On DVD/Blu-ray: THE BAG MAN (2014) and AT MIDDLETON (2014)

THE BAG MAN
(Bahamas - 2014)

This low-budget, Bahamas-financed thriller was shot in Louisiana in 2012 and released on 15 screens a month ago.  It plays like one of those forgettable post-PULP FICTION Tarantino knockoffs that flooded video stores well into the late 1990s. There's an added bit of THE USUAL SUSPECTS tossed in, along with some occasional would-be David Lynch eccentricity that provides a few fleeting amusing moments but mostly just feels rote and tired, with cinematography so dark and murky that it's often hard to tell what's going on.  Based on an unfilmed screenplay titled MOTEL (the film's original title) penned by veteran actor James Russo, THE BAG MAN is the debut of writer/director David Grovic, who manages to corral a pair of slumming big names like John Cusack and Robert De Niro for a sort-of THINGS TO DO IN NEW ORLEANS WHEN YOU'RE COASTING. By now, it's no surprise to see Cusack or De Niro in this kind of Redbox-ready clunker that keeps a roof over the heads of guys like Michael Madsen or Tom Sizemore or Val Kilmer or Christian Slater, but not that long ago, this would've been a major release in theaters nationwide.  De Niro's been taking mercenary jobs for a few years now (you think he even remembers making RED LIGHTS?), and once in a while, a SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK might accidentally happen, but Cusack's fall from the A-list has been shocking in its suddenness because nothing really brought it on.  It's not like he got old or was involved in a scandal or had a string of bombs or a reputation for being unusually difficult. What gives?  Who did he piss off?  What the hell happened to John Cusack?

Here, Cusack is Jack, a flunky for Dragna (De Niro), a powerful New York mobster prone to windy, overly-scripted speeches that reference the likes of Herman Hesse and Sun Tzu.  Dragna gives Jack an easy, quick-money assignment:  retrieve a bag, don't look inside, drive it to no-tell motel in an off-the-beaten-path podunk town, and wait for him to arrive.  Jack arrives at the motel with complications already in tow--a guy who tried to get the bag from him is now a corpse in his trunk.  The situation doesn't improve once he goes through the hassle of checking in (Crispin Glover is the twitchy, wheelchair-bound desk clerk):  Jack shoots some mystery men waiting for him in the next room, then finds himself paired up with Israeli hooker Rivka (Rebecca Da Costa), who's being hassled by a pair of vicious pimps, one an eye-patched Nick Fury lookalike (Sticky Fingaz), the other a bad-tempered Serbian dwarf (Martin Klebba). Bodies start piling up and the sheriff (Dominic Purcell, who's actually good here) keeps nosing around before Dragna makes his explosive reappearance to inform Jack why he was selected for this job, and it's a front-runner for 2014's dumbest plot twist. There's lots of would-be Tarantino dialogue ("If you could fuck any woman from history, who would it be?") and quirky touches (Glover sternly telling Cusack "Don't touch my wheelchair...it belonged to my dead mother!" gets a big laugh), and De Niro, hamming it up and sporting near-George Romero-eyeglass frames and a big silver pompadour in a role that seems like it was written with Christopher Walken in mind, has a long monologue that centers on an episode of FULL HOUSE, but those moments are disbursed in a stingy fashion throughout a drab, dull, stagy noir that's going nowhere fast, much like Cusack's career if he doesn't stop seemingly choosing his scripts at random.  (R, 109 mins)


AT MIDDLETON
(US - 2014)

If you happen upon AT MIDDLETON in its last five minutes, you might think you missed a powerful, heartfelt look at two people who make a connection over the course of a day and are forced by the circumstances and the realities of their lives to part ways and return to their respective spouses.  But if you watch the rest of the film leading up to that finale, you'll get a grating, phony, and pandering middle-aged rom-com filled with obvious jokes, cliched plot turns, cardboard characters, and some frequently atrocious acting, the kind of fawned-over festival favorite that ultimately gets dumped on 20 screens with little fanfare.  There's a good film to be made--one that could deftly balance drama and comedy--about parents of an only child facing an empty nest when that kid goes off to college, but until its surprisingly poignant ending, AT MIDDLETON takes the easy route to stale laughs and even staler drama nearly every time and has almost nothing substantive to offer. Taking place over one day at the mid-level, mostly average Middleton College, the type of place no one really wants to go but they just sort-of end up there, AT MIDDLETON finds heart surgeon George Hartman (Andy Garcia) and his son Conrad (Spencer Lofranco) arriving for a campus tour when George has a meet-cute with Edith Martin (Vera Farmiga), when she steals his parking spot.  Edith is there with her ferociouly ambitious daughter Audrey (Farmiga's little sister Taissa of AMERICAN HORROR STORY; there's a 21-year age difference but they look so much alike that the initiallly odd casting works).  George is a milquetoast sort who wears a bow tie, while Edith is brash, loud, and free-spirited and prone to embarrassing Audrey. Gee, is there any way opposites won't attract and that dweeby bow tie won't be undone before the end of the movie?

George and Edith get separated from the tour group and spend the afternoon on their own, stealing a couple of bikes, crashing a drama class, going into the music building and playing "Chopsticks," climbing the campus bell tower, watching THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, watching a young couple have public sex, running through a fountain, and generally making nuisances of themselves campus-wide. In the film's worst stretch, George and Edith blaze up with a couple of stoner pre-med students.  Can you do anything new with the concept of square parents getting high? As evidenced by a baked Garcia rapping "I'm a cardiac surgeon!" over some background reggae beats, the answer is a resounding "no."  It just gets worse when one of the stoner dudes starts talking about a diseased dog's distended ballsack, which leads to the mantra "The ballsack is life," which is at least a brief respite from the film busting its ass to make "feckless" a punchline.  A mannered Vera Farmiga, who appears to have prepped for the role by visualizing the worst of Diane Keaton and running with it, is really hard to take at times, and in the most unintentionally telling shot, she actually grabs a crutch and starts using it for no reason. The younger actors don't fare much better, though they aren't required to embarrass themselves quite as much. Still, Taissa Farmiga gets one of the worst lines after a spat with Conrad--when he puts his earbuds back in and walks away, she yells "Confusion has a lot of great soundtracks!"  What?  What does that even mean? Peter Riegert appears briefly as a cynical DJ named Boneyard Sims, who gives communications major Conrad some pointers.  The best performance is a two-scene bit from Tom Skerritt as a famed linguistics professor who advises the driven Audrey to slow down and use college to explore her options when she melts down after he declines her request to be her mentor.  Skerritt brings a quiet, scholarly dignity to the role that's completely at odds with the cookie-cutter histrionics going on almost everywhere else, and with about four minutes of screen time, he succeeds in making you wish this was a film about his character. As George and Edith grow closer over the day, they question the decisions they've made and the complacency that's set in, but AT MIDDLETON isn't interested in that.  It's the kind of movie where a staid, uptight guy loosening his bow tie and rapping after a couple of bong hits is supposed to be instantly hysterical.  And there's the moment when Edith starts crying because the day's coming to an end, and she looks at George with tears streaming down her face and says "I thought you fixed hearts!"  Really?  Pros like Garcia and Vera Farmiga read that line in director Adam Rodgers' script and said "Yep...sounds good!  Let's do this!"?  But then at the end, something happens.  It gets serious, and the final moments are genuinely emotional as the two parties go to their respective vehicles and get on the road home, presumably never to see each other again.  The expressions on Garcia's and Farmiga's faces convey the pain, the missed opportunities, the uncertainty over the future.  They're exhibiting the best acting they've done in the whole film and then you realize why: because they aren't talking.  (R, 100 mins)

In Theaters: NOAH (2014)

NOAH
(US - 2014)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky.  Written by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel. Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, Leo McHugh Carroll, Marton Csokas, Madison Davenport, voices of Nick Nolte, Frank Langella, Kevin Durand, Mark Margolis. (PG-13, 138 mins)

Biblical purists aren't going to go for Darren Aronofsky's revisionist take on Noah's Ark, which is faithful to the point of including Noah and an ark.  At times seeming like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Bible, Aronofsky's NOAH succeeds as epic cinema and as part of the bigger picture of the filmmaker's work as a whole. One of Aronofsky's recurrent themes, from PI (1998), REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000), THE FOUNTAIN (2006), THE WRESTLER (2008) all the way to BLACK SWAN (2010), is the obsessive, frequently maniacal, and all-consuming nature of their protagonists.  In that respect, Russell Crowe's Noah is cut from the same cloth as Ellen Burstyn's Sara Goldfarb and her diet pills in REQUIEM, Mickey Rourke's Randy "The Ram" Robinson in THE WRESTLER or Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers in BLACK SWAN. To some degree, Aronofsky's characters are perpetually in a head-on descent into self-destructive madness.

Such is the case with Noah, a descendant of Adam & Eve's third son Seth.  Though "God" is never invoked, "The Creator" supplies Noah with a vision of the world's flooded end as punishment for man's sins.  Noah is entrusted to build an ark, to which The Creator will direct all of the world's animals to begin life anew after its watery destruction.  Noah spends ten years building the massive ark with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), their sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll), and adopted daughter and Shem's love interest Ila (Emma Watson), left barren from injuries sustained in a massacre of her people and rescued by Noah and Naameh years earlier. He also gets assistance from a group of fallen angels known as The Watchers, stone giants who resemble ancient Transformers with the voices of Nick Nolte and Frank Langella.  As the animals make their way to the under-construction ark (and a steam potion puts them in a state of hibernation), warrior-king and Cain descendant Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) decides to kill distant relative Noah and orders his army to take control of the ark in an attempt to survive The Creator's extermination of mankind.

Winstone!

But the massive flood is just the beginning, as middle child Ham is resentful of his brother's love of Ila and angry enough to be privy to the manipulation of Tubal-Cain.  And as the situation grows more dire, Naameh's request of a gift from Noah's grandfather Methusaleh (Anthony Hopkins) disrupts Noah's single-minded drive and pushes him to the point of homicidal mania.  So yes, to say Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel take some liberties with the source material is an understatement.   But a straight Biblical adaptation was never in the cards anyway, even before Paramount added disclaimers to the advertising that stated as much.  Obviously, one's devotion and attachment to the story will likely dictate the response, but personally, as someone who has no commitment to the Bible and whose church of choice is the big screen, I found NOAH to be exciting, ambitious filmmaking.  With THE WRESTLER and BLACK SWAN, Aronofsky kept things relatively low-budget after the brilliant THE FOUNTAIN proved to be a costly (and mismarketed) flop for Warner Bros.  Given the power granted to bottom-line-obsessed execs and focus-group mouth-breathers, the fact that Paramount gave Aronofsky $125 million to make NOAH and largely left him alone to make the film he wanted to make and disregarded the test audience feedback and released the director's preferred cut is a major miracle itself.  Aronofsky had been toying with the idea of helming a mega-budget epic, but turned down MAN OF STEEL and left THE WOLVERINE during pre-production, opting instead to wait until the time was right for NOAH.

"What a fool belieeeeeeves...."

Aronofsky takes a huge gamble in making Noah extraordinarily unlikable and practically deranged in the second half as he'll stop at nothing to follow through with The Creator's request (as the years go on, Noah's hair grays and at times, Crowe resembles a feral Michael McDonald).  Utilizing CGI and some of the same sort of minimalist visual trickery seen in THE FOUNTAIN, Aronofsky creates a visually stunning world in NOAH. The sequence detailing the onset of the flood while the ark is under attack by Tubal-Cain's men is terrifying to watch and jaw-dropping in its scope and a must-see on a large screen. Some of the stuff involving The Watchers is a little goofy (but I'm always up for some Nick Nolte grumbling) and sometimes, it feels a little too derivative of the LORD OF THE RINGS, but in an era when most multiplex movies are bland, uninspired, and interchangeable, NOAH is unique even when it's borrowing an occasional element here and there.  It's the strangest Biblical epic in years and so much of it could've gone so horribly awry, that even on those rare instances where something doesn't work, you're still admiring the chutzpah of the whole endeavor.  Even if you vehemently disagree with the out-of-the-box approach Aronofsky takes--and nothing's going to change your mind--the fact that NOAH even exists is proof that Hollywood might still give a shit about artistic vision.

Cult Classics Revisited: OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) (1982)

OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO)
(Spain/France - 1982)

Written and directed by Max H. Boulois. Cast: Tony Curtis, Joanna Pettet, Max H. Boulois, Ramiro Oliveros, Nadiuska, Gerard Barray, Fernando Sancho, Aldo Sambrell, Sara Mora, Tom Hernandez. (Unrated, 86 mins)

Martinique-born jack-of-all-trades Max-Henri Boulois has dabbled in a bit of everything over his career: he was some sort of "French athletics prodigy" in the early 1960s before embarking on his career as an author and political commentator.  He also found time in the 1970s to record some albums under the name "Max B," parlaying whatever notoriety that brought into a few supporting roles under his "Max B" moniker, which led to a three-film run as independent auteur Max H. Boulois, self-financing, writing, directing, and starring in films under his Spain-based "M.B. Diffusion S.A." production banner.  Boulois' filmmaking efforts are little more than clumsy, Martinique-shot vanity projects that are among the most obscure in all of exploitation cinema:  1980's BIG GAME, aka MAD MEX: THE BLACKFIGHTER and the 1981 casino heist thriller BLACK JACK never scored a US release, though by the time of BLACK JACK, Boulois was able to afford real actors like the legendary Peter Cushing and former THUNDERBALL Bond girl Claudine Auger.  But Boulois' magnum opus is his ill-conceived, budget-starved 1982 effort OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO), a modern updating that turns the Shakespeare tragedy into an action film set in an unnamed African country, with Boulois' General Othello leading a band of guerrila fighters against the rule of a tyrannical despot. Shakespeare updates are nothing new in movies, but you know you're in for something special when the opening credits misspell Shakespeare's name.

Like his previous films, OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) is pretty much a Boulois home movie, with barely-audible dialogue often drowned-out by the overbearing use of Beethoven selections on the soundtrack.  The only real reason to sit through it is to check out a hammy Tony Curtis booze-and-coke-sweating his way through his performance as the duplicitous Col. Iago, Othello's racist second-in-command who plots his superior's downfall.  Resentful of Othello and his marriage to humanitarian aid worker Desdemona "DeDe" Fergusson (Joanna Pettet), the daughter of a powerful US senator (Tom Hernandez),  Iago sets in motion a complex plan to destroy Othello and Major Cassius (Ramiro Oliveros), and usurp control of the guerilla fighters himself.  Curtis sports a ten-gallon hat in a couple of scenes for no reason, and elsewhere rants and raves, likely ad-libbing lines where he expresses his disgust at Othello's "chimpanzee hands, those thick lips, and that smell" all over the privileged, white Desdemona (almost every white male is a vile racist, right down to Sen. Fergusson, outraged over his daughter's marriage, complaining that Othello practices witchcraft and probably "cast a spell" on Desdemona). Boulois doesn't use much of the Bard's actual writing, but when he does, as in one scene where Curtis delivers an Iago soliloquy, it comes off as hokey and awkward amidst the modern vernacular. OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) came at a time in Curtis' career when his substance abuse problems essentially made him an unemployable pariah in Hollywood, resulting in appearances in some truly dreadful films like Ulli Lommel's BRAIN WAVES (1983) and the Alexander Salkind fiasco WHERE IS PARSIFAL? (1984).  As far as he could be from the likes of SOME LIKE IT HOT and SPARTACUS, desperate for work and probably figuring he could score some primo blow in Martinique, Curtis appears to be invested in this and even showed up at Cannes in 1982 to shill for it, going so far as to sit down with Roger Ebert to discuss it. Cannon chief Menaham Golan acquired the distribution rights to Boulois' film, but didn't do much with it other than dump it in a few foreign territories under their "Cannon International" banner. They never released it in US theaters and it never turned up on video, though it can be found on the bootleg and torrent circuit.

OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO)'s cult status is minor, due largely to the depressing presence of a slumming Curtis, reduced to appearing in a Eurocine co-production that looks like the typically slipshod Jess Franco films that the French company was financing around the same time. In keeping with the Eurocine tradition, shots vacillate from night to day in the same scenes, while other scenes end abruptly, sometimes in mid-sentence, there's little continuity, and the dialogue--Curtis and Pettet appear to be speaking on-set; Boulois and the others sound dubbed--often ranges from garbled to completely inaudible. There's little sense of pacing, and even with spaghetti western stalwarts Fernando Sancho and Aldo Sambrell in supporting roles, the whole thing is a real snooze when Curtis is offscreen. But such is the life of the cult film enthusiast. Bad-movie fanatics and connoisseurs of trashy cinema are always willing to explore films of the "Does this piece of shit really exist?!" variety, and on that front, OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) doesn't disappoint.   What can I say?  This is the life we've chosen.

Joanna Pettet during her 1970s heyday

Pettet, whose career got off to a promising start in the late 1960s with Sidney Lumet's THE GROUP, the 007 spoof CASINO ROYALE, and Peter Yates' ROBBERY, doesn't embarrass herself, though it's hard to believe she wasn't entertaining better offers than this or another vanity project around the same time, co-starring in the drive-in thriller DOUBLE EXPOSURE, where producer Michael Callan cast schlubby character actor Michael Callan as a fashion photographer surrounded by a bunch of models who can't wait to sleep with Michael Callan.  The beautiful, British-born Pettet was a constant presence on American TV in the 1970s but for some reason, she never made it big. Not long after her OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) triumph, she had a short but acclaimed run on KNOTS LANDING, followed by a few other appearances of no significance.  Pettet quit acting after a harrowing experience in late 1989, when she was among the hostages held by Filipino rebels plotting a coup against then-President Corazon Aquino.  She was in Manila shooting the low-budget Roger Corman/Cirio H. Santiago production TERROR IN PARADISE and the insurgents took over the hotel where she was staying and the area around it as they closed in on the Presidential residence at the Malacanan Palace.  Pettet managed to escape and decided that easy money in shit movies wasn't worth it anymore.  The film was unreleased until 1995, the same year Pettet and ex-husband Alex Cord (AIRWOLF's "Archangel") lost their 26-year-old son to a heroin overdose.  She was a companion to the great British actor Alan Bates in the final days before his 2003 death from pancreatic cancer, but beyond that, the now-71-year-old Pettet has completely retired from public life.  She deserves to be better-known.

The hulking Boulois has a bit of screen presence but isn't much of an actor, though as far as self-financed, would-be auteurs go, he's not as bad as, say, John De Hart in GETEVEN, Tommy Wiseau in THE ROOM, or Phil Pitzer in EASY RIDER: THE RIDE BACK. Despite all the ingredients for some outstanding Cinema du Batshit, OTHELLO (THE BLACK COMMANDO) is a pretty dry and tedious affair, very rarely going as bonkers as its misbegotten concept and incompetent execution would imply. After the world failed to embrace his "Sheakespeare" interpretation, Boulois abandoned movies and music and returned to journalism, writing several non-fiction books and being a regular French TV presence in the coverage of European and Middle East politics.  His website hasn't been updated since 2011.



(special thanks to Marty McKee for sending me his copy of this--you sure you don't want it back, Marty?)

In Theaters: SABOTAGE (2014)

SABOTAGE
(US - 2014)

Directed by David Ayer.  Written by Skip Woods and David Ayer.  Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington, Olivia Williams, Mireille Enos, Terrence Howard, Harold Perrineau, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, Max Martini, Martin Donovan, Troy Garity, Maurice Compte, Kevin Vance, Michael Monks, Gary Grubbs, Mark Schlegel. (R, 109 mins)

Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to movies after a decade in politics has largely found the action icon in self-deprecation mode, poking fun at his age in the sadly neglected THE LAST STAND and cutting loose while Sylvester Stallone played his straight man in ESCAPE PLAN.  Those two films, along with his appearances in the EXPENDABLES outings, showed a fully self-aware Schwarzenegger who seemed to be happy just making formula action movies again. Unfortunately, if the word "expendables" isn't in the title, formula action movies with '80s action stars aren't doing very well in the 2010s, so Schwarzenegger tries something different with SABOTAGE, teaming with writer/director David Ayer, who's made a name for himself with tough, gritty L.A. cop thrillers--he scripted the great TRAINING DAY (2001) and the underrated DARK BLUE (2002), directed the frequently absurd STREET KINGS (2008), and both wrote and directed END OF WATCH (2012). Ayer's had some stumbles--his 2006 directing debut HARSH TIMES features what's thus far the only bad Christian Bale performance--but the idea of collaborating with Schwarzenegger had some interesting potential. Unfortunately, SABOTAGE is an almost total bust with only the hints of a better film occasionally peaking through the rubble.  I like the idea of an aged Schwarzenegger exploring the dark side of a character who's spent his life in law enforcement and has seen far too much horrible shit, and that comes through in a powerfully effective closing shot that strongly suggests Ayer might've been going for something meaningful, but until then, SABOTAGE is filled with tired cliches, obnoxiously cartoonish heroes, and illogical plotting.  It seems torn between being a Schwarzenegger vehicle and an Ayer film, clumsily reaching a happy medium that comes off as an awkward, compromised attempt at the most mediocre of both worlds.

Schwarzenegger is John "Breacher" Wharton, a veteran Atlanta-based DEA badass who runs a crew of hardcore, hypermacho, undercover dude-bros who play by their own rules and look like the types of guys who go to metal shows just to beat the shit out of people in the mosh pit.  They fuckin' live on the edge 24/7, motherfucker. They fuckin' work hard and they fuckin' play harder.  They make SONS OF ANARCHY look like fuckin' pussies and they've always got each others' backs, bro, because that's all fuckin' matters in this world. It's not just a fuckin' job...they fuckin' live it, man.  It's what they fuckin' do. They fuckin' crush fuckin' cartels, they fuckin' get shit done, and they fuckin' answer to fuckin' no one.  Then they fuckin' go to fuckin' titty bars and they fuckin' make it rain, slammin' fuckin' shots, fuckin' smashin' bottles, and kickin' the fuckin' shit outta some fuckin' pussy bouncers, just because they fuckin' can. They're the fuckin' best at what they do.  They got fuckin' names like Breacher, Monster (Sam Worthington), Sugar (Terrence Howard), Grinder (Joe Manganiello), Neck (Josh Holloway), Pyro (Max Martini), Tripod (Kevin Vance), and Smoke (Mark Schlegel).  But the fuckin' sickest of all is Monster's old lady Lizzy (Mireille Enos), who's like, just totally fuckin' off the chain, bro.

"Get up, come on, get down with the sickness!"

Breacher's still getting over his wife and son being murdered by a Guatemalan cartel boss when he and his crew orchestrate a $10 million heist of drug money to set themselves up for life.  The money goes missing and the Feds are on to them, but after laying low for six months, they get nothing and have no choice but to send Breacher and his team back in the field.  Shortly after, members of the crew start getting offed one by one in assorted gruesome ways that mimic the revenge tactics of the cartel:  one is smashed to pieces by a train, another is disemboweled, gutted, and nailed to the ceiling.  Hard-nosed Atlanta homicide detective Brentwood (Olivia Williams) and her partner Jackson (Harold Perrineau) are in charge of the investigation and get no cooperation from the crew (who, naturally, want to fuckin' deal with this in their own fuckin' way, telling Brentwood--what else--"Welcome to our world"), though a reluctant Breacher slowly begins to warm up to her.  As the body count rises and a drug raid reveals they aren't being targeted, Breacher and the team lose trust in one another with the pending exposure of their corruption and the increasing likelihood that the killer is one of their fuckin' own.

Ayer doesn't shy away from graphically gory carnage, making SABOTAGE an unusually grim Schwarzenegger film.  But Ayer and co-writer/screenwriting pariah Skip Woods (A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD) never really establish a consistency between a brutal DEA thriller and an Arnold actioner. Schwarzenegger seems up to the challenge of playing a morally-conflicted, burned-out DEA field op whose years on the job mixed with unspeakable tragedy have prompted him to go rogue, but Breacher and his colleagues are some of the most absurdly posturing, gratingly repulsive heroes to hit screens in ages.  They act like the kind of roid-raging, fart-obsessed Beavis & Butt-heads who go to public places just to yell, start fights and break shit. They're the kind of no-rules renegades who leave a trail of dead bodies and just strut away from the scene of a meth-stronghold massacre, telling the cops "Cleanup, aisle 3."  It's hard to care about Monster and Lizzy's imploding marriage, since it's obvious these two sacks of shit were made for each other. Enos is a fine actress, but she's completely over-the-top here, and not in a good way (see Eva Green in 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE). You can tell Ayer handled the writing in the scenes with Williams and Perrineau, because their rapport and ribbing with one another expertly conveys the kind of lived-in comfort and trust of two veteran cops who've worked together for some time.  The scenes with these two are far more interesting than anything involving Breacher and his crew of goonish idiots (Williams also gets the film's best line, telling a posturing Grinder "I hate to interrupt your bro-down, but..."). I also liked some amusing asides here and there, like Breacher being under constant surveillance during his suspension, bringing Pop Tarts to the Feds parked outside his house and sharing his Netflix DVDs with them.

As an actor, Schwarzenegger has overcome the obstacle of his thick Austrian accent with his larger-than-life screen presence and sheer charisma--when he plays a Texas sheriff in RAW DEAL or a US Special Forces vet in COMMANDO or a big-city cop or even a KINDERGARTEN COP, he's Arnold and you just roll with it, no matter how inherently absurd his casting may be.  That's why he's awesome.  But with SABOTAGE, it's the first time it feels like Schwarzenegger is out of place.  Maybe it's the conflicted script, maybe it's the ill-fitting suits he wears in the DEA offices, or maybe it's his age, but for whatever reason, it's hard to buy the Breacher that he's selling here.  He doesn't look comfortable in the action scenes, and while it's commendable that he isn't going full Seagal and checking out entirely while his stuntman does the heavy lifting, Arnold just doesn't move like he used to.  He looks oddly slumped when he's carrying a shotgun and barging through doors.  It's perfectly understandable--no matter how great of shape he's in, he's still 66 years old and it's not 1990 anymore.  There's no mention made of his character's age, but maybe it would've been smart to work it in, especially given the implications of the closing scene.  But as it is, for the first time since his post-Governator comeback, he actually comes across as too old for this shit.  Perhaps if SABOTAGE were as relatively lighthearted as THE LAST STAND or ESCAPE PLAN, the miscasting wouldn't come off as so glaring.  But that again speaks to how SABOTAGE is constantly working at cross purposes.  It's Schwarzenegger taking on dark, serious material, but it's at least a decade too late, and the filmmakers feel too much of an obligation to make it an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, and as a result, it's a complete mess that unfortunately feels like it should've gone straight to DVD.  Ultimately, the basic center of the film--the mystery of who's offing the crew and why--doesn't really hold up to any serious scrutiny.  Also, SABOTAGE can't even follow the advice of its own one-sheet ("Leave no loose ends"):  what was the point of introducing Troy Garity's bitter, whistleblowing Fed only to drop him completely after two scenes? And if Breacher's crew followed their directive to blow up all the money in their initial raid, then how did the DEA suits know $10 million was missing?  That's got "Skip Woods" written all over it.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE GREAT BEAUTY (2013); THE PAST (2013); and THE GRANDMASTER (2013)

THE GREAT BEAUTY

(Italy/France - 2013)

The recent Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film is equal parts majestic and ponderous, profound and obvious.  It's often stunningly beautiful, and purposefully reminiscent of the legendary likes of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti.  Like its characters, THE GREAT BEAUTY overstays its welcome and probably would've been more effective had there been maybe 20-30 minutes less of it, but the things in it that work, work extremely well.  Directed and co-written by acclaimed Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino (IL DIVO), coming off his little-seen, Weinstein-buried English-language debut THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, which featured Sean Penn in probably the strangest role of his career, THE GREAT BEAUTY could almost be seen as the later years of Marcello Mastroianni's LA DOLCE VITA character.  Sorrentino's favorite actor, the chameleon-like Toni Servillo (think of him as Italy's Daniel Day-Lewis), stars as Jep Gambardella, a 65-year-old journalist who's always seen where it's important for society's elite to be seen, where people are famous for being famous.  Jep wrote a legendary novel 40 years ago and never wrote another, instead choosing to pen puff pieces and live the celebrity life ("I wrote one book 40 years ago and no bookstore carries it!"). He's no longer able to mask his contempt for his assignments, openly mocking interview subjects like pretentious performance artist Talia Concept (Anita Kravos), whose entire schtick is stripping nude and head-butting a concrete wall.  He's grown increasingly misanthropic with age and can always be counted on to deliver a scorched-earth screed if he's prodded enough (his dressing down of a friend who chastises his "novellette" over drinks at a party provides some unforgettable cringe).  When he's informed by the devastated husband (Massimo De Francovich) of his teenage first love that she's recently passed and her diary reveals she carried a torch for him for nearly 50 years, it forces Jep to re-evaluate his life and what's he's done with it.  He feels emotion where a sardonic crack once sufficed.  He considers writing that second novel and trying to find the promise that once was, saying "I'm at the age where I can't waste any more time doing the things I don't want to do."

As a basic point-A to point-B plot, THE GREAT BEAUTY is hardly innovative.  Where Sorrentino succeeds is with the incredibly poetic way that the film plays out. Showcasing marvelous tracking shots, sweeping crane shots, and Kubrickian framing, it's LA DOLCE VITA with the hypnotic look of Alain Resnais' LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD and the sense of melancholy for the gone forever past of Visconti's THE LEOPARD.  It's a film that mourns the past, lost youth, lost time, missed opportunities, and fading memories, as Jep, from his spacious penthouse apartment overlooking the Coliseum, surrounds himself with the frustrating vapidity of a modern Rome that doesn't understand the beauty it once was. When we first meet Jep, it's at his birthday party, a garish rave populated by the vulgar, the cretinous, and the insufferable:  Eurocult icon Serena Grandi appears as a bloated, haggard, coke-snorting ex-reality TV star, now reduced to jumping out of Jep's cake, and one pompous woman huffs "I wouldn't know her...I've never owned a TV," to which her sighing friend replies "You remind me of that at least once a day." Sorrentino gives the film a freeform structure that sometimes causes it to drag, especially in the second half, but the cinematography is gorgeous and the great Servillo is outstanding as always. (Unrated, 141 mins)


THE PAST
(France/Italy - 2013) 

Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi ventures to Europe for this searing drama that functions as somewhat of a French-language companion piece to his 2011 Best Foreign Film Oscar-winner A SEPARATION.  Like that film, THE PAST has lives intersecting in unforeseen ways with consequences the players never see coming.  Farhadi has demonstrated his ability at building strong, believable, and very human characters in situations where all of the details are distributed in a deliberate but never hokey fashion.  There are surprises and shocking revelations in THE PAST, but it's very organic in its construction and Farhadi avoids the easy pitfall of hackneyed melodrama.  THE PAST is an excellent film but, through no fault of its own, it can't help but feel like a bit of a retread after A SEPARATION, even though its characters aren't in exactly the same scenario.  Ali Mosaffa stars as Ahmad, an Iranian man who, in the midst of a severe depression, left Paris, his French wife Marie (Berenice Bejo of THE ARTIST) and her two daughters from a previous relationship, Lucie (Pauline Burlet) and Lea (Jeanne Jestin).  Four years later, he returns from Iran at Marie's request to finalize their divorce.  She's now involved with Samir (Tahar Rahim), who's moved in with his five-year-old son Fouad (Elyes Aguis).  Ahmad doesn't expect to walk into a quietly dysfunctional powderkeg of tension, resentment, and other unresolved issues as he's drawn into the various conflicts existing in the household.  Lucie is now a rebellious teenager who regards Ahmad like a father and objects to Samir being in their lives as another of her mother's men who will "just go away after a few years." Samir's wife has been in a coma for eight months for reasons that may or may not involve Samir and Marie having an affair.  Fouad has a playmate in young Lea but is angry that he isn't living at his own house and that he has to share a bunk bed with Ahmad.

As with A SEPARATION, Farhadi slowly reveals layers of the story, methodically filling in the audience on the history of the characters and refusing to paint things in mere black and white.  Almost everyone--Ahmad, Marie, Samir, and Lucie--provoke shifting alliances with the viewer.  Is Marie a homewrecker?  Does Ahmad relish the turmoil in which he finds himself?  Though you may question the decisions they make, no one is completely right and no one is completely wrong, but they're unmistakably human and deeply flawed.  It's hard to not compare THE PAST to the masterpiece that was A SEPARATION, but it's filled with powerful moments, committed performances (as he did with little Kimia Hosseini in A SEPARATION, Farhadi gets a movie-stealing performance out of a child actor, in this case the amazing young Aguis) , and Farhadi isn't afraid to let takes linger to the point where you're as uncomfortable as the characters.  Witness the scene where Ahmad and Samir find themselves left alone at the kitchen table and just sit there, not with animosity--they aren't by any means chummy but they seem to realize they have no reason to dislike one another--but with the shrugging realization that they don't really have anything to say.  (PG-13, 130 mins)


THE GRANDMASTER
(US/Hong Kong/China/France/Netherlands - 2013)

Legendary Wing Chun martial-artist and Bruce Lee mentor Ip Man (1893-1972) has been the subject of numerous films and a TV series in the last several years, virtually saturating the Asian market to become their version of Italian DJANGO westerns and French films about Coco Chanel. Donnie Yen starred in two hugely popular but highly fictionalized accounts, IP MAN (2008) and IP MAN 2 (2010) before declaring he was done because the Ip Mania was getting out of hand (he seems to have had a change of heart since he recently signed on for a third IP MAN, due out in 2015).  There were also the competing IP MAN films THE LEGEND IS BORN: IP MAN (2010) with Dennis To, and IP MAN: THE FINAL FIGHT (2013) with Anthony Wong (because of its title, this is often mistaken as a sequel to the two Yen films), as well as the Chinese TV series IP MAN, which premiered in 2013 and starred Kevin Cheng in the title role.  2013 also saw the release of the most ambitious IP MAN project: Wong Kar Wai's THE GRANDMASTER, a more arthouse take on the legendary figure that was nonetheless controversially recut by US distributor Harvey Weinstein and sold as an action-centered kung-fu epic. Wong (CHUNGKING EXPRESS, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) had already released two versions, running 130 minutes and 123 minutes.  Weinstein--allegedly with Wong's involvement--overhauled the film to 108 minutes for the US, adding some English captions to give a sense of perspective and exposition to American audiences not necessarily familiar with the Sino-Japanese conflicts that impacted Ip Man's life in the 1930s, and while that's helpful, the US release also makes further edits and rearranges some sequences.  Wong wrote that it was a chance to "re-shape it" for a different audience while at the same time admitting that his 130-minute cut is his preferred version prepared with "precision and perfect balance."

Precision and perfect balance are not among the feelings you get watching the American cut of THE GRANDMASTER.  It's a dazzling, sweeping epic (Philippe Le Sourd's cinematography got a well-deserved Oscar nomination), but its storytelling is muddled and confusing, even with the addition of English expository text and additional voiceover from Tony Leung's Ip Man.  The purpose of Weinstein ordering the re-edit was to make Wong's film more linear, but the timeframe still jumps all over the place and there's still enough flashbacks and side stories that you're frequently unaware what year certain parts of the story are taking place.  Covering Ip Man's life from 1936 to the early 1950s, Ip Man establishes himself as a great martial arts philosopher and practitioner and Grandmaster and is forced to leave Foshan after the Japanese invasion in 1938.  The unwieldy plot also involves disputes between northern and southern China, traitorous Chinese martial artists selling out to the Japanese invaders, Ip Man's competitive rivalry/unrequited love with Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang), the daughter of Master Gong Yutian (Wang Quigxiang), and how the Gong legacy is defamed and usurped by the treacherous Ma San (Zhang Jin) before Ip Man is forced to relocate to Hong Kong in 1950, where the film even tangentially involves Pu Yi, the subject of Bernardo Bertolucci's Oscar-winning THE LAST EMPEROR (1987).  What's odd--at least in the US cut--is how the last third of the film has Ip Man essentially step aside as a peripheral character in his own story.  Zhang's Gong Er becomes the center of the plot in an extended flashback that details her reclaiming of the Gong dynasty in a brilliantly-shot fight sequence with Ma San, as Wong even works in an opium den sequence that's a straight-up homage to Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984), right down to the use of Ennio Morricone's famed "Deborah's Theme." Even in this truncated form, THE GRANDMASTER looks incredible--Wong really loves shooting epic fights in wind, rain, and snow--and the performances of Leung and Zhang are excellent, but there was enough of a cineaste backlash over this recut version that a domestic special edition Blu-ray release of Wong's 130-minute version is inevitable, so why not wait for that?  (PG-13, 108 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)

On DVD/Blu-ray: MEET HIM AND DIE (1976)

MEET HIM AND DIE
(Italy/West Germany - 1976)

Directed by Franco Prosperi.  Written by Peter Berling, Antonio Cucca, Claudio Fragasso, Alberto Marras. Cast: Ray Lovelock, Martin Balsam, Elke Sommer, Riccardo Cucciolla, Ettore Manni, Heinz Domez, Ernesto Colli, Peter Berling.  (Unrated, 94 mins)

Raro USA has done a fine job bringing cult classic 1970s poliziotteschi and other Eurocult gems to DVD and Blu-ray over the last few years, frequently in comprehensive, near Criterion-level packaging (their first box set of Fernando Di Leo crime films, featuring CALIBER 9, THE ITALIAN CONNECTION, THE BOSS, and RULERS OF THE CITY is absolutely essential).  There have been stumbles along the way:  a pressing error caused the entire run of Massimo Dallamano's THE SECRET OF DORIAN GRAY (1970) to be recalled, the DVD release of Di Leo's TO BE TWENTY (1978) had a glitch that causes it to skip the last chapter of the film, forcing you to go to the chapter selections to see the end of the movie, and their recent Blu-ray release of Umberto Lenzi's NIGHTMARE CITY (1980) has been knocked for its subpar transfer that doesn't even look as good as the decade-plus-old Anchor Bay DVD.  You can't knock them all out of of the park, but their edition of MEET HIM AND DIE is an unmitigated disaster of shit-the-bed proportions.

The movie itself is fine--it's not the best polizia and it's not where one should start when exploring the subgenre, but it's an entertaining action thriller.  The plot is filled with shootouts, double-crosses, and some nicely-done chase sequences.  Massimo (Ray Lovelock of LIVE LIKE A COP, DIE LIKE A MAN) is busted for holding up a jewelry store and sent to prison.  It's revealed very early that he's actually an undercover cop, ostensibly posing as a criminal to help orchestrate an escape for incarcerated mob boss Giulianelli (Martin Balsam), who's still overseeing his smuggling operation from the inside and the cops know there's bigger fish to catch.  But Massimo's ultimate goal is to use Giulianelli to get to Perrone (Ettore Manni), who employs the two goons who shot and paralyzed his mother.  From the action to the memorable score by Ubaldo Continiello to--if you watch the English track--the appearances of all the usual suspects in the dubbing world (Balsam--the same year he co-starred in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN--dubs himself, while Lovelock is voiced by Ted Rusoff, and Elke Sommer turns up about an hour in and is dubbed by Pat Starke), MEET HIM AND DIE is a perfectly serviceable polizia.  There's nothing new here, but fans will find a lot to enjoy.

That is, if they can get past the botched transfer.  Whether it was Raro's doing or them just working with what they had, the DNR (digital noise reduction) here is off-the-charts.  It's as bad as the infamous PREDATOR Blu-ray.  In the long shots, it actually looks sort-of OK, but close-ups of the actors--and director Franco Prosperi (more on him in a bit) uses a lot of close-ups--look like they're coated in a waxy glaze, all lines and definition completely removed as everyone just has a smooth, lifeless appearance, surrounded by garish, overly-bright colors.  All the grain has been removed, with a fake grain sort-of "hovering" over the image (Blue Underground's Blu-ray release of Dario Argento's THE CAT O'NINE TAILS is a horrific example of this), and it's most noticeable whenever Riccardo Cucciolla (as Massimo's boss) is on screen--watch how the designs on his loud sport jackets sort of move.  Sure, there are some moments where it's not awful-looking, but for the most part, this is a horribly ugly transfer and indicative of everything people misunderstand about the concept of high-definition.  This is not how movies should look. This is not how film looks, especially when it's one from the mid-1970s.  It's anti-HD.

As if the transfer and the absurd levels of DNR weren't bad enough, Raro completely embarrasses itself with the accompanying booklet.  There's an essay about the film by polizia expert Mike Malloy, who recently directed the documentary EUROCRIME, which looks at the genre and interviews virtually every still-living actor who appeared in them.  Malloy obviously knows his shit, and his essay, as well as a video segment in the bonus features where he talks about the movie, the actors, and the subgenre itself, are nicely-done (I liked his description of the Italians latching on to what was popular--peplum, spaghetti westerns, crime movies--and "strip-mining" it until everyone was completely exhausted with it).  But there's also a two-page bio of Prosperi and an accompanying filmography, and here lies the problem:  as strange as it seems, there were two Franco Prosperi's working in Italian cinema from the 1960s to the 1980s. The MEET HIM AND DIE Prosperi was a genre and exploitation journeyman who dabbled in a little of everything over his mostly unexceptional career (007 ripoffs in the '60s, horror films in the '70s, and CONAN ripoffs in the '80s).  The two-page bio is for the other Franco Prosperi, best known for co-directing, with Gualtiero Jacopetti, the MONDO CANE documentaries.  The filmography listed after the bio?  That's for the correct (MEET HIM AND DIE) Franco Prosperi.  Now, I don't expect the general public to know (or care) that there are two very different Franco Prosperi's--I didn't know until a few years ago and even the most hardcore Eurotrash disciple has gotten them confused at some point in their travels.  But shouldn't someone at Raro maybe not fallen asleep at the wheel?  Was anyone paying attention?  Was anyone in charge of proofreading or fact-checking?  Did they even watch the video that Malloy shot for them?  Because he specifically mentions the "two different Franco Prosperi's" phenomenon and he specifically says "The director of MEET HIM AND DIE is not the guy who made MONDO CANE." Can you imagine Criterion ever making a gaffe that egregious?  Did anyone not find it odd that the bio of Prosperi made no mention of the film in which it's packaged?  Malloy is the only credited author of the booklet, but it's obvious from his video segment that he didn't write the bio, since he knows it's not the correct Prosperi.  So, between the shitty picture quality and the careless packaging, is there any reason at all to get behind this tire fire of a Blu-ray release?  The relatively obscure MEET HIM AND DIE (which may have had some brief US exposure under the title RISKING) is far from essential, but even the worst polizia deserves better than what it gets here:  a release that does nothing for the film, the genre, either Franco Prosperi, or Raro USA's sinking reputation.  This whole package is riddled with the kind of bush-league fuck-ups that make you hesitant to purchase anything else they release in the future.  Get it together, guys.

In Theaters/On VOD: BLOOD TIES (2014)

BLOOD TIES
(France/US - 2013; US release 2014)

Directed by Guillaume Canet.  Written by Guillaume Canet and James Gray.  Cast: Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, James Caan, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, Matthias Schoenaerts, Lili Taylor, Noah Emmerich, John Ventimiglia, Domenick Lombardozzi, Yul Vazquez, Richard Petrocelli, Jamie Hector, Eve Hewson, Griffin Dunne, Olek Krupa.  (R, 129 mins)

Since his 1994 debut LITTLE ODESSA, writer/director James Gray's films have always felt out of place with contemporary cinema.  Initially lumped in with the post-RESERVOIR DOGS, Tarantino indie scene, the not-prolific Gray has established himself as more of a Sidney Lumet disciple with his gritty, character-driven, low-key NYC period pieces that frequently involve cops, criminals, and the blurred lines that separate them (most notably his underrated 2007 gem WE OWN THE NIGHT, set in the late '80s with connected club owner Joaquin Phoenix taking on his Russian mob friends after they shoot his cop brother Mark Wahlberg).  BLOOD TIES seems like the movie Gray's wanted to make for the last 20 years, but alas, he only co-wrote it, as TELL NO ONE director Guillaume Canet fashions this French production as a loving throwback to the tough, hard-edged NYC cinema of the 1970s.  It's a triumph of production design and visual detail as Canet and the crew flawlessly recreate 1970s Brooklyn, augmented by subtle examples of seamless, non-intrusive CGI done right.  If only as much attention had been paid to the script.

A remake of Jacques Maillot's 2008 film LES LIENS DU SANG (RIVALS), which was set in 1979 Paris, BLOOD TIES opens in 1974 Brooklyn (with a bloody, brain-splattering shootout accompanied by the Ace Frehley version of "New York Groove," which wasn't recorded until 1978 but let's not nitpick because it's a terrific scene) and offers the old standby of the just-paroled con (Clive Owen as Chris) trying to stay straight. He's constantly butting heads with his resentful brother, NYPD cop Frank (Billy Crudup in the role Canet himself played in RIVALS), who gets him a job at a garage where he meets and falls for cashier Natalie (Mila Kunis), while trying to connect with his two kids and dealing with his bitter, hooker ex Monica (Marion Cotillard).  Meanwhile, Frank has arrested low-level mook Scarfo (BULLHEAD's Matthias Schoenaerts), who owns a van that's been tied to a rash of robberies.  Scarfo claims he's innocent and the whole thing is a set-up by a vengeful Frank, who used to be involved with his wife Vanessa (Zoe Saldana).  As Chris struggles to stay afloat after a potential deal to open a snack stand with his ex-con buddy Mike (Domenick Lombardozzi) falls apart, he eventually accepts a job from mob-connected bar owner Fabio (Yul Vazquez) to rub out three rivals with the Famous Last Words caveat "I just wanna get back on my feet...I'm not gonna make a habit of this."  Of course, one job leads to another and as the cops continue to keep an eye on Chris, who buys Natalie a beautiful engagement ring and is suddenly able to afford an expensive new TV for their ailing father (James Caan), Frank starts getting heat from his boss (Noah Emmerich) and the NYPD brass starts questioning his loyalty.

Released in Europe last year at 144 minutes, BLOOD TIES has been cut by 15 minutes for its dump-job of a US release (28 screens and VOD).  Whether distributor Lionsgate made these edits with or without Canet's involvement is unknown, but at least in this incarnation, it feels rushed and incomplete.  It aspires to be an epic, sprawling crime saga, but it suffers from an awfully choppy opening half-hour and a finale that feels too abrupt, and as a result, the film jumps all over the place and feels like a series of vignettes rather than a cohesive whole. What exactly is Chris?  It's explained that he was in prison for a revenge killing when his girlfriend--presumably Monica--was raped and he offed the attacker.  But once out, he becomes a hit man and later, out of nowhere, he's suddenly a pimp. The film takes place over a few months from late 1974 into early 1975 but the time element never feels right.  Too much goes down in such a short amount of time. Also, there's numerous instances where people are congregated in a scene and behaving as if their last scene together didn't happen.  There's one glaring instance of two scenes that seem to be out of order when Frank kicks temporary roommate Chris out of his apartment, and in the very next scene, Frank is outraged and storms out of the room when he's told by an NYPD honcho that unless he tells Chris to move out, he'll have to turn in his gun and badge.  The large supporting cast gets little to do:  Caan has a big, emotional speech that feels shoehorned in, and Cotillard and Schoenaerts finally get their own plot threads going around 100 minutes into the movie, as if the filmmakers suddenly remembered they were in it.

Is this something unique to the US cut or was this a problem in the European version as well?  Even if the flow and the rhythm of the story are improved by those missing 15 minutes, it won't eliminate the predictable story elements and the cliched execution.  How many times have we seen the ex-con sucked back into "the life"?  How many times have we seen brothers on opposite sides of the law clash only to have the familial bonds reunite them?  It's a great song, but at what point do we stage an intervention for a filmmaker who makes the conscious, straight-faced decision to use the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" for a scene where a junkie falls off the wagon and hits bottom?  Canet indulges in some heavy Scorsese worship throughout BLOOD TIES, and it's fun early on when he shows Chris watching Monica walk away in slo-mo to Lee Moses' "Bad Girl" or late in the film when he's fleeing the cops and speeding from place to place like Ray Liotta's coke-addled Henry Hill in GOODFELLAS.  Scorsese-worship can be a blast--David O. Russell's AMERICAN HUSTLE is recent proof of that--but someone needs to tell Canet that you can't have the camera slowly move in on the pensive visage of Clive Owen to the opening guitar riff of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" nearly 25 years after GOODFELLAS and expect to be taken seriously.

BLOOD TIES is a mess, but it's a beautiful mess, and the performances of Owen and Crudup (looking a lot like a younger Harvey Keitel here) are top-notch.  Canet aims high and sometimes hits the mark (there's a kinetic energy to the opening shootout, and one late phone call between Chris and Frank has a gut-wrenching moment of clarity for both of them), and even with its copious cliches, there's a very good film trying to break out of the merely OK one in which it's trapped.  It's pretty obvious that Gray was a gun-for-hire on this one, probably brought on to ensure that the dialogue had a genuine NYC feel to it instead of sounding awkwardly translated from French.  Gray's films don't lean this heavily on cliches and convention, whereas Canet is a movie buff with an obvious affinity for 1970s crime flicks and wanted to make one of his own.  That's great, and he certainly succeeded on a visual level and got the right attitude from his actors--this is a rare-for-these-days example of a 1970s-set film not looking like a bunch of out-of-their element, in-over-their-heads actors playing ironic hipster dress-up against a gaudy digital greenscreen--but the script just doesn't hold up its end of the deal.