On DVD/Blu-ray: PIRANHA DD (2012) and JUAN OF THE DEAD (2012)

PIRANHA DD
(US - 2012)

Alexandre Aja's gore-and-T&A-soaked 2010 remake of the 1978 cult classic PIRANHA was one of the most divisive and inexplicably acclaimed horror films in recent memory.  Some major critics and a lot of fans praised it as an enthusiastically crude throwback to old-school exploitation trash, but I think a lot of these people were imagining the movie they wanted PIRANHA 2010 to be as opposed to what it really was.  It struck me as a smug, condescending version of what ironic hipsters think an exploitation film should be, coasting on the glories of past examples and acting like it belonged in the same company.  But even PIRANHA 2010's defenders kept their distance from PIRANHA 3DD (on DVD as PIRANHA DD, or, specifically, "Piranha Double D"), a slapdash sequel that was barely released to theaters by The Weinstein Company's new B-movie division Radius TWC.  Understand something here:  by saying that PIRANHA DD is slightly more tolerable, I'm in no way recommending it.  It's still a complete piece of shit...but it's not as egregiously shitty as its predecessor.  Director John Gulager (FEAST) and writers Marcus Dunstan & Patrick Melton (FEAST, several SAW sequels) and Joel Soisson (nearly every DTV Dimension Films horror sequel over the last 15 years), all legit exploitation vets, approach the material with much less snarky poseurdom.  It's more openly comedic, and though most of the humor still bombs, it just has a different attitude.  It feels more like a genuine exploitation film than one trying way too hard to be one. 



This time, the piranha attack an adult water park called The Big Wet, run by sleazy Chet (David Koechner, cast radically against type as "David Koechner"), who has a "Double D Swims Free" policy, stripper lifeguards, and a nude swimming area with a "cooch cam."  He's pumping the park's water in illegally from an underground lake, which his marine biologist stepdaughter Maddy (the appealing Danielle Panabaker) knows is infested with the mutant strain of piranha.  And of course, opening day turns into an orgy of blood, boobs, and crappy CGI:  a guy hacks off his own penis after a baby piranha latches onto it while he's having sex (don't ask how it got in her); another guy gets a piranha stuck up his ass while he's jerking off in the pool; and a decapitated head still manages to motorboat a set of silicone-enhanced breasts.  With its bargain-basement visual effects that would make the Worldwide FX guys in Bulgaria look the other way in embarrassment, PIRANHA DD plays a lot like a hard-R version of a Saturday night SyFy movie, and the joke wears out its welcome about as quickly, right down to the appearances of D-list celebrity punchlines like Gary Busey (killed in the first five minutes) and David Hasselhoff (as himself, at one point muttering, in what must've been an ad-lib, "Welcome to rock-bottom").  Christopher Lloyd and Ving Rhames return from the first film, and the great B-movie vet Clu Gulager (the director's dad) also has a bit part.  PIRANHA DD does the absolute bare minimum to qualify as a film, with the closing credits starting at the 70-minute mark, with 13 minutes of credits mixed with bloopers and Hasselhoff in a fake trailer for something called FISHHUNTER.  I guess PIRANHA DD is marginally better than Aja's PIRANHA, but that's a lot like saying testicular cancer is marginally better than prostate cancer.  Your chances of survival are greater, but it's still a terrible thing to endure and no one should be subjected to it.  (R, 83 mins)


JUAN OF THE DEAD
(Spain/Cuba - 2012)

We're approaching--if not already past--the point where we really need another zombie movie, let alone a zombie spoof, but the Cuba-based JUAN OF THE DEAD, while clearly inspired by SHAUN OF THE DEAD, actually brings some new ideas and imagination to the table.  Its ambitions lie beyond the capabilities of its budget and its visual effects team, but the spirit and style come across loud and clear.  A zombie outbreak in Havana prompts fisherman Juan (Alexis Diaz de Villegas) and his friends to form the requisite ragtag group of misfits and miscreants to sell their undead-killing services to those willing to pay.  As they make their way across Havana with plans to somehow get to Miami, they battle countless hordes of zombies while reflecting on the political past of their country.  Writer/director Alejandro Brugues deftly weaves splatter, comedy, and socio-political commentary into a loose-feeling, freewheeling film that doesn't have the power and filmmaking discipline that an in-his-prime George Romero would exhibit, but there's a lot more to chew on here than flesh.  I liked the way the Cuban media promotes the idea that it's not a zombie outbreak at all, but rather, a "social discipline" issue with "dissidents" in the employ of the US.  And Juan and his pals aren't exactly the most noble heroes around, especially when they have no qualms about leaving an old man behind to be zombie food just so they can use his wheelchair to cart beer back to their base of operation.  Brugues also stages a few truly inventive set pieces, including one involving a wily old zombie hunter (Antonio Dechent) quick-wittedly staging one of the most audacious mass-zombie killings in the history of the genre, and another great scene where our "heroes" find themselves stripped and handcuffed in the back of a military transport where all hell breaks loose when one of the prisoners onboard turns into a zombie mid-ride.  Filled with wit ranging from high-minded political humor to gutter vulgarity, and enough zombie mayhem to please the gorehounds, JUAN OF THE DEAD is a surprising find.  It doesn't always succeed because of its too-frequently dubious visual effects, but because of its ambition and sheer gumption. (Unrated, 96 mins)

Cult Classics Revisited: BLACK MAGIC RITES (1973)

BLACK MAGIC RITES
aka THE REINCARNATION OF ISABEL
aka RITES, BLACK MAGIC AND SECRET ORGIES IN THE 14TH CENTURY
aka THE GHASTLY ORGIES OF COUNT DRACULA
(Italy - 1973)

Directed by Ralph Brown (Renato Polselli).  Written by Renato Polselli.  Cast: Mickey Hargitay, Rita Calderoni, Raoul, Christa Barrymore, William Darni, Max Dorian, Marcello Bonini. (Unrated, 98 mins).

Best known as THE REINCARNATION OF ISABEL but recently released on Blu-ray (and re-released on DVD) by Kino/Redemption as BLACK MAGIC RITES, this incoherent fever dream from Renato Polselli exists under a number of different titles and is one of the strangest of all Italian horror films.  It was considered lost for many years and existed only in a severely truncated 59-minute version back in the days of VHS bootlegs.  But in 1998, Redemption released a complete version of the film and...it probably made even less sense.  The 1998 DVD was letterboxed and non-anamorphic, so this film gets a significant HD upgrade on Blu-ray.  The color and detail are terrific, and the sound is room-shaking, and while this film has numerous admirers who consider it a minor classic in experimental, avant-garde Eurotrash, I still find this a tedious chore to sit through.   Sure, there's a lot of crazy shit, occasionally impressive use of color, some over-the-top gore, and gratuitous nudity by the truckload, but it just goes on and on and while the complete lack of anything resembling a linear story isn't necessarily a bad thing, BLACK MAGIC RITES just gets too repetitive and meandering for its own good.  It's still required viewing for any Eurocult aficionado, and clearly, many people have gotten more out of Polselli's film than I have thus far.

The "plot" has American Jack Nelson (Mickey Hargitay) buying part of a centuries-old castle that's also part-girls' school.  There's also some kind of cultish religious sect inhabiting part of the grounds, led by a high priest (Raoul) who looks like Sacha Baron Cohen as Frank Zappa, along with his scarred henchman Gerg, played by Marcello Bonini, which I believe is Italian for "Almost Donald Pleasence."  It turns out Jack's stepdaughter Laureen (NUDE FOR SATAN's Rita Calderoni) is the reincarnation of Isabella, a young woman accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake at the castle 500 years ago in an endless flashback that seems to go on for 20 minutes. In the present day, the sect is sacrificing the nubile school girls for their hearts and eyes to the still-living (and, of course, topless) spirit of Isabella (also Calderoni).  Everyone in the present day is a reincarnation of someone from 500 years back, and the mayhem began when Isabella's lover (also Hargitay) became so enraged over her sacrifice that he invoked the powers of darkness and became Count Dracula (!).  So all the men are revealed to be vampires--except Laureen's fiance Richard (William Darni)--and they go on a rampage before all hell breaks loose, and Richard asks the high priest what's going on, to which Frank Zappa's stunt double replies "Do not try to understand it."  No shit.

BLACK MAGIC RITES/THE REINCARNATION OF ISABEL is packed with orgies, vampirism, cannibalism, garish colors, hideous fashions, human sacrifice, near-constant nudity, lesbian sex scenes, burnings at the stake, people returning from the dead, non-stop ominous church organ music with bonus theremin and orgasmic moans (with occasional prog-rock freakouts), and trippy strobe lighting.  There's even a three-way scored to old ragtime piano music.  How is something this insane so dull?  The film feels way longer than 98 minutes, and probably should've topped out at around 75.  Who knows?  Maybe that 59-minute bootleg version was the perfect length.  In the years since the DVD Eurocult explosion, this film and 1972's DELIRIUM (which also starred Hargitay, Calderoni, and most of the same actors) have earned Polselli (1922-2006) some significant cred in the world of bizarre cinema.  But while DELIRIUM is still pretty nuts, it at least has some semblance of a plot, while BLACK MAGIC RITES just feels like an Italian Jess Franco film, right down to overstaying its welcome, the overabundance of zooms and the frequently clumsy filmmaking.  But just like many Franco fans insist stuff like that is all part of some subversive master plan, Polselli is also lauded for his work on BLACK MAGIC RITES.  To each their own, but I'm not buying it.

Hard to believe Mickey Hargitay opted
to retire from acting after this film

This was Hungarian bodybuilder and 1955 Mr. Universe Hargitay's last film before his retirement from acting.  His only credit after this before his 2006 death was a cameo on a 2003 episode of LAW & ORDER: SVU, starring his daughter Mariska.  Hargitay was married to Jayne Mansfield and they had three children before their divorce in 1964.  He was acting almost exclusively in Italian B-movies from then on (like BLOODY PIT OF HORROR and LADY FRANKENSTEIN) and raised the children after Mansfield was killed in a car crash in 1967.  I'm always amused at the possibility of young Mariska Hargitay hanging out on the sets of schlocky Italian movies like this.  Hargitay seems pretty bored here, and is absent for long stretches, indicating that he probably wasn't around very much.  This never received a US theatrical release, nor was it ever dubbed into English (or maybe they tried and just gave up).  While his voice isn't used in the film, Hargitay appears to be speaking Italian, as his lip movements match the Italian dialogue and don't match the English subtitles.

I know a lot of serious movie people who greatly admire this film.  I'll agree that the film is completely batshit crazy, but it has some serious pacing issues that accomplish the impossible by making batshit crazy boring.  Even so, it should be seen once just for completism's sake, and there's no denying that it looks spectacular on Blu-ray.

Cult Classics Revisited: DEATH WATCH (1980)

DEATH WATCH
(France/Germany - 1980; 1982 US release)

Directed by Bertrand Tavernier.  Written by David Rayfiel and Bertrand Tavernier.  Cast: Romy Schneider, Harvey Keitel, Harry Dean Stanton, Max von Sydow, Bernhard Wicki, Therese Liotard, Vadim Glowna, William Russel, Caroline Langrishe, Robbie Coltrane. (R, 130 mins).

In a near-future society where disease has been almost completely eliminated, Catherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider) is diagnosed with an extremely rare terminal illness.  Unscrupulous TV exec Vincent Ferriman (Harry Dean Stanton) tries to cajole her into appearing on DEATH WATCH, a reality-TV show where his camera crews will follow her as she lives out her final days, giving viewers the rare chance to see someone dying of something other than natural causes or old age.  She agrees, only to provide money for her husband (Vadim Glowna), but arranges an escape from the camera crews farely quickly.  Ferriman sends cameraman Roddy (Harvey Keitel)--who has a camera implanted in his eyes--after her. Finding her at a church shelter, Roddy befriends the dying Catherine, and unbeknownst to her, is filming her for the DEATH WATCH broadcast. Complications arise when Roddy develops feelings for Catherine, who's on her way to visit her ex-husband (Max von Sydow), and die with dignity, on her own terms.  Roddy also has to manage the fact that, because of the camera implantation, he has to have a constant light source and can't close his eyes for more than a few seconds or it will cause near-instant blindness (one glaring weakness of the film is that it never sufficiently explains how Roddy sleeps, other than him saying "I never did sleep much. I always felt that I'd miss something").

Catherine (Romy Schneider) on the run
with Roddy (Harvey Keitel), unaware that
he's filming her for DEATH WATCH.

Directed by Bertrand Tavernier (COUP DE TORCHON, ROUND MIDNIGHT), who co-wrote with frequent collaborator David Rayfiel, this sci-fi art film is, in retrospect, filled with surprisingly prescient visions of today's reality TV and a media and schadenfreude-obsessed, tragedy-as-entertainment culture ("Death is the new pornography," says Ferriman). I'm surprised this hasn't been remade.  Quietly released in the US by Quartet Films in 1982, about a month before Schneider's sudden death from cardiac arrest at just 43 (her 14-year-old son died a year earlier after being impaled on a spiked fence he was attempting to climb, and it was a tragedy from which Schneider never recovered), this vanished quickly but eventually found a cult thanks to home video and late-night TV airings in the 1980s.  It benefits from a genuinely jarring feel throughout--European production, Americans and Europeans in the cast, shot in Scotland, and is quite unique in the sci-fi, "futuristic" genre, in that it largely looks just like 1980 Glasgow (except for a great THEY LIVE-esque moment in a huge, Costco-type supermarket, with subliminal "Don't steal...you'll feel much better if you don't" messages loudly playing over the speaker system). It loses a little momentum near the end with a few long monologues from von Sydow, but the climax is quite emotional and well-played by the actors. The beautiful Schneider has rarely been better, and she and Keitel work very well together, despite their reportedly not getting along all that well. It's interesting seeing Keitel and Stanton in such odd (for them) settings. They seem to be improvising in many of their scenes together.

Schneider with Harry Dean Stanton as network exec Vincent Ferriman

DEATH WATCH was just released in a Blu-ray/DVD set from Shout Factory, and presents Tavernier's uncut European version for the first time in the US.  Running 12 minutes longer than the US version, the European DEATH WATCH is a great example of how small edits and subtle changes can make a completely different film.

(SPOILERS)

In the US cut, Catherine is legitimately sick.  In the European cut, Ferriman's subject dies earlier than expected and, needing a new "star," he bribes Catherine's doctor (William Russel) into convincing her that she's got two months to live.  The doctor gives her a painkiller prescription, but it's the pills that are designed to make her feel sick when she's really not, and the whole plan is to have her be miraculously "cured" at the end of the show's run.  It's established early on that it's all scripted by Ferriman and the network (Roddy is not involved in that aspect of the plan; he thinks Catherine is truly ill) to maximize ratings and profits.  The European cut is even more tragic and cynical in its critique of corporate greed and the invasive, rubbernecking nature of reality TV.

The ending and Ferriman's motivation are the biggest differences in the US and European cuts, with the doctor getting some added commentary like "What a circus," and "Drug her and make her sick, then 'cure' her, all for what? Ratings?" but the European version also includes a scene with Catherine visiting her dementia-stricken father (Bernhard Wicki) in a mental hospital. Wicki remained credited in the US cut, but was nowhere to be found.

Trailer for the film's 2012 UK re-release

 



Shout Factory's Blu-ray/DVD combo pack also finally allows North American fans to see DEATH WATCH in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  The US version was released on VHS by Embassy Home Entertainment, and looked atrocious in a washed-out, faded, and hideously-cropped 1.33:1.  The Blu-ray is a revelation in terms of detail, textures, and color.  The only extra is a photo gallery that runs just over a minute.  A more comprehensive package, or at least an interview with Tavernier, would've been nice, but it's enough of an event to have this ambitious, thinking person's sci-fi film at long last available in its intended version after all these years.  It's a dark, scathing, brilliant and beautifully-shot film that's more relevant and powerful than ever.  Is it much of a stretch for the 1980 science-fiction of DEATH WATCH to become as real as the 1976 satire of NETWORK that's happening on cable news and countless tabloid TV shows every hour of every day?

Shout Factory's Blu-ray artwork

New on DVD/Blu-ray: HEADHUNTERS (2011) and LOVELY MOLLY (2012)

HEADHUNTERS
(Sweden/Norway/Denmark/Germany - 2011; 2012 US release)

HEADHUNTERS, a delightfully deranged thriller based on a novel by Scandinavian mystery writer Jo Nesbo, pits an outwardly arrogant but deeply insecure corporate recruiter (Aksel Hennie) who doubles as an art thief, against a potential target (GAME OF THRONES' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a former GPS tech company CEO who turns out to be far more dangerous than he ever imagined.  Hennie steals and fences expensive art as a way of maintaining the illusion of an upper-class, high-rolling lifestyle and to stay in the good graces of his stunning wife (Synnove Macody Lund), who he constantly fears will leave him for a taller, more handsome man.  He's got a great set-up going with a sleazebag partner (Eivind Sander) who works at a security company and can override alarm codes.  But Coster-Waldau is no fool.  In fact, he's a total psycho, and Hennie's greed and insecurity lead to him being plunged into a sick and often darkly amusing game of cat-and-mouse with an increasingly high body count and one detour that literally leads him into the shit.  While almost certainly inspired by the success of the Stieg Larsson-based DRAGON TATTOO trilogy, HEADHUNTERS feels more like a Scandinavian Coen Brothers film, with one ridiculous yet oddly plausible nightmare scenario after another for Hennie. It's dark, twisted, and extremely violent, but fans of this kind of stuff will find it to be terrific fun all around. (R, 100 mins)


LOVELY MOLLY
(US - 2012)

Eduardo Sanchez forever cemented his place in horror history by co-writing and co-directing THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999), and judging from his latest solo effort, he's still coasting on it.  A derivative and ultimately frustrating supernatural slow-burner, LOVELY MOLLY wastes a brave, committed performance by newcomer Gretchen Lodge in the title role.  Recently married to truck driver Tim (Johnny Lewis, best known as Half-Sack in the early seasons of SONS OF ANARCHY) and relocated to her childhood home, Molly finds herself haunted--psychologically and spiritually--by traumas and ghosts of the past, which includes heroin addiction and abuse by her father, who was killed by her protective older sister Hannah (Alexandra Holden). With Tim gone for days at a time, and footsteps and strange sounds following her around the house, it doesn't take long for Molly to start cracking.  Is she crazy?  Is she using again?  Or is her father's vengeful spirit still in the house?  Sanchez fashions LOVELY MOLLY as a sort of update on Roman Polanski's REPULSION, which was also heavily referenced in this year's earlier and similarly stale SILENT HOUSE, with some bonus PARANORMAL ACTIVITY because, well, that seems to be required these days.  Sanchez establishes an ominous, unsettling, dread-soaked mood for a while, and Lodge is often nothing short of remarkable, but once you see where the story's going, it's just another tired retread, right down to Molly busting out her handheld camcorder to try and document the supernatural disturbances, resulting in a lot of shaky-cam and angles and imagery that won't surprise or scare anyone who's seen a horror movie in the last decade and change. The bonus features are even worse, as Sanchez assembles a pointless faux documentary detailing the occult history of Molly's house dating back to colonial times, robbing the film of its ambiguity, which, other than Lodge, is about all it had going for it. (R, 100 mins)

In Theaters: THE POSSESSION (2012)

THE POSSESSION
(US - 2012)

Directed by Ole Bornedal.  Written by Juliet Snowden & Stiles White.  Cast: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick, Matisyahu, Grant Show, Natasha Calis, Madison Davenport, Jay Brazeau. (PG-13, 92 mins)

It's been nearly 40 years since the release of THE EXORCIST, and the knockoffs show no signs of slowing down.  Produced by Sam Raimi, THE POSSESSION is better than most, with an experienced figure behind the camera in veteran Danish horror/suspense director Ole Bornedal (1994's NIGHTWATCH and its 1998 US remake), but except for one nicely-done scare and some impressive production design, there's little here we haven't seen before.  Written by Juliet Snowden & Stiles White (KNOWING), THE POSSESSION utilizes most of the standard-issue possession motifs (or as much as its PG-13 rating will allow) fused with more J-Horror imagery (are we done with this yet?), and relies too much on loud crashes and piercing music cues in place of actual tension and scares.  However, Bornedal does a nice job establishing an unexpected, almost European look to the film in the early going (featuring the most Kubrickian-looking basketball practice gym you'll ever see), with some impressive camera movements and lighting and lots of interesting technical aspects that, for a while, set THE POSSESSION apart from the usual DTV-level time-killer that it eventually becomes.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan dares to open the Dybbuk box.

In this "true story" (inspired by a 2003 eBay listing) set in upstate New York, college basketball coach Clyde Brenek (a strong performance by the underrated Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is recently divorced from ex-wife Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) and gets his daughters--Hannah (Madison Davenport) and Emily (Natasha Calis)--on the weekends.  The girls, particularly Emily, are having some difficulty with the disruption in their lives, and things get really complicated when Clyde and the girls stop at a yard sale and Emily is drawn to a mysterious, sealed wooden box with strange lettering carved into it.  Emily soon becomes slavishly devoted to and fiercely protective of the box, and often erupts in violence if anyone comes near it.  After Emily has a shrieking fit where she repeatedly smacks herself in the face, Clyde is accused of abusing her and Stephanie gets a restraining order.  When Stephanie and her new boyfriend Brett (Grant Show) start observing Emily's continued strange behavior, Clyde does some research and finds out the lettering on the box is Hebrew, and seeks the guidance of Tzadok (Hasidic reggae beatboxer Matisyahu), who turns out to be the demonic possession genre's hippest exorcist.  Tzadok says the box is a Dybbuk Box, used to house an ancient Jewish demon called the "dybbuk."  Tzadok defies the wishes of his elderly rabbi father and agrees to perform an exorcism on Emily.

Natasha Calis as the possessed Emily

The "dybbuk" is an interesting concept, and it's handled better here than in the 2009 film THE UNBORN, which featured Gary Oldman as a rabbi who battles a dybbuk by blowing into a shofar  The casting of Matisyahu as the exorcist is a distraction that's hard to get over, but he has a loose and engaging presence that makes one wish he had more screen time.  THE POSSESSION's problems start when the script begins requiring otherwise intelligent characters to start behaving stupidly.  Clyde should be a little more alarmed when Emily stabs him with a fork at breakfast for no reason.   Why is it that parents of possessed children in movies are always way too slow on the uptake when it comes to these matters?  Haven't any of these people seen THE EXORCIST? 

Madison Davenport and Kyra Sedgwick

There's also stupid contrivances that are there only to advance the plot in the easiest way possible.  In one scene, Emily is on the phone with Clyde and asking him if the box is OK and telling him to not to go near it (it's at his house).  In the next scene, Emily has the box with her at school and attacks a classmate who tries to steal it from her. Emily is sent home and the box is left at school. That night, the dybbuk attacks and kills Emily's teacher (this film's obligatory Burke Dennings stand-in), who's there, alone, late at night, grading papers next to a tiny lamp at her desk.  Are the screenwriters even trying?  Does this woman not have a home?  With better lighting?  Also, what happens to Brett?  He's last seen being attacked by a possessed Emily as all of his teeth start falling out, then getting into his car and driving it in reverse as Emily has a seizure on the front lawn and Hannah calls 9-1-1, and they're off to the hospital. Where does Brett go?  Is he dead?  Alive and still driving around in reverse, all bloody and toothless?  I'm glad Grant Show is getting paid post-MELROSE PLACE, but his character is so irrelevant that even the filmmakers forget about him.

Exorcist Tzadok (Matisyahu) tries to save Emily

When the script isn't dumbing things down, Bornedal and his regular cinematographer Dan Laustsen have a great-looking film on their hands.  And I liked the little shout-outs to past demonic possession films, like Emily's right eye moving on its own while the other stares straight ahead (from the 1975 Italian EXORCIST ripoff BEYOND THE DOOR) and a nicely-CGI'd swarm of moths surrounding a still Emily that looked a lot like the climactic bird attack in the 1979 OMEN/CLOSE ENCOUNTERS-inspired cult classic THE VISITOR).  There is one very good, almost great jolt when Emily is getting an MRI and something pops up unexpectedly in the resulting scan.  Those bits, Bornedal's direction, and the fine performances by both Morgan and Calis nudge THE POSSESSION a bit beyond the typical genre offering, but after a while, it's done in by a script that just feels illogical and half-baked.

In Theaters: LAWLESS (2012)

LAWLESS
(US - 2012)

Directed by John Hillcoat.  Written by Nick Cave.  Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Jason Clarke, Dane DeHaan, Noah Taylor, Lew Temple, Bill Camp, Tim Tolin.  (R, 116 mins)

Director John Hillcoat and musician/screenwriter Nick Cave previously collaborated on the viscerally brutal 2006 western THE PROPOSITION and reunite for this adaptation of Matt Bondurant's novel The Wettest County in the World.  Bondurant's book was loosely based on the Prohibition-era bootlegging experiences of his grandfather Jack and his two great-uncles Howard and Forrest Bondurant, who ran a major moonshine operation in Franklin County, Virginia.  LAWLESS has a lot of the same grim, stomach-turning violence that made THE PROPOSITION so memorable, but as a whole, it's not quite as good.  It wants to be a 1930s gangster version of THE PROPOSITION, but it has commercial obligations to fulfill, and it's not as well-constructed, with a propensity for corny one-liners and implausible characterization, and a villain who's ultimately too over-the-top for his own good.   It's certainly an entertaining film, but it often feels like its issues stemmed more from the editing and not the writing.  THE PROPOSITION was a great film, while LAWLESS is merely a good one.

Tom Hardy and Shia LaBeouf as
two of the Bondurant brothers

In 1930-31 Franklin County, the moonshining Bondurant brothers--Howard (Jason Clarke), the oldest; Forrest (Tom Hardy), the middle brother and the leader/brains of the operation; and Jack (Shia LaBeouf), the youngest and most eager to make his mark--are doing well until the local prosecutor brings in Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), a Chicago-based "Special Deputy" who's not there to clean up the operation, merely to help himself and the prosecutor profit from it.  They want their cut and the Bondurants aren't going to budge.  In between the war with the corrupt lawmen, Forrest gets involved with Maggie (Jessica Chastain), a former Chicago dance-hall girl who needed to get away to a quiet life and lands a job at the Bondurants' general store, and Jack courts local Amish girl Bertha (Mia Wasikowska).  One of the film's biggest problems is the paper-thin characterization of the women.  Yes, it's a film about men and their guns, but whether by Cave's scripting or the assembling of the film, Maggie and Bertha are both very ill-defined and not very believable.  Wasikowska, especially, is saddled with a character that just never seems real: the flirty, sassy Amish girl "who always had a rebellious streak in her," according to Jack.

Guy Pearce as the evil Charlie Rakes

Hardy's performance is strange but effective.  He plays Forrest as a very quiet, withdrawn type who's prone to bursts of savage violence when pushed, and he seems a lot like Nick Nolte, but with more grunting.  LaBeouf, who often comes off as, well, a total douche both onscreen and off, does some of his best work and it's a case of Hillcoat using LaBeouf's persona and/or limitations to the film's advantage.  Jack is a cocky, inexperienced, and occasionally arrogant whippersnapper who often seems in over his head, and LaBeouf embodies that perfectly.  It's similar to how everyone said Josh Hartnett was too bland a leading man for THE BLACK DAHLIA, when in fact, it as an inspired move by Brian De Palma where the character's flaws and weaknesses matched the audience's perception of the actor (Hartnett's casting was one of the few successful things about that film).  I haven't been a fan of LaBeouf in the past, but with LAWLESS and his recent casting in Lars Von Trier's next project, he seems to be taking steps toward being Taken Seriously, and he does a very solid, credible job here.  Gary Oldman has a small role as dapper big-city mobster Floyd Banner, who forms an uneasy alliance with Jack when it means taking on Rakes.  Which brings us to Guy Pearce as Charlie Rakes.  With his jet-black hair slicked back and his eyebrows shaved, sporting a bow-tie and dress gloves, too much cologne, and a broad Chicago accent through pursed lips, the prissy, sneering Rakes gives Pearce the kind of despicable, over-the-top bad guy that actors love to sink their teeth into.  Make no mistake, Pearce makes Rakes a memorably sadistic villain, but ultimately, it's the kind of villain that doesn't really belong in this movie, and by the end, he's too much of a cartoon, spouting the kind of snarky one-liners that seem more akin to a blockbuster action movie than a 1930s period piece.  This doesn't make it a bad movie, but no matter how much fun Pearce is to watch here--and he is a blast--these issues keep it from rising to the level of THE PROPOSITION.  I guess it's an issue of finding the right tone and staying consistent, and neither Hillcoat nor Cave are as disciplined on this project as they were on their last one.

Gary Oldman as big-time gangster Floyd Banner

THE PROPOSITION is known for its often shocking violence, and Hillcoat and Cave certainly maintain consistency in that area.  Whether it's Jack getting a savage beating from Rakes, or various throat slicings, bullets through flesh, shovels to the head, or Rakes getting a gift-wrapped package containing the severed testicles of one of his flunkies, LAWLESS has no shortage of wince-inducing violence and gore.  Also returning from the previous Hillcoat/Cave collaboration is cinematographer Benoit Delhomme, who brings the same kind of visually stunning beauty to drab, dusty surroundings, with the imagery matched perfectly to the rustic score by Cave and Warren Ellis, with vocal contributions from Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, and Mark Lanegan.  LAWLESS is not without problems, and it falls short of being a new classic of gangster cinema, but it's well-made, looks great, has good performances, and is much better than most of the studio product that normally gets dumped in theaters around Labor Day.

On DVD/Blu-ray: FIST OF THE REICH (2012)

FIST OF THE REICH
aka MAX SCHMELING
(Germany/Croatia - 2010; US release 2012)

Directed by Uwe Boll.  Written by Timo Berndt.  Cast: Henry Maske, Heino Ferch, Suzanne Wuest, Vladimir Weigl, Yoan Pablo Hernandez, Arved Birnbaum, Arthur Abraham, Enad Licina. (Unrated, 123 mins)

Absurdly retitled FIST OF THE REICH for its straight-to-DVD US release, MAX SCHMELING was a longtime pet project of bad movie icon Uwe Boll, long mocked for his awful video game film adaptations (ALONE IN THE DARK, etc) and various attention-seeking publicity stunts (shit-talking his actors on commentary tracks, challenging his detractors to boxing matches) that border on performance art.  After going several years without the German tax shelter loopholes that enabled him to spend large amounts of money to hire slumming name actors like Jason Statham, Ray Liotta, and Burt Reynolds (IN THE NAME OF THE KING) and Ben Kingsley (BLOODRAYNE), there's been a marked decline in not just the "entertainment" value of Boll's films, but also his budgets.  Lately, Boll's idea of a big name is getting Edward Furlong or Michael Pare.  These lower budgets inspired Boll for a while--1968 TUNNEL RATS and POSTAL were alright and the grim prison drama STOIC was actually, dare I say it, good.  But lately, Boll hasn't even been trying:  BLOODRAYNE: THE THIRD REICH was awful and the simultaneously-shot BLUBBERELLA was his career nadir, which for Uwe Boll, is really saying something.  A couple of years ago, Boll got a co-production deal with a Croatian company and shot at least four films back-to-back on the same trip to Zagreb:  MAX SCHMELING was his priority, but he also got BLOODRAYNE: THE THIRD REICH and BLUBBERELLA done next, and his still-unreleased-in-the-US Holocaust drama AUSCHWITZ was shot right after.



Yoan Pablo Hernandez as Joe Louis,
fighting Max Schmeling (Henry Maske)

Boll is delusional enough that he probably thought MAX SCHMELING was the kind of sincere, reverent biopic that would put him in the same league as Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese.  Schmeling (1905-2005) is arguably the most famous boxer in German history, one who became a major celebrity in early 1930s Germany due to his own success as well as his marriage to popular Czech-born German movie star Anny Ondra.  Schmeling came to America and fought (and befriended) the great Joe Louis (their friendship was the subject of the 2002 film JOE AND MAX) and other American boxers (Jack Sharkey, Max Baer) before retiring from boxing and serving as a paratrooper in the Luftwaffe during WWII, though he never supported Hitler or the Nazis.  He attempted a comeback after WWII (when he was already over 40), but it was short-lived and after leaving boxing for good, became an executive with Coca-Cola's German office and lived out his years as boxing royalty before he died in 2005 at the age of 99.

Schmeling's life is a fascinating one and deserves more than the tired, cliche-filled treatment it gets from Boll.  In a move straight out of a Bad Idea Jeans ad, Boll cast boxer and 1988 Summer Olympics East German gold medalist Henry Maske as Schmeling, which would've worked if Maske was an actor.  For the sake of a film, it's probably easier to have an actor pretend to be a boxer than it is for a boxer to pretend to be an actor.  Though Maske tries, he's hopelessly wooden, with a deer-in-the-headlights expression for much of the film.  All of the boxers in the film are played by actual boxers, which should theoretically make the boxing sequences exciting, right?  Wrong.  The ring scenes in MAX SCHMELING are badly choreographed and completely inept in their execution.  They're staged horribly and they're performed even worse.  And these are real boxers!

Suzanne Wuest as Max's actress wife Anny Ondra

Even worse are the cheap sets for the major bouts.  Regardless of where a match is taking place--Cleveland, Madison Square Garden, or Yankee Stadium--it's all obviously the same set and looks like a ring just put up in a gym somewhere.  And later in the film, when Max attempts his post-war comeback, it's amazing how all of the rinky-dink venues in which he's boxing all look like--you guessed it--"Madison Square Garden" and "Yankee Stadium," which I hate to break to Dr. Boll, was never an indoor stadium.  Also a distraction:  the film is in German with English subtitles (the DVD has a badly-dubbed English audio track), and it's never NOT in German with English subtitles.  Was Boll trying to go for a genuine 1930s feel here, where every nationality spoke the same language in movies?  If you want to make a believable story, don't have the Yankee Stadium ring announcer speaking German.  Why is Joe Louis speaking German?  Why are American boxers and their trainers speaking German to one another?   Now, I'm sure one could say the same thing about, say, Tom Cruise and a bunch of British actors speaking English while playing Nazi offers in VALKYRIE, but for some reason, it just seems very silly for Yankee Stadium officials to be speaking German in MAX SCHMELING.

Heino Ferch as trainer Max Manoch

No one in the cast really fares all that well (Vladimir Weigl as Max's cigar-chomping Jewish manager is a total boxing movie cliche, and you can't miss Boll's stick-poking by portraying this character as constantly broke, making a production out of patting his pockets when the check arrives, and waiting for Max to pay the bill).  The one bright spot is provided by veteran German actor Heino Ferch (DOWNFALL, THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX) as Max's trainer Max Manoch.  He not only brings some warmth and humanity to the film but he also makes a valiant effort to help the non-actor Maske.  He doesn't succeed, but you can see Ferch is trying and giving this film a lot more than he's going to get in return.  You can almost sense him giving up during the climax when Schmeling announces his retirement--in the middle of a bout, no less--and the script requires Ferch to lead the arena in--wait for it!--the slow clap!

Not the one used in the film, but another pic
of the real Max Schmeling, with Henry Maske.

Maybe Boll was sincere with what he wanted to accomplish with MAX SCHMELING, but it's just too predictable, too bullet-pointed in its plot structure (screenwriter Timo Berndt's research seems to have been limited to checking out Schmeling's Wikipedia page), and just too embarrassingly hokey and creaky.  It's hard to pull off making an "old" movie in today's cinematic world.  Spielberg did a great job of it with WAR HORSE.  But Uwe Boll is Uwe Boll.  And for this being such a long-planned dream project of his, is there any reasonable explanation for his bailing on the commentary 72 minutes in?  I didn't listen to all of it, but the film concludes with its best shot--a poignant and moving undated photo of an aged Schmeling in conversation with none other than Maske, probably sometime in late 1980s or early 1990s.  I switched over to the commentary to hear what Boll had to say about this photo.  Nothing.  He's not talking.  I kept toggling back through the chapters.  I finally heard his voice around the 60-minute mark, and after a few minutes of some typically self-aggrandizing comments about his IMDb critics, and how "I've made some really good movies!" he just says he's done and bids farewell. 

What the hell?  Who leaves the commentary track of their pet project just over halfway through the film?   Sure, this is a guy who regularly answers his cell phone and eats cheeseburgers during commentary tracks, but this is an ostensibly serious film.  Boll doesn't give a shit.  Why should we?  I guess we should just be thankful that he resisted the urge and waited until BLUBBERELLA to cast himself as Hitler.

"Here's what I think of sticking around for the whole commentary!"