RICHARD JEWELL (US - 2019) Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Billy Ray. Cast: Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, Nina Arianda, Ian Gomez, Dylan Kussman, Niko Nicotera, Wayne Duvall, David Shae, Mike Pniewski, Charles Green, Billy Slaughter, Eric Mendenhall. (R, 131 mins)
After granting himself not one but two threesomes in 2018's surprisingly lighthearted geriatric drug trafficking saga THE MULE, Clint Eastwood returns to his unofficial "American Heroes" series with RICHARD JEWELL. Late-period Eastwood has been maddeningly inconsistent, from the hagiography of AMERICAN SNIPER to his playing fast and loose with the facts in SULLY to the completely botched THE 15:17 TO PARIS, where he couldn't possibly have been less engaged with the material. Eastwood's always worked fast (RICHARD JEWELL began filming in late June 2019, and it's already out), but there's been an increasing sloppiness to his films as he's gotten older, almost like he's more concerned with getting it done than getting it right, but at 89, he seems to be mostly back on his game with RICHARD JEWELL. Helping immensely is Paul Walter Hauser as Jewell (1962-2007), the security guard who discovered a pipe bomb in Atlanta's Centennial Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics, and quickly went from hero to prime suspect thanks to an anxious FBI and an overzealous media. Hauser, also memorable as Shawn Eckardt, the hapless "bodyguard" and "terrorism expert" involved in the attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, in I, TONYA, turns in the best performance Eastwood's gotten out of an actor in years, fearlessly capturing all facets of Jewell, whether it's his insecurities, his flaws, his eagerness to respect authority, and his foolish belief that the FBI agents investigating him are "fellow law enforcement." The well-intentioned Jewell is a wannabe cop who was dismissed from the sheriff's department and later fired from a university after student complaints and for overstepping his bounds, even pulling people over off-campus when he suspected them of DUI. He studies the penal code on his nights off and clings to his pipe dream of becoming a police officer. He's encouraged by his mother Bobi (Kathy Bates), who almost certainly realizes it's never going to happen for Richard, but she loves him too much to hurt his feelings.
Jewell's life changed on July 27, 1996 when he was working security and discovered a mysterious backpack under a bench near the sound tower in Centennial Park, which was packed with people attending a Jack Mack and the Heart Attack concert. Initially dismissed by cops at the event aware of his history of being overzealous, Jewell persisted until someone in charge opened the backpack and found the bomb. It went off, killing one and wounding 111 others. Jewell was immediately hailed as a hero who saved lives but FBI investigators, led by composite characters Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) and Dan Bennet (Ian Gomez) start putting together a profile that points to Jewell, basing it on his obsession with becoming a cop, his desire to be a hero, his being fired from past security jobs, his large size, that he lives with his mother, etc. Over drinks, Shaw leaks to ambitious Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) that they're looking at Jewell and the paper runs with it on the front page. Within three days of the bombing, Jewell is now the prime suspect being hounded by the media and Shaw, who has no actual evidence but keeps trying to trick Jewell into incriminating himself. With nowhere to turn and with the FBI determined to pin the bombing on him, Jewell calls mercurial attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), who was at a law firm a decade earlier where Jewell worked as a supply room clerk and, as Jewell tells him, "you were the only one who talked to me and treated me like a human being."
Eastwood being engaged with the material makes a difference, and his fury over the treatment of Jewell, who was eventually exonerated three months later (Eric Rudolph was captured in 2003 and confessed to Centennial Park and numerous other bombings) is palpable. That's perhaps to a fault, especially in regards to the way the film handles Scruggs, the real reporter who broke the story. Eastwood and screenwriter Billy Ray (SHATTERED GLASS) came under fire as the film was released for their depiction of Scruggs, an actual person who died in 2001 and isn't here to defend herself, offering sex in exchange for a hot tip from Hamm's Shaw, a fictional character created for the film. There's plenty of blame to lay at the feet of Scruggs and the Atlanta Journal Constitution without resorting to cheap-shot slut-shaming or turning her into a vamping, strutting, bitch-on-wheels femme fatale out of an early '90s straight-to-video erotic thriller. Wilde's performance as Scruggs is absolutely ridiculous in its cartoon villainy (made even more hollow by her later teary realization that she's been instrumental in railroading Jewell before promptly disappearing from the film), and here once again, Eastwood is overdoing it to further stack the deck against an American Hero™, like the guy heading the NTSB inquiry in SULLY doing everything short of twirling a mustache in his ruthless quest to nail Sully Sullenberger's balls to the wall for the Miracle on the Hudson, a sentiment that necessitated Sullenberger requesting the names of those characters be changed because that's not how they treated him. Making her the cold-blooded Mean Girl of the AJC newsroom also doesn't seem an accurate representation from what her colleagues have said, but with her cackling and preposterously evil interpretation of Scruggs, Wilde often appears to be auditioning for a future role as Cruella de Vil in a 101 DALMATIANS reboot she thinks might happen two or three decades down the road. I don't think Wilde's performance is entirely her fault--this is how she's been directed to play it--but it's the one big misstep that Eastwood makes in an otherwise fine film.
So yes, the Scruggs scenes are a major detriment to RICHARD JEWELL, but Hauser, Bates, and Rockwell are so good that they manage to wash away the bad aftertaste. After seeing his work here, it's hard to imagine anyone else playing Jewell, though Jonah Hill was initially attached when the project went into development as THE BALLAD OF RICHARD JEWELL back in 2014 with Leonardo DiCaprio as Bryant and Paul Greengrass set to direct (Hill and DiCaprio have producer credits here). His being generally little-known works to Hauser's advantage, and his resemblance to Jewell is striking (Eastwood uses real footage of Jewell in news clips on TV, and it's hard to tell the difference between subject and actor). But even beyond that, Hauser just brilliantly captures the little moments where the eager-to-please Jewell just can't stop himself from opening his big mouth, despite being repeatedly admonished by Bryant to say nothing. When the FBI team comes in to his mother's apartment and starts ransacking the place, even taking her Tupperware and underwear as evidence, he's still agreeably offering "If you need help finding anything, let me know." The expression on Hauser's face, regret over being a willing doormat combined with the faint hope that the agents view him as an equal, as Jewell can't even look at Bryant or his mom as they glare at him, speaks volumes. Also worthy of mention in a scene-stealing supporting role is Nina Arianda as Nadya, Bryant's no-nonsense secretary and legal aid, who very quietly becomes the heart and soul of the unlikely Jewell support team that also includes his only friend, Dave Dutchess (Niko Nicotera) who's hauled in by the FBI as a possible accomplice, with agents also threatening to start a rumor that he and Jewell are lovers (that Jewell is very adamant about clearing up that falsehood is another risky move for woke 2019, but it's true to the character). With a mishandling of Scruggs that's irresponsible at best and misogynistic at worst, RICHARD JEWELL is a decidedly flawed film, but at the end of the day, it's one of the better offerings from this latter period of Eastwood's legendary career, thanks mostly to a committed and often quite moving performance by Paul Walter Hauser.
VICE (US - 2018) Written and directed by Adam McKay. Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Tyler Perry, Jesse Plemons, Alison Pill, Lily Rabe, Eddie Marsan, Justin Kirk, LisaGay Hamilton, Bill Camp, Don McManus, Shea Whigham, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Fay Masterson, John Hillner, Paul Yoo, Joseph Beck, Tony Graham. (R, 132 mins) ANCHORMAN director and Will Ferrell BFF Adam McKay took the leap to "serious filmmaker" with 2015's THE BIG SHORT, an angry and irreverent autopsy of the housing market collapse. He takes the same approach and nets less consistent results with the Dick Cheney biopic VICE, which covers the life of George W. Bush's vice president from his days as a hard-drinking college dropout and all-around fuck-up in 1963, through the events of 9/11 to his heart transplant in 2012. Regardless of how one feels about Cheney and where you stand politically, the one thing everyone can agree on in these more-divisive-than-ever times is that Christian Bale completely disappears onscreen and all you see is Dick Cheney. Sporting Oscar-worthy makeup and an extra 45-50 lbs, the Oscar-winning actor, known for his startling transformations in past films like THE MACHINIST, THE FIGHTER, and AMERICAN HUSTLE, absolutely becomes Cheney. Bale carries VICE on his shoulders, and it's a good thing he does, because without the level of obsessive, Day-Lewisian dedication in his performance/metamorphosis, the film's shortcomings and inconsistencies would be a lot more glaring than they already are.
Counting Ferrell and Brad Pitt among its producers, VICE is entertaining, but McKay too often succumbs to Michael Moore agitprop with all the subtlety of a jackhammer or, perhaps, Ron Burgundy. Tonally, it's all over the place, with the grim seriousness of 9/11 juxtaposed with the kind of meta jokes that wouldn't have been out of place on something like MR. SHOW or FUNNY OR DIE (like a focus group stopping the movie to address its liberal bias). There's a ruthless, Lady Macbeth quality to Lynne Cheney, played here by Amy Adams, leading to Adams and Bale playing an entire scene in emphatic, scenery-chewing Shakespearean dialogue. McKay also takes the story into a hypothetical direction about 40 minutes in, just prior to Cheney accepting an offer to be Bush's VP where he, Lynne, and their extended family live happily ever after as historical footnotes, never to be heard from again as an inspiring score cue swells and the closing credits begin rolling before abruptly resetting and bringing the film back to reality. There's a scattershot, throw-everything-at-the-wall approach to VICE that's worked for McKay in the past (ANCHORMAN, THE OTHER GUYS) and has also completely backfired (ANCHORMAN 2). It splits the difference here because it is funny, but the comedy only spotlights the fact that VICE is never sure what it wants to be. Bale is diving into this and losing himself in the way he deftly captures everything about Cheney physically and psychologically, while Adams is stuck playing a one-dimensional Lynne Cheney who's defined almost exclusively by her shrewd opportunism and the Cheney image (when their daughter Mary, played by Alison Pill, comes out as gay, it's Dick who immediately embraces her and offers his support while Lynne stands there, already questioning how this affects Dick's political career). Others are doing convincing impressions that look like SNL on a good night, like Steve Carell's obnoxious and loathed-throughout-DC Donald Rumsfeld, Tyler Perry's Colin Powell, Eddie Marsan's Paul Wolfowitz, and Sam Rockwell's George W. Bush, seen here as an easygoing goofball who only seems to be in politics to earn his dad's respect.
There is a clever framing device involving an onscreen narrator (Jesse Plemons), and the story jumps back and forth through the years, chronicling Cheney's time as a protege of presidential adviser Rumsfeld in the pre-Watergate Nixon White House, and his eventual return as White House Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford (Bill Camp) in the 1975 "Halloween Massacre," a gig he gets after swooping in to scavenge for table scraps left by everyone tainted by the Watergate fiasco. He's also the Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush and the film glosses over his tenure as CEO of Halliburton before he's persuaded to be George W. Bush's running mate. Throughout VICE, Cheney is accurately depicted as a Machiavellian mover and shaker, fixated on finding loopholes and reinterpretations to skirt around the Constitution and the law to find ways to grant the executive branch previously untapped levels of power, secrecy, and unaccountability. He's always working behind the scenes, quietly plotting, and never drawing attention to himself, qualities that come into play when he manipulates the younger Bush into letting him take on a much more significant role in policy and day-to-day operations than VPs have historically played ("The president and I have an understanding," he says whenever someone asks him if he's overstepping his boundaries).
The film's second half focuses almost entirely on the post 9/11 era, with the the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, "enhanced interrogation," Cheney's vengeful outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, and other decisions that resonate to this day (the infamous incident where Cheney shot a guy in the face is also shown, along with a reminder that the only apology that ever came from it was from the victim to Cheney), but therein lies the core problem with VICE: you're not going to leave the theater knowing anything you didn't already know going in. And to that end, it's rather shallow and superficial, and lacking the focused rage of THE BIG SHORT (the most vicious jab is aimed not at Dick Cheney, but at the apathetic and easily-distracted general public, and it comes at the very end, so stick around for that stinger that comes early in the closing credits). It's a triumph of makeup and a testament to Christian Bale's many gifts as an actor and his complete devotion to his craft. He makes efforts to show Cheney's human side and doesn't play him a cartoonish Bond villain, but a long, "no apologies" monologue near the end might make you wonder if this wouldn't have made a more insightful film if it was a one-man show like James Whitmore as Harry S. Truman in 1975's GIVE 'EM HELL, HARRY! or Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon in Robert Altman's 1984 film SECRET HONOR.
MUTE (UK/Germany - 2018) Directed by Duncan Jones. Written by Michael Robert Johnson and Duncan Jones. Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Paul Rudd, Justin Theroux, Seyneb Saleh, Dominic Monaghan, Robert Sheehan, Gilbert Owuor, Jannis Niewohner, Rob Kazinsky, Noel Clarke, Mia-Sophie Bastin, Lea-Marie Bastin, Daniel Fathers, Andrzej Blumenfeld. (Unrated, 126 mins) After establishing himself as a major new voice in intelligent, thought-provoking sci-fi with 2009's MOON and 2011's SOURCE CODE, Duncan Jones jumped to the megabudget realm in 2016 with the $160 million WARCRAFT, an adaptation of the popular video game series. Met with a lukewarm response from the critics who loved his more brainy earlier films, WARCRAFT looks for now to be a franchise non-starter despite being a moneymaker everywhere but the US. After WARCRAFT and several tumultuous, emotional years of ups-and-downs in his personal life--his father David Bowie died in January 2016 and his beloved childhood nanny passed a year later, and he also became a father with a second child on the way after his wife emerged victorious in a battle with breast cancer--Jones decided it was time to make his long-gestating dream project MUTE, a script he wrote with Michael Robert Johnson (SHERLOCK HOLMES, POMPEII) way back in 2001 and was talking about as a potential second film nearly a decade ago when he was doing press for MOON. Jones was unable to generate any studio interest in MUTE at the time, but with Netflix agreeing to distribute pretty muchanything, he finally found a way to get it done with little interference, allowing him to make exactly the film he wanted to make. A Guy Ritchie-esque crime saga in its earliest drafts, MUTE's screenplay went through numerous transformations over the years as Jones would periodically rework it before stuffing it back in the bottom desk drawer until he had more time.
Judging from the end result, it looks like Jones didn't so much revise as he just found ways to cram in every idea he scribbled in the margins over the years. MUTE is a hot mess, but it's at least a great-looking mess. The biggest obvious inspiration is BLADE RUNNER, with MUTE taking place in a Berlin roughly 30 years from now, looking very much like the neon dystopian cityscapes of everything from Ridley Scott's influential classic to Luc Besson's THE FIFTH ELEMENT and it even seems indebted to the Wachowskis circa CLOUD ATLAS. Mute since a childhood accident that could've been remedied had his devout Amish mother not refused surgery, Leo Beiler (Alexander Skarsgard) lives a largely low-key life tending bar at a flashy club called Foreign Dreams, where his blue-haired girlfriend Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh) is a waitress. He's ultimately fired after too many run-ins with customers who get belligerent with Naadirah, but things get even worse for Ben when she turns up missing after vaguely confessing "You don't really know me." In a concurrent story, AWOL Army medic and single dad Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) works for Maksim (Gilbert Owuor), the Russian gangster who owns Foreign Dreams. Cactus is working off a debt by operating on Maksim's goons as needed (bullet extractions, etc), and in exchange, Maksim is supposed to be obtaining forged passport documents that will get Cactus and his young daughter Josie (played by twins Mia-Sophie and Lea-Marie Bastin) back into the US. As Luddite Leo (who can barely operate an outdated cell phone and is referred to by one character as a "tech tard") tears Berlin apart looking for Naadirah, following clues that involve Maksim and shady pimp Nicky Simsek (Jannis Niewohner), his story will eventually--and cumbersomely--intersect with Cactus Bill's attempts to get out of the city with the help of his cybernetic surgeon buddy Duck Teddington (Justin Theroux).
The nuts-and-bolts of the story--Leo's stoical rampage through the seedy underbelly of the city--is the stuff of any number of generic thrillers you've seen a thousand times. Dropping that story into the middle of a gloomy noir set in future Berlin makes for some nice visuals, but the BLADE RUNNER worship is enough for Ridley Scott to obtain a restraining order, from the neon to the Spinner-style hovercars, the advertisements on the sides of skyscrapers, and Clint Mansell's electronic score that's filled with endless Vangelis and Tangerine Dreamgasms. It's also a love letter to his father's much-loved "Berlin Trilogy," with "Moss Garden" from 1977's "Heroes" and the Bowie-derived Philip Glass composition "Symphony No. 4 (Heroes)" making soundtrack appearances. There's shout-outs to German expressionism with one character owning a poster of the 1930 Emil Jannings/Marlene Dietrich classic THE BLUE ANGEL, and a general sense of melancholia that brings to mind what might've happened in an alternate universe where Wim Wenders made BLADE RUNNER. Further showing off his love of even the most off-the-wall German cinema, Jones at one point has Rudd's Cactus--who also carries a large Bowie (wink wink) knife--wearing a gaudy coat that makes him look like Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Wolf Gremm's 1982 sci-fi cult oddity KAMIKAZE '89.
There's a lot of good intentions with MUTE, but as is often the case when a filmmaker is granted a large budget and a lot of leeway, it looks like Jones couldn't bear to part with anything he wrote or shot. The first hour is a ponderous dawdle, with Skarsgard absent for long stretches while Jones makes the peculiar decision to have Rudd and Theroux act and dress like Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland in M*A*S*H, right down to Rudd's admittedly amazing horseshoe mustache that gives Gould's '70s look a run for its money. There's a gross pedophilia subplot that seems to belong in another movie, and for some reason, Sam Rockwell has a brief cameo as his character from MOON. Things go completely off the rails in the third act, in good and bad ways, with one character's abrupt exit and an another's actions turning it into an unexpected variation of THE VANISHING, with the whole "future Berlin" element pretty much abandoned. MUTE looks like Jones had fragments of ideas for a half dozen movies and threw them together without really smoothing out the transitions and the rough edges. But it looks good, there's some really impressive production design and top-shelf CGI, and there is one really astonishingly mean-spirited bit with the way one character is forced to spend his last gasping moments watching his worst nightmare become reality and can do nothing but die with the realization that he's powerless to stop it. A horrifying, devastating moment like that is evidence that Jones isn't slacking here, but he's juggling too many half-baked ideas and trying to pay tribute to too many things, and when the credits finally roll, it looks like a bunch of pieces that don't really fit. In the end, MUTE is a misfire, but an occasionally intriguing one.
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (UK/US - 2017) Written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Peter Dinklage, John Hawkes, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Caleb Landry Jones, Clarke Peters, Zeljko Ivanek, Amanda Warren, Samara Weaving, Sandy Martin, Kerry Condon, Brendan Sexton III, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Kathryn Newton, Malaya Rivera Drew, Jerry Winsett, Nick Searcy. (R, 115 mins) With its dark humor, small-town cops, generous doses of local color, quotable dialogue, shocking bursts of unexpected violence, and Frances McDormand heading the cast, it's inevitable that THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI will draw comparisons to the Coen Bros.' FARGO. But it quickly makes its case as very much its own film, and it's the best work yet from Martin McDonagh, the British writer/director who gave us the great IN BRUGES and the half-great (loved the first half, didn't care for the second) SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS. McDonagh expertly captures the small-town, rural atmosphere and succeeds in making every major character complex and multi-dimensional. Lesser films would've made everything that transpires black and white and one-sided, stacking the deck against the main character to maximize sympathy, but in THREE BILLBOARDS, everything is in shades of gray. Even the most loathsome characters have redeeming qualities, and while the outrageously foul-mouthed insults and seething anger fly fast and furious, THREE BILLBOARDS is, at its core, one of the warmest, honest, and most emotional films to hit theaters in some time.
Seven months after her teenage daughter Angela was raped, doused in gasoline, and burned to a crisp, Mildred Hayes (McDormand) has run out of patience. There's no leads, no breaks, and local police are still reeling from a recent scandal where Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a racist cop with serious anger management issues, beat and tortured a black suspect. Consumed with bitterness and rage and past her breaking point, Mildred rents out three billboards near her home outside the tiny town of Ebbing, MO, on a virtually abandoned stretch of road that's been rarely used in the 30 years since a nearby highway was constructed. They say, in succession, "Raped While Dying," "And Still No Arrests?" and "How Come, Chief Willoughby?" Understandably, police chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) is upset, explaining to Mildred that there was no DNA match, no witnesses, and nothing for them to go on. The billboards attract the attention of the local and regional media and earn Mildred the scorn of Ebbing's residents, with none more furious than Dixon, who repeatedly tries to intimidate and bully Mildred and local ad agency owner Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones) into taking them down. People also resent Mildred's aggressively calling out Willoughby since it's the worst-kept secret in Ebbing that the chief, married to Anne (Abbie Cornish) and with two young daughters, is terminally ill with pancreatic cancer and doesn't have long to live.
To say much more about the relentlessly busy plot would spoil the rich rewards THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI has to offer. The billboards have an effect on everyone: Willoughby, a good man trying to do his job and being put in an awkward position while facing his certain death; Mildred's son Robbie (MANCHESTER BY THE SEA's Lucas Hedges), who's already having a hard time getting over the death of his older sister (he thanks his mom for the billboards "in case I go more than two minutes without thinking about her"); and Mildred's ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes), a wife-beater still prone to violent tendencies who's taken up with 19-year-old Penelope (THE BABYSITTER's Samara Weaving). But none are impacted more than Dixon, and Rockwell rises to the challenge with the film's most difficult role and most expansive and unexpected character arc, simultaneously presented as a dipshit, mama's boy cop who took six years to get through the police academy, a virulent and unapologetic racist and homophobe, and ultimately, a guy capable of recognizing the mistakes he's made and doing something to right his many wrongs. It's national treasure McDormand's film for obvious reasons, and it's probably her finest work since FARGO, but an Oscar-worthy Rockwell has never been better. All of the actors get a chance to shine, even if they only have a couple of scenes (especially Weaving as the sweet but dim Penelope, and Peter Dinklage as the local used car salesman and town drunk who has an unrequited crush on Mildred), and McDonagh's dialogue, while occasionally coming off as a little too scripted (particularly Mildred's rant at a local priest played by Nick Searcy), is brutal and lacerating in its misanthropic fury that's also occasionally sweet, if you can believe that. Only in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI could "cunt" be a term of endearment from a son to his mom and sister. It's a moving, perceptive, tragic, funny, and devastating look at grief, choices, and the haunting regret of words and actions that you'd give anything to take back. It's one of the best films of the year.
Written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Cast: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken, Tom Waits, Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko, Zeljko Ivanek, Harry Dean Stanton, Gabourey Sidibe, Michael Pitt, Michael Stuhlbarg, Kevin Corrigan, Linda Bright Clay, Long Nguyen, Brendan Sexton III. (R, 110 mins)
Writer/director Martin McDonagh's follow-up to his acclaimed IN BRUGES (2008) again demonstrates his deftness at mixing the comedic and the dramatic and doing so without jarring or uneven shifts in tone. SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS adds a "meta" element that's somewhat reminiscent of Shane Black's 2005 cult favorite KISS KISS BANG BANG (a great film totally abandoned by its distributor). With rare exception--KISS KISS BANG BANG, for example--self-reflexive meta films of this sort tend to exude a certain air of smugness about them, almost as if the filmmakers are too busy marveling at how preciously clever they're being. For the most part, McDonagh does a good job at keeping that element in check, but it doesn't always work as well as it should, or as well as McDonagh thinks it is. Contrary to what the trailers, TV spots, and poster art are selling, this isn't exactly the wacky comedy about a ragtag group of criminal miscreants that it appears to be. It's *A* film like that...just not the one being advertised.
In Hollywood, hard-drinking Irish screenwriter Marty (McDonagh's IN BRUGES star Colin Farrell) is having a hard time finding inspiration for his latest script, titled SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS. He's got one: the Jack of Diamonds serial killer, who happens to be going around wiping out mobsters and leaving a jack of diamonds card behind. Marty's best friend Bobby Bickle (Sam Rockwell) is an out-of-work actor who makes a living in a lucrative scam with aging, dapper, cravat-wearing criminal Hans (Christopher Walken), where Bobby kidnaps a dog and after a few days, Hans returns it to the owner for the reward. Things spiral out of control when Bobby kidnaps Bonny, a Shih Tzu owned by hot-tempered, trigger-happy crime boss Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson), who thinks nothing of killing anyone who gets in the way of him retrieving his beloved dog.
That's the essential "plot," and that's where a typical Hollywood points A-to-B-to-C story would focus. But McDonagh takes things in unexpected directions with various sidetracks and detours as he cinematically demonstrates the stages of the writing process as Marty and Billy (who wants to help write the script) brainstorm and the film turns into a running commentary on itself. These are tricky waters for a film to navigate. If it's done right, it's brilliant. If it's not, then it's pompous and insufferable. SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS isn't brilliant as a whole, but it seems headed that way for the first half. It's filled with sharp writing, witty and profane dialogue, great characters, and inspired situations that often border on silly but are immensely enjoyable. McDonagh weaves together hilarious comedy, devastating drama, and some surprising scenes of shocking violence with confidence and energy, but once Marty suggests, instead of a big shootout, the characters in his script should just go to the desert and talk, that's exactly what McDonagh has his characters in the film do. While it's nice watching Farrell, Rockwell, and Walken explore these characters and give them added dimensions, there's no denying it kills the momentum for a while. There's certainly an argument that subverting that expectation of a big shootout (which we eventually get) is McDonagh's whole point, but it's the only time the film threatens to become one of those meta movies where the winking gets a little forced and you start to feel like the filmmakers think the material is beneath them. There's some good stuff after this section, but SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS never returns to being as entertaining as it was for that first hour.
Even if it doesn't quite hang together all the way through, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS does boast a terrific ensemble cast. Rockwell has rarely been better, and Hans is easily Walken's best role in years. Whether he's doting over his cancer-stricken wife (Linda Bright Clay), making odd facial expressions, or saying things like "Fuck the cops! Fuck 'em!" in ways that only he could say them, Walken turns in a marvelously inspired "Christopher Walken"-y performance that's great fun to watch. Rockwell and Walken are the standouts, but Farrell and Harrelson do fine work, and there's also memorable supporting turns by Tom Waits, Harry Dean Stanton, and, of course, Bonny the Shih Tzu. SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS functions on multiple levels and is the kind of film that probably requires more than one viewing to catch and process everything. It's one of those films where subsequent viewings will likely bring other things to the surface to enrich the experience. I certainly enjoyed enough of it to pick up the eventual Blu-ray and spend more time studying it in greater detail. It's just that kind of film.
