THE MUSTANG (France/Belgium - 2019) Directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. Written by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Mona Fastvold, Brock Norman Brock and Benjamin Charbit. Cast: Matthias Schoenaerts, Jason Mitchell, Bruce Dern, Connie Britton, Gideon Adlon, Josh Stewart, Noel Gugliemi, Thomas Smittle, Keith Johnson. (R, 96 mins) Initially developed at the Sundance Institute (Robert Redford is among the truckload of credited producers), THE MUSTANG is the debut of French actress-turned-filmmaker Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADELE BLANC-SEC), and if you're a guy who likes a good UMBERTO D, BRIAN'S SONG or FIELD OF DREAMS man-weepie, then you're gonna want to see this one right away. Incarcerated at Nevada State Prison for the last 12 years, Roman Coleman (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. Only able to express himself through rage and violence, he's spent most of his prison time in solitary confinement, preferring to be alone and resorting to behaviors and actions that he knows will keep him isolated from the other inmates. "I'm not good with people," he mumbles the prison psychologist (Connie Britton), who's prepping him for his latest return to general population from solitary. She assigns him to work on the outdoor maintenance crew, shoveling piles of shit from the prison's horse-training program, funded by the state as a rehabilitation technique and to fill a demand for captured wild mustangs to be properly trained and groomed to sell at auction. The program is run by elderly rancher Myles (Bruce Dern), who's earned the respect of the inmates under his charge and repays it in kind, with inmate Henry (Jason Mitchell) designated the head trainer.
Roman is drawn to one horse in particular, who's kept in a locked stable and spends all day, every day kicking on the door in rage over his confinement. Myles gives Roman a shot at working with him, and it goes well for a while until Roman, furious over a disastrous visit from his estranged, pregnant daughter Martha (Gideon Adlon), takes his anger out on the disobedient horse, violently pummeling him with a series of punches. Myles has him thrown back in solitary as punishment, but he gets a second chance when he's called to help move some horses inside the prison kitchen when a dangerous storm approaches the area. Slowly but surely, Roman and the horse, who he names "Marquis," begin to bond, with Myles and Henry remarking that no one was able to break him until Roman came along. De Clermont-Tonnerre and her co-writers (including Nicolas Winding Refn's BRONSON collaborator Brock Norman Brock) aren't really dealing with complex metaphors or deep symbolism here, as it's quite obvious that Roman and Marquis are two sides of the same coin, kindred spirits who feel constantly trapped and violently lash out at anyone who tries to get close to them.
THE MUSTANG's strengths come not from its formulaic story arc but from its performances. Belgian actor Schoenaerts first began getting attention in art-house and foreign film circles with 2011's BULLHEAD and 2012's RUST AND BONE, and while he's made some impression with American audiences with roles in 2014's THE DROP and as Jennifer Lawrence's duplicitous uncle in 2018's RED SPARROW, THE MUSTANG might prove to be his English-language breakthrough. It's a very internalized performance, and as Roman, he's tightly-wound and seething, but with his eyes conveying the pain of regret and a complete inability to communicate. While he has frightening outbursts, it's in the quiet moments that Schoenaerts speaks volumes about this character, and you might be dead inside if you can keep it together at the pivotal moment when Roman and Marquis reach a mutual respect and understanding of one another. Schoenaerts gets solid support from Mitchell (STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON) and Dern, who's just perfect in a role that has him getting a little piece of Robert Duvall's "grizzled old coot" action. De Clermont-Tonnerre's messaging gets a little ham-fisted at times, and there's an underdeveloped subplot with Roman's shitbag cellmate (Josh Stewart from the COLLECTOR movies) forcing Roman and Henry to procure ketamine from the horse vet's office, but at its core, THE MUSTANG is an empathetic and compassionate character study of rehabilitation and redemption.
THE DISCOVERY (US/UK - 2017) Directed by Charlie McDowell. Written by Charlie McDowell and Justin Lader. Cast: Jason Segel, Rooney Mara, Robert Redford, Jesse Plemons, Riley Keough, Ron Canada, Mary Steenburgen, Wendy Makkena, MJ Karmi. (Unrated, 102 mins) Watching the Netflix Original film THE DISCOVERY, it seems completely feasible than director/co-writer Charlie McDowell (son of Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen) and writing partner Justin Lader (they previously worked together on the 2014 Mark Duplass indie THE ONE I LOVE) came up with a killer opening sequence and struggled to build a story around it. The first five minutes of THE DISCOVERY would make a great short film. A few years in the future, controversial physicist Dr. Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) is being interviewed by a TV news journalist (Steenburgen) on the one-year anniversary of what's come to be known as "The Discovery." Harbor is a household name the world over for finding irrefutable, scientific proof of the afterlife, demonstrating that the spirit breaks down measurable brain waves to a subatomic level as those particles venture to another plane of existence beyond our reality. Upon his presenting The Discovery to the world, death became the ultimate reward. People with terminal illnesses welcomed their diagnosis. The global suicide rate skyrocketed, as people had proof of what they now "know" is a better world waiting for them and they voluntarily check out to expedite their journey to that better place. Everyone from the homeless to the depressed to Hollywood celebrities and sports heroes started taking their own lives, with over a million suicides in the first year. As the interview goes along, one of the news crew's production assistants interrupts to say "Thank you, Dr. Harbor, for my fresh start," turns a gun on himself and blows his brains out on camera.
A year after that, Harbor is running a research facility in an isolated, gothic-looking compound in a remote Rhode Island seaside town, and is visited by his estranged son Will Stevenson (Jason Segel), a neurologist who started using his late mother's maiden name to distance himself from The Discovery. Harbor is working with his other son Toby (Jesse Plemons) and longtime research assistant Cooper (Ron Canada), with the compound staffed by Harbor acolytes, all failed suicides who now view Harbor as some kind of messiah. Will is visiting in a hapless attempt to persuade his father to stop experimenting with the afterlife, feeling tremendous guilt about the whole situation because the incident that inspired Harbor's research--a near-death experience Will had as a child--was embellished by a young and mischievous Will, who told his parents he "saw things" while he was flatlined. Harbor entertains no thoughts of abandoning his research. He's actually had a new breakthrough: a machine that can record the images seen by the recently deceased. Harbor needs a cadaver, which leads to Will, Toby, and Isla (Rooney Mara), a woman Will met on the ferry and later saved from a suicide attempt, stealing a corpse from a local hospital. Hooking the body up to the machine yields no results, but while dismantling the wires and electrodes alone, Will sees blurred images on a monitor that must be what the dead man is seeing in his afterlife. Keeping this secret from his father, Will and Isla, both damaged souls (he blames his mother's suicide on Harbor, she fell asleep and her five-year-old son vanished, never to be seen again), begin a tentative, hesitant romance while getting to the truth of the images seen in the video of the dead man's afterlife.
THE DISCOVERY falls apart right around the time Will, Isla, and Toby decide to steal a corpse from the morgue, with the lone attendant complaining "I'm doing the work of five people!" as if that's sufficient excuse for making it look that easy to wheel a dead body out of a hospital. With a premise that's crying out for someone like PRIMER and UPSTREAM COLOR auteur Shane Carruth, there's numerous directions THE DISCOVERY could've gone: a philosophical, existential FOUNTAIN mode Darren Aronofsky-meets-circa TREE OF LIFE Terrence Malick mind-bender; a love story that traverses Heaven and Earth in a more scientific take on Wim Wenders' WINGS OF DESIRE and FARAWAY, SO CLOSE; a sci-fi variant on Paul Thomas Anderson's THE MASTER; a post-Duplass mumblecore drama; and even a horror route, with the inherent creepiness of the garbled video transmissions of the afterlife having an undeniable John Carpenter/PRINCE OF DARKNESS aura about them. But in McDowell's hands, the film doesn't take any of these paths. It just stands there, confused, until a cliched twist ending that plays out like Charlie Brooker adapting Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" as an episode of BLACK MIRROR. Segel and Mara do what they can with their mopey characters (judging from her appearance here, it looks a lot like Mara's Isla was written with ANOTHER EARTH's Brit Marling in mind--this seems like the kind of project in which Marling would script and star). In one of the least-engaged performances of his career, Redford seems to have dropped by for a few days of shooting and is stuck with the film's most impenetrable and inconsistent character. Initially presented as a committed, principled man of science, Harbor isn't interested in God or religion and just looks at the hard facts, but by the second anniversary of The Discovery, he's either a manipulative cult leader or a mad scientist--the movie can't seem to decide, but Redford never adjusts his performance either way. It's a role that seems more fitting for McDowell's dad Malcolm, and Redford just looks bored, fidgety and uncomfortable throughout, like he realized after his first day on the set that this was a dud and it was too late to back out of it. For a star of his magnitude, Redford's onscreen appearances were relatively sparse from the 1980s to the 2000s as he focused his creative energies on directing and Sundance, but in the last seven years, he's been more visible than in past decades, even having fun in big-budget special effects movies like CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER and PETE'S DRAGON, the kind of tentpole projects he would never do in his heyday. A living legend at 80, Redford has nothing to prove to anyone, but if THE DISCOVERY is any indication, it would perhaps behoove him to go back to being a little more picky about his acting gigs in his emeritus years. McDowell concocts an intriguing premise with THE DISCOVERY but just doesn't know what to do with it, leading to a dull, dreary misfire that does little to combat the stigma that most Netflix Original films debut there for a reason.
TRUTH (US/Australia - 2015) Written and directed by James Vanderbilt. Cast: Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford, Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Elisabeth Moss, Bruce Greenwood, Stacy Keach, Dermot Mulroney, John Benjamin Hickey, David Lyons, Rachael Blake, Andrew McFarlane, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Natalie Saleeba, Noni Hazelhurst, Nicholas Hope, Philip Quast. (R, 125 mins)
This chronicle of the 2004 events that led to the dismissal of 60 MINUTES II producer Mary Mapes and the end of Dan Rather's tenure at CBS suffers from being based on Mapes' own memoir. As a result, it constantly straddles the fine line between dramatization and Mapes hagiography. Writer/director James Vanderbilt's intent seems to be to make Mapes (played here by Cate Blanchett) a martyr for the dying profession of journalism, when it was primarily corner-cutting, sloppy fact-checking, and a rush to get on the air that undermined the explosiveness of the story itself. And whether it's her past accomplishments and her reputation as a tough ballbuster (she also broke the Abu Ghraib story), her upbringing at the hands of an abusive father, her need to challenge bullying power structures, or allowing herself to be duped for the sake of a big story, Vanderbilt seems to hold everyone but Mapes accountable for Mapes' questionable judgment.
Mapes was fired for the bungled report, whereas Rather (Robert Redford) was granted the dignity of resigning on his own terms. With the Swift Boat smear campaign of John Kerry in full force as he's in a dead heat with incumbent George W. Bush in the run up to the 2004 presidential election, Mapes gets word that retired Lt. Col. Bill Burkett (Stacy Keach) has documents that show Bush got special treatment to get into the National Guard and went AWOL and never reported for duty when stationed in Alabama in 1973. Burkett won't reveal his sources, and while Mapes and her team--freelance journalist Michael Smith (Topher Grace), researcher Lucy Scott (Elisabeth Moss), and retired Lt. Col. Roger Charles (Dennis Quaid)--follow the paper trail and assemble the story, they're unable to get complete confirmation that Burkett's photocopied documents are authentic. Two of four experts deem them authentic enough, and with Rather onboard, they run with it, putting the entire piece together in just five days in early October 2004 since 60 MINUTES II will be off the air until after the election to clear space for a Billy Graham crusade and a prime-time Dr. Phil special. Almost immediately after the report airs, discrepancies are brought to their attention and sources start recanting their original statements: Burkett lied about how he got the documents, the Times New Roman font in the documents is 100% consistent to how it looks when typed out on a computer, and the "th" superscript was very uncommon on typewriters of 1973. Additionally, one of the brass prominently mentioned in the documents wasn't even in a position of authority on the base in Alabama at the time the documents were supposedly written.
Eventually, Rather had to issue an on-air apology for what was referred to as "Memogate" and "Rathergate," and it brought his long and iconic run at CBS to an end. It was Mapes whose career took the biggest hit, and Vanderbilt makes sure we all realize it. Blanchett is one of our great actresses, but her Mapes is some pretty blatant Oscar-baiting. She's a little BLUE JASMINE and a little Faye Dunaway as she flips her hair and guzzles chardonnay and pops Xanax (the film also makes an effort to introduce her via a knitting pastime, which she's never seen doing again), and it's her against the world with the future of journalism at stake, but she's got father figure Rather to offer sage advice. Even the other characters marvel at her, as when Charles tells Smith that Mapes wanted to pursue Bush's alleged Guard misconduct in 2000, but her mother died and she dropped the story. "If her mother hadn't died...Al Gore would be the president," Quaid is forced to say with a straight face. The supporting characters, including Mapes' journalist husband Mark Wrolstad (John Benjamin Hickey), have precious little to do and exist only to prop up Mapes and repeatedly tell her some variation of "You're doing the right thing" or to break some bad news (you could make a drinking game out of how many times Quaid, Grace, or Moss enter a scene and say "It gets worse..."), or to passionately exclaim "This is what we do!" when she's feeling pangs of self-doubt. Journalism 101 turns to Cliche 101 throughout, right down to some truly terrible exposition when Grace's Smith is introduced to the rest of the team, and they all immediately do one of those LAW & ORDER: SVU info drops where everyone finishes everyone else's sentence as the camera zings from person to person, with Smith somehow completely up to speed on an investigation he's been a part of for about 30 seconds.
Dan Rather and Mary Mapes visiting the set of TRUTH during filming.
The presence of Redford is both the film's strongest aspect and its biggest distraction. Like Christopher Plummer's interpretation of 60 MINUTES' Mike Wallace in Michael Mann's THE INSIDER (1999), Redford wisely makes no attempt to look or sound like Rather, instead opting to nail down his speech patterns and his general persona. A legend portraying a legend, Redford walks off with every scene he's in, but seeing him is a constant reminder of his Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman's Carl Bernstein in 1976's ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, the gold standard of the admittedly limited "investigative reporters bringing down a President" subgenre. TRUTH pales in comparison to that masterpiece, and it's indicative of just how much David Fincher had to do with the greatness of 2007's ZODIAC--scripted by Vanderbilt and with a major ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN influence in its structure and narrative. TRUTH marks Vanderbilt's debut as a director, but ZODIAC stands out as the anomaly among his screenwriting credits, which are littered with fun-but-lunkheaded fare like THE RUNDOWN (2003), THE LOSERS (2010) and WHITE HOUSE DOWN (2013). TRUTH has a powderkeg of a story at its core, but loses itself by constantly presenting Mapes as the crucified savior of real TV news reporting, the last bastion of integrity sacrificed at the altar of corporate business interests, with even Rather lamenting the death of the format once they're all forced out. Regardless of the truth--Bush's Guard record was quite dubious--Mapes, Rather, and their team dropped the ball and failed to get all their ducks in a row, which the film admits but stresses "that's not what it's about," a notion that only gave substance to the right-wing blogosphere's claim that the bombshell report was politically motivated. It is what it's about, and in making the presentation of the whole unfortunate saga so one-sided and myopic, Vanderbilt ends up making the same mistakes as his protagonists.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (US - 2014) Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Cast: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo, Emily VanCamp, Jenny Agutter, Toby Jones, Hayley Atwell, Maximiliano Hernandez, Callan Mulvey, Garry Shandling, Chin Han, Georges St-Pierre, Salvator Xuereb. (PG-13, 136 mins)
Around the time Joss Whedon got the AVENGERS gig, there seemed to be a conscious effort by Marvel to bring some outside-the-box personality to the proceedings while still meeting the demand for intense action and grandiose visual effects. Shane Black brought his patented LETHAL WEAPON smartassery to IRON MAN 3 while semi-regular GAME OF THRONES director Alan Taylor fashioned an appropriately darker THOR: THE DARK WORLD. One could argue that the trend started before Whedon, as CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER director Joe Johnston utilized some of the same WWII-set atmosphere way back in 1990's THE ROCKETEER. For the sequel, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, the sibling directing team of Anthony and Joe Russo seem as unlikely a choice as you can conceive. Best known for directing episodes of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and COMMUNITY, the pair hadn't made a film since the 2006 comedy YOU, ME AND DUPREE but here reveal themselves to be secret '70s post-Watergate political paranoia/conspiracy fans. The spirit of Alan J. Pakula seems to permeate THE WINTER SOLDIER, and it's an interesting approach that keeps things fresh and exciting. Does the world need another run-of-the-mill superhero movie? Most of these films are entertaining on their own, but I've found that even the ones I really like--SPIDER-MAN 2, IRON MAN and THE AVENGERS, for instance--I never feel compelled to own or even revisit (Christopher Nolan's DARK KNIGHT trilogy being an exception). Letting the filmmakers bring their own style or ambitions to these films gives them something more tangible than just wall-to-wall CGI. I mean, be honest--it made a ton of money, but how many people really like IRON MAN 2?
The Russo brothers and returning screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely open the film in the present day, two years after the events of THE AVENGERS. Steve Rogers/Cap (Chris Evans) is still adjusting to the modern world, regularly updating his list of things to check out ("See ROCKY (ROCKY II?)" S.H.I.E.L.D. head agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) informs Rogers of Project Insight, a secret operation involving three helicarriers routed to various spy satellites around the globe for the purpose of pre-emptively halting terror threats. After he receives a flash drive from Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Fury is unable to access the encrypted data and is soon ambushed by mysterious agents posing as cops. Meanwhile, Rogers incurs the wrath of top-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. official Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford), who believes he's up to something with Fury. Soon, Rogers, Romanoff, and Sam Wilson/The Falcon (Anthony Mackie) find themselves on the run after uncovering information about HYDRA, a rogue unit operating within and against S.H.I.E.L.D., and their top assassin is the unstoppable Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), whose true identity--not a surprise to Marvel fans--makes him closer to Cap than the hero realizes.
I enjoyed Johnston's THE FIRST AVENGER but found it generally forgettable despite the wonderful WWII-era production design. But this is a different story. One of the best films in the Marvel canon, THE WINTER SOLDIER is a much darker work, jettisoning the 1940s idealism for a strong sense of modern cynicism. There's a rampant mistrust of government and its abuses of power throughout, and while Cap decries the measures S.H.I.E.L.D. is taking in the name of protecting the people, Fury reminds him that the Greatest Generation has its own issues and shouldn't be pointing fingers. Also note how Pierce informs Cap that "building a better world sometimes means tearing the old one down." There's much humor throughout, with Rogers and Romanoff frequently coming off like a pair of ballbusting partners in a cop buddy movie, and Cap looking at another night in by explaining "All the guys in my barbershop quartet are dead," and nods and inside jokes (including a quick reference to Jackson's Jules Winnfield from PULP FICTION). But where THE WINTER SOLDIER really succeeds is not with its title-sharing villain (Stan is fine, but he's really a secondary bad guy), but with its vividly 1970s atmosphere--not in terms of the look, obviously, but in the style. It plays a lot like a Marvel superhero version of THE PARALLAX VIEW, THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, or ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (watch the tense scene where Rogers boards an increasingly crowded elevator and realizes he's a target), and one of the key elements is the inspired and almost subversive casting of Redford as the primary villain. Redford acts infrequently these days, and never in huge films of this sort, but seeing him play the kind of callous, duplicitious, well-connected string-puller that his characters used to face decades ago is a treat for fans of the screen legend. Redford's casting isn't mandatory for the film to work, but it adds a clever layer to the proceedings (had he turned it down, I can picture Warren Beatty serving the same function), and fortunately, the Russos don't let him down.
While the conspiracy elements inevitably take a back seat to non-stop CGI action in the latter half, it's generally convincing and well-handled. Some of the up-close fight scenes have a too-dizzying shaky-cam element to them, but it's not too overwhelming and it makes up a small percentage of the film. In keeping with the '70s aesthetic, many of the action scenes and a couple of car chases are handled, for the most part, practically, thanks to second-unit director and veteran stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos, who cut his teeth working on B-movies by the likes of William Lustig (MANIAC) back in the '80s. Razatos has done second-unit work for a number of CGI-heavy action films in recent years, like THE EXPENDABLES and last two FAST & FURIOUS entries, but the Russos use him for his old-school skills here, and he does some exemplary work. Given my lukewarm response to THE FIRST AVENGER and my general one-and-done sentiments when it comes to watching most of these things, I found THE WINTER SOLDIER to be a cut above the norm. It's a superhero film with a dark, gritty streak, and its unusual fusion of comic book action and cynical conspiracy thriller makes it an unpredictable spring surprise at the multiplex.
Written and directed by J.C. Chandor. Cast: Robert Redford. (PG-13, 105 mins)
A stellar late-career achievement for 77-year-old Robert Redford, ALL IS LOST contains the most sparse use of dialogue of any major release since THE ARTIST. Redford is the entire cast in this harrowing saga of a man adrift in a yacht in the Indian Ocean. The film opens with an unseen Redford narrating a letter written by the character: "I'm sorry. I know that means little at this point, but I tried." Cut to eight days earlier, as Redford is stirred awake by a stray shipping container colliding with the yacht and creating a hole in the hull. Water pours in, but Redford (the character is billed as "Our Man") calmly and methodically goes to work patching the hole and draining the water from the boat. Most of his equipment is damaged and he's unable to radio for help. He's soon faced with inclement weather and a torrential storm, which capsizes the yacht and damages it beyond repair. He opts for the life raft with little rations or hope of imminent rescue, using his nautical skills to chart when he'll drift into commercial shipping territory and out of the open water.
ALL IS LOST sounds like it would be a dull and dry CAST AWAY retread, but in the hands of writer/director J.C. Chandor (MARGIN CALL), it's fast-paced and exciting. Every creak and gurgle in the sinking yacht and every splashing wave ratchets up the tension. Its only real stumble is some typically unconvincing greenscreen CGI during a storm when Redford is trying to steer the yacht. Of course, it's Redford, in his best role in years, that makes it work as well as it does. We learn very little about "Our Man," other than what we can deduce: he's regretful of past decisions that have hurt loved ones, he's resourceful, and he prefers (or accepts) solitude. With a career going back over 50 years, Redford's never been a showy actor known for "big" scenes or iconic one-liners (his only Oscar nomination for acting came for 1973's THE STING; he lost to Jack Lemmon in SAVE THE TIGER). Among his legendary contemporaries who hit their stride in the 1970s, Redford doesn't have a "You talkin' to me?" or "You can't handle the truth!" or "Hoo-aaah!" or "Go ahead, make my day" moment for his career highlight reel. His acting style has always been sparse and his work in ALL IS LOST is about as internalized as it gets. Chandor stays focused on the actor throughout, letting Redford's actions, his eyes, and the lines in his aged face tell the story. Of any living legends, De Niro, Nicholson, Pacino, or Eastwood couldn't have played this part as effectively. I could see Paul Newman pulling it off if it had it been made 10 or 15 years ago, and again, his acting style was similar to Redford's. But you don't hire those other guys so they can be quiet. On his Facebook page, filmmaker Rod Lurie, who directed Redford in 2001's THE LAST CASTLE, praised his performance in ALL IS LOST and wrote that "When we made THE LAST CASTLE, Bob sat down with me and we went through the script page by page, and he took a red marker and started crossing off lines and whole sections of his dialogue, saying 'I can sell this without saying it.'" And other than the brief opening voiceover, two failed attempts at calling for help on the radio and a cry for help at a passing ship that doesn't see him, the only dialogue Redford has is, after several days at sea and reaching his breaking point, an anguished and enraged "FUUUUUUUUUCK!" which may very well be his YouTube-worthy moment of over-the-top emoting.
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)
