In Theaters: ALLIED (2016)

ALLIED
(US/China - 2016)

Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Written by Steven Knight. Cast: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Jared Harris, Simon McBurney, Lizzy Caplan, August Diehl, Matthew Goode, Daniel Betts, Camille Cottin, Charlotte Hope, Thierry Fremont, Anton Lesser. (R, 124 mins)

A defiantly old-fashioned throwback to glamorous star vehicles of yesteryear--except when it makes jarring modern concessions in terms of profanity and sexual content--ALLIED is an entertaining if occasionally implausible WWII espionage thriller that's equal parts wartime programmer and Alfred Hitchcock. In 1942, Canadian intelligence officer Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) parachutes into the French Moroccan desert for a covert mission in Casablanca, which gives you a good idea of what vibes ALLIED gives off in its early-going and throughout its superior first half. His assignment is to pose as a French phosphate engineer and team with Resistance leader Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard), who fled France after she was the sole survivor of a massacre on a compromised outfit. Once she tutors him in making his Quebecois accent sound more Parisian, they're to go undercover as a married couple and blend in with other Nazi sympathizers, with the goal being the assassination of the German ambassador at an upcoming swanky dinner party. Their pretend marriage blossoming into real love during an afternoon desert sandstorm, Max and Marianne relocate to London and marry upon the completion of their mission, settling down into a domesticated existence with a newborn daughter, with family man Max taking a less dangerous office job at British military HQ.

That changes when his superior officer and friend Frank Heslop (Jared Harris) calls him in for a meeting with a high-ranking SOE official (the always sinister Simon McBurney). They have evidence that Marianne Beausejour was killed in 1941 and that the woman Max married is an impostor and a Nazi spy. He's to run a "blue-dye test" in which he gets a phone call, jots down some false intelligence info, then waits to see if decoders pick it up a few days later among their decryptions of German transmissions. If they do, then they know she's a spy and Max is to execute her immediately or be hanged for treason. Of course, Max refuses to believe their allegations and sets out to prove her innocence, even if it means disobeying direct orders and putting his own life at risk.

The script by Steven Knight (EASTERN PROMISES, LOCKE, PEAKY BLINDERS) does a nice job of refusing to pull punches and go for predictable, implausible twists in the name of pleasing the crowd. It's uncompromising in ways that movies for adults used to be, and it's one of the more effective ways that director Robert Zemeckis (BACK TO THE FUTURE, FORREST GUMP) establishes a vividly old-school mindset throughout the film. Going back to the groundbreaking WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, Zemeckis has been a pioneer in the advancement of visual effects, As demonstrated in films like FORREST GUMP and THE WALK, and in his several motion-capture animated works like THE POLAR EXPRESS and BEOWULF, the one-time Steven Spielberg protege is obviously an advocate of digital filmmaking and CGI, and, for better or worse, they're used extensively throughout ALLIED. The recreations of Casablanca and London are generally well done on a visual level, though it rarely feels like anything but a greenscreen, which is a similar degree of artifice you'd see on a 1940's Hollywood set, but just lacks the organic feel (or maybe it's just me), and the CGI sandstorm leaves a lot to be desired. Cotillard is tasked with most of the dramatic heavy lifting even though Pitt gets more of a focus by way of Max's extensive investigating. But there's just something distractingly off about the appearance of the 52-year-old Pitt. Sporting some visible thick makeup under his eyes to wipe away the years required to play a character who's probably 20 years younger, his face almost seems airbrushed, like Milla Jovovich in the third RESIDENT EVIL movie. The resulting CGI sandblasting make him look waxy smooth and disturbingly artificial, almost like a CGI'd Brad Pitt being motion-captured by Andy Serkis. His closeups are enough to take you out of the movie, which is otherwise engrossing (the assassination sequence is top-notch) even if a bit silly at times, such as the perfect family picnic about 20 feet away from a downed German plane whose wreckage is still smoldering.

In Theaters: FLIGHT (2012)

FLIGHT
(US - 2012)

Directed by Robert Zemeckis.  Written by John Gatins.  Cast: Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Melissa Leo, Bruce Greenwood, Tamara Tunie, Nadine Velazquez, Brian Geraghty, Keven Gerety, James Badge Dale, Garcelle Beauvais. (R, 139 mins)

Veteran airline pilot Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) wakes up in an airport hotel room in Orlando with a naked woman and a floor littered with empty bottles. Groggy and hungover, he does a quick line of coke to balance himself out.  It's 7:00 am and he's piloting a 9:00 am flight to Atlanta.  The woman, Katerina (Nadine Velazquez) is one of his flight's attendants.  Whip is good to go and feelin' alright, as evidenced by a shot of Washington striding through the airport terminal to the tune of Joe Cocker's version of Traffic's "Feelin' Alright."

The planned 52-minute flight experiences some major turbulence but Whip gets them through it.  Only later, after Whip hands the controls over to co-pilot Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty), pours three mini bottles of Smirnoff into his orange juice and takes a quick nap in the pilot's seat, does all hell break loose.  The plane starts to nosedive and and West's steering mechanisms fail.  Whip decides to "roll" the plane by veering it to the point where it flies upside down, evening out the plane and stopping the dive.  All power eventually fails and Whip guides the plane to a crash landing just past a small church (MESSAGE!), losing six of the 102 passengers onboard.  Two crew members are killed, including Katerina.  Whip's daring method of handling the crash turns him into a hero, but there's a problem.  Standard NTSB protocol after a crash is to draw blood for analysis.  Whip was battered in the crash and unconscous for several hours and doesn't recall the blood being drawn.  They find the alcohol and cocaine in his system, and despite the clear reason for the crash being a faulty rear elevator assembly that caused the plane to nosedive, Whip's extracurricular actitivies present the possiblity that he's on the hook for manslaughter in the passenger deaths.

FLIGHT would seem to offer Washington the kind of tour de force that results in instant Oscar buzz.  He's a great actor, one of the best, but even he has a hard time elevating this beyond the point of hackneyed and predictable.  After the harrowing opening 20 or so minutes, the film turns into the kind of by-the-numbers addiction drama that frankly, we've seen a hundred times before.  While in the hospital, Whip meets Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a heroin addict recovering from an overdose, and they become friends after he's discharged.  She cleans up her act and tries to help him, but Whip, the kind of guy who doesn't need any help and shuts out anyone who tries, continues to drink and use.  Director Robert Zemeckis, helming his first live-action film since 2000's CAST AWAY, can't resist repeatedly hammering home the plot points over and over again, usually with the ham-fisted use of a popular song accompanying the scene just in case the audience is too dense to get it.  Was it necessary for a scene of Reilly shooting up to use both the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" and Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane"?  Or to have Whip's dealer (John Goodman) introduced to the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil"?  FLIGHT starts out believably grim and realistic--as a character, the arrogant, irresponsible Whip is only slightly less of an asshole than Washington's Alonzo Harris in TRAINING DAY--but it grows increasingly "Hollywood" the more it proceeds towards it inevitably uplifting ending.  Allowing Whip some level of redemption is fine, but the path to it just feels hollow.  Zemeckis and screenwriter John Gatins (COACH CARTER, REAL STEEL) completely lose it in the home stretch when the perpetually self-destructive Whip falls off the wagon hard the night before a federal hearing and his lawyer (Don Cheadle) and union rep (Bruce Greenwood) resort to methods of sobering him up that very nearly turn the film into a comedy.  Let's just say it prompts Zemeckis to use an instrumental Muzak version of The Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends."

There's a lot of good things about FLIGHT.  Washington commands the screen, which should surprise no one.  British actress Reilly believably handles a southern American accent.  The terrifying crash sequence is easily the film's highlight.  But the film just really loses its way in the second half before utterly collapsing in the last half hour.  A lot of us have seen functioning alcoholics in action, but FLIGHT takes functioning alcoholism to ridiculous extremes, with Whip consuming amounts of alcohol that no one could handle, let alone fly a plane or calmly testify at a hearing.  At some point, despite a solid start, FLIGHT becomes less concerned with the plausible depiction of Whip's personal hell and more focused on getting Denzel Washington another Oscar.