On DVD/Blu-ray: Special "Late Summer Box-Office Bombs" Edition: GETAWAY (2013) and PARANOIA (2013)

GETAWAY
(US/UK/Switzerland/China - 2013)

It took four countries, location work in a fifth, and 25 credited producers to shit out this borderline-unwatchable car crash porno that leaves no stale cliché unutilized while wasting some death-defying work by an apparently insane Bulgarian stunt crew.  Director Courtney Solomon (DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, AN AMERICAN HAUNTING) hyped the film's "real" car chases and crashes and the absence of CGI.  I'm calling bullshit on the "no CGI," but yeah, most of the crash stuff is real.  The problem is that it's shot and edited in the most anti-entertaining, headache-inducing way imaginable, using multiple cameras with varying image quality (don't worry, that's written into the plot), and it's such a garbled, noisy blur that it's impossible to get a feel for any of it.  Solomon wanted the crash and stunt work to be real, but I suggest he take a look at John Frankenheimer's RONIN.  I've seen John Frankenheimer films.  I've studied John Frankenheimer films.  Courtney Solomon--you're no John Frankenheimer.

Acting as if he arrived on set and never shook the jetlag, Ethan Hawke is the improbably-named Brent Magna, a former racing wunderkind who bombed out on the circuit and fled to Europe to become a wheelman-for-hire.  He's looking to settle down with his Bulgarian wife Leanne (Rebecca Budig), but he arrives home to find she's been...taken.  Faster than you can say "Liam Neeson," Magna is being harangued on his cell phone by a mystery man (a mostly-unseen but heard-too-much Jon Voight, who sounds like he's doing an Armin Mueller-Stahl impression), who orders him to steal a tricked-out Shelby Super Snake and go around Sofia following his instructions (leading cops on chases, driving the car through crowded parks, etc) or Leanne will be killed, all the while taunting Magna and boring the audience with such hackneyed bad-guy zingers as "We're just getting started, my boy," and "You're running out of time...tick tock, tick tock."  Magna is soon joined by The Kid (Selena Gomez), who actually owns the car and is the key to the mystery man's plot:  Magna and The Kid are pawns in his plan to steal computer files from an investment bank whose CEO is The Kid's dad.  With a dozen cameras in and out of the Shelby, the mystery man is constantly watching them, but The Kid manages to hack into the mystery man's server through her tablet and fool him with the old "same footage looped" trick, crossing her fingers and hoping he's never seen SPEED.  In a truly magical happenstance, The Kid is whatever the story needs her to be at any given moment:  whiny rich kid, gearhead, ace hacker, and expert in international investment law.  Bravo, screenwriters!  I guess if you like crashes, shattering glass, screeching tires, a complete void of logic and suspense, and zoom-ins to Ethan Hawke making constipated faces as he pretends to drive a car, GETAWAY might be entertaining.  But for everyone else, it's an incoherent jumble with a dumb twist ending, and for all the work that went into the car chases, you can't make heads or tails of what's going on.  Also with Paul Freeman and PASSENGER 57 villain Bruce Payne in tiny roles, GETAWAY opened Labor Day Weekend and tanked in ninth place.  Offering nothing worthwhile and looking cheaper than any Bulgaria-shot DTV NuImage production, it's amazing that this actually made it to theaters at all.  (PG-13, 90 mins)


PARANOIA
(US/France - 2013)

Can we just admit that no one gives a shit about the Hemsworth brothers despite Hollywood doing its damnedest to make them happen?  Sure, Chris is a decent-enough actor who lucked into THOR and THE AVENGERS and got to co-star in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (made long before THOR, but released after), but elsewhere, audiences haven't really warmed up to him:  no one cared about the RED DAWN remake and Ron Howard's racing drama RUSH flopped.  But Chris is a mega-star next to little brother Liam, who's in the HUNGER GAMES franchise, co-starred in a Miley Cyrus vehicle, and got killed early in THE EXPENDABLES 2--all films that don't depend on him--but has been met with crickets and tumbleweed everywhere else:  LOVE AND HONOR and EMPIRE STATE barely got released, and his big summer headlining splash with PARANOIA fizzled badly, opening in 13th place to become one of the biggest DOA duds of the summer.  The franchise gigs are good for them now, but does anybody really care otherwise?  When's the last time you heard anyone say "Man, I gotta see that new Chris Hemsworth flick!"?  PARANOIA is bad, but it's not all Liam's fault.  Sure, he's got no presence as a leading man and is really out of his league sharing scenes with three legends in the "just pay me and I'll ham" phase of their careers, but it's just a dumb, predictable, clichéd thriller that's so bored with itself that it never really tries to be anything more than a time-killer.  If ever a movie was made to fold laundry and balance your checkbook by, it's PARANOIA, and as such, it fits right in with auteur Robert "Still coasting on LEGALLY BLONDE" Luketic's other triumphs, like 21 and two Katherine Heigl rom-coms (THE UGLY TRUTH and KILLERS).

Hemsworth is Adam Cassidy, an ambitious cubicle drone at tech giant WyattCorp.  Driven for success and saddled with medical bills that insurance won't cover for his sick father (Richard Dreyfuss), Adam is convinced he's designed the next big thing in social networking.  When he bombs the presentation to sneering CEO Nicholas Wyatt (Gary Oldman) and he and his team lose their jobs, Adam treats them all to a $16,000 night at the club on his still-active corporate credit card.  An irate Wyatt then threatens to press charges unless Adam agrees to partake in some corporate espionage and infiltrate Eikon, another tech megapower owned by Wyatt's rival and former mentor Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford), to steal trade secrets so Wyatt can run Goddard out of business for good.  You know you're in for some cutting insight when Adam and Wyatt are shown playing chess (SYMBOLISM!) and Wyatt snottily declares "Checkmate!" (See! Adam's a pawn!  Get it?).  Of course, Adam becomes pupil to the master Goddard and falls for his top marketing exec Emma (Amber Heard), and they have no idea he's Wyatt's plant.  Or do they?   Hemsworth is bland enough on his own, but he and Heard are one of the most chemistry-impaired screen couples you'll ever see.  The film only really comes alive in the two instances where Oldman and Ford are onscreen together, but it's hardly the highlight of either actor's career.  If anything, it may well prompt you to watch AIR FORCE ONE again.  Oldman plays the pompous ass to the hilt in a performance that sounds like a tribute to Vinnie Jones ("Yaw ay-out when oy sigh yaw ay-out!  Oy eewn you!"), while Ford is indifferent and seems vaguely annoyed that he was talked into being in this.  For all the shit Robert De Niro takes about phoning in his performances and coasting on his past accomplishments, it seems we've let Ford off the hook.  There's a younger generation of moviegoers who see Ford as the guy who used to play Han Solo and Indiana Jones but is now just a grumpy old fart with an earring on talk shows.  Ford hasn't challenged himself in years (and this is his second bad tech flick, after 2006's absurd FIREWALL), though he does seem to relish the moment when he tells Hemsworth's Adam "Shut up...you're nothing but a convenient tool, an empty vessel."  Scripted line or Ford ad-lib?  Discuss.  (PG-13, 106 mins)

In Theaters: SPRING BREAKERS (2013)

SPRING BREAKERS
(US/France - 2013)

Written and directed by Harmony Korine.  Cast: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane, Sidney Sewell, Thurman Sewell. (R, 94 mins)

After writing the script for Larry Clark's controversial KIDS (1995), Harmony Korine became an indie icon of sorts with his own directing efforts, ranging from the repugnant (GUMMO, TRASH HUMPERS) to the merely unwatchable (JULIEN DONKEY-BOY).  While Korine has his defenders, I've never made it all the way through any of the films he's directed.  The surprise with SPRING BREAKERS is not only that it's a Korine film in multiplexes nationwide, or that it has name actors, including the subversive casting of Disney good girls doing very bad things, but that it shows that Korine can indeed make a real movie once he decided to quit dicking around.  It's by far his most commercial film yet, though still not for all tastes and certain to alienate most mainstream audiences, but it's filled with such dazzling visuals and garish colors (Korine is working with cinematographer Benoit Debie, who's shot films by Gaspar Noe, Fabrice du Welz, and Dario Argento), propelled by some memorably quotable dialogue, some very Steven Soderbergh-inspired editing, and a propulsive, constant score by Cliff Martinez (another Soderbergh fixture) and Skrillex, that it's an exhilirating, adrenalized, and very cinematic experience, miles ahead of anything Korine's done in the past or even seemed capable of doing.  At 40, it's possible that Korine has finally grown up.  SPRING BREAKERS is unexpectedly inspired, frequently brilliant, and one of the year's best films.

For a while, Korine fashions the film as a hard-R MTV Spring Break special, with copious amount of alcohol, drugs, partying, and the requisite jiggle and gratuitous nudity.  But slowly, a style emerges and the plot kicks in as we follow four college students and their desperate attempt to get to Florida for spring break: wild girls Candy (Vanessa Hudgens of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL), Brit (Ashley Benson of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS), and Cotty (Rachel Korine of...uh, her marriage to Harmony Korine), and their more conservative, devoutly Christian friend and not-very-subtly-named Faith (Selena Gomez of THE WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE).  With only $300 in spending money between the four of them, Candy, Brit, and Cotty decide to rob an all-night diner called the Chicken Shack, using squirt guns and sledgehammers (an extremely impressive continuous tracking shot where Korine and Debie keep the camera in the car with Cotty, who drives slowly in front of the restaurant as we see masked Candy and Brit's mayhem through the Chicken Shack's windows and then make their escape out of the side exit).  Faith doesn't approve of their methods, but wants to go to Florida, so off they go where it's a non-stop party until they get arrested in a raid at the motel.

It's here where the film really takes off, with the introduction of James Franco as Alien, a drug-dealer and aspiring rapper who bails them out of jail and comes off like a walking cliche:  he's got a teardrop tat, neck tats, cornrows, wears a gold grill, he's decked out in assorted bling, has a pit bull, a house full of guns, a grand piano on his back patio, and gets an epic "Lookit my shit!" monologue that must be heard to be believed ("I got shorts!" and "I got SCARFACE on repeat!  Constant y'all!"  "See these guns?  See these Franklins!  Lookit my shit!").  Uncomfortable among Alien and his gangsta friends, Faith catches the first bus home but the other three become partners in crime with Alien and get involved in his turf war with former friend and now rival Archie (Gucci Mane).  Alien calls this area his home and doesn't have much use for the throng of spring breakers ("every spring, the scum comes"), but he finds kindred spirits in Candy, Brit, and Cotty after a bizarre KILLER JOE-esque scene where Candy and Brit make Alien fellate two loaded guns at once.

SPRING BREAKERS is a surreal, hypnotic fever dream that may not exist in any kind of reality (it doesn't seem plausible that Faith, despite her willingness to drink and get high, would hang out with the other three), and even in their criminal exploits, the girls are constantly saying "It's just like a dream" or "It's just like a video game."  While the plot itself likely isn't meant to be taken seriously--though there could be an argument made about Korine's misanthropic world view and the girls being coddled, overprivileged, and spoiled, with no idea of the world they're entering--the film is so well-crafted and compelling just on a visual level, with no shortage of audacious "Why the hell not?" set pieces like Franco's haunting piano rendition of Britney Spears' "Everytime," Franco's instant-classic monologue, and, well, everytime Franco's on screen really.  It's easy to mock Franco when he does his "James Franco" things, but it's a performance like the one he turns in as Alien that justifies the hype he was getting as far back as his days on FREAKS AND GEEKS.  Perhaps recognizing that there was only so far he could take the "Disney girls gone wild" element (Gomez doesn't strip, but the other three do nudity, and Hudgens and Benson have a swimming-pool threesome with Franco), Korine essentially lets Franco take center stage, and it was probably a smart move.  In short, nothing Korine has done before has indicated what he accomplishes with SPRING BREAKERS, managing to deftly balance style, swagger, downbeat drama, dark comedy, social critique, and revenge thriller all in 90 minutes. From the visuals to the music cues (Ellie Goulding's "Lights" is the perfect closing credits tune for this), SPRING BREAKERS demonstrates a startling maturity of Korine from self-indulgent enfant terrible to a genuinely gifted filmmaker. The year's still young, but this is my favorite 2013 film so far.