KONG: SKULL ISLAND (US/China - 2017) Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts. Written by Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly. Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly, Terry Notary, Toby Kebbell, Jing Tian, John Ortiz, Shea Whigham, Richard Jenkins, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Thomas Mann, Eugene Cordero, Mark Evan Jackson, Will Brittain, Miyavi, Robert Taylor. (PG-13, 118 mins) Not a follow-up to Peter Jackson's 2005 version of KING KONG, but instead the second installment of Warner/Legendary's "MonsterVerse" franchise after 2014's GODZILLA, KONG: SKULL ISLAND delivers the monster mega-throwdown that audiences want, but is lacking almost everywhere else. It follows the JURASSIC WORLD template right down to hiring one of that film's writers (Derek Connolly) and handing directing chores to a relative newcomer with zero genre experience in Jordan Vogt-Roberts. Vogt-Roberts gives you what you want with huge CGI monster mayhem, but gets tripped up in the rest, which amounts to little more than a tribute to APOCALYPSE NOW. Set in 1973 at the end of the Vietnam War for no discernible reason other than kitschy production design and a classic rock soundtrack, KONG opens with Bill Randa (John Goodman), the head of a secret government outfit known as Monarch, requesting that he and seismologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) get a military escort to the uncharted "Skull Island" in the South Pacific for mapping purposes. Assigned to accompany Randa and Brooks is a helicopter squadron led by hardass warrior Col. Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), with Randa bringing along high-priced mercenary tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and anti-war photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson). Monarch isn't there to map an island, as everyone soon finds out when a giant ape starts swatting choppers out of the sky. Survivors are scattered into three groups--one with Conrad, Weaver, biologist San (Jing Tian),and some soldiers, another with Packard, Randa and a few other soldiers, and a third consisting of soldier Chapman (Toby Kebbell), who's left on his own.
Conrad's group eventually find their way to a cordoned-off settlement where the natives live with Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly), an affable, madman-bearded WWII pilot who was shot down over Skull Island in 1944 and presumed dead. Marlow informs them that "Kong is king around here," and protects Skull Island from an assortment of giant spiders and octopi but also the "Skullcrawlers," subterranean lizard creatures that live under the earth and are kept in check by his patrolling presence. Randa and Brooks--whose real mission is to prove the existence of these monsters--set off charges on the flight in and brought the Skullcrawlers to the surface. The situation is made worse by an increasingly unhinged Packard, who wants revenge on Kong for the death of his soldiers and is willing to sacrifice the lives of everyone to get it. Eventually, all parties band together to make the three-day trek to a rendezvous point as they haplessly try to evade being devoured by the Skullcrawlers and stop Packard from killing Kong.
Budgeted in the vicinity of $185 million, KONG: SKULL ISLAND has some spectacular Kong vs. creature brawls and at least corrects the mistakes of Gareth Edwards' GODZILLA by actually giving the title creature plenty of screen time (Kong is motion-captured by both Terry Notary and Kebbell, who pulls double duty along with his role as Chapman). But when the humans are taking center stage, things take a turn for the dreadful. Vogt-Roberts' endless APOCALYPSE NOW shout-outs are nice for a while, but get old quickly (there's also a shot with Shea Whigham that recalls a big Willem Dafoe moment in PLATOON), and the overcrowded cast is left with material that's pretty lacking. The script keeps forcing smart actors to play characters who do dumb things, and Reilly seems to be the only one having any fun. Jackson is cast radically against type as "Samuel L. Jackson," and about the 25th time we get a wild-eyed closeup where furious face is juxtaposed with a glaring Kong, you're tempted to shout "We get it...he's more dangerous than Kong!" Goodman has nothing to do once they get to Skull Island, Jing (recently seen in THE GREAT WALL) is given even less and may as well be wearing a T-shirt that says "Chinese co-production obligation," and Hiddleston and especially Larson look bored out of their minds, obviously cashing a fat paycheck in between serious gigs. Vogt-Roberts scores some points for pulling off some surprising kills that don't necessarily follow the order of billing, but the soundtrack is an annoying greatest hits package of predictable classic rock staples. Why is Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" being played on the flight to Skull Island? Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" during a Saigon bar scene? Check. The Chambers Brothers' "Time Has Come Today" played over Vietnam protests? Check. CCR's "Run Through the Jungle" heard as characters run through the jungle? Check, and give us a fucking break. Nit-picking? Perhaps. But it's indicative of a lack of imagination and the fact that this is a business deal with little feel for the classic that inspired it, regardless of occasional cute bits like a briefly-glimpsed file for a guy named "Cooper Schoedsack." There's no denying KONG: SKULL ISLAND delivers on the action, moves briskly, and is never boring, but the wildly uneven tone, the terrible script (with contributions by GODZILLA co-writer Max Borenstein and NIGHTCRAWLER writer/director Dan Gilroy), and the obvious going-through-the-motions demeanor of most of the cast take some of the fun out of it.
BONE TOMAHAWK (US/UK/France - 2015) Written and directed by S. Craig Zahler. Cast: Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, Lili Simmons, David Arquette, Evan Jonigkeit, Kathryn Morris, Sid Haig, Fred Melamed, Michael Pare, Sean Young, James Tolkan, Jamison Newlander, Geno Segers, Zahn McLarnon. (Unrated, 132 mins)
An instant cult classic that actually earns the distinction, the horror-western hybrid BONE TOMAHAWK is the slow-burning directorial debut of novelist/musician/jack-of-all-trades S. Craig Zahler. Zahler's toiled on the fringes for much of his career, with his biggest brush with fame being when he was commissioned to script a ROBOTECH adaptation back in 2007 that ultimately never happened. He wrote the 2011 DTV horror film ASYLUM BLACKOUT, and in 2012, he had a martial arts series titled DOWNTOWN DRAGONS in the works for FX, but the network never moved it beyond the planning stage. Zahler found acclaim for his "western noir" novels like 2010's A Congregation of Jackals and 2013's Wraiths of the Broken Land, both books finding a huge fan in Kurt Russell, and the two became friends. Zahler wrote BONE TOMAHAWK for the legendary actor and the project was a labor of love--made for just $1.8 million, a shoestring budget by today's standards--that took several years to become a reality. It's a western like no other, one of the strangest and grisliest films of the year, and the kind of offbeat, original work that you just don't see much of these days. There's a reason it's getting a very limited theatrical release and being shuffled off to VOD. There's very little concern for commercial appeal here, though it will undoubtedly find an appreciative audience that will show it a lot more love than mainstream multiplexers ever would. Let there be no doubt: for better or worse, Zahler made exactly the film he wanted to make.
In the tiny town of Bright Hope, doctor Samantha O'Dwyer (Lili Simmons), Deputy Nick (Evan Jonigkeit), and injured outlaw Purvis (David Arquette) are abducted in the middle of the night from the sheriff's office by a tribe known as the "Troglodytes." Stone-age cannibals living undetected in caves in the vast terrain several days away from Bright Hope, the tribe came in search of Purvis who, with his late cohort Buddy (Sid Haig), disturbed a Troglodyte burial site and now everyone must pay the price. Sheriff Hunt (Russell), his loyal deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), sartorially dandy, lothario gunman John Brooder (Matthew Fox), and, against the wishes of everyone, Samantha's injured husband Arthur (Patrick Wilson), hobbling around and delicately nursing a broken tibia being held together by two splints, embark on the long journey to find Mrs. O'Dwyer and Deputy Nick.
Of course, they encounter every obstacle on the way--the elements, their horses get rustled away, Arthur's leg keeps needing reset--and for about 90 minutes, it's a harsh, brutal western. That's just an opening act for the harrowing last section of the film, when the heroes encounter the Troglodytes and are taken prisoner, at which point the film turns into what might happen if Ruggero Deodato remade THE SEARCHERS. For all the talk of Eli Roth's THE GREEN INFERNO being the big 2015 Italian cannibal homage, time will show that BONE TOMAHAWK was the better gutmuncher throwback, despite its old west setting (the Troglodytes are legitimately terrifying and far more effective than the cannibal tribe in Roth's film). But before all that, in character-driven sequences that many may find laboriously-paced, Zahler spends a lot of time establishing who these people are and what life is like in Bright Hope, engaging in world-building the likes of which you'd find in a novel. That kind of detail is uncommon in most movies today and yes, BONE TOMAHAWK takes a good 40 minutes to really get rolling, but viewer patience pays off by the end, when you realize just how well you know these people and how emotionally invested you are in the horrific, nightmarish predicament in which they've found themselves. Russell (his facial hair a work-in-progress for its epic state in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming THE HATEFUL EIGHT, which he worked on immediately following this) is so good here and has one particular line of dialogue late in the film that's so devastating and heartfelt that it brought tears to my eyes, and I don't get like that over movies, especially cannibal horror westerns. The performances are just terrific across the board. Every few minutes, Jenkins, basically playing the chatty, Gabby Hayes/Walter Brennan old coot sidekick, gets some goofy bit of dialogue or there's some sardonically funny and quotable line from somebody (Sheriff Hunt's deadpan reaction to seeing Chicory's geriatric horse: "That is not a handsome horse") that really makes you come to know and care about the characters.
BONE TOMAHAWK overcomes some early jitters over the possibility of gratuitous fanboy-pandering with the brief presence of cult horror scenesters and convention regulars like Haig, Michael Pare, Jamison Newlander (THE LOST BOYS' Alan Frog) as the mayor, and Sean Young as the mayor's abrasive, henpecking wife, but they're soon out of the picture when the rescue mission gets underway. In an age when horror filmmakers approach their movies with a sense of entitlement that it's a cult classic right out of the gate, it's nice to see a film take some chances and risk alienating the audience, and to see the creative force behind it earn the trust of experienced lead actors who typically don't do this kind of "extreme" fare. Unfolding just like a really good book, BONE TOMAHAWK very slowly and deliberately pulls you in and its power sneaks up you. It's the kind of film where revisits will reveal something new and interesting that you didn't catch before. I can't wait to watch it again. Even the really gross parts.
The feature writing/directing debut of MAD MEN co-star John Slattery is an indie labor of love, based on a 1983 novel by then-Philadelphia Daily News columnist Pete Dexter, inspired by South Philly's Schuylkill neighborhood, known back in the day as "Devil's Pocket." In 1981, Dexter was badly beaten outside a bar by some Devil's Pocket locals who took umbrage with a column he wrote, and that incident is worked into GOD'S POCKET, a well-meaning but slight and flimsy slice-of-life saga that got a middling reaction from Sundance audiences and probably wouldn't have received any post-festival attention at all were it not for the unexpected passing of star Philip Seymour Hoffman in February, just three weeks after he was in Park City promoting it and A MOST WANTED MAN. GOD'S POCKET was commercially released before A MOST WANTED MAN but shot after, making it notable as the last film Hoffman completed before his death (he was nearly finished with his work on the next two simultaneously-shot HUNGER GAMES installments and will still be in both, due out in December 2014 and December 2015). But beyond that and being able to see the great actor in one of his final performances, GOD'S POCKET is pretty forgettable, the kind of film that usually gets accolades at festivals and is never mentioned again. But even the Sundance crowd didn't get that enthused about it. It's not a bad movie by any stretch, but it's rather aimless and has no real purpose. There's some interesting moments, Slattery and co-producer Hoffman were old friends (and they had a great scene together in 2007's CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR), and Slattery also brought along his MAD MEN co-star Christina Hendricks, but GOD'S POCKET is a film where the actors are having more fun than the audience. One is reminded of the old Gene Siskel quote where he would ask "Is this movie more interesting than the same group of actors having lunch?" No, not really. Watching Slattery, Hoffman, Hendricks, John Turturro, Eddie Marsan, and Richard Jenkins bullshit over pizza and beers would be a far more interesting experience than the bland GOD'S POCKET.
One thing Slattery does right is expressing the period detail in a matter-of-fact fashion without beating you over the head with it. It takes place in the late '70s and he doesn't swamp you with disco hits of the era to make sure you realize that. Of course, a tired, late-film montage to Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home" negates that, but still, the effort is appreciated. God's Pocket is the kind of proud, blue collar enclave where, if you aren't from there, you'll never belong. Mickey Scarpato (Hoffman) is such a guy. A meat salesman and very small-time criminal, Mickey is married to Jeanie (Hendricks), a cop's widow whose son Leon (Caleb Landry Jones of ANTIVIRAL) is killed at a construction site after mouthing off and hurling racial slurs at an elderly black worker. The workers all claim that he hit his head in an accident, but Jeanie isn't buying it and tells Mickey to dig further. But Mickey's preoccupied with paying for Leon's funeral, and he's stuck dealing with price-gouging funeral home owner Smilin' Jack Moran (Marsan), as well as trying to sell his refrigerated truck, which gets stolen while Leon's body--tossed out of Smilin' Jack's funeral home when Mickey couldn't pay the bill--is in the back of it. There's some fleeting moments where some dark humor earns the film some points, and things pick up considerably whenever Hoffman and Turturro (as his gambling-debt-saddled, bad-luck pal) are onscreen together, but too much of GOD'S POCKET just rambles along with no particular place to go, especially the subplot about an alcoholic newspaper columnist (Jenkins) ostensibly trying to dig for the details of Leon's death but really trying to get Jeanie into bed. The film's time element is also badly-handled, with it supposedly taking place over three days, but with entirely too much happening in that small window of time. While it was always a privilege to see Hoffman at work, this won't go down as one of his more memorable films or standout performances. (R, 89 mins)
BORGMAN (Netherlands/France/Belgium/Denmark - 2013; US release 2014)
Dutch actor/filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam's BORGMAN is loosely inspired by Jean Renoir's 1932 film BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING, itself remade by Paul Mazursky in 1986 as DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS. BORGMAN takes the concept to a misanthropic extreme as the title character (Jan Bijvoet) has far more sinister, yet still vague, plans in store for the bourgeois family whose home he insidiously infiltrates. As the film opens, Borgman and several mysterious vagrants are being pursued from a small town by a group of men--including a priest--hoisting shotguns and axes. Borgman, sporting long, unkempt hair and a madman beard, is separated from his cohorts and ends up at the front door of Richard (Jeroen Perceval) and his wife Marina (Hadewych Minis). Borgman insinuates that he knows Marina, which is enough to set Richard off as he beats Borgman and accuses his wife of hiding something from him. Feeling sorry for who she believes to be a homeless unfortunate, Marina permits Borgman to bathe when Richard leaves for work, and allows him to stay in the guest house for a day or two if he stays out of sight. Of course, Borgman enters the house and interacts with the children (who call him a "magician") and the family's disgruntled nanny Stine (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen). Borgman seemingly casts a spell on all of them and phones his cohorts (van Warmerdam among them), who arrive and begin systematically murdering people associated with the family--the gardener, the doctor, anyone who may visit the house--putting their heads in cement and dumping the bodies at the bottom of a nearby lake so they can assume their identities and get on the property. Borgman leaves but returns, clean-shaven, well-groomed, and recognized only by Marina, as Richard hires him to take on the suddenly vacated gardener position. Borgman brings his associates along with him as they move in and slowly take over the household, already on shaky ground with unspoken tension between Richard and Marina. This tension is only magnified with the presence of Borgman, who crouches nude over Marina while she sleeps and somehow influences her dreams with imagery that violently turns her against her husband.
BORGMAN had some interesting potential, but it's heavy-handed and painfully obvious in its soapbox statement-making. Before Borgman inserts himself into their lives, Marina complains of feeling "a warmth that intoxicates but also confuses," all but spelling out that she'll be sexually drawn to Borgman and doing so in ways that no normal person would convey. Van Warmerdam also makes some ham-fisted points about class struggles, as Marina feels overwhelming guilt about their affluence and good fortune, with Borgman representing punishment for their success and upper-class privilege. Marina is also tone-deaf to her hypocrisy, secretly allowing Borgman on the premises early on while later chastising Stine, who politely requests that her on-leave-from-the-military boyfriend be allowed to stay overnight, with a firm "No...I've got to know who I've got under my roof." Bijvoet is OK as Borgman, but the more the film goes on, the more obscure his motives become and he's more or less just part of the scenery while the family--slowly being poisoned literally and figuratively--disintegrates around him. BORGMAN is essentially the Renoir and Mazursky films revamped through a Michael Haneke filter. We've been down this road before with Haneke's 1997 and 2008 versions of FUNNY GAMES and Yorgos Lanthimos' DOGTOOTH (2009), and the tedious BORGMAN brings little new to the table other than tame transgression and a ponderous sense of self-importance. (Unrated, 113 mins)
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP (US/Canada/Luxembourg - 2013)
Despite one of the most star-studded casts of 2013, THE COMPANY YOU KEEP only made it to 807 screens in the US, just over the threshold required to consider it a "wide" release. It's a rather sluggishly-paced thriller scripted by frequent Steven Soderbergh collaborator Lem Dobbs (THE LIMEY, HAYWIRE) and scored by ubiquitous Soderbergh regular Cliff Martinez (TRAFFIC, CONTAGION), and you wonder if perhaps Soderbergh could've brought more energy to the film than director/star Robert Redford. As has been the case in some of his more recent directing efforts like 2007's LIONS FOR LAMBS and 2011's THE CONSPIRATOR, there's a good story that gets bogged down in talking points and speechifying lectures. While THE CONSPIRATOR is a fine film nonetheless and LIONS FOR LAMBS a bit better than its reputation, THE COMPANY YOU KEEP never really catches fire. When former Weather Underground activist Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) is nabbed by the FBI in Albany for a 1979 Michigan bank robbery that left a guard dead, her arrest prompts local reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) to dig into her past. He finds Albany-based lawyer Jim Grant (Redford), a widower and father to 11-year-old daughter Isabel (singing sensation and elderly America's fantasy granddaughter Jackie Evancho), who seems to have no existence before 1979. That's because Grant is really Nick Sloan, a prominent Weather Underground figure and one of eight suspects still wanted for the 30-year-old crime. Jim/Nick leaves Isabel with his younger brother Daniel (Chris Cooper) and goes on the run, searching the country for Mimi Lurie (Julie Christie), his ex-lover and the group's most volatile member and, through a convoluted set of circumstances, the only person who can clear his name and verify that he in fact had nothing to do with the robbery. All the while, Shepard is on his trail, digging up secrets of his past, and the FBI, led by Agent Cornelius (Terrence Howard) is in hot pursuit.
Look at that poster. Just look at it. Is there any way this movie could possibly be good? And really? Someone thought it was a good idea to cast Robin Williams as a wacky priest after LICENSE TO WED? THE BIG WEDDING, a remake of the 2007 French farce MON FRERE SA MARIE, assembles a huge cast of slumming actors and plants them in one unfunny, smutty situation after another before trying to go for the sappy, feel-good ending (writer-director Justin Zackham scripted THE BUCKET LIST). The problem is, nobody in this film's target audience wants to see post-Farrelly Brothers vulgarity and other hijinks of that sort. It doesn't quite approach the "jizz-as-hair-gel"-levels of outrageousness, but if you want to see Robert De Niro getting puked on by Katherine Heigl or going down on Susan Sarandon for a "poonjob," or Topher Grace getting jerked off at the table at a wedding rehearsal dinner, then you've found your movie.
Heading a cast that, for the most part, looks like they'd rather be anywhere else, Diane Keaton (who's already played this same role in SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE) is Ellie, who returns to artist ex-husband Don's (De Niro) Connecticut home for the wedding of their adopted Colombian son Alejandro (Ben Barnes, a British actor who doesn't look even remotely Colombian) to Missy (Amanda Seyfried), daughter of wealthy Barry and Muffin (David Rasche, Christine Ebersole), racists and anti-Semites who are appalled at the idea of "beige grandchildren." Don lives with Bebe (Sarandon), Ellie's best friend until she and Don had an affair. There's also Don and Ellie's daughter Lyla (Heigl), who can't have children and just left her husband, and their successful doctor son Jared (Grace), a 29-year-old virgin who's still waiting for the right girl. The comically dysfunctional family gets along great, but things fall apart when Alejandro insists that Don and Ellie pretend to be married to please his devoutly Catholic biological mother Madonna (Patricia Rae), who sternly disapproves of divorce. Of course, it leads to one comic mishap after another: Don and Ellie end up having sex, Jared wants to lose his virginity to Alejandro's impossibly hot biological sister (Ana Ayora), and then there's Williams, playing an alcoholic priest. You know the performances are grating when Williams comes across as the least obnoxious. Shot in 2011 and bounced around the release schedule for nearly two years, THE BIG WEDDING tries to be shocking with its rampant tastelessness, from the crude situations to the copious F-bombs, but it's merely boring. This sort of gutter humor can be funny but doesn't really work with an accomplished cast of aging legends that's collectively got double-digit Oscar nods and several wins and seems visibly appalled at the lowbrow nature of the project. Gag after gag lands with a complete thud: there's supposed to be something inherently funny about senior citizens talking dirty. Burgess Meredith screeching about "takin' the skin boat to tuna town!" in GRUMPY OLD MEN gets a laugh, but De Niro jokingly calling Keaton a "cunt" comes off as more uncomfortable than funny, and you can even see on his face as he says it that he knows it doesn't work. If nothing else, this is further proof that his brilliant work in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is the anomaly in De Niro's recent filmography and THE BIG WEDDING fits in perfectly with his current career plan of complete apathy and utter contempt for his craft. De Niro doesn't need to prove himself to anyone, but at what point do we start considering whether he's crossed that dubious line where his bad movies outnumber his good ones? And he still has four more coming out between now and the end of the year. (R, 89 mins)
Directed by Roland Emmerich. Written by James Vanderbilt. Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, James Woods, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins, Joey King, Michael Murphy, Jimmi Simpson, Nicolas Wright, Rachelle Lefevre, Lance Reddick, Matt Craven, Jake Weber, Barbara Williams, Garcelle Beauvais, Peter Jacobson, Kevin Rankin, Falk Hentschel, Andrew Simms. (PG-13, 132 mins)
It always helps when a dumb action movie knows it's a dumb action movie. WHITE HOUSE DOWN, the latest from director/Washington, DC destruction fetishist Roland Emmerich, was beaten to theaters by the very similar "DIE HARD IN THE WHITE HOUSE"-themed OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, but overall, it's the more enjoyable movie, benefitting significantly from not taking itself so seriously. Aside from some unconvincing CGI explosions that seem to be an unfortunate necessity these days, Emmerich keeps things refreshingly, almost quaintly old-school in terms of style and direction. When's the last time you saw a big-budget action movie that didn't have blurry shaky-cam and constant video-game zooms? With a couple of exceptions, the action sequences in WHITE HOUSE DOWN are straightforwardly constructed and best of all, coherent. It's a sad statement on modern moviemaking when stable camera operation and coherent editing are in such low supply that they have to be specifically singled out for praise on one of the rare occasions that they occur, but I'll take what I can get.
Written and directed by Andrew Dominik. Cast: Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Sam Shepard, Vincent Curatola, Max Casella, Trevor Long, Slaine. (R, 97 mins)
I wasn't able to see KILLING THEM SOFTLY until nearly a week after it opened to critical acclaim and audience rage, so it's impossible to discuss the film without conducting a post-mortem of it. Writer/director Andrew Dominik's follow-up to his critically-lauded but studio-abandoned THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD bowed to utterly toxic audience reaction during its opening weekend and functions as one of the year's more alarming examples of a massive critic/audience disconnect. It's not uncommon or unexpected for an ad campaign to intentionally misdirect an audience in order to hide a plot twist, but there's plenty of fairly recent examples of studios very deceptively and intentionally selling an arthouse-type film as something it isn't because they know it's not mainstream or multiplex-friendly. Very often, films like this get tiny theatrical releases in one or two cities before being dumped on DVD, but sometimes, there's maybe a big name involved and it can have a huge opening weekend before the negative buzz circulates. 20th Century Fox opening Steven Soderbergh's 2002 remake of SOLARIS nationwide on Thanksgiving weekend to rope in the George Clooney/OCEAN'S ELEVEN crowd stands as a particularly egregiously ballsy example. Lionsgate sold William Friedkin's BUG as a horror film, sucking people in with "From the director of THE EXORCIST." Not a lie, but not really preparing audiences for an adaptation of a stage play where Ashley Judd freaks out in a motel room for two hours. Clooney had this happen again with 2010's THE AMERICAN, which Focus opened nationwide and sold as an action-packed suspense thriller when in fact it's an austere, methodical, glacially slow-paced character study filled with long stretches of silence. I saw THE AMERICAN with an audience where the impatience and discontent grew from dramatic sighs midway through to a palpable fury by the end, with one woman shouting "Hang the director!" as the closing credits rolled. Through no fault of the films themselves, there's certainly an argument to be made for their marketing being examples of blatant audience contempt. It's not like the days of old when the inaccurate depiction of horror and exploitation films was largely a standard practice. No, the studios behind SOLARIS and THE AMERICAN cynically took advantage of Clooney's celebrity to sell small, artsy, limited-appeal films to an unsuspecting commercial audience, when they shouldn't have been opening wide in the first place (it's worth noting that Clooney produced THE AMERICAN but refused to do any publicity for it--was he protesting the marketing?). Audiences seemed to be a lot more open to these kinds of challenging films in decades past, but are moviegoers dumber today? Yeah, probably, though it might not be that simple. They're certainly less tolerant when faced with a film that goes against their expectations. I can't imagine a sign at a movie theater entrance in 1975 like the hand-written one I was confronted with when I went to see PUNCH DRUNK LOVE in 2002 ("PUNCH DRUNK LOVE is not a typical Adam Sandler comedy--refunds will not be given due to the content of the film"). But film snobs and cineastes are just as knee-jerk reactionary and misguided when they say things like "Sorry if this movie made you think!" or "Just go see a Michael Bay movie instead." It's hard to disagree with someone who's peeved about dropping $50 on tickets and concessions for themselves and their significant other and the George Clooney action thriller they were sold turns out to be a somber Jean-Pierre Melville homage. Other than extreme levels of multiplex audience scorn, what do films like SOLARIS, BUG, and THE AMERICAN have in common? They're good once one considers them without the mainstream expectations.
KILLING THEM SOFTLY didn't even get a chance to rake in some box office before the negative word-of-mouth spread like a virus. Having said that, and after seeing it, if one doesn't follow movie news and decides to see it based solely on the marketing, I don't find the trailer for KILLING THEM SOFTLY to be all that deceptive, though I'll concede it's more of an arthouse film that probably shouldn't have opened wide "in theaters everywhere." The plot is essentially what's laid out in the trailer. What audiences seemed to revolt against was the fact that it's largely character-driven and very dialogue-heavy. If a trailer has blatantly lied to a prospective audience, that audience is justified in their displeasure, but the intense mainstream hatred for KILLING THEM SOFTLY? That's on the audience. The trailer didn't sell something that wasn't there. People saw Brad Pitt and guns, and jumped to their own conclusions. Know what you're going to see. Know that it's from the guy who made THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD. Know that it's based on a 1970s novel by a guy who specialized in chronicling the blue-collar, working-stiff aspect of the mob. This isn't Brad Pitt's SCARFACE.
KILLING THEM SOFTLY is based on George V. Higgins' 1974 novel Cogan's Trade. Higgins also wrote the 1970 novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which was turned into a 1973 box-office flop with Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle that's now rightfully considered one of the great mob movies. Both books and their subsequent film adaptations focus on the seedy, unglamourous, average Joe, nickel-and-dime side of gangster life. Dominik updates Higgins' work to include a politically-charged undercurrent of the 2008 election, with frequent TV shots and talk radio clips of a campaigning Barack Obama and soon-to-be-outgoing President George W. Bush discussing the Wall Street bailout. Dominik uses these elements and a change in setting from Boston to New Orleans to illustrate that even the mob is susceptible to economic and recession woes, but it's a point that he belabors a bit too heavy-handedly as the film proceeds, though it does wrap up with a declaration by Pitt's character that's maybe my favorite movie line of 2012.
The film begins with low-level New Orleans mobster Johnny "The Squirrel" Amato (Vincent Curatola, best known as Johnny Sack on THE SOPRANOS) hatching a plan from the dingy office of his dry-cleaning business: he's persuaded dim, skeezy flunky Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and his Australian junkie buddy Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) to knock over an illegal card game run by numbers guy Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). Frankie balks because he knows such an act would put a hit out on them, but Trattman infamously staged a robbery of one of his own card games in the past and was granted a pass for it. If it happens a second time, the bosses would naturally assume he stupidly tried it again and wouldn't be as forgiving. Frankie and Russell pull off the job, and of course, Markie looks guilty until Russell starts bragging about it and it gets back to mob enforcer Dillon (Sam Shepard). Dillon dispatches hit man Jackie Cogan (Pitt) to meet with a mysterious go-between known as The Driver (Richard Jenkins) to work out a plan to whack Frankie, Russell, The Squirrel, and, at Jackie's insistence, Markie, now deemed a business liability even though he wasn't part of the second heist. Jackie insists on a second man to assist, so New York Mickey (James Gandolfini) is brought in. Mickey, once a feared and respected figure, is depressed over his marital troubles and now an alcoholic, sex-addicted shell of what he once was, even agreeing to a lower fee because times are tough and he needs the money.
From the start, Dominik lets the story unfold naturally and takes his time establishing the characters. Pitt doesn't even appear until nearly 30 minutes in. Outstanding performances all around, right down to the smaller roles, though Shepard's really feels cut down, as Dillon is mentioned frequently but actually on screen for less than a minute (and incidentally, Higgins' novels took place in the same universe, and not having read them, I'm assuming that Shepard's Dillon and Peter Boyle's Dillon in THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE were likely the same character in the books). Gandolfini only has two or three scenes, but they're long scenes and he's able to make a vivid impression of what at times seems like Tony Soprano if he hit rock bottom. Liotta, who busts out his signature laugh at one point, manages to evoke genuine sympathy when the hapless Markie is subjected to one of cinema's most brutal, stomach-turning beatings. These characters don't talk or behave like Tarantino-esque pop-culture gangsters, but the real, gritty deal. The film features some of the harshest and most spectacularly foul language you'll hear in a movie this year, even when they aren't dropping a near-record number of F-bombs (at one point, Mickey berates a tip-demanding hooker with "You want a tip? Put the condom on with your mouth and stop acting like your anus is a national monument"). Other than the frequent use of Obama and Bush soundbites, KILLING THEM SOFTLY looks and feels like it could've been made in 1977. From the fashions to the cars to their attitudes, these aging wiseguys have never moved beyond their glory days, and the realization seems to be hitting them during the hard times of the recession with the increased corporatization, red tape, penny-pinching, and micro-managing inherent in their world. As evidenced by his final, seething monologue, Jackie is the only one who seems to get it.
Like THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (which is in my top five favorite films of the last decade), KILLING THEM SOFTLY is not a commercial endeavor, and it will likely be some time before it can be appreciated and valued away from the standards and expectations of a mainstream multiplex movie audience. It's a terrific film, smartly written, richly detailed, and not at all deserving of the hatred being leveled at it by average moviegoers. Its day will come and maybe for those who disliked it so intensely, something will draw them back to give it a second chance and without the baggage of its box office failure and the "F" grade from the inane Cinemascore, perhaps then it will click. Until then, let the devoted cult following begin.
