THE TITAN (US/UK/Spain/Germany - 2018) Directed by Lennart Ruff. Written by Max Hurwitz. Cast: Sam Worthington, Taylor Schilling, Tom Wilkinson, Agyness Deyn, Nathalie Emmanuel, Noah Jupe, Corey Johnson, Aleksandar Jovanovic, Diego Boneta, Aaron Heffernan, Alex Lanipecun, Naomi Battrick, Steven Cree, Nathalie Poza, Francesc Garrido, Kyle Soller. (Unrated, 97 mins) It's another week and another dud Netflix acquisition with the sci-fi/horror outing THE TITAN, a potentially interesting sort-of reverse MARTIAN with hints of the underrated and sort-of forgotten SPLICE. It looks great and benefits from some beautiful Spain and Canary Islands location work, but its intriguing concepts are rendered moot by lax execution and a typically bland performance from AVATAR's Sam Worthington, who they're apparently still trying to make a thing. Completed in 2016, THE TITAN is set in a post-apocalyptic 2048 where the west coast is uninhabitable due to nuclear fallout and huge sections of the US and much of the world are turning into overpopulated, war-ravaged hellholes. As NASA scientist Dr. Martin Collingwood (Tom Wilkinson) explains, "Time is running out and we've outgrown our world." His plan? Populate Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Its atmosphere is largely methane and nitrogen and thus impossible for humans to live, but Collingwood's multi-billion project involves using US soldiers in an experimental program to alter their DNA and biological structure to adapt to Titan's atmosphere, explaining that "Humans must adapt rather than reshape planets in our image." One test subject is Air Force Lt. Rick Janssen (Worthington), who moves his family--doctor wife Abi (Taylor Schilling of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK) and young son Lucas (Noah Jupe)--to a top-secret NATO base on a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean. Collingwood promises Rick and the other test subjects that they'll be enhanced, superior versions of themselves. "You'll be you, but better." Clearly, they've never seen a body-horror movie with a deranged scientist before.
Things go smoothly at first, with Rick's biological enhancements allowing him to swim at high speeds and stay underwater for over 40 minutes. But then the trouble starts: mood swings, clumps of hair falling out, a bad reaction to surgery intended to alter the aperture of his eyes to allow him to see through darkness but instead leaving him temporarily blind and bleeding from his eyes. Then scaly masses start forming on his skin. Abi, whose career as a doctor is mentioned often but never called upon in a story capacity, breaks into Collingwood's office (well, he leaves the door unlocked for maximum plot convenience) and looks at his notes: past experiments have found him blending human DNA with amphibians and bats to allow test subjects to sprout gills and potentially fly. He's even labeled them "Homo Titanus" in his intent to create the next stage of evolution. In time, Rick's human appearance morphs into a combination of the later, redesigned Gill Man from 1956's THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, a human-sized Dr. Manhattan from WATCHMEN, and "Dren" from SPLICE, as Abi desperately tries to save her husband from what Collingwood has done. It's hard to believe he gets away with what he's been doing, especially after a video conference call with an enraged NASA official where we learn Collingwood has gone rogue and completely veered away from his original assignment, and is revealed to be a quack with dubious theories on evolution. It seems like NASA or the President or somebody from NATO would head to this base and maybe relieve Collingwood of his duties since he's turning soldiers into bat/Gill Man-hybrids. Schilling takes this a lot more seriously than she should, Worthington is too dull to make this his version of Jeff Goldblum in THE FLY, and Wilkinson just seems to be amusing himself on his Canary Islands vacation by choosing odd ways to pronounce words like "methane" and "Pentagon." German director Lennart Ruff, making his feature debut, has a good eye for shot compositions and the film certainly looks more expensive than it likely is, a good indication that he'll be getting journeyman gigs on big-budget Hollywood movies soon enough. But at the end of the day, THE TITAN is an intriguing idea that just gets sillier and dumber as it trudges along to its unsatisfying conclusion.
Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by Kieran Fitzgerald and Oliver Stone. Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Nicolas Cage, Rhys Ifans, Scott Eastwood, Logan Marshall-Green, Timothy Olyphant, Ben Schnetzer, Lakeith Lee Stanfield, Joely Richardson, Ben Chaplin, Nicholas Rowe, Basker Patel, Edward Snowden. (R, 134 mins) It would be nice if Oscar-winning filmmaker and tinfoil-hat fashionista Oliver Stone was back in provocateur mode with SNOWDEN, but the message is lost in the auteur's didactic execution. Told with myopic tunnelvision and with nothing but gushing admiration for its subject, SNOWDEN lumbers along with little in the way of nuance or subtlety, and nothing in the way of questioning the ex-CIA/NSA whistleblower. It's canonizing hagiography of the most one-sided order, with Edward Snowden the sole voice of morality in a world of evil big government surveillance that exists only to piss on the freedoms of Americans and can't possibly have any positive purpose whatsoever. This should be a nailbiting thriller but Stone is so distracted by his Snowden man-crush that it never has a chance to reach the heights of his in-his-prime conspiracy/paranoia triumphs like JFK or NIXON. It's more in line with the hokey, neutered simplicity of something like WORLD TRADE CENTER. Snowden is a complex, complicated figure, but you wouldn't know it by watching SNOWDEN. Stone isn't interesting in getting in Snowden's head, so you're better off checking out Laura Poitras' Oscar-winning 2014 Snowden documentary CITIZENFOUR instead.
That said, Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a terrific job of capturing Snowden's voice and mannerisms with uncanny accuracy. The film opens in 2013 as an on-the-run Snowden is holed up in a Hong Kong hotel preparing to leak secret CIA and NSA files to documentary filmmaker Poitras (Melissa Leo) and Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson). Jumping back and forth from 2004 to 2013, we follow Snowden through a short stint in the Army, where his goal of joining the Special Forces is stalled by brittle bones and a pair of fragile legs that get him a discharge. Told by his doctor that there's other ways to serve his country, the conservative, Ayn Rand-admiring Snowden is admitted into The Hill, the CIA training facility in Virginia where he becomes the top prospect of (fictional) instructor Corbin O'Brian (a vampiric Rhys Ifans). He also falls in love with liberal Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley), who joins him when his new CIA job takes him to places like Switzerland and Japan, where his focus is cybersecurity and designing programs that are ostensibly used to monitor post-9/11 terrorist activities. He leaves the CIA but works for them on a contractual basis later on, and is disturbed to find that much of the US government's surveillance focus is spying on its own citizens and that one of his programs is used for drone strikes in the Middle East. Growing increasingly concerned about the nature of his work and how far the surveillance goes (he's informed at one point that his suspicions about Lindsay having an affair are unfounded, proof that the omnipresent They are watching her and monitoring her computer and phone activity), he decides to blow the whistle, stealing thousands of secret files and fleeing the country before reaching out to activist filmmaker Poitras.
How heavy-handed is SNOWDEN? The surveillance program is called "Prism," and when invoking it, Stone feels the need to frame shots with a prism effect that's also used when epileptic Snowden has seizures. It actually caused snickering in the audience about the 10th or 12th time it's used. How unsubtle is SNOWDEN? Ifans has been directed to play O'Brian in the most ominously sinister fashion possible, making it difficult to tell if he's a top CIA official or the Antichrist. Watch when he's shown speaking with Snowden in a conference room, Snowden physically there, but O'Brian on a giant, theater-sized screen as Ifans' looming, side-eyed visage takes up the entire display, just in case the whole "Big Brother is watching" concept wasn't already clear. The performances are generally solid, though Nicolas Cage is squandered in an intriguing but tiny role as a benched analyst curating antiquated espionage equipment, his sole purpose being to unknowingly supply the Rubik's Cube that Snowden will use years later to stash the SD card with all the files. But it's Ifans' bizarre portrayal that really sticks out, bringing to mind what might happen if PHANTASM's The Tall Man worked for the CIA. There's a nerve-shredding, Alan J. Pakula-type paranoia thriller to made about Snowden's exploits, and less preachy filmmakers could've done wonders with the subject. Remember that incredible Donald Sutherland exposition drop in JFK? That Oliver Stone could've done something with SNOWDEN. So could Michael Mann in INSIDER mode or David Fincher channeling ZODIAC. There's also a nice Mann vibe in some of Anthony Dod Mantle's digital cinematography in locations all over the world that recalls last year's criminally underrated hacker thriller BLACKHAT. Unfortunately, Stone the filmmaker defers to Dr. Stone the lecturing activist with an agenda. The film completely flies off the rails in a catastrophic climax that recalls Professor Steven Seagal's speech at the end of ON DEADLY GROUND, as Gordon-Levitt actually exits the film and Snowden takes over, playing himself being interviewed via internet from Russia, basking in the standing ovation he gets at a TEDTalk event. This drawn-out finale--more like a tacked-on Snowden infomercial--concludes with an inspirational, manipulative score crescendoing as a pensive Snowden finishes the interview, closes his laptop and turns away, in profile, triumphantly staring out the window of his Russian apartment and smiling, looking like he's waiting for Stone to cue up Foo Fighters' "My Hero" for the closing credits.
There's been no shortage of ambitious, gifted, and intelligent artists-turned-working-stiff actors who put their game face on, punch a clock, and schlep their way through movies they'd rather not be doing, but few are worse at masking their utter contempt for a project they know is beneath them than Bruce Willis. The odd thing about Willis is that, unlike a journeyman mercenary who doesn't command an eight-figure salary, he's still an A-lister and doesn't need the work or the money. But here he is, in the grand tradition of unseen, streaming-ready duds like CATCH .44, SET-UP, FIRE WITH FIRE, LAY THE FAVORITE, and THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY, coasting through for another easy payday and doing as little work as possible. Willis isn't alone, as THE PRINCE is also the latest piece of evidence in the ongoing autopsy of John Cusack's career. Cusack, the once-iconic star of SAY ANYTHING, GROSSE POINTE BLANK, and HIGH FIDELITY, has spent the last couple of years on an relentless kamikaze mission to accept every role Val Kilmer probably turned down. But Willis and Cusack are just prominently-billed guest stars in THE PRINCE. The actual star is Jason Patric, hailed briefly in the early '90s (AFTER DARK, MY SWEET and RUSH) as the great actor of his generation, but now reduced to appearing in movies like THE PRINCE. Patric's place in popular culture is forever cemented by THE LOST BOYS and in tabloid history by being the guy Julia Roberts ran off with three days before she was supposed to marry his friend Kiefer Sutherland, but he hasn't appeared in a major movie since playing the villain in 2010's underrated THE LOSERS and, like Willis and Cusack, has often been cited as being mercurial and difficult on a movie set. Unlike Willis and Cusack, however, Patric has been spending most of his offscreen time fighting a legal battle with his ex-girlfriend and California lawmakers for sperm donor parental rights, and seems to be in THE PRINCE because he probably needs the money and it's the best gig he can get right now. It's also his second consecutive film (after this year's earlier THE OUTSIDER) with director Brian A. Miller, whose resume is littered with forgettable, mostly 50 Cent-produced cop movies. Miller and Willis have already completed something called VICE, coming to a Redbox kiosk near you in early 2015.
Hideously shot, with garish lighting and a smeary, smudgy color palette and everyone looking waxy like a Blu-ray with too much DNR (moonlight coming through the blinds on a bedroom window looks like the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND mothership is parked outside), THE PRINCE has 33 credited producers and a plot that's virtually identical to THE OUTSIDER. Patric had a supporting role in that film, but here he's the star and he brings more grit and gravitas than a going-through-the-motions TAKEN ripoff like this deserves. Patric is Paul Brennan, a hardworking Mississippi mechanic and widower whose daughter Beth (Gia Mantegna) has gotten hooked on heroin and gone missing from college in New Orleans. Brennan also happens to be an ex-criminal and a once-legendary Big Easy hit man known as "The Prince." He vanished without a trace 20 years back after a botched hit on New Orleans crime lord Omar Kaiser (Willis) resulted in Kaiser's wife and daughter getting killed instead. Brennan drags Beth's dramatically-sighing friend Angela (Jessica Lowndes) along to New Orleans with him, which results in much back-and-forth banter, as Angela can't even. They get to New Orleans and find Beth has hooked up with a ruthless drug kingpin known as "The Pharmacy" (50 Cent), and after numerous instances of Brennan walking into a club and asking about his daughter only to be promptly told to fuck off, he's amassed enough of a body count that word gets to Kaiser that his arch-enemy is back in town. This leads to the inevitable showdown at now-successful businessman Kaiser's company headquarters, which looks suspiciously like the hotel where Willis was likely staying during his 3-4 days on the set. Most of Willis' scenes have him seated at a desk surrounded by surveillance monitors and mumbling orders while his top flunky (South Korean pop star and NINJA ASSASSIN lead Rain) does the leg work. Fiddy and Jonathan Schaech (as a gun shop owner) have about three minutes of screen time and a tired-looking Cusack, barely conscious in a nothing supporting role, first appears 50 minutes in and has a few scenes as an ex-sidekick of Brennan's who briefly helps him take on Kaiser's goons before vanishing from the film. With his steely, intense persona, Patric is surprisingly effective here and seems much more comfortable in action mode now than he did in 1997's disastrous SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL. It's too bad his efforts are wasted in something so trifling and dumb. If Brennan had to change his name and his safety and the security of his future family depended on him never again setting foot in New Orleans, then perhaps he should've moved further than one state away when he went into self-imposed exile. Perhaps he should've attempted to talk his daughter into going to college anywhere other than in New Orleans. Perhaps he should've considered storing his stash of weapons somewhere other than in the back room of a gun shop in, yes, you guessed it, New Orleans. (R, 91 mins)
GOOD PEOPLE (US/Denmark/Sweden - 2014)
Another VOD dump-off by Cannon cover band Millennium, GOOD PEOPLE is a good example of the kind of commercial, popcorn suspense thriller that would've cleaned up at the box office in the mid-to-late '90s, but just doesn't get much distributor support today. Based on a 2009 book by Chicago-based Marcus Sakey, a prolific mid-level crime novelist who specializes in the kind of brisk, well-crafted page-turners that people used to read on long flights, GOOD PEOPLE moves the setting of the novel from the Windy City to London for no particular reason, but other than that, retains the same basic plot. Financially-strapped American expat couple Tom (James Franco) and Anna Wright (Kate Hudson) have invested all of their money into renovating a dilapidated home left to them by Tom's British grandmother. Tom is a construction contractor and Anna is a schoolteacher, but there isn't enough money coming in, Anna desperately wants to start a family, and they've resorted to renting their basement to a tenant. Tom finds the tenant dead and discovers a duffel bag filled with £220,000 (approximately $350,000) stashed above the ceiling tiles. Rumpled detective Halden (Tom Wilkinson) comes snooping around and Tom is being followed and harassed by both vicious drug dealer Jack Witkowski (Sam Spruell) and French crime lord Genghis Khan (Omar Sy), each of whom claim the missing money belongs to them. Tom and Anna have stashed the money, but catch the attention of Halden when they start doing stupid things that people in movies who fall into dirty money usually do, namely Tom making large bank deposits and paying off long-gestating bills and Anna splurging on an expensive washer-dryer set for her single-mom best friend (Anna Friel) and paying for expensive tests at a fertility clinic. Before long, Tom and Anna are in the middle of a war between Witkowski and Khan, which leads to the inevitable showdown between all interested parties at the grandmother's abandoned house.
Sakey's book was a compelling and uncomplicated read, but GOOD PEOPLE is a bland and unexciting film. The script by BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD and SNOWPIERCER screenwriter Kelly Masterson, having a bit of an off-day here, and the direction by Danish TV vet Henrik Ruben Genz (FORBRYDELSEN, the original Danish version of the TV series THE KILLING) are exceedingly routine and by-the-numbers. Genz really drops the ball in the climax, which is very badly-staged, too dark, and confusingly executed. GOOD PEOPLE is watchable enough, but it never really tries to be anything more than that. Franco and Hudson do what's required of them, but only Wilkinson seems invested enough to try and create something a little deeper with his cynical and melancholy character, one of those "last honest cop" types wading through a department full of corruption and who lost his junkie daughter to drugs dealt by Witkowski. So yeah, this is...personal. In the end, there's absolutely nothing here you haven't seen before, and even the actors seem to know it. (R, 90 mins) LOCKED IN (UK/US - 2014)
If you've seen the barely-released 2008 film PASSENGERS, you've got a good idea where LOCKED IN is headed. Both films share the same screenwriter (Ronnie Christensen) and both owe a tremendous debt to the heyday of M. Night Shyamalan. Josh (Ben Barnes), his wife Emma (Sarah Roemer), and young daughter Brooke (played by twins Abigail and Helen Steinman) are in a bizarre car accident that leaves Brooke comatose with "locked-in syndrome"--she's alive and her brain is active, but her body is in a state of total paralysis. It isn't long before Josh starts getting voice mails from Brooke and is certain she's attempting to communicate with him. He believes she's doing this to convince Josh and Emma to reconcile, as they've recently separated after he had a one-night fling with psycho ex Renee (Eliza Dushku). Josh even finds what he believes is evidence that Renee ran their car off the road and caused the accident. What's going on is a bit more spiritual, as Josh's older brother Nathan (Johnny Whitworth) directs him to sympathetic medium Frank (Clarke Peters), who insists that "time is a factor" and "it's not too late" to rescue Brooke from wherever she may be. There's a barrage of revelations in the closing minutes, followed by one final twist that doesn't make much sense.
But then, not much does in LOCKED IN, a troubled production that was shot in Boston in 2009 and shown at some film festivals in 2010. It was tied up in legal wrangles for several years and existed in various cuts on the bootleg circuit (the festival version ran 85 minutes), before indie distributor Wrekin Hill finally sent it straight-to-DVD with a running time of 78 minutes and three credited editors obviously on a doomed salvage mission. It doesn't seem like any of the editors looked at what the others did--whole chunks of story seem to be missing. Sometimes it seems like Josh lives at the house, sometimes it seems like he's living in a motel. There's no consistency to how some characters behave, especially Emma's mom, played by MY LEFT FOOT Oscar-winner Brenda Fricker. And why is John Carpenter favorite Peter Jason wearing a bear costume as a boozy mattress king shooting a TV commercial in one scene? He's listed rather high in the credits for such a throwaway bit part--surely he had more to do at one point than slur a couple of lines before declaring "I gotta take a shit." Maybe he just ad-libbed that last part and fled the set? Both Barnes and Roemer were almost Next Big Things five years ago (Barnes was Prince-then-King Caspian in the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA franchise, and Roemer was Shia LaBeouf's love interest in the surprise 2007 hit DISTURBIA), and Roemer had enough momentum going at the time to get a producer credit on this, but LOCKED IN is a catastrophe that isn't doing anything for anyone's career, especially the great Peters (THE WIRE, TREME), who's entirely too good an actor to play such a stock, cardboard "Magical Negro" stereotype. The end result can't possibly be what Christensen and veteran British TV director Suri Krishnamma had in mind when they went into this. LOCKED IN is one of those movies that wasn't finished--it was abandoned. (R, 78 mins).
