamel/Bruce Willis VOD actioner FIRE WITH FIRE) that was floating around Hollywood for several years. That script has obviously been given some extensive polishing to refashion it for both a post-DEADPOOL Ryan Reynolds and the venerable Samuel L. Jackson, cast radically against type as motherfuckin' Samuel L. Jackson. The two stars aren't quite Nick Nolte & Eddie Murphy or Robert De Niro & Charles Grodin, but they might've been if in better hands. Despite A-list actors and location shooting all over Europe, this is still a Millennium/NuImage production, which means most of the money went to the cast and you're gonna get that same backlot at Avi Lerner's Nu Boyana Studios in Bulgaria that's been in countless DTV efforts by the Cannon cover band over the years, and that the Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX will do their part by delivering the least convincing CGI explosions and greenscreen work that Lerner and 31 other credited producers can look at and shrug "Eh, fuck it...it's good enough." Many of the exterior shots that aren't marred by atrocious greenscreen are drenched in a gauzy, smudgy Barbara Walters lens filter. Lerner got a pair of box-office draws with Reynolds and Jackson, but from a filmmaking standpoint, he still approached THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD as if it starred Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White being directed by Isaac Florentine (why isn't he directing this, by the way?). The film does the bare minimum to get by, and it's damn lucky that it's got Reynolds and Jackson to move it along, because without them, this would've gone straight to Redbox.
Still haunted by a botched job where a client was shot in the head on his watch, AAA-rated security contractor Michael Bryce (Reynolds) has hit bottom. He now takes easy gigs guarding London's low-level drug smugglers and assorted corporate scumbags, his car still smells like ass weeks after pellets of cocaine exploded in a client's rectum, and he's still pining for his French Interpol agent ex Amelia Roussel (Elodie Yung). Amelia has just been assigned to lead the security detail taking incarcerated assassin Darius Kincaid (Jackson) from London to the International Court at the Hague, where he's set to testify against genocidal former Belarus dictator Vlasislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman), who hired Kincaid for some past jobs. Of course, Amelia's boss Jean Foucher (Joaquim de Almeida) is a mole secretly on Dukhovich's payroll--a non-spoiler that's obvious the moment you see the character is played by Joaquim de Almeida--and the dictator's minions ambush the transport convoy, killing everyone but Kincaid and Amelia. With no other options and with Kincaid needing to be in The Hague in 24 hours, Amelia heads to a safe house and calls Bryce, who knows Kincaid from the assassin's 28 attempts on his life while in the line of duty protecting a client. Of course, they're now on the run throughout Europe, with Dukhovich's goons in hot pursuit trying to eliminate the bickering bromancers, who now have to set aside their differences and work together to get to The Hague...if they don't kill each other first!
THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD is so beholden to formula that at one point, Amelia actually tells the prosecutor "The only way Bryce and Kincaid don't make it is if they kill each other first." There's no shortage of car chases and shootouts and director Patrick Hughes (the lackluster THE EXPENDABLES 3) keeps things moving briskly even if the film is 20 minutes too long. Oldman is criminally underused as the villain and Salma Hayek has even less to do as Kincaid's equally foul-mouthed wife, who's in a Dutch prison and will be released if Kincaid testifies. You can definitely see the DEADPOOL influence in the incongruous use of '80s and '90s songs, like Lionel Richie's "Hello" during a flashback to a violent bar brawl where Kincaid met his wife, or another flashback to Bryce and Amelia's meet-cute at a funeral shootout set to Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is." Or Bryce drowning out Kincaid's blues singing with his own a cappella take on Ace of Base's "The Sign." Like DEADPOOL, there's no joke there other than "Hey, these were huge hit singles 25 or 30 years ago, so just recognizing them should be instantly hysterical." But Reynolds and Jackson (who's really having a blast here) are a terrific team and when they're busting chops and working off one another, THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD really comes alive with more than its share of quotable dialogue ("This man has single-handedly ruined the word 'motherfucker'") and laugh-out-loud gags (a car chase montage coming to abrupt halt in seconds thanks to the airbags). In the hands of someone like Shane Black, THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD could've been right up there with a next generation mismatched buddy/cop classic like KISS KISS BANG BANG. Obviously constrained by what he's been given to work with by his producers, Hughes resorts to quick-cut, shaky-cam action scenes and his attempt to pull off the illusion of a long, single-take fight scene is exposed by the first of several obvious cuts about four seconds into the sequence. This is an ugly cheap-looking film in need of some serious quality control on the tech side, but that doesn't mean it's not entertaining. It's a must-see for Reynolds and Jackson fans, and it'll be in constant rotation on cable and streaming until the end of time, but the presence of those two big names are probably the exact reason the producers were totally cool with cutting corners everywhere else.
It's overlong, mostly predictable and hampered somewhat by a third act plot development that rivals 47 METERS DOWN in terms of unnecessary cruelty, but THEIR FINEST is an enjoyably old-fashioned "war at home" WWII saga that became a small word-of-mouth art house hit in the spring. In London in 1940, Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) thinks she's getting a secretarial job with the Ministry of Information's film division. With most of the men called up as the war escalates, she's actually been hired as a screenwriter after department head Roger Swain (Richard E. Grant) was impressed with some comics she wrote for a newspaper in the absence of the regular writers who were off fighting. Teaming with in-house scribe Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin), Catrin's job is to come up with inspiring scripts for movies to keep the British citizens' spirits lifted amidst constant air raids and concerns, as Swain puts it, "that there won't even be any theaters left to show them." Catrin is drawn to the story of twin sisters Lily and Rose Starling (Lily and Francesca Knight) who have found a certain degree of local fame for taking their father's boat, the Nancy Starling, to rescue soldiers at Dunkirk. The sisters have embellished the story significantly, as the Ministry eventually discovers that they tried to go to Dunkirk, but their engine broke down and they were towed back before they even left British waters. It's got too much crowd-pleasing potential to dismiss, so Catrin and Tom are instructed to fictionalize it, and to also add an authoritative male figure--a drunk uncle played by aging thespian Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy)--because no one will believe that two young women took a boat to Dunkirk.
Directed by Lone Scherfig (AN EDUCATION) and adapted from Lissa Evans' 2009 novel Their Finest Hour and a Half by veteran British TV writer Gaby Chiappe (HOLBY CITY, EASTENDERS, LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD), THEIR FINEST is definitely a "they don't make 'em like they used to" kind of movie, at times playing like one of Woody Allen's period comedies, mostly pleasant and anchored by an appealing performance from Arterton. THEIR FINEST does a nice job of presenting a woman's struggle in a male-dominated job market (of course, she makes less money than her male colleagues), and her duties inevitably lead to the expected resentment of her artist husband Ellis (Jack Huston), who has no money coming in and can no longer serve because of a leg injury sustained in the Spanish Civil War a few years earlier. There's also some timeless jabs at the eternal struggle between artists and the powers that be, with the filmmakers forced by the Secretary of War (Jeremy Irons) to cast American soldier and Eagle Squadron hero Carl Lundbeck (Jake Lacy) to appeal to the US, even though he can't act and there were no Americans at Dunkirk. It's Arterton's film, but the scene-stealer is the always-outstanding Nighy, whose Hilliard is a pompous, past-his-prime egotist humbled by the sacrifices made by those around him and eager to do his part by helping Lundbeck hone his acting chops, even talking his agent down from demanding more money and better accommodations because the plucky, can-do spirit of those around him have inspired him to such a degree. It's a warm and at times touching performance that again demonstrates why Nighy is one of our great character actors. THEIR FINEST is a film that's impossible to dislike even if it's rather slight when it's all said and done, and that late-film story development is jarring but in a way that somewhat negatively impacts the film as it sets it up for some ham-fisted sentimentality near the end. (R, 117 mins)
DRONE (US/Canada - 2017)
A potentially interesting, politically-driven thriller, DRONE gets derailed when the filmmakers decide to make it overwrought and polemical, with its antagonist basically wearing a light that flashes "MESSAGE!" In Renton, WA, Neil Westin (Sean Bean) claims to be an IT troubleshooter for a software corporation. Unbeknownst to his wife Ellen (Mary McCormack) and 16-year-old son Shane (Maxwell Haynes), he's actually a CIA contractor who's part of a secret program that employs civilian drone pilots to drop bombs on suspected terrorists in the Middle East from the cozy confines of suburban Seattle, but a recent security leak threatens to expose the entire operation. Meanwhile, Imir Shaw (Patrick Sabongui) has arrived from Pakistan and leaves at least one dead body in his wake in his surveillance of the Westin family, including trailing an adulterous Ellen to a motel with a younger co-worker (Bradley Stryker) who wants to take their fling to a more serious level. Neil's also dealing with the recent passing of his Alzheimer's stricken father and can't find the words to write his eulogy when Imir shows up in his driveway under the guise of buying Neil's father's sailboat. Neil invites him in and as they discuss the boat and get to know each other, Ellen arrives home and they ask Imir to stay for dinner. As Imir starts slowly doling out his backstory, culminating in the revelation that it's the one-year anniversary of his wife and daughter being collateral damage in a US drone strike, it finally dawns on Neil that his dinner guest knows his real job and intends to avenge the death of his family by destroying Neil's.
Director/co-writer Jason Bourque, a veteran of numerous Lifetime movies, takes entirely too long to generate any suspense with DRONE. Imir doesn't even make his intent known to the Westins until the last 15 minutes, and the bulk of the film feels like a long dinner sequence in a play. The film shows its cards too soon in establishing Imir as a threat and doesn't really explore the moral complexities of Neil's job. He doesn't seem to feel one way or another about it, though his decidedly non-PC colleague Gary (Joel David Moore) serves as a mouthpiece for intolerance with his labeling drone casualties as "dune coons." Subtlety is a foreign concept to DRONE, and it's not helped by an ineffective, mannered performance by Bean, who's usually a sure thing but here, he's using a forced, overdone American accent that completely undermines anything he might've been able to do with this character. A subplot about Neil's distance from his late father and Shane getting close to his grandfather in his final days adds nothing, due in large part because Haynes is a terrible actor. McCormack and Sabongui do what they can with paper-thin characters, and even when it finally gets going at the very end, Bourque still can't resist tacking on a final scene of clunky political commentary. DRONE isn't nearly as obnoxious in its pontificating as say, THE CRASH, another thriller from earlier this year that got tripped up in political preaching and also featured McCormack, but it's still not really worth anyone's time. (Unrated, 90 mins)
Affected and mannered by design, Natalie Portman's feature-length impression of Jackie Kennedy carries this artsy, dream-like collage by acclaimed Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain (TONY MANERO, NERUDA). Taking place in the week after the assassination of JFK (Danish actor Caspar Phillipson), JACKIE is a largely experimental work that isn't concerned being a straightforward biopic, and that works in its favor about as often as it works against it. A framing device has Jackie being interviewed by a journalist (Billy Crudup) at the family home in Hyannis Port several days after her husband's funeral. She makes it clear from the outset that she won't indulge the obvious ("You want me to describe the sound the bullet made when it collided with my husband's skull?"), and she will shape the story and have final edit over what is written and presented to the public. From the moment LBJ (John Carroll Lynch) is sworn in on the flight back to D.C., a shell-shocked, blood-splattered Jackie is adamant about making sure her husband is honored and his public persona preserved. Whether she's planning his memorial or telling her story to the journalist, Jackie is constructing an image, that will shape the world's perception of herself and JFK for years to come. Her goal is to present to the world "the brief, shining moment that there was a Camelot," while acknowledging "There won't be another Camelot...not another Camelot."
As intricately constructed as its subject's public image, JACKIE is equal parts Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick. The often stream-of-consciousness monologues delivered by Jackie aren't nearly as wandering and meandering as more recent Malick, and the cold, clinical presentation and long tracking shots are straight out of Kubrick 101. Shooting in Super 16 gives the film a grainy and almost voyeuristic immediacy into Jackie's grief, but the more it goes on, the more ponderous it becomes. Larrain lets Mica Levi's Oscar-nominated score do a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting, and while there's a number of striking images throughout, JACKIE's insistence on keeping everyone--from its supporting characters to the audience watching--at a distance becomes a detriment. The script by Noah Oppenheim (whose two previous writing credits are THE MAZE RUNNER and ALLEGIANT) gets lost in frequently pretentious pontification, with Jackie telling a priest (the late John Hurt in one of his last roles; he died a month after the film's release) things like "The characters you read on the page become more real than the characters who stand beside us." In JACKIE's interpretation of its subject, the First Lady is someone who always seems to playing a part or playing to an audience ("I love crowds!" she tells JFK in a flashback), and to that extent, Portman's performance is remarkable in that it conveys that sense of deliberately manufactured artifice. It's nice that Larrain attempted something more than a cookie-cutter biopic, but in using such tactics, he never lets you in, and the large supporting cast--Hurt, Crudup, Lynch, Peter Sarsgaard as an unconvincing Bobby Kennedy, Greta Gerwig as White House Social Secretary and Jackie's friend Nancy Tuckerman, Richard E. Grant as Bill Walton--exists largely to listen to Jackie wax philosophical and marvel at Portman's uncanny interpretation with her clipped, airy inflections. JACKIE is ambitious and beautifully crafted, but Larrain's technique is too distant and clinical for its own good. (R, 100 mins)
PATERSON (US/Germany/France - 2016)
A quiet film even by Jim Jarmusch standards, PATERSON is a low-key character piece focusing on a Paterson, NJ bus driver named Paterson (Adam Driver) and--it's never really specified--his wife or girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and their English bulldog Marvin (a fine canine performance by eight-year-old Nellie, who was diagnosed with cancer during production and died shortly after filming). A creature of habit, Paterson wakes up every day between 6:10 and 6:15 am, eats a bowl of Cheerios, and walks to work. In his down time and on his lunch breaks, he writes poetry in a journal. When he gets home, Laura makes dinner and tells him about her day, which usually involves her constantly changing life goals ("I need to learn how to play the guitar so I can become a country singer and be as big as Tammy Wynette," she tells Paterson, who's obviously just hearing about this dream for the first time, right between her wanting to be a fashion designer, a painter, and hoping to start her own cupcake business), then he walks Marvin and stops at a neighborhood dive bar run by Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley), for one beer and some conversation before calling it a night. This is Paterson's daily routine, which we follow over the course of a week, and in the context of the film, we see little in the way of a social life (they go see ISLAND OF LOST SOULS at a revival house on Saturday) and nothing in the way of family or friends (a photo on a table tells us that Paterson is a former Marine). PATERSON is about finding heart and soul in the mundane and the everyday, whether it's Paterson being inspired by a box of Ohio Blue Tip matches or eavesdropping on slice-of-life passenger conversations while he's behind the wheel. To that extent, it feels a little like Wayne Wang and Paul Auster's 1995 arthouse hit SMOKE, but the daily repetition recalls Chantal Akerman's JEANNE DIELMAN and the general mood of the film comes off somewhat like Jarmusch's attempt at making a less-precious Wes Anderson film (the recurring use of twins gets a little too cute after a while). The atmosphere is intriguing--Jarmusch sets his scenes in old-school Jersey neighborhoods that have likely been unchanged for decades, and Paterson himself seems like a man not made for these times (he doesn't even have a cell phone). It's a film about the millions of average nobodies who have artistic ideas within them that need to come out but everyday life just happens. Flighty but loving Laura wants Paterson to publish his poetry, but he writes it mainly for himself. He's fine with that, and he's happy. There's a reverence for the history of Paterson, whether it's the invocation of revered Paterson-born poet William Carlos Williams, whose most well-known collection is titled Paterson, and in the framed photos of hometown heroes on the wall of Doc's bar. On a cursory glance, not much happens in PATERSON, but it very subtly sneaks up on you, as in a late sequence where Paterson, on one of his solitary walks, meets a kindred spirit in a traveler from Osaka (Masatoshi Nagase, who was in Jarmusch's MYSTERY TRAIN back in 1989) carrying a tattered Japanese translation of Paterson, that really carries some unexpected emotional resonance. (R, 118 mins)
MAX ROSE
(US - 2016)
Screened at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and shelved for three years until it hit a few theaters in the fall of 2016, MAX ROSE marks the first significant big-screen role for Jerry Lewis since 1995's little-seen FUNNY BONES. Lewis brings much emotion and poignancy to the title character, a forgotten jazz pianist who had a brief day in the sun in the late 1950s but never became a star. As MAX ROSE opens, 87-year-old Max is dealing with the death of Eva (Claire Bloom), his wife of 65 years. He's understandably hit hard by it ("I can't even remember my life without her," he says) and despite the doting attention of his adult granddaughter Annie (Kerry Bishe) and attempts at bonding from his somewhat estranged son Chris (Kevin Pollak), Max grows obsessed with something he uncovered in the days before Eva's death: a makeup compact with a hidden inscription from a "Ben," dated November 5, 1959, the day he was in across the country in a NYC studio cutting his only record. Max is haunted by the notion that Eva had a secret lover and questions the whether his marriage and his entire life has been a lie, even breaking down and airing this potentially dirty laundry during the eulogy at Eva's funeral. A health scare permanently sends cantankerous Max to a retirement home, where he's not enthused about knitting and cooking classes but finds some buddies in a likable trio of fellow old-timer widowers (played by Rance Howard, Lee Weaver, and legendary political satirist Mort Sahl, and watching guys like Sahl and Lewis riff provides some of MAX ROSE's best moments), but he can't get "Ben" out of his mind. When he eventually finds out who Ben is and that he's still alive (Dean Stockwell turns up in the third act), Max realizes he can't have any kind of closure until he gets to the bottom of Eva's relationship with him.
MAX ROSE was written and directed by Daniel Noah, a producer on recent notable cult films like TOAD ROAD and A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT. Noah based the Max Rose character on his own grandfather, so there's no doubting his sincerity in the project, which was probably key in getting an essentially retired Lewis onboard. While things take a decidedly predictable turn (there's obviously an explanation for the inscription and no way the film will turn the saintly Eva into a cheating wife) and grow increasingly maudlin in the home stretch, with a closing scene that's audience manipulation at its most shameless, it's hard to not like MAX ROSE. This is almost entirely due to the sentimentality of seeing Lewis in a starring role once again after all these years. Like Clint Eastwood in GRAN TORINO, it's a film that sinks or swims on its star, in each case a cultural icon with decades of familiarity working in his favor. Lewis is a joy to watch here, even if he's grown notoriously prickly and abrasive with age, and he's convincing and heartbreaking in the small, quiet moments where Noah really nails the emotional impact of losing someone after so long: Max sitting alone in the living room, the house eerily silent; or deciding it's time to throw out Eva's toothbrush and her things in the medicine cabinet; or spotting the book she was reading, left on the coffee table with its bookmark sticking out at the halfway point, and realizing she'll never finish it. This is the kind of film that probably would've gotten a big push a decade or two ago, with a sentimental Oscar nod for Lewis all but guaranteed. But after some significant retooling following its panned Cannes screening in 2013 (which resulted in Fred Willard being cut from the film completely, which may be a factor in its truncated running time), there's no place for something like MAX ROSE in today's market. Some movies skew old and still get wide releases (the recent Shirley MacLaine-starring THE LAST WORD and the new remake of GOING IN STYLE come to mind), but is anyone under 80 going to pay to see a new Jerry Lewis movie in 2016? And while there are no doubt a good number of tech-savvy geriatrics, how many are into streaming and VOD? My dad is 73 and shakes his head and makes a face like he's sniffing Limburger when you mention "streaming" to him. MAX ROSE isn't any great shakes, but it's awfully hard to dislike, and a must for Jerry Lewis fans...if they're even aware of its existence. (Unrated, 84 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
LOGAN (US - 2017) Directed by James Mangold. Written by Scott Frank, James Mangold and Michael Green. Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant, Eriq La Salle, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Elise Neal, Quincy Fouse, Rey Gallegos, Daniel Bernhardt, Jason Genao. (R, 137 mins) I hit a wall with Marvel and DC movies about a year ago with the realization that I just didn't care about them anymore. LOGAN seems to be cognizant of that sentiment as it's a comic book movie like no other, one that seems designed for people who are tired of the same old comic book movies. It's a risky proposition for something so commercial to go so defiantly against expectations. An established, moneymaking franchise hasn't wandered this far in an unforeseen direction since UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING. For starters, LOGAN is the most graphically gory film of its type since the 2008 cult classic PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, almost playing at times like it comes from an alternate universe where Mel Gibson was hired to direct THE PASSION OF THE WOLVERINE. It's doubtful that this move into hard-R territory would've been possibly without the huge success of the smug and douchey DEADPOOL, but that's where the comparisons end. A deconstruction of its franchise's own mythology and a downbeat, mournful elegy of the dark side of heroism inspired by Mark Millar's Old Man Logan comics series, the ambitious LOGAN is cerebral and audacious, an outside-the-box attempt at exploring the psychology of a scant few lost and broken X-Men who are the last of their kind and know the end is near. It's visceral, bleak, and uncompromising, with director/co-writer James Mangold taking a more personal thematic approach to this than he did on 2013's little-loved THE WOLVERINE, which he took on as more of a gun-for-hire job after Darren Aronofsky quit during pre-production. The Logan of LOGAN is more in line with other Mangold protagonists like Sylvester Stallone's Freddy Heflin in COP LAND and Christian Bale's one-legged Civil War vet in 3:10 TO YUMA: sad, bitter, burned-out and beaten down by life, and generally just going through the motions until something comes along that inspires them to give a shit again.
LOGAN takes place in 2029, years after nearly all of the X-Men have died off and 25 years since the last mutant was born. James Howlett, aka Logan (Hugh Jackman) is a disheveled alcoholic dividing his time between driving a limo in El Paso and scoring seizure medication for Prof. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who's holed up an an abandoned factory in the outskirts of a small Mexican town just south of the border. Now 90, Xavier is suffering from a degenerative brain disease that causes him to lose control of his telepathic powers without proper meds, which are getting more expensive by the day. The pair share their living space with albino mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant), who takes care of housekeeping duties like Felix Unger to Logan's Oscar Madison. Logan is contacted by Gabriella (Elizabeth Rodriguez), who wants him to drive young Laura (Dafne Keen) to North Dakota where she's to meet some other young mutants and cross the border into Canada. Logan is incredulous, as no mutants have been born in nearly three decades, but when Gabriella is killed and he realizes that Laura is being targeted by a heavily-armed security force with cybernetic right arms led by Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), he ends up on the run with Xavier and the child in tow. Pierce is employed by Transigen, a company ostensibly conducting pediatric cancer research at a medical facility in Mexico, but they're really breeding a new strain of mutant using the DNA of X-Men like Logan. Judging from her retractable knuckle blades, Xavier immediately concludes that Logan's DNA was used to father Laura. With Pierce abducting an ailing Caliban and forcing him to use his powers to track them down, Logan, Xavier, and Laura form a tentative three-generational family unit, with Xavier reminding the misanthropic Logan "This is what life looks like...people love each other...you should take notice."
The characters are the key component of LOGAN, but it doesn't skimp on the action. The trio has several run-ins with Pierce and his employer, chief villain and asshole geneticist Dr. Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant), there's a terrific car chase, and there's a couple appearances by Wolverine clone X-24, also played by Jackman. The level of violence in LOGAN is sure to surprise even the most jaded moviegoers: between the two of them, Logan and Laura stab, skewer, slice, dice, decapitate, and disembowel everyone Transigen sends their way, tallying up a body count that makes John Wick look like a hesitant rookie. While it meets the action content requirement, LOGAN is about the people, and even though it functions as a standalone work, this is a film that couldn't have been made had Jackman and Stewart not had so much experience with these characters. They've inhabited these characters through multiple installments and the audience knows them so well over the last 17 years that the more serious approach carries significant emotional weight. Like Clint Eastwood's reformed killer William Munny in UNFORGIVEN, Jackman's Logan subverts expectations and serves as a genre commentary on itself (in addition to Logan being an outcast who has no place in the world, there's additional western motifs that Mangold drives home by showing Xavier and Laura watching SHANE on TV). Logan is dying from the slow poisoning caused by the adamantium that makes up his claws and runs through his body. He knows the end is near for him, Xavier, and Caliban and that when they die, the X-Men die with them, even if they live on in the "bullshit" comic books that Logan sees wherever he goes. The bond that he and Xavier form with Laura gives him a reason to live, a reason to do what's right before the lights go out on a life that's seen too much pain and death. Of course, doing so requires doling out more pain and death, and therein lies the conundrum. Jackman and Stewart are so good in LOGAN that they warrant legitimate Oscar consideration, though it'll never happen. They're matched by an impressive Keen in her movie debut. She has no dialogue for the first 3/4 of the film and instead relies on facial expressions and the most penetrating, "don't fuck with me" side-eye you'll ever see. This kid has an intimidating look to her that goes way past "resting bitchface." LOGAN is an instant classic of its kind, the most extreme superhero bloodbath since PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, the best serious genre offering since THE DARK KNIGHT, and a thoughtful and often profoundly moving drama that looks at the last days of dying legend. One of the best films of 2017.
MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON (US - 1990) Directed by Bob Rafelson. Written by William Harrison and Bob Rafelson. Cast: Patrick Bergin, Iain Glen, Richard E. Grant, Fiona Shaw, Peter Vaughan, Bernard Hill, Roshan Seth, Delroy Lindo, Anna Massey, James Villiers, John Savident, Paul Onsongo, Roger Rees, Adrian Rawlins, Peter Eyre. (R, 136 mins)
Bob Rafelson isn't the first director to come to mind when you think "big-budget epics." Born in 1933, Rafelson got his start as a story editor and writer on various 1960s TV shows before becoming one of the primary creative forces on the TV series THE MONKEES. He directed the group's 1968 feature film HEAD, scripted by his friend Jack Nicholson, and he and business partner Bert Schneider would soon expand their Raybert Productions (the pair produced EASY RIDER) to form BBS Productions with new partner Stephen Blauner. Through BBS, Rafelson also had a hand in producing Peter Bogdanovich's THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971), Nicholson's first directing effort DRIVE, HE SAID (1971) and Peter Davis' Oscar-winning documentary HEARTS AND MINDS (1974). BBS also handled Rafelson's own directorial efforts like his breakthrough FIVE EASY PIECES (1970) and THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS (1972). The company folded after HEARTS AND MINDS, but in this selection of work (all except HEARTS AND MINDS are on the 2010 Criterion set AMERICA LOST AND FOUND: THE BBS STORY), you see key building blocks in 1970s auteurism and the independent film movement with the kinds of intimate, serious, unflinching character studies (HEAD being the exception) for which Rafelson would come to be known. Simply put, Bob Rafelson wasn't the kind of guy who made huge, sweeping, expensive event movies.
Bob Rafelson on the set of MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON
By the time Rafelson began shooting MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON in late 1988, he'd only made two films over the course of the decade: his controversial 1981 remake of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, with Nicholson and Jessica Lange, and the 1987 suspense thriller BLACK WIDOW, with Debra Winger and Theresa Russell. BLACK WIDOW was a rare commercial hit for Rafelson, grossing $25 million and becoming a cable mainstay to this day. Never prolific even in his prime, the now-81-year-old Rafelson has directed only eleven features over the course of his 50-year career--six of which involve Nicholson, the actor with whom Rafelson will always be inextricably linked--and he hasn't made anything since the little-seen 2003 thriller NO GOOD DEED, an updated adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 1923 short story The House on Turk Street, with Samuel L. Jackson and Milla Jovovich. The subject of MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON was an interest of Rafelson's since the 1960s and the film was a longtime dream project that he'd been trying to get made since 1980, but never managed to get it off the ground. That is, until he met Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, the heads of the indie production company Carolco.
Kassar and Vajna's Carolco began as a low-budget outfit producing horror films like THE CHANGELING (1980) and SUPERSTITION (shot in 1982, released in 1985). Carolco's first box office success came with FIRST BLOOD (1982), and would continue throughout the decade with hits like RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985), RAMBO III (1988), and RED HEAT (1988) and notorious controversies like Alan Parker's ANGEL HEART (1987). They made a move into critical respectability with Costa-Gavras' MUSIC BOX (1989), which earned an Oscar nomination for Jessica Lange. A film like MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON would be another huge bid at serious artistry that the indie producers wanted, and they were eager to help Rafelson achieve his vision with a budget in the vicinity of $20 million. Considering how many of today's biggest actors and directors see their films going straight to VOD because something's a "flop" if it doesn't gross $75 million in its opening weekend, it's hard to believe there was once a time when producers were willing to give $20 million to Bob Rafelson, an accomplished and acclaimed filmmaker who nevertheless wasn't exactly synonymous with "big box office," to make a personal pet project starring two unknown actors and shot on location in the vast wilderness of Kenya, much like it's hard to believe there was once a time when $20 million was considered "big budget."
Iain Glen as John Hanning Speke
Scripted by Rafelson and William Harrison, from Harrison's 1982 biographical novel Burton and Speke as well as the personal journals of the men at the core of the story, MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON takes place from 1854 to 1864, and chronicles the efforts of explorers Richard Francis Burton (Patrick Bergin) and John Hanning Speke (Iain Glen) to find the source of the Nile. To do so requires going into the darkest heart of Africa where white men have never journeyed, and Rafelson follows them and their party every grueling step of the way, with hostile tribes, impenetrable terrains, and other life-threatening obstacles, from malaria to a deadly beetle burrowing into Speke's ear and causing him to go partially deaf, to Burton getting a spear thrown through his cheek and later slicing his legs open to combat a crippling bout of cellulitis causing a near-fatal swelling. But, in keeping with Rafelson's style, it's also a very human, character-driven story of two competitive men who shared a mutual respect and kinship, with their differences complementing one another to make them the perfect team. Burton was the scientific one, intellectual and learned (he claims to speak 23 languages), and dedicated to his profession but able to unwind with a rogue-ish, hard-living wild side tamed by the love of the upstanding Isabel Arundell (Fiona Shaw) back home in England. Speke was an ex-military man who made up for his lack of book smarts with his heroic actions, saving Burton's life on a number of occasions throughout their journey. When Burton is stricken with malaria and held captive by a chieftain, Speke goes forward and is convinced he's found the source of the Nile, christening it Lake Victoria. Burton is unconvinced, pointing out that the untrained Speke is barely literate and knows nothing of cartography and measuring coordinates (future historians and medical experts concluded that Speke was most likely dyslexic, a condition not identified or studied until well into the 1880s). A progressive-minded man who doesn't believe white men can "discover" any land that native people are already living on, Burton also has a change of heart during his time in captivity, when he's forced into the mercy-killing of slave Mabruki (Delroy Lindo in his first noteworthy screen role), and doesn't wish to proceed forward, instead dismissing Speke's assertions and calling an end to the expedition and heading back to London.
Patrick Bergin as Richard Francis Burton
By 1861, Burton and Speke are bitter rivals, a wedge driven between them by the abrupt end to the expedition and by the glad-handing Larry Oliphant (Richard E. Grant), an academic who's insanely jealous of Burton and manipulates the impressionable, insecure Speke into turning against him. Both Burton and Speke published their findings, and Speke was given a fully-funded expedition of his own to ascertain that Lake Victoria was indeed the true source. Public opinion sided with Speke, who relished the fame and attention but remained despondent over his and Burton's collapsed friendship. When academia-generated hype forces the two to agree to a very public debate, Burton dreads embarrassing his former friend, and Speke, fearing his intellectual weaknesses and shaky methodology will be exposed, commits suicide. Heartbroken, Burton retires from public life with Isabel as future research and exploration by others concludes that Speke was indeed correct about Lake Victoria.
It's a sweeping, beautiful piece of filmmaking, unlike anything else in Rafelson's filmography, with stunning cinematography by the great Roger Deakins. And of course, it bombed. Carolco productions were being distributed by Tri-Star Pictures, who didn't really know how to sell the film (did they think it was a sci-fi movie?). To many who saw the trailer in 1989, it looked like a then in-vogue Merchant-Ivory costume drama. According to Rafelson in a recent interview with film and TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz, Tri-Star executives were more focused on their own GLORY, bumping MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON from the holiday 1989 crop of year-end Oscar contenders to the early 1990 dumping ground. Opening on two screens on February 23, 1990, MOUNTAINS expanded over the next few weeks mainly due to passionate accolades from prominent critics (Siskel & Ebert loved it), but it abruptly flatlined at its widest release on 187 screens when Tri-Star gave up on it and pulled the plug, with a total gross of just $4 million. Perhaps the real, unspoken, underlying reason that Tri-Star didn't get behind the film was that it pretty clearly portrays Speke as gay, with the devious actions of Oliphant done more out of possessive love for him than overt hatred of Burton. There's a scene with a smiling Oliphant caressing an injured Speke's leg and resting his hand on his knee, and Speke smiling back, and while the film doesn't go into explicit details, the message is loud and clear. Though Rafelson doesn't specifically spell out the nature of their relationship, Harrison's research into his novel revealed that Speke and Oliphant's involvement with one another wasn't exactly a closeted secret among their social circle. Perhaps the most telling moment is where Speke comforts a delirious, incoherent Burton, stricken with malaria and the deadly swelling in his legs, with a kiss on the lips that lingers just a little too long. In the context of the scene, Burton has no idea what's happening and doesn't respond, but Speke knows what he's doing and loses himself in the moment, the implication being that Speke secretly wants to take their Victorian-era bromance to the next level.
Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar
in the early days of Carolco
Despite Carolco's success, industry experts said that the company's heavy spending ways wouldn't be able to sustain them forever. Carolco was also dealing with internal struggles at the time, as Kassar and Vajna's partnership had dissolved by November 1989 and Vajna was paid $100 million for his share of the company. He would remain credited on their films released throughout 1990, like MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, AIR AMERICA, TOTAL RECALL, and JACOB'S LADDER, as he was still part of Carolco when they went into production. Kassar would continue Carolco on his own and oversee blockbusters like TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991), BASIC INSTINCT (1992), CLIFFHANGER (1993), and STARGATE (1994) before the bottom fell out with Paul Verhoeven's SHOWGIRLS (1995) and Renny Harlin's CUTTHROAT ISLAND (1995), the latter being one of the costliest box office bombs in film history, and one that completely obliterated Carolco. Vajna formed his own production company, Cinergi, but the two would once again join forces for a new venture, C-2 Pictures, that seems to have fizzled in 2009 after an unspectacular run that included the Eddie Murphy/Owen Wilson flop I-SPY (2002), TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003), BASIC INSTINCT 2 (2006), and the well-received but short-lived 2008 TV series TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES. Neither Kassar (now 63) nor Vajna (now 70) have produced any films since 2009.
Bob Rafelson directing Patrick Bergin
Rafelson went back to work soon after MOUNTAINS sank from view, reuniting with Nicholson for the 1992 romantic comedy MAN TROUBLE, one of the low points of both men's careers. Rafelson and Nicholson teamed once more for 1997's BLOOD AND WINE, a tense noir nailbiter that Fox barely released and once again, one of Rafelson's finest films went nowhere despite a name cast that also included Stephen Dorff, Jennifer Lopez, Judy Davis, and Michael Caine. As a sleazy and terminally ill small-time criminal, Caine turns in one of his best performances in a film that he almost didn't make. Disillusioned with the state of his career after co-starring in Steven Seagal's ON DEADLY GROUND (1994) and doing a pair of low-budget, partially Russian mob-financed Harry Palmer adventures with notoriously corner-cutting producer Harry Alan Towers in 1995, a depressed Caine was seriously contemplating retirement until Rafelson and Nicholson convinced him to give BLOOD AND WINE a shot. Caine got most of the critical accolades and even though nobody saw the movie, it kickstarted a late '90s Caineassaince that resulted in another Oscar for 1999's THE CIDER HOUSE RULES and is presently ongoing. Rafelson then made the 1998 mystery POODLE SPRINGS for HBO, with James Caan as Philip Marlowe, and during this period, directed a few erotic short films and an episode of the Showtime series PICTURE WINDOWS. NO GOOD DEED is his last film to date, as Rafelson appears to have called it a career, instead opting to remain busy in his emeritus years as an interview subject. Rafelson dabbled in various genres, demonstrating a particular affinity for noir as he got older, but MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON remains his most unusual, and in many ways, most personal project.
Because of Speke's introverted personality, a very effective Glen turns in the more internalized performance of the two stars. Glen has stayed consistently busy as a character actor on British TV and in films like LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER (2001) and a couple of RESIDENT EVIL entries, and is probably best known for his current gig as Jorah Mormont on HBO's GAME OF THRONES. But MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON should've made a star of Bergin, and for a while, he was being groomed for the A-list, with Newsweek even declaring him "the next Sean Connery." The Dublin-born Bergin was relatively inexperienced when Rafelson cast him, with supporting roles in a pair of barely-released Irish films (1988's TAFFIN and 1989's THE COURIER), but Rafelson rightly spotted something in the actor that made him perfect for the larger-than-life Burton. Bergin is absolutely magnetic in the role--alternately dashing, heroic, pompous, romantic, funny, and later, utterly devastating in the scene where he kills Mabruki--and while MOUNTAINS may have been a commercial bomb, it got him on the map with Hollywood executives and industry insiders. He struck gold shortly after when he was cast in 1991's SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY as the psychotic stalker husband of Julia Roberts, just coming off of consecutive Oscar nominations in STEEL MAGNOLIAS (1989) and PRETTY WOMAN (1990). He then co-starred with Harrison Ford in PATRIOT GAMES (1992), but other than that, Bergin's Hollywood launch was stalled by one troubled production and box office disaster after another: the comedy/horror film HIGHWAY TO HELL hit a dead end in a handful of theaters in 1992 after three years on the shelf; Lizzie Borden's S&M thriller LOVE CRIMES (1992) was disowned by pretty much everyone involved and earned Bergin's combative co-star Sean Young a Razzie nomination; and the epic MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART (1993) was taken away from director Vincent Ward, re-cut by Harvey Weinstein and dumped by Miramax. Bergin did star in a pair of well-received TV movies--he had the title role in Fox's ROBIN HOOD (1991) and played Dr. Frankenstein opposite Randy Quaid's monster in TNT's FRANKENSTEIN (1992)--that did little for his big-screen career. By the time MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART was playing to empty arthouses, Bergin's career momentum was already at a complete standstill.
Some have blamed it on his hateful character terrorizing America's then-sweetheart Roberts in SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, and others have blamed it on the laughable LOVE CRIMES and his on-set clashes with the notoriously volatile Young. Whatever the cause--bad timing, bad movies, his mustache--Bergin was flatly rejected by American moviegoers in one of the quickest flameouts of a Next Big Thing in Hollywood history. The very industry that was grooming him for stardom now wanted nothing to do with him. By the mid-1990s, he was already a straight-to-video fixture with only occasional theatrical releases like the inane LAWNMOWER MAN 2: BEYOND CYBERSPACE (1996). When he turned up in a supporting role in the Ewan McGregor/Ashley Judd thriller EYE OF THE BEHOLDER (2000), it was actually a surprise to see him on the big screen. In 2002, he had the title role in the low-budget Italian TV miniseries DRACULA. In the years since, Bergin has appeared in some truly awful movies, many of which have never even been commercially released and, of course, was reduced to starring in an Asylum production with SyFy's spoofy SHARK WEEK (2012). Like Michael Madsen and Tom Sizemore, but to a lesser degree, Bergin's IMDb page shows him appearing in several movies a year, but the last one anyone saw or was even vaguely aware of was when he was 15th-billed in the 2004 Anne Hathaway vehicle ELLA ENCHANTED. What happened to Patrick Bergin? One look at his work in MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON and it's clear he had what it took to be a major star. Did SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY typecast him and ruin his career? Did he burn some bridges along the way? Did Alan Rickman get all of his roles? How do you go from "the next Sean Connery" to LAWNMOWER MAN 2 in five years? Whatever the reason, will somebody give this guy a good part? How has he not played a Bond villain by now? How has he never played an eccentric detective on a CBS police procedural?
With a 1999-issued DVD long out-of-print, MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON was recently brought back into the spotlight with an airing on Turner Classic Movies. Nearly 25 years after its release, it's amassed a fervent cult following and has come to be regarded as a forgotten masterpiece. It's one of the last great films of its kind, a relic from a bygone era of grand, majestic, epic adventures in the tradition of David Lean (there's even a brief cameo by Omar Sharif). Reviews at the time compared MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON to Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) and John Huston's THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1975), but despite significant acclaim and raves from those moviegoers who did manage to see it, it simply couldn't overcome the apathy of the executives at Tri-Star. Like other 1980s epics such as Sydney Pollack's OUT OF AFRICA (1985) and Roland Joffe's THE MISSION (1986), MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON showcased arduous location shooting in exotic places in the years just before CGI became the new way to do things. They don't make them like this anymore, and they were rarely making them like this then. With Carolco's CUTTHROAT ISLAND bankruptcy issues, Rafelson isn't even sure who owns MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON (though, if it's anything like other Carolco titles from that era, it's most likely Lionsgate, though the logo at the end of the TCM airing indicates that Paramount at least controls the television rights), but 2015 would be the perfect time for a 25th anniversary, special edition Blu-ray release of this tragically neglected film.
This visually striking adaptation of Dostoyevsky's 1846 novella uses the title and the concept of the self, but really ventures off into its own dystopian nightmare black comedy scenario more akin to the likes of George Orwell and Franz Kafka. The retro-futurist production design recalls the drab and bleak worlds of Terry Gilliam's classic BRAZIL (1985) and Orson Welles' Kafka adaptation THE TRIAL (1962). There's also a lot of THE TRIAL in one of two performances by Jesse Eisenberg, who does a remarkable job of channeling Anthony Perkins' Josef K. in his portrayal of meek office drone Simon James. Afraid of his own shadow, Simon is employed by a bureaucratic company called ColLoc and works in a dreary, gray, overcrowded, and oppressively hot office building. He gets hassled by the security guard, who still doesn't recognize him after seven years of employment. His co-workers and his demanding boss Mr. Papadopoulos (Wallace Shawn) rarely seem to notice him and if they do, they get his name wrong ("Stanley!"). Simon would rather keep quiet and look down, and on the rare occasions he considers speaking, he can't get a word out, especially around his cold mother (Phyllis Somerville), who can't even point him out when he's clearly visible in an improbably upbeat ColLoc TV commercial. He secretly pines for co-worker Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), finding excuses to visit her department for painfully awkward interaction or just spying on her through his telescope, as her apartment building is adjacent to his own. Simon's tenuous grip on his world is jeopardized when Mr. Papadopoulous hires James Simon (also Eisenberg), a doppelganger who looks just like Simon but is his opposite in every other way: brash and egotistical where Simon is quiet and withdrawn, James is Simon's id run rampant. His gregarious personality wins over the office. He coasts by on Simon's hard work. He bullies a waitress (Cathy Moriarty) into bringing him breakfast after they've stopped serving while she can't even be bothered to bring Simon a Coke. He seduces Hannah and the boss' daughter (Yasmin Paige) and demands a copy of Simon's apartment key so he can arrange other trysts he wants to keep secret from Hannah ("I'll also be taking other women up there, in case you start noticing different smells"). Obviously, Simon can only be pushed so far.
A cursory glance at some of the names associated with THE DOUBLE guarantees it'll at the very least be an interesting experience. Directed and co-written by comedian, music video director, and THE IT CROWD co-star Richard Ayoade, the film also lists Michael Caine and Harmony Korine among its producers, it's co-written by Korine's younger brother Avi, and in addition to Shawn and Moriarty, its eclectic supporting cast features, among others, James Fox, Noah Taylor, Rade Serbedzija, Chris O'Dowd, and Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis as an irate janitor. THE DOUBLE obviously owes a huge debt to Terry Gilliam and Orson Welles, but it still manages to be a unique and very well-executed bit of paranoia, dark comedy, and bleak misanthropy, anchored by two brilliant Eisenberg performances that play to both of his screen personas and allow him to take them into some dark places. Only released on 16 screens and VOD, THE DOUBLE didn't get much of a push from Magnolia and grossed just $200,000, but it shouldn't take very long for it to become a word-of-mouth cult item. (R, 93 mins)
A GOOD MAN (US - 2014)
For most casual moviegoers, Steven Seagal probably fell off the pop culture radar around 2002, the last time one of his own headlining vehicles (HALF PAST DEAD) made it into theaters. In the years since, his A&E reality series STEVEN SEAGAL: LAWMAN and his jokey supporting turn as a villain in Robert Rodriguez's MACHETE (2010) have alerted the general public to his continued existence, but only hardcore denizens of the DTV gutter know that Seagal's been consistently cranking out a ton of low-budget and mostly terrible actioners, starring in no less than 25 nearly interchangeable straight-to-DVD titles in the 12 years since HALF PAST DEAD served as an unintentionally prophetic description of his big-screen career. Seagal doesn't seem to be well-liked by his peers--he was never invited to take part in any EXPENDABLES entries--and the only time he makes the news now is when he releases a hilariously awful blues album or is seen hanging out with his close personal friend Vladimir Putin. Most of Seagal's DTV titles are thoroughly worthless, with the once-engaging action icon setting new benchmarks in apathy by letting his obvious double handle everything from strenuous fight scenes to simple shots where his back is to the camera and he answers questions by nodding. If you see enough of these, you start to notice that it's frequently only really Seagal if he has a close-up or if it's a two-shot and he's talking, and even then, sometimes the co-star is much shorter and "Seagal"'s head is out of the frame. There were even a few instances in the mid-2000s where his performance was badly dubbed over by someone else for some unexplained reason. Seagal puts the bare minimum amount of work into most of these productions but, like a broken clock being right twice a day, a couple of them have been accidentally decent, like 2009's THE KEEPER and 2010's A DANGEROUS MAN, the latter being better than most of what he had in theaters during his late '90s decline before 2001's EXIT WOUNDS gave him a very brief comeback.
A GOOD MAN is typical of Seagal's straight-to-DVD output. It's hardly the worst of the lot, but that doesn't exactly merit a recommendation. Rather than being aggressively shitty, it's merely predictable and boring, with Seagal as Alexander, codename "Ghost," an ex-covert ops guy living off the grid in "Eastern Europe" (like many of Seagal's movies these days, this was shot on-the-cheap in Romania) after a raid on a Middle East terrorist compound went south two years earlier. Ghost involves himself in the troubles of attractive neighbor Lena (Iulia Verdes) and her kid sister Mya (Sofia Nicolaescu), whose safety is jeopardized by their American half-brother Sasha's (Victor Webster) involvement with Russian mobster Vladimir (Claudiu Bleont). Sasha owes Vladimir a ton of money via a debt accrued by his late father, and Ghost sees this as the perfect opportunity to start a war between Vladimir and terror cell financier Mr. Chen (Tzi Ma, best known for the Coen Bros. remake of THE LADYKILLERS), who was responsible for what went down in the Middle East two years earlier. A GOOD MAN offers everything you expect from modern-day Seagal: the star using a ridiculously affected and completely inappropriate accent, thankfully abandoning his N'awlins drawl of recent years but resorting to an even more ludicrous-sounding hip-hop dialect that sounds like Drexl Spivey after a root canal. This leads to a mush-mouthed Seagal shouting things like "All y'all muthafuckaz," and "I wondah how much pussy he get?" proving that at no point during filming did director Keoni Waxman pull his star aside and remind him that he's 62 years old. There's also the now-standard Seagal fighting style, which consists of being there for the close-ups and sticking his arm out so a bad guy can run into it while Waxman shakes the camera around to simulate "fighting action" before cutting to actual fighting with "Seagal" shot from behind as his younger and more svelte double does the heavy lifting. Finally, about an hour or so in, we get another signature move in the modern Seagal repertoire: the mid-film sabbatical where he disappears for 20 or more minutes while a co-star--in this case, Webster--advances the plot and gets a bunch of action scenes. Seagal stars in a lot of movies, but he's one of the laziest actors in the business and A GOOD MAN does nothing to counter that reputation and halt his ongoing free-fall into irrelevance. (R, 103 mins) DOM HEMINGWAY (UK - 2013; US release 2014)
Writer/director Richard Shepard scored an acclaimed indie sleeper hit with 2005's THE MATADOR, with Pierce Brosnan as a lethal assassin and all-around bad guy having a crisis of conscience when he befriends nice-guy salesman Greg Kinnear. Shepard explores somewhat similar territory--at least the redemption aspect--in DOM HEMINGWAY, which opens as strong as any film this year with an introductory rant by the title character (Jude Law) and a punchline that won't soon be forgotten and sets the tone right from the start that it's not going to be playing things safe. Law is all maniacal bluster, fusing elements of Dennis Hopper in BLUE VELVET, Ben Kingsley in SEXY BEAST, and Lee Marvin in POINT BLANK into one memorable madman. Safecracker Dom is released from a British prison, where he's been locked up for 12 years after refusing to rat on crime boss Ivan Fontaine (Demian Bichir). Teaming up with his best friend/handler Dickie (Richard E. Grant), Dom heads to St. Tropez to collect the money he feels Fontaine owes him for his work and his silence. Unfortunately, Dom can't keep his volcanic temper in check and ends up endlessly insulting Fontaine, his girlfriend Paolina (Madalena Ghenea), and Dickie. He succeeds in making amends, and Fontaine gives him more money than he ever expected. After a drunken car wreck results in Paolina running off with his money, Dom makes his way back to London and tries reconnecting with his estranged daughter Evelyn (GAME OF THRONES' Emilia Clarke), who resents him for spending 12 years behind bars and not being there when her mother--Dom's wife--was dying of cancer. Evelyn has a young son with whom Dom tries to get acquainted, and while he wants to go straight, he shoots his mouth off and ends up tangling with Lestor (Jumayn Hunter), Fontaine's chief rival and a man who has a score to settle with Dom.
DOM HEMINGWAY starts off so darkly hilarous and gloriously foul and profane that it's dispiriting when it veers off into the realm of feelgood redemption dramedy at its midpoint. Law's performance--one of his best--keeps things afloat but the shift in tone is cumbersome, to say the least. It's hard not to laugh at Dom incorporating James Taylor lyrics into a bile-soaked tirade that also has him threatening to "throat-fuck" Fontaine, but it's awfully difficult to buy him getting all misty over the grandson he never knew shortly after. It's not that a sociopath like Dom can't find genuine emotions of that sort deep within himself--it's that the film doesn't feel genuine in the journey of its central character. Dom is whatever the plot needs him to be at any given time, and even Evelyn's change of heart about her dad doesn't really ring true. The first half of DOM HEMINGWAY is outrageously entertaining, but it fizzles once Evelyn enters the story and never regains its footing. It's too bad because until the film starts stumbling and bumbling, it features some of the finest work of Law's career, and he gets some excellent support from Grant as his perpetually suffering yet always loyal sidekick. It's not always successful, but they make it worth seeing. (R, 93 mins)
