THE LAST FULL MEASURE (US - 2020) Written and directed by Todd Robinson. Cast: Sebastian Stan, Christopher Plummer, Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Peter Fonda, LisaGay Hamilton, Jeremy Irvine, Diane Ladd, Amy Madigan, Linus Roache, John Savage, Alison Sudol, Bradley Whitford, Dale Dye, Ser'Darius Blain, Zachary Roerig, Cody Walker, James Jagger, Richard Cawthorne, Ethan Russell, Bruce MacVittie, Asher Miles Fallica, Travis Aaron Wade, Rachel Harker. (R, 116 mins) An extremely earnest and well-meaning chronicle of the efforts to award a posthumous Medal of Honor to a fallen Vietnam War hero, THE LAST FULL MEASURE wears its heart on its sleeve and you can't fault the nobility of its intentions. Jumping between 1999 and flashbacks to the botched Operation Abilene in the ill-fated 1966 Battle of Xa Cam My on a rubber plantation roughly 30 klicks outside of Saigon, the film doesn't shy away from a deep dive into hagiography in the story of Air Force pararescueman William "Pits" Pitsenbarger (played here by Jeremy Irvine), a Piqua, OH native who was killed in action on April 11, 1966 while treating and rescuing 60 Army infantrymen, then refusing evacuation and staying behind to help the unit defend their position against VC snipers. Because it was an Army operation, the request for a Medal of Honor citation was denied and Pitsenbarger was instead awarded the Air Force Cross. But the men saved by Pitsenbarger, along with retired Air Force Sgt. and fellow pararescueman Tom Tulley (William Hurt) have never given up the fight for his heroism to be properly recognized. The MOH inquiry lands in the lap of ambitious (and, like almost everyone else here, fictional) mid-level Pentagon staffer Scott Huffman (Sebastian Stan), who has loftier goals than sifting through boring paperwork for info about a 33-year-old battle that nobody remembers, and he's practically encouraged by his smarmy boss Carlton Stanton (Bradley Whitford, cast radically against type as "Bradley Whitford") to blow it off and bide his time before pawning it off on someone else.
But Huffman proceeds with at least pretending to give a shit, his obvious ambivalence to the assignment earning the derisive scorn of Tulley as well as the Cam My survivors he tracks down to half-heartedly interview (their stories are intercut with combat flashbacks to that fateful day), all of them embittered and shattered from the horrors they experienced and witnessed: Jimmy Takoda (Samuel L. Jackson), Ray Mott (Ed Harris), and Jimmy Burr (the late Peter Fonda, in his last film), the latter with a bullet still lodged in his head and suffering from PTSD so intensely debilitating that he carries a loaded shotgun at all times and sleeps during the day because he remains terrified of the darkness of night. A pencil pusher and company man who seems to demonstrate no understanding of the sacrifice these men have made, Sanford inevitably comes around to seeing the light, feeling their pain, and legitimately caring about the legacy of Pitsenbarger, especially after he meets his elderly parents, Alice (Diane Ladd) and Frank Pitsenbarger (Christopher Plummer), who's terminally ill with cancer and wants nothing more than to see his son properly honored before he dies.
It's doubtful you'll find a film in 2020 with more honorable intent. This was a longtime passion project for writer/director Todd Robinson (who previously directed Harris in the instantly-forgotten, low-budget submarine thriller PHANTOM), who spent 20 years trying to get it made before production finally began in 2017 (Roadside Attractions, Lionsgate's art house division, has been sitting on this for a while). Pitsenbarger's story could've been told without resorting to melodramatic embellishment, like the invoking of an actual friendly fire incident during the two-day battle that the film uses to lend credence to a generally debunked conspiracy theory that Pitsenbarger was denied the Medal of Honor because of potential embarrassment it would inflict on the US Army, not to mention the presidential aspirations of a fictional senator (Dale Dye) who, in the context of the film, was one of the architects of Operation Abilene. The dramatic license taken with this plot tangent certainly necessitates nearly everyone--the exceptions being Pitsenbarger, his parents, and Linus Roache as Clinton-era Air Force Secretary Whit Peters--being composite characters or whole cloth fictional creations "inspired" by actual participants. The best parts of THE LAST FULL MEASURE are provided by a stacked cast of national treasures and one ageless living legend in the always-magnificent Plummer, who's just heartbreaking when Mr. Pitsenbarger looks out of his son's bedroom window, recalling when he was just a boy, and saying "Sometimes I can still see him out there mowing the lawn." Jackson, Harris, Hurt, and Fonda are all granted time in the spotlight to work their magic, their characters haunted by memories of war and the sacrifice Pitsenbarger made to save them. When these guys are onscreen, as opposed to the bland Stan's uninteresting Sanford, THE LAST FULL MEASURE is often gut-wrenchingly powerful. That's especially true for Jackson, who gets a great monologue about coming home from Vietnam only to have the locals call him a "baby-killer," and Fonda, who goes out with a marvelous farewell performance as a broken man who's been absolutely unable to psychologically function in any capacity since the day Pitsenbarger saved his life.
Peter Fonda (1940-2019)
There's enough real drama in this story that it shouldn't have been difficult to avoid the fictionalization and the unfortunate second half turn toward the maudlin and overwrought. That begins right around the time Sanford travels to Vietnam to find another Cam My survivor (THE DEER HUNTER's John Savage), who stayed behind and turned the battle site into a CGI butterfly-filled memorial of prayer and reflection in a ridiculously long sequence that looks like an outtake from an apparent John Savage self-help meditation video. It's not long after that when Hurt's otherwise solid performance is completely derailed by a ludicrously melodramatic, saliva-spewing survivor's guilt breakdown that has him slobbering all over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Characters start giving speeches as the inspirational score swells and tugs at the heartstrings, and no matter how sincerely it's delivered, not even a great actress like three-time Oscar-nominee Diane Ladd is capable of selling florid dialogue like "Talking about Bill is one of the greatest joys of our life...keeping him alive keeps us strong...it's how we balance our grief and live a happy life without him." And around the time Pitsenbarger gets his posthumous Medal of Honor and Whitford's loathsome prick character has his come-to-Jesus moment and is shown leading the ovation with a slow clap (are we still doing this, Hollywood?), you might ask yourself why Robinson is so determined to sabotage a generally credible movie with this kind of mawkish, pandering horseshit. For most of its duration, THE LAST FULL MEASURE is a terrific showcase for some great actors, and if you're a fan of Peter Fonda, you'll be hard-pressed to not get a little choked-up at his last scene (fittingly, the film is dedicated to him). In the end, even with the second-half stumbling and bumbling (it was nice to see Savage on the big screen again, but his whole section is a momentum-killer that should've been left on the cutting room floor), it's a suitably effective--and refreshingly non-jingoistic--man-weepie that dads and grandpas will love, and I can't help but wonder if it's in theaters now so the Blu-ray will make a great Father's Day gift in June.
GLASS (US - 2019) Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Cast: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard, Luke Kirby, Adam David Thompson, M. Night Shyamalan, Serge Didenko, Russell Posner, Leslie Stefanson. (PG-13, 129 mins) After a decade spent as a critical punching bag and all-around industry pariah, M.Night Shyamalan mounted an unexpected comeback with 2015's THE VISIT and 2017's SPLIT, a pair of surprise hits for low-budget horror factory Blumhouse. SPLIT focused on Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), a disturbed young man with 23 personalities he collectively calls "The Horde," working to both protect Kevin and contain a 24th, known as "The Beast." Kevin abducts three teenage girls from a mall parking lot and by the end of the film, the monstrous Beast emerges, with a Hulk-like animal rage and a supernatural ability to climb walls. McAvoy's performance was an astonishing tour-de-force and should've been up for some awards, and his work did much of the heavy lifting when it came to making SPLIT Shyamalan's best film in years. A closing credits stinger showing an uncredited Bruce Willis threw everyone for a loop, establishing SPLIT as a secret sequel to Shyamalan's 2000 film UNBREAKABLE, the director's much-ballyhooed follow-up to his blockbuster THE SIXTH SENSE. Considered somewhat of a disappointment at the time, UNBREAKABLE was ultimately a superhero origin story and comic book deconstruction that was made at a time when comic book superhero movies weren't really a thing. The film quickly found loyal cult following and a critical reassessment over the years, and is now regarded by many as every bit as essential the Shyamalan canon as THE SIXTH SENSE.
A lot's changed in 19 years. Comic book and superhero movies rule the multiplex and it seems a new one is opening every other week, with no apparent signs of audience fatigue, so much so that even the ones people hate become blockbusters. The only superhero hit at the time of UNBREAKABLE was Bryan Singer's first X-MEN, and where Shyamalan was once ahead of the curve, he's now playing not so much catch-up, but this sort of analytical, deconstructive take runs the risk of seeming like didactic lecturing to a moviegoing public that, at this point, is pretty knowledgeably savvy when it comes to the medium. It doesn't help that the brief shot of Willis at the end of SPLIT seemed like something added after the fact, and even now, fusing the worlds of UNBREAKABLE and SPLIT into GLASS often feels like Shyamalan is forcibly retconning a superhero trilogy for himself. Set several weeks after the events of SPLIT and 19 years after UNBREAKABLE, GLASS opens with Crumb and his constantly shifting roster of personalities holding another four teenage girls captive in an abandoned Philadelphia factory. Meanwhile, security equipment store owner David Dunn (Willis), the sole survivor of a catastrophic train derailment and a man who's been impervious to injury and prone to superhuman feats of strength, is still moonlighting as a hooded rain poncho-sporting vigilante now referred to by the media as "The Overseer." Gifted with an ESP-like ability to come into physical contact with someone and "see" their criminal past, Dunn, aided by his adult son Joseph (the now-grown Spencer Treat Clark, who played the same role as a kid), goes on frequent walks through the surrounding Philly neighborhoods to seek out wrongdoers, and when Crumb stumbles into him, he "sees" the kidnapped girls. As "The Overseer," Dunn rescues the girls and battles Crumb in his "Beast" form, but when the fight goes outside the warehouse, the cops are already waiting.
Both men are hauled off to a mental institution where they're evaluated by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who specializes in cases of superhero-inspired "delusions of grandeur." She tries to convince them that their abilities aren't real and can be explained away, and brings them together with catatonic patient Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), the brittle-boned man who caused the train derailment in UNBREAKABLE and introduced Dunn to his long-suppressed abilities. Price, an aspiring criminal mastermind and comic book villain come to life who calls himself "Mr. Glass," has been confined to the mental hospital for 19 years, faking his vegetative state to wait for the perfect storm. He conspires with Kevin and "The Horde" to plot an escape from the mental hospital and cause a chemical explosion at the opening of the Osaka Tower, a new skyscraper in downtown Philly.
Much of GLASS deals with subverting expectations, which is very much in line with Shyamalan's recurring twist endings. GLASS offers several unexpected turns in the third act, but even under the auspices of a live-action comic book, it too often strains credulity in both its plot developments and the ways it continues to retrofit itself into the events of UNBREAKABLE. The film works better in its first half, particularly with McAvoy's once-again outstanding work as "The Horde" and in the warm relationship between Dunn and his loyal son (bringing Clark back to play Joseph is one of the best decisions Shyamalan makes here). But once "Mr. Glass" starts putting his master plan into motion, things start collapsing. What kind of mental hospital is this? It's made clear that Dr. Staple is visiting and only has three days to evaluate them, but where is the head doctor? Where are the other patients? There appears to be one orderly on duty at any given time, but there's tons of security guards who let Kevin--wearing a nurse's uniform--just wheel Price right out of the ward. Dr. Staple's behavior is inconsistent, even after her motives are revealed--first she's against Kevin's one surviving victim Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, returning from SPLIT) meet with him, but then says she can't help him without her. Shyamalan doesn't seem to know what to do with Taylor-Joy, Clark, or Charlayne Woodard as Elijah's mother, and the big superhero/villain battle outside the mental hospital is an often awkwardly-shot letdown that allows Willis to pull some of his Lionsgate VOD antics and sit out most of the showdown while his double hides under his poncho's hoodie, complete with some Willis dialogue obviously dubbed in post. When all is revealed and the pieces of the puzzle in place after a laborious epilogue, GLASS just never quite jells into a cohesive whole. It's an interesting idea in search of a point. It's well-made, McAvoy is marvelous (introducing even more of the 23 personalities we didn't get to meet the first time around), and in their scenes together, Clark's presence seems to engage Willis enough to remind him of a bygone era when he gave a shit, but in the end, this doesn't live up to either UNBREAKABLE or SPLIT and doesn't fully succeed in making its case that this should've been a trilogy.
THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD (US/China - 2017) Directed by Patrick Hughes. Written by Tom O'Connor. Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Salma Hayek, Elodie Yung, Joaquim de Almeida, Richard E. Grant, Kirsty Mitchell, Sam Hazeldine, Rod Hallett, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Tine Joustra, Michael Gor, Barry Atsma, Tsuwayuke Saotome, Josephine De La Baume. (R, 118 mins) THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD tries to be a throwback to the ballbusting buddy/cop/action movies of the '80s, and its attempts to be 2017's answer to 48 HRS or MIDNIGHT RUN succeeds about 60% of the time. It's a film that gets by almost solely by riffing on the onscreen personas of its two stars, working from a script by Tom O'Connor (whose only previous writing credit is 2012's instantly forgotten Josh Duhamel/Bruce Willis VOD actioner FIRE WITH FIRE) that was floating around Hollywood for several years. That script has obviously been given some extensive polishing to refashion it for both a post-DEADPOOL Ryan Reynolds and the venerable Samuel L. Jackson, cast radically against type as motherfuckin' Samuel L. Jackson. The two stars aren't quite Nick Nolte & Eddie Murphy or Robert De Niro & Charles Grodin, but they might've been if in better hands. Despite A-list actors and location shooting all over Europe, this is still a Millennium/NuImage production, which means most of the money went to the cast and you're gonna get that same backlot at Avi Lerner's Nu Boyana Studios in Bulgaria that's been in countless DTV efforts by the Cannon cover band over the years, and that the Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX will do their part by delivering the least convincing CGI explosions and greenscreen work that Lerner and 31 other credited producers can look at and shrug "Eh, fuck it...it's good enough." Many of the exterior shots that aren't marred by atrocious greenscreen are drenched in a gauzy, smudgy Barbara Walters lens filter. Lerner got a pair of box-office draws with Reynolds and Jackson, but from a filmmaking standpoint, he still approached THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD as if it starred Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White being directed by Isaac Florentine (why isn't he directing this, by the way?). The film does the bare minimum to get by, and it's damn lucky that it's got Reynolds and Jackson to move it along, because without them, this would've gone straight to Redbox.
Still haunted by a botched job where a client was shot in the head on his watch, AAA-rated security contractor Michael Bryce (Reynolds) has hit bottom. He now takes easy gigs guarding London's low-level drug smugglers and assorted corporate scumbags, his car still smells like ass weeks after pellets of cocaine exploded in a client's rectum, and he's still pining for his French Interpol agent ex Amelia Roussel (Elodie Yung). Amelia has just been assigned to lead the security detail taking incarcerated assassin Darius Kincaid (Jackson) from London to the International Court at the Hague, where he's set to testify against genocidal former Belarus dictator Vlasislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman), who hired Kincaid for some past jobs. Of course, Amelia's boss Jean Foucher (Joaquim de Almeida) is a mole secretly on Dukhovich's payroll--a non-spoiler that's obvious the moment you see the character is played by Joaquim de Almeida--and the dictator's minions ambush the transport convoy, killing everyone but Kincaid and Amelia. With no other options and with Kincaid needing to be in The Hague in 24 hours, Amelia heads to a safe house and calls Bryce, who knows Kincaid from the assassin's 28 attempts on his life while in the line of duty protecting a client. Of course, they're now on the run throughout Europe, with Dukhovich's goons in hot pursuit trying to eliminate the bickering bromancers, who now have to set aside their differences and work together to get to The Hague...if they don't kill each other first!
THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD is so beholden to formula that at one point, Amelia actually tells the prosecutor "The only way Bryce and Kincaid don't make it is if they kill each other first." There's no shortage of car chases and shootouts and director Patrick Hughes (the lackluster THE EXPENDABLES 3) keeps things moving briskly even if the film is 20 minutes too long. Oldman is criminally underused as the villain and Salma Hayek has even less to do as Kincaid's equally foul-mouthed wife, who's in a Dutch prison and will be released if Kincaid testifies. You can definitely see the DEADPOOL influence in the incongruous use of '80s and '90s songs, like Lionel Richie's "Hello" during a flashback to a violent bar brawl where Kincaid met his wife, or another flashback to Bryce and Amelia's meet-cute at a funeral shootout set to Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is." Or Bryce drowning out Kincaid's blues singing with his own a cappella take on Ace of Base's "The Sign." Like DEADPOOL, there's no joke there other than "Hey, these were huge hit singles 25 or 30 years ago, so just recognizing them should be instantly hysterical." But Reynolds and Jackson (who's really having a blast here) are a terrific team and when they're busting chops and working off one another, THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD really comes alive with more than its share of quotable dialogue ("This man has single-handedly ruined the word 'motherfucker'") and laugh-out-loud gags (a car chase montage coming to abrupt halt in seconds thanks to the airbags). In the hands of someone like Shane Black, THE HITMAN'S BODYGUARD could've been right up there with a next generation mismatched buddy/cop classic like KISS KISS BANG BANG. Obviously constrained by what he's been given to work with by his producers, Hughes resorts to quick-cut, shaky-cam action scenes and his attempt to pull off the illusion of a long, single-take fight scene is exposed by the first of several obvious cuts about four seconds into the sequence. This is an ugly cheap-looking film in need of some serious quality control on the tech side, but that doesn't mean it's not entertaining. It's a must-see for Reynolds and Jackson fans, and it'll be in constant rotation on cable and streaming until the end of time, but the presence of those two big names are probably the exact reason the producers were totally cool with cutting corners everywhere else.
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.
THE EXORCIST III (US - 1990) Written and directed by William Peter Blatty. Cast: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Brad Dourif, Jason Miller, Scott Wilson, Nicol Williamson, George DiCenzo, Don Gordon, Lee Richardson, Grand L. Bush, Nancy Fish, Viveca Lindfors, Zohra Lampert, Barbara Baxley, Harry Carey Jr, Ken Lerner, Mary Jackson, Sherrie Wills, Tracy Thorne, Tyra Ferrell, Lois Foraker, Kevin Corrigan, Patrick Ewing, Samuel L. Jackson. (R, 110 mins)
LEGION (US - 1990/2016) Same credits minus Jason Miller and Nicol Williamson. (Unrated, 105 mins) Released in August of 1990 after a tumultuous production, THE EXORCIST III is tops among threequels that completely disregard the Part II's that preceded them, instead functioning as a direct sequel to the first film (see also HIGHLANDER: THE FINAL DIMENSION and the recent BLAIR WITCH, to name just two). William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist who adapted his 1971 novel for William Friedkin's landmark 1973 classic, had nothing to do with John Boorman's insane box office bomb EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977) and opted to write his own sequel, publishing the novel Legion in 1983. When it came time to make Legion into a film, Blatty adapted and directed it himself, but made the first of many compromises with Morgan Creek bosses James G. Robinson and Joe Roth when he agreed to include the word "Exorcist" in the title. Throughout production, no one could settle on a name: on-set footage of the clapboard shows it as EXORCIST 1990, and it was also called EXORCIST: LEGION and EXORCIST: 15 YEARS LATER at various points. Even before shooting wrapped, the signs of disconnect and a communication breakdown between Blatty and his backers were already glaringly apparent.
The focus here is on Lt. Bill Kinderman, the Georgetown detective who investigated the death of the movie director thrown out of possessed Regan MacNeil's bedroom window in the 1973 original. Kinderman had a much larger role in the novel but was mostly relegated to the sideline in Friedkin's film, where he's played by the great Lee J. Cobb. Cobb died in 1976, so Kinderman is played in THE EXORCIST III by George C. Scott, whose interpretation is much more sarcastic and blustery than Cobb's more soft-spoken and easygoing portrayal. The film also features the minor character of Father Dyer, played in Friedkin's film by church technical advisor Rev. William J. O'Malley, and here by Ed Flanders. The character of Father Damien Karras, the troubled priest who sacrifices himself by jumping out of Regan MacNeil's bedroom window and tumbling down the famous steps to his death, makes an improbable return in THE EXORCIST III. It was Blatty's initial wish to have his old friend Jason Miller, who received an Oscar nomination for his work in THE EXORCIST, reprise the role but for various reasons (more on that below), Miller was replaced by Brad Dourif. The plot has Kinderman investigating a string of brutal killings where the victims all have at least tenuous ties to the original exorcism of Linda Blair's Regan MacNeil. The methodology follows that of James Venamun, aka "The Gemini Killer," a Zodiac-like serial killer who was executed in the electric chair 15 years earlier, the same night of the MacNeil exorcism. Kinderman's investigation leads him to the locked-down psych ward of a local hospital, where he sees a patient who looks exactly like the long-dead Father Karras. The priest is possessed by the spirit of the Gemini Killer. Karras' soul was taken from his body at the moment of death by what Venamun describes as "The Master," who was angry about being exorcised from Regan MacNeil and decided to put the Gemini Killer's spirit into the body of Karras. After a decade and a half of rebuilding his strength inside Karras' body, the Gemini has been leaving Karras and possessing elderly folks in the dementia ward, who are then able to escape the hospital and continue his killing spree 15 years after his presumed death.
It's an admittedly hokey story that works because of the unique elements Blatty brings to the table. It plays like a supernatural police procedural, with plenty of Blatty's trademark eccentricity, dark humor, and verbose repartee, particularly in the spirited and sometimes oddball conversations ("The carp...") between Kinderman and Dyer (Cobb and Miller were able to bring a little of that to THE EXORCIST, but there's much more of it here) and the bizarre character quirks, like twitchy, chain-smoking Dr. Temple (Scott Wilson) having stacks of newspapers ("I like to read the science articles") and nudie mag pics plastered on his office wall. THE EXORCIST III is very dialogue-heavy and at times feels like more of a companion piece to Blatty's only other directing effort, the 1980 cult film THE NINTH CONFIGURATION, which also featured Miller, Flanders, Wilson, and George DiCenzo from this film. But when Blatty turned in his cut of LEGION (or whatever it was called at the time), the studio wasn't happy. Their biggest concern was that there was no exorcism, but they also didn't like the idea of Dourif in the role of Karras and insisted Miller be summoned to reshoot all scenes involving the character. That was Blatty's original intention, but as Dourif explains on Shout! Factory's new two-disc Blu-ray set, Miller was suffering from severe alcoholism at the time, with everyone agreeing that he wasn't up to the demands of the role. The idea of replacing Miller with Dourif wasn't too hard to fathom, especially since they already had Scott replacing Cobb and Flanders in place of O'Malley. Morgan Creek didn't budge. They wanted someone from the original EXORCIST, so Miller was brought in and Dourif was informed by Blatty that his entire performance was being scrapped. But, as Blatty feared, Miller started showing signs of not being up to the task, so a decision was made to reduce his workload by having Dourif return to essay the role of just the Gemini Killer, instead of both Karras and the Gemini-possessed Karras. So in what was ultimately released as THE EXORCIST III, when Kinderman sees Karras, the priest is played by Miller, but when Karras is overtaken by the talkative, ranting Gemini Killer, the audience sees Dourif, who returned to reshoot half of his scenes, meeting the demand of the producers that Miller play Father Karras and satisfying Blatty's wish that Dourif still be in the film. It's an initially jarring effect, but it works for the most part. Nicol Williamson was cast as Father Morning, a character exclusive to the reshoots, who arrives for a climactic exorcism that comes out of nowhere and looks like a hastily tacked-on afterthought even to those not in the know about the film's troubled production. For starters, Karras is suddenly possessed by the devil for the climax (the uncredited voice provided by Scott's two-time ex-wife Colleen Dewhurst), which is filled with loud, gory special effects (Morning's skin peeling off as he unsticks himself from the ceiling) that are completely at odds with the serious, understated tone of the first 95 minutes of the film.
THE EXORCIST III opened to middling reviews but its reputation has improved over time. It remains a flawed mess but has so many effective moments throughout that the good far outweighs the not-as-good. The long, static hallway shot of the nurses' station culminates in one of the greatest jump scares in horror movie history. The nature of the Gemini Killer's murders and Kinderman's investigation ("the victim had an ingot driven into each of his eyes, then the killer cut off his head and crucified him on a pair of rowing oars") are profoundly disturbing and get under your skin in ways that prefigure the likes of David Fincher's SE7EN and help make this film as terrifying as THE EXORCIST in its own way. It's worth noting that all of these creepy scenes and the incredible hallway jump scare were in the LEGION cut, which built up a mystique over the years, with rumors always swirling that Blatty wanted to assemble a director's cut. But extensive searches yielded little and the footage was never found, leaving LEGION a title regularly mentioned with other Holy Grails of lost films, like the never-to-be-assembled original cuts of Erich von Stroheim's GREED (1924) or Orson Welles' THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942). The original prints of LEGION have been lost to time for now, but we've got the next best thing on Shout!'s Blu-ray: in addition to the theatrical version, there's a composite assembling of Blatty's original vision using VHS dailies combined with footage from THE EXORCIST III that remained from the original cut of LEGION. Because they were part of the studio-mandated reshoots, neither Miller nor Williamson are in LEGION, so other than incidental bits (like shots of photographs) reinstated to indicate that Dourif was indeed playing Father Karras, most of the big differences start around 50 minutes in when Kinderman first visits Karras' cell and Karras is only being played by Dourif. The cell is different in LEGION, which was shot at the DEG Studios in Wilmington, NC, while the reshoots were done in Los Angeles on a different set, which necessitated Dourif filming his scenes a second time. It's easy to see why Robinson and Roth were unhappy with LEGION. As brilliant as it is at times, it's got one of the most abrupt and anti-climactic endings you'll ever see. Dourif's memorable performance is more hammy and his voice electronically altered a bit in THE EXORCIST III, but the actor prefers his slightly more restrained LEGION interpretation and remains dissatisfied with the released version.
As incongruous as the exorcism is in a film called THE EXORCIST III, it's the best of two imperfect ways to end the movie, and it's the only cut that includes Scott's incredible "I believe!" speech, which wasn't in LEGION. Even with Blatty's original version now newly-assembled for fans to finally see, it still doesn't explain the inconsistencies with the 1973 film. The biggest of these is Scott's Kinderman repeatedly referring to Karras as his "best friend," when, going by their relationship in the first film, they had one testy but generally good-natured conversation before Karras' death. When did they have a chance to pose for a happy photo on what looks like a fishing trip? Kinderman's friendship with Father Dyer makes sense, especially considering the reinstated ending on the 2000 "Version You've Never Seen," where Cobb's Kinderman and O'Malley's Dyer walk away from the MacNeil house with Kinderman quoting CASABLANCA's "beautiful friendship" line (faithful to Blatty's novel, but unnecessary in the film). And it's still hard to accept that a detective as observant as Kinderman, even in a state of concern over his friend Father Dyer being hospitalized, would fail to notice a headless statue right in front of him by the elevator. Also, in LEGION, Dourif's possessed Karras has an ability to mimic sounds, like roars and train whistles, a concept that was wisely dropped for THE EXORCIST III. Another key difference is that the closing scene of THE EXORCIST III--Kinderman and cop Atkins (Grand L. Bush) standing over the grave of Father Karras--actually comes much earlier in LEGION, when they're exhuming Karras and discover the remains of Brother Fain, an elderly Jesuit who vanished in 1975. In LEGION, the Gemini Killer reveals that Fain was tending to the burial of Karras when the possessed-by-the-Gemini Killer priest awoke and crawled out of his coffin, inducing a heart attack and scaring Fain to death. The explanation is also in THE EXORCIST III, but it makes little sense without Fain's backstory and the exhuming of Karras' remains.
While not adhering to the tone or style of Friedkin's 1973 classic, LEGION is a film that still gets under your skin, demonstrating some distinct similarities to MR. FROST, a little-seen and now-forgotten 1990 supernatural thriller that was also released not long after THE EXORCIST III, with Alan Bates as a cop dealing with chatty serial killer Jeff Goldblum, who claims to be Satan. EXORCIST sequels seem to be a doomed lot, as shown again 14 years later when Paul Schrader's EXORCIST prequel DOMINION was shelved entirely for EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING, a completely reshot version directed by Renny Harlin, with both starring Stellan Skarsgard as a young Father Merrin, Max von Sydow's character from the original. Similar to LEGION in that it was a thoughtful look at the nature of evil rather than a conventional, head-spinning and green-barfing possession movie, DOMINION eventually got a limited release before appearing on DVD. but was further evidence that no one was sure what they really wanted out of an EXORCIST movie. Still, even with its problems, THE EXORCIST III is easily the best of the bunch after Friedkin's original trailblazer. Shout!'s Blu-ray is packed with extensive vintage and new supplemental material, including an audio interview--played over the LEGION cut as a commentary track--with the now-88-year-old Blatty who, not surprisingly, hasn't directed a film since.
CELL (US - 2016) Directed by Tod Williams. Written by Stephen King and Adam Alleca. Cast: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Stacy Keach, Owen Teague, Erin Elizabeth Burns, Clark Sarullo, Ethan Stuart Casto, Joshua Mikel, Catherine Dyer, Lloyd Kaufman. (R, 98 mins) Based on the 2006 Stephen King novel, CELL is easily the worst big-screen King adaptation since 1995's THE MANGLER, which may come as a surprise since King himself co-wrote the script. The novel had a bumpy journey from page to screen, first being announced in 2007 by the Weinsteins and Dimension Films as a project for Eli Roth, from a script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Roth left over "creative differences" and the entire project fell apart. The Weinsteins sold the rights to others, Alexander and Karaszewski's script was tossed, and King himself was commissioned to rewrite the screenplay. By the time filming began, with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 director Tod Williams at the helm, significant rewrites were done by Adam Alleca, who scripted the 2009 remake of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. That remake was OK as far as remakes go, but it begs a question: how bad was King's script that Adam Alleca was hired to fix it? CELL reunites John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, stars of the not-bad 2008 King short story adaptation 1408, but both actors have rarely seemed more disinterested in what they're doing. It's a badly-made, incoherent mess, starting with video-burned opening credits that make it look like a cheap TV show, and ending with some embarrassing CGI explosions that aren't even up to the standards of The Asylum. Remember when Stephen King movies were big events? It's not long into CELL before you realize why Lionsgate gave it a stealth VOD burial. It's an amateurish disaster that would be laughed off the screens if it got a wide multiplex release. This is so bad that even a prime time slot on Syfy on a Saturday night would've been too gala a premiere for it.
An exclusive pic of an audience exiting
a pre-release test screening of CELL
Whatever themes that were present in King's novel--there's some satirical points to be made by the effects of cell and smartphones on the public--are dumped here in favor of yet another generic zombie apocalypse story. Opening with an event known as "The Pulse," much of the world (or at least the few Atlanta locations the boatload of producers could afford) is turned into rampaging, flesh-eating 28 DAYS LATER creatures by a croaky signal that transmits over their phones. Fortunately for comic book artist Clay Riddell (Cusack), his cell battery died at the airport just before The Pulse, thus making him immune from the initial outbreak. Teaming up with subway conductor Tom McCourt (Jackson), the pair venture to Clay's studio where his neighbor Alice (ORPHAN's Isabelle Fuhrman) has just been forced to kill her zombified mother. The trio make their way across what's become a post-apocalyptic hellscape seemingly in a matter of hours, eventually picking up another survivor, Jordan (Owen Teague), and heading to Clay's house to find his estranged wife and son. They soon realize that the source of the cellular mayhem is a character drawn years ago by Clay: a spectre in a red hoodie known in the book as Raggedy but rechristened The Night Traveler for the movie (played by Joshua Mikel), a figure they've all seen in their dreams, who's somehow controlling the hive-minded horde of cell phone zombies.
Cell wasn't one of King's better novels, coming off much of the time like a technologically-tweaked revamp of The Stand with tired tropes taken from any number of older King books (does anyone rip himself off more than Stephen King?). CELL can't even manage to get to the level of an entertaining ripoff. It might've been effective ten years ago, but the overrated 2008 indie THE SIGNAL already covered a lot of this. There's a ton of deviations from the novel, none of them improvements. Most notable is the fate of Charles Ardai, the headmaster of a prep school where the trio first finds Jordan. In the book, Ardai is a major character overtaken by a "Phoner" signal that convinces him to commit suicide. In the film, Ardai, played by Stacy Keach in a five-minute cameo, simply gets impaled after an explosion and the group moves on. There's absolutely no sense of time or place in CELL. It looks like Clay, Tom, and Alice hit the road immediately after The Pulse, but the country is already a desolate wasteland and survival camps have sprung up. It's like an entire season of THE WALKING DEAD haphazardly whittled down to 98 minutes, and much of it shot in such total darkness that it's impossible to tell what's going on. Exposition is mechanically dropped by actors playing characters who sound like they're spouting facts they just yanked out of their asses, just as an easy way to get to the next set piece. This has all the hallmarks of a botched disaster--two years on the shelf; King nowhere in sight to promote a movie he co-wrote; a shrugging Cusack looking pale, disheveled, and bored, displaying almost no reaction to the carnage happening around him; Jackson seeming thoroughly pissed-off that he was talked into being in it; a dated appearance by the long-ago-viral "Trololo Song" as a plot point (it sedates the Phoners)--coming off very much like an unreleasable dumpster fire that was just abandoned by everyone involved. It's 98 minutes of nobody giving a shit. Even by the standards of much of Cusack's recent work in the Cusackalypse Now canon (his stellar turn in the terrific LOVE & MERCY aside), the shit-the-bed CELL is the worst film of his career.
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (US - 2016) Directed by David Yates. Written by Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer. Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Margot Robbie, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent, Ben Chaplin, Casper Crump, Simon Russell Beale, Matt Cross, Madeleine Worrall. (PG-13, 109 mins) The latest big-screen incarnation of the legendary Edgar Rice Burroughs character has all of the expected 2016 blockbuster summer tentpole bells-and-whistles--3-D, extensive CGI, motion-capture performances for the apes, post-300 quick cut/slo-mo speed-ramping--but makes a concerted effort to remain faithful to the Tarzan of old whenever possible. The best decision made by screenwriters Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer and latter-franchise HARRY POTTER director David Yates is to consciously avoid making this yet another origin story. THE LEGEND OF TARZAN takes place in 1890, years after Tarzan and Jane have left the jungle to return to their aristocratic life in London as Mr. and Mrs. John Clayton III. Tarzan's backstory--his parents killed after a shipwreck when he was a baby, his being raised by apes in the deep jungles of the Congo, his meeting American Jane and returning to society--is doled out in periodic flashbacks that take up only the necessary screen time. The film expects the audience to have a working knowledge of Tarzan, which is a pretty bold move considering how major studio marketing usually works and for whom the movie is targeted. It's been 18 years since the last big-screen TARZAN movie--the 1998 bomb TARZAN AND THE LOST CITY, with Casper Van Dien--and over 30 since the 1984 prestige epic GREYSTOKE: THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, LORD OF THE APES with Christopher Lambert and 1981's abominable TARZAN THE APE MAN with Bo Derek and Miles O'Keeffe. Tarzan hasn't been a regular pop culture fixture since the late 1960s. As was the case with last year's pleasantly-surprising THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., I guarantee there are moviegoers today who have no idea who or what Tarzan is.
In this incarnation, Clayton, Lord Greystoke (Alexander Skarsgard) resents being called "Tarzan," even though he's become a popular figure in 1890 London, with his "Ape Man" character the subject of numerous newspaper articles and pulp stories, and "Me Tarzan, you Jane" a fictional catchphrase. He enjoys indulging children who are fascinated by his legend but feels out of place in the aristocracy, having no inclination to journey back to the wild, unlike Jane (Margot Robbie), who dislikes formality and longs for excitement and adventure. Nevertheless--there'd be no movie otherwise--that's exactly where they find themselves headed after the Prime Minister (Jim Broadbent) encourages Clayton to visit the African Congo to investigate stories of tribes being enslaved by evildoers in the employ of the never-seen King Leopold of Belgium. Leopold has acquired part of the Congo and is claiming bankruptcy even though the area is rich in diamonds and minerals. Dr. George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson, cashing a paycheck), a visiting American envoy at the behest of President Benjamin Harrison and a veteran of the Civil War, takes a special interest in the slavery aspect of the allegations against Belgium and tags along, much to Tarzan's initial disapproval. The Prime Minister has suggested Tarzan go on his diplomatic mission after receiving an invitation from Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz), a vintage mustache-twirling villain secretly working for King Leopold. Rom needs access to the diamond mines of Opar, which is overseen by tribal lord Chief Mbonga (Djimon Hounsou). Mbonga agrees to allow Rom access to the mines' riches if he hands over Tarzan, who was forced to kill Mbonga's son years earlier.
A lot of plot has to get set in motion before the action really fires up, and for the most part, it's rousing and fun, an enjoyable mix of GREYSTOKE costume epic and old-school jungle adventure. Of course, the weakest element is the dubious CGI work, which is a blurry, incoherent mess when Tarzan is swinging through the trees. Elsewhere, Yates cribs a little too liberally from past blockbusters in a way that often crosses the line from homage to ripoff, whether it's the tiresome speed-ramping or the "circling aerial shot of a band of heroes walking single file along the top of the mountain," which was played out the 247th time Peter Jackson did it in the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. Tarzan and Williams being chased by a stampeding flock of ostriches looks a little too much like the gallimimus scene in JURASSIC PARK, and a shot of a gorilla roaring in Williams' face has he turns away in fright is straight out of ALIEN 3. Robbie's Jane is far too present-day snarky at times (you're almost expecting her to vocal-fry "hashtag whatever" at Tarzan), and a throwaway line implying Rom was molested by his priest as a boy has no place in a TARZAN movie, nor does Williams quipping "Do you want me to lick his nuts, too?" when Tarzan tells him to bow before an ape leader. So yeah, there are some big flaws here, but it gets more right than wrong, starting with not overstaying its welcome, clocking in at a perfectly reasonable 109 minutes. Skarsgard is a fine Tarzan, a stoical man of few words and he certainly looks the part, even if his Tarzan yell sounds suspiciously like a guttural death metal remix of Johnny Weissmuller's iconic call. Waltz was obviously hired to be Christoph Waltz, and he relishes every moment of it. He's given a lot more to do here than in his squandered turn as Blofeld in the disappointing SPECTRE, and his performance, coupled with his suit and hat and his steamboat journey upriver, combine to make a nice winking nod to Klaus Kinski in FITZCARRALDO. THE LEGEND OF TARZAN is mindless, harmless summer fun (despite the insistence of many critics and bloggers who specialize in professional outrage, tirelessly trying to find things to be offended by), but it isn't giving the Weissmuller or Gordon Scott classics any cause for concern over their place in the TARZAN canon.
THE HATEFUL EIGHT (US - 2015) Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Channing Tatum, James Parks, Zoe Bell, Lee Horsley, Gene Jones, Dana Gourrier, Keith Jefferson, Craig Stark, Belinda Owino. (R, 168 mins) Quentin Tarantino's second consecutive western (after 2012's spaghetti tribute DJANGO UNCHAINED) is a three-hour epic that's equal parts classic western, Agatha Christie mystery, Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, bitterly misanthropic screed, and a horrific, splatter-filled gorefest. It has everything you'd want in a Tarantino film--quotable dialogue, vividly-detailed characters, a spirited love of all cinematic genres, and some truly inspired creative violence. But it's also Tarantino at his most self-indulgent. THE HATEFUL EIGHT is a very good movie that could've been a great one if there was less of it. For the first time since the 107-minute European cut of DEATH PROOF, the shorter version of which was his contribution to GRINDHOUSE, a Tarantino film has moments of rambling, florid overwriting. Tarantino characters have a lot to say, but in THE HATEFUL EIGHT, they simply talk too much. And then they talk some more. It's the stagiest Tarantino film--even more so than his 1992 debut RESERVOIR DOGS, which had a lot more cutaways and flashbacks and was an hour shorter--but that's by design. For about 90 minutes, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is top-tier Tarantino, with a deliberate buildup that brings a group of wildly disparate characters together during a blizzard and the audience can just lean back and watch a great filmmaker get great performances out of his cast, letting the story gradually build into a stomach-knotting powderkeg of suspense and tension. But then Tarantino loses focus, a couple of major characters are Janet Leigh'd out of the film far earlier than you'd expect, and then it becomes a bit of an unwieldy mess, complete with the requisite Tarantino flashbacking, fractured timelines that bring both plot threads together. To call Tarantino self-indulgent is like calling water wet, but as a director, he's growing too enamored of the words of his favorite writer--Quentin Tarantino--to remain objective. DJANGO UNCHAINED ran a little long, but THE HATEFUL EIGHT starts to feel oppressive after a while, its story not nearly substantive enough to justify its bloated run time. It may sound like I didn't care for it, but I liked it quite a bit. I just would've preferred less of it.
Set several years after the end of the Civil War, THE HATEFUL EIGHT opens during a Wyoming blizzard as a stagecoach heads toward the mountain town of Red Rock. Bounty hunter and former Union Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), with the corpses of three outlaws in tow, hitches a ride on the coach transporting legendary bounty hunter John Ruth, aka "The Hangman" (Kurt Russell), who's taking his latest capture, outlaw Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to hang in Red Rock (she's wanted dead or alive, but as Ruth says, "I don't like to cheat the hangman"). As the blizzard gets closer and travel becomes more treacherous, they decide they'll have to wait it out at a lodge called Minnie's Haberdashery. Warren and Ruth form a Leone-esque unholy alliance to have one another's backs with their respective bounties, and on the way to Minnie's, they're joined by another traveler, new Red Rock sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), on his way to being sworn in and whose horse broke a leg in the storm and had to be killed. Mannix is the son of a legendary Confederate officer and tensions flare with Warren over old North and South grudges. Coach driver O.B. (James Parks) gets them to Minnie's to find others stranded: former Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern); cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), who's penning his memoirs; the very British Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), Red Rock's hangman; and Bob (Demian Bichir), a Mexican employee of Minnie's. Owners Minnie and Sweet Dave are nowhere to be found and Bob claims they went to visit Minnie's mother on the other side of the mountain and left him in charge. Warren is suspicious of their absence (Bob: "Are you calling me a liar?" Warren: "Not yet") and Ruth doesn't trust anyone in the group, remaining shackled to Daisy in the event anyone plans on collecting the $10,000 reward for her capture. Words are exchanged, war-era grievances exhumed, and alliances shift as it becomes clear that at least one person in the room isn't who they claim to be.
Though it doesn't involve an alien creature, the scenario should sound familiar to any Kurt Russell fan who's seen John Carpenter's 1982 version of THE THING. That's one of the most obvious homages in THE HATEFUL EIGHT, right down to the film's use of unused cues from the legendary Ennio Morricone's THING soundtrack (one of the very few times a Carpenter film was scored by someone other than Carpenter). Though Tarantino uses his usual mix-tape approach to scoring the film, throwing in some Roy Orbison and The White Stripes as well as a memorable borrowing of Morricone's "Regan's Theme" from EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, the film also contains some original Morricone music written specifically for it. Tarantino's grandiose vision for THE HATEFUL EIGHT borders on hubris at times--who else would stage an overlong drawing-room mystery taking place mostly on one set while shooting in Ultra Panavision 70, a 65mm format that hasn't been used since 1966 (in keeping with that, a roadshow edition running 175 minutes (plus an intermission and an overture with some new Morricone music, debuted on 100 screens a week earlier than this general release version)? The snowy exteriors look incredible on a big screen, and Tarantino's the kind of gifted filmmaker who can make such lofty ambitions work in such a claustrophobic setting, also tossing in a few unmistakably De Palma split diopter shots to make the really hardcore movie nerds trickle a little with giddy excitement (guilty as charged).
From Tarantino's ego (the opening credits declare "The 8th Film by Quentin Tarantino," and midway through, he can't resist giving himself the role of narrator) to the inflated length to the use of Ultra Panavision for what's mostly a single-set production, everything about THE HATEFUL EIGHT is grandiosely overblown, including--intentionally so--the performances. Russell fans will be delighted to see him resurrecting the John Wayne swagger he used as Jack Burton in 1986's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, though his better--and more restrained--2015 western performance can be seen in BONE TOMAHAWK. Jackson does his furious indignation schtick that no one does better, and no one drops an enraged "motherfucker" quite like him (and he gets to spit out his most vile Tarantino monologue yet with a story he tells Dern's Smithers about crossing paths with his son), and Leigh is positively feral at times, especially once she's missing some teeth and covered in blood and brain matter, looking like a possession victim in a '70s EXORCIST ripoff by the end. THE HATEFUL EIGHT is a film that's unmistakably the work of its mad scientist auteur creator, showcasing both his strengths and weaknesses, and operating at an estimated rate of 75% riveting to 25% tedious. Tarantino is one of the very few major directors whose new films constitute a legitimate event, but he could really stand to start taking a "less is more" approach.
The possibilities seem limitless when you think of the entertainment potential of Nicolas Cage playing a Louisiana politician embroiled in a sex scandal. But THE RUNNER, the Oscar-winning actor's latest straight-to-VOD trifle, demonstrates barely enough oomph to be classified as lukewarm. Playing like a really boring season of HOUSE OF CARDS whittled down to 90 minutes and missing all the good parts, THE RUNNER is set in 2010 just after the BP oil spill and offers Cage, with a wildly on-and-off N'awlins drawl, as Colin Bryce, a little-known New Orleans-based congressman who makes headlines after delivering an impassioned speech shredding BP during a televised hearing. A rising star with Senate ambitions crashes quickly when hotel security footage shows him in an elevator dalliance with the wife of a local fisherman. Bryce's PR-savvy wife Deborah (Connie Nielsen) has overlooked his past infidelities in their 25-year business arrangement of a marriage and is willing to stick with him as long as he doesn't resign and start back at square one. He does resign, she leaves him, and he stops just short of going full TIGHTROPE with New Orleans prostitutes (the camera pans down to a wad of bills and a couple of Trojans just to let us know he's safe about it) before a whirlwind romance with his married-but-separated consultant Kate Haber (Sarah Paulson). Bryce then rebuilds his career as a pro-bono attorney working on lawsuits against BP until his attempt to get back in politics forces him to realize that it's all about schmoozing lobbyists and greasing palms or corporate benefactors in the arena of political gamesmanship.
Who cares? Where's the story here? Where's the hook? As a drama, it's uninteresting, and as a character study, it doesn't even qualify as one-dimensional. You have to gladhand and sell part of your soul to be a politician? Thank you, writer/director Austin Stark for blowing the lid off that one. Cage plays it completely straight in a story that's begging for him to conjure some of his manic BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL - NEW ORLEANS craziness. I respect Cage wanting to play something straight, and it's probably not fair to criticize THE RUNNER for not being the film I wish it was, but if it offered anything substantive or even slightly intriguing, I wouldn't have to wish it was something else. What's most difficult in assessing THE RUNNER is that there's really nothing wrong with it in its presentation or its filmmaking: the performances are fine--there's also Wendell Pierce as Bryce's chief advisor and Peter Fonda as Bryce's alcoholic father, a beloved progressive 1970's New Orleans mayor whose legend casts a long shadow-- and there's nothing bad in Stark's direction, but there's just no meat to the story. THE RUNNER tries to be Cage's THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN, but there's two problems with that: nobody remembers THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN and the end result is about as exciting as watching Nicolas Cage watch C-SPAN. (R, 90 mins)
BIG GAME (Finland/UK/Germany/US - 2015)
With some more convincing visual effects and better distribution, the high-concept, dumb-but-fun BIG GAME could've been a decent-sized hit. Written and directed by Jalmari Helander (the Finnish holiday horror cult hit RARE EXPORTS), BIG GAME is short (the closing credits start rolling at 77 minutes), and it's the kind of movie that dads and their preteen sons would really enjoy. Instead, Anchor Bay rolled it out on a whopping 11 screens and VOD, even with star Samuel L. Jackson riding high on KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE and AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON. Jackson is strictly in paycheck mode--yes, he does get one obscured-by-an-explosion "motherfucker"--as lame-duck US President William Alan Moore, dealing with declining approval ratings and a calculated effort by his opponents to smear him as "wimpy." He's already survived one assassination attempt, which left a bullet lodged near the heart of his top Secret Service agent Morris (Ray Stevenson). Moore is on his way back from a summit when Air Force One is shot down over the mountains of Finland. Morris, bitter about taking a bullet for a man he perceives to be a spineless coward, sabotaged the parachutes of the other agents and is revealed to be in cahoots with psychotic terrorist Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus) in a plot to kill the President. Moore's escape pod is discovered by 13-year-old Oskari (RARE EXPORTS' Onni Tommila), who's hunting in the forest alone to prove his manhood to his father and the small village's close-knit hunter-gatherer types. Oskari steps up to help the President and get him through the forest to show his father he's a worthy outdoorsman and the President shakes off his wussiness to take on Morris, Hazar, and their associates who will stop at nothing to eliminate him.
Sort-of like a family-friendly OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, BIG GAME is the very definition of a harmless diversion. Jackson isn't very convincing playing a doormat, and may have only signed on for the free trip to Helsinki, but he has a nice rapport with young Tommila. Stevenson and Kurtulus are pretty one-dimensional bad guys (Stevenson seems to be amusing himself by doing an Alec Baldwin impression), but you also get a character actor summit back home, with Victor Garber as the VP, Jim Broadbent as a CIA terrorism expert, Felicity Huffman as the CIA director, and Ted Levine as the Joint Chiefs chair. Helander pulls off a couple of imaginative action sequences--one involving Moore and Oskari huddled inside a runaway freezer--that succeed in spite of some greenscreen work that looks rushed. The kind of movie where no one can off a bad guy without a snarky quip of some kind, BIG GAME is brainless fun if you're in the right mood, and an earnest attempt at showing us what a low-budget Finnish Jerry Bruckheimer production might look like. (PG-13, 87 mins) THE WATER DIVINER (US/Australia - 2014; 2015 US release)
It doesn't seem like that long ago that an Oscar-winning actor like Russell Crowe making his narrative directing debut with an epic period piece would've been instant awards-season material. Indeed, THE WATER DIVINER was a big Christmas Day 2014 opening in Australia and other parts of the world, but Warner Bros. sat on it for several more months in the US before giving it a limited release on just 385 screens in April 2015, making it the Oscar-winning actor's least-seen film since 2009's instantly obscure (and deservedly so) TENDERNESS. It's that awards season presumptuousness that's the first step in hindering the film, which leisurely strolls out of the gate and unfolds at the speed of Merchant-Ivory, seemingly already assuming it's an Oscar front-runner. Set in 1919, the film also stars Crowe as Joshua Connor, a rugged Australian farmer and father of three sons who were killed on the same day in the Battle of Gallipoli four years earlier. Connor's still-grieving wife Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie) has lost her grip on reality and still talks about their sons as if they were boys, fixing their shoes and darning their socks, and even insisting that Connor read a bedtime story to them in their empty room at night. After Eliza commits suicide, Connor heads to Turkey to recover the remains of his boys and bring them home to be buried next to their mother. The Gallipoli battle site is declared off limits by occupying British forces, but Connor finds an unlikely ally in Major Hasam (Yilmaz Erdogan of ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA), a leader for the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli but now working as a Turkish liaison with the Australia-New Zealand ANZAC forces on locating and identifying remains at the battle site's mass burial. At his hotel in Istanbul, Connor also bonds with proprietor Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and her young son Orhan (Dylan Georgiades). Ayshe, who also lost her husband at Gallipoli, initially resents the Australian "enemy" but comes to sympathize with him upon learning that he's lost his wife and his sons, and their growing friendship stirs resentment in Omer (Steve Bastoni), Ayshe's controlling brother-in-law to whom she has essentially been handed over as property and is arranged to be married when she decides her grieving period is over.
Crowe's film is sincere but inert and predictable, from the mutual, it's-nothing-personal-just-war understanding and respect that Connor and Hasam come to as they become friends, to the slowly blossoming romance between Connor and Ayshe. THE WATER DIVINER takes a turn for the silly when Connor's keen ability for locating ground water becomes a Spidey Sense of sorts when he uses it to ascertain the exact spot where his sons were killed. It's also hard to buy Connor's flashbacks to Gallipoli events that he couldn't possibly be remembering but rather, sees them as paranormal visions. Are screenwriters Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios trying to take the leap that Connor's talent for water divining leads to something more spiritually divine? If so, it doesn't work. The cramming in of the romantic subplot is soap-opera material at best, especially with a ludicrous dinner-by-500-candlelights scene that's unintentionally hilarious, as are some terrible CGI explosions that look like they were done using an app on Crowe's iPhone. The ending is weak, rushed, and unsatisfying, though there are moments throughout where the film almost pulls it together before bumbling and stumbling again. Crowe's performance is fine, and he has a good "buddy" chemistry with Erdogan, and when sequences aren't being thwarted by too-obvious greenscreen backgrounds, the location shooting in Australia and Turkey looks very good thanks to regular Peter Jackson cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, whose last film this was--the 59-year-old Oscar winner for FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING died of a heart attack just three days after the film's US opening. At the end of the day, THE WATER DIVINER is a well-intentioned but leadenly-paced and meandering misfire. (R, 111 mins)
