FURY (US - 2014) Written and directed by David Ayer. Cast: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, Brad William Henke, Xavier Samuel, Scott Eastwood, Kevin Vance, Jim Parrack, Anamaria Marinca, Alicia von Rittberg, Laurence Spellman. (R, 133 mins)
It's been 16 years since the visceral brutality of the opening sequence of Steven Spielberg's SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, a horrific depiction of the D-Day invasion at Normandy, forever changed the cinematic depiction of war. Sure, plenty of war films, especially those centered on Vietnam, pulled no punches and went straight for the jugular, but SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was a game-changer, at least as far as depictions of long-ago wars were concerned. Its impact has been felt in practically every war film or TV show that came in its wake, from the graphic detail of the beloved HBO miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS and THE PACIFIC to the infamous femoral artery scene in Ridley Scott's BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001). The fictional FURY, set in April 1945 during the final month of action in the European theater, is a film that wants to be another SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but really only ends up being an exponentially more violent and foul-mouthed take on the kind of WWII saga that would've been made in the days after WWII and into the late 1960s. It has engrossing story, some good performances, and some well-shot battle sequences that abstain from today's standard quick-cut shaky-cam action, but there's a gnawing feeling that you've seen it all before, from the graphic carnage and the way ammunition shreds through flesh to the outsider joining an established unit and going through the requisite hazing and having to prove his manhood, to Brad Pitt's performance being a somewhat toned-down rehash of his work as Lt. Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009). Writer/director David Ayer (END OF WATCH) has Spielberg-sized ambitions, but he can't resist relying on easy genre tropes, cardboard characterizations, and fuckin' macho tough guy fuckin' posturing just like he fuckin' had earlier this fuckin' year in fuckin' SABOTAGE, one of fuckin' 2014's worst fuckin' movies. And please, in the name of all things cinematic, the time has come to declare a moratorium on alpha-male lunkheads in war movies or cop movies or firefighter movies or doctor movies--any kind of real-world movie or TV show with an ensemble of everyday people doing heroic things--feeling the need to emphatically declare "This is what we do!"
FURY focuses on a close-knit Sherman tank crew (the tank has been christened "Fury") led by Wardaddy (Pitt), a stern, no-nonsense type who lives for war because it's what he does. He's fiercely protective of his men: devoutly-religious Bible (Shia LaBeouf), fast-talking Gordo (Michael Pena), and sub-literate hillbilly Coon-Ass (Jon Bernthal). They've just lost their assistant driver and Wardaddy isn't happy with his newest addition: inexperienced and terrified Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a typist who's been in the Army for eight weeks. Naturally, Norman is razzed and ridiculed by the others and an early fumbling of the ball leads to another tank commander being ambushed and killed by German soldiers ("That's on you!" Wardaddy yells, because of course he does). Ayer's episodic script follows the men on a series of assignments, culminating in an epic battle where every other tank in their company is destroyed and they hit a mine shortly after, rendering the tank immobile. Rather than turn the film into DAS TANK, Ayer introduces a battalion of German officers approaching from further down the road as the men of Fury strap in, hunker down, and arm themselves for a 5-against-300 suicide mission that jettisons the relative realism of the preceding 80 or so minutes as the film degenerates into the equivalent of a WWII cartoon.
Ayer leaves no cliche unused, and the men of Fury exit in the exact order you expect. Of course, Norman proves his worth to the crew and earns his own cool nickname--"Machine"--because that's what he is. The arc of "Machine" hits all the required marks of a naive, innocent, baby-faced kid turning into a battle-hardened killer. And of course, Coon-Ass isn't the complete dipshit he spends almost the entire film being, acting like a bullying Neanderthal before putting his arm around Machine and grunting "Yer alright." Some attempts at character depth are made, like Wardaddy excusing himself so he doesn't look shaky and apprehensive in front of his adoring men, and LaBeouf turns in a strong performance as Bible, with a stare that belongs to a good-hearted man who's dangerously close to losing it--it's too bad Ayer undermines LaBeouf's performance by almost constantly showing him with tears welling in his eyes to the point where it becomes unintentionally funny. But for a film where none of war's graphic horrors are spared--heads are blown off, tanks squash corpses underneath, limbs are seared off, bodies split in half, Norman has to clean up pieces of his dead predecessor's face--the most impressive and suspenseful section of FURY is a long sequence where Wardaddy and Norman invite themselves into the home of a German woman (Anamaria Marinca) and her niece (Alicia von Rittberg). We're not sure where it's going, but as the women make eggs and coffee and Wardaddy shaves, a romance blossoms between Norman and the niece and there's a temporary and oddly tranquil domesticity amidst the madness that's destroyed when the other three guys from Fury drunkenly barge in and behave like animals. The ultimate end to this detour is that it makes Norman a man in more ways than one, but it's a strange sequence (I'm surprised the studio didn't make Ayer shorten it or cut it entirely) that demonstrates something genuinely substantive beyond Ayer's uber-macho dick-swinging and the checklist of war movie cliches and could almost function as a stand-alone short film. If only the rest of FURY was as unpredictable and willing to take chances.
VENUS IN FUR (France/Poland - 2013; US release 2014)
In adapting David Ives' play, shifting its location from Manhattan to Paris, and casting his wife Emmanuelle Seigner as one of the two leads, Roman Polanski turns Venus in Fur into an often very personal look at his own obsessions. Perhaps too personal, as the other lead, QUANTUM OF SOLACE Bond villain Mathieu Amalric, looks almost exactly like a younger Polanski. The legendary and always controversial filmmaker, still going strong at 81, tosses in some callbacks to several of his past works, from CUL-DE-SAC (1966) to BITTER MOON (1992) to DEATH AND THE MAIDEN (1994) and even THE TENANT (1976), as playwright and first-time director Thomas Novachek (Amalric) adapts Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch's scandalous 1870 novel as a modern stage production and gets a late audition in Vanda Jourdain (Seigner) that goes places he never expected. Vanda, conveniently named after the dominating mistress of the book, is brash, rude, and pushy, and seems ill-prepared and not very articulate ("I'm like, demure and shit"). But when she starts reading, something clicks and Thomas is transfixed. Soon, the dialogue of the play starts mirroring the developing situation between them as Vanda, who somehow knows the play front to back even though Thomas hasn't given the complete script to anyone, slowly peels away at Thomas' exterior and forces him to reveal his true submissive nature while his fiancee keeps calling to see why he's so late getting home. Polanski plays visual tricks throughout, like an increase of shots staged in a way that Seigner towers over Amalric, and indulging in some cruelly sick humor like a spotlight on a large phallic cactus prop with two bushes on each side of its base (left over from a musical production of STAGECOACH, Thomas explains earlier) during the moment of Thomas' ultimate emasculation at the hands of Vanda.
While best known to mainstream audiences for Hollywood hits like ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) and CHINATOWN (1974), Polanski has repeatedly utilized claustrophobic settings and seems to have a particular affinity for putting as few characters as possible in very tight quarters, going all the way back to his 1962 debut KNIFE IN THE WATER. His previous film, 2011's CARNAGE, had four characters seemingly trapped EXTERMINATING ANGEL-style in an apartment as they argued over a playground scuffle between their children. It, too, was based on a stage play and Polanski did a good job of creating fluid camera movements to alleviate the confined nature and make it more cinematic. He tries to replicate that feeling with VENUS IN FUR, but with two less protagonists, increased staginess is inevitable and at times, the verbal sparring and psychological gamesmanship grow tiresome (it helped that CARNAGE ran a brief, brisk 81 minutes). Still, Seigner and Amalric are excellent even though you can't help but wonder if Polanski is revealing a bit too much of his and Seigner's relationship here. It can't be coincidental that Amalric can practically function as a Polanski doppelganger while Seigner spends most of the film strutting around the theater in high heels and a seemingly painted-on leather bustier. Maybe the couple's next collaboration should just be a leaked sex tape. (Unrated, 96 mins) WITCHING & BITCHING (Spain/France - 2013; US release 2014)
Spanish filmmaker Alex de la Iglesia has frequently been compared to Mexico's Guillermo del Toro, as both arrived on the scene around the same time (de la Iglesia with 1993's ACCION MUTANTE, and del Toro with 1992's CRONOS), and both made their name in fantasy/horror. This is probably more so with del Toro, who has stayed under that umbrella while de la Iglesia has frequently dabbled in other genres but remained true to his kinetic, gonzo style. While del Toro has gone on to commercial fame and fortune, de la Iglesia remains on the fringes of cult cinema stateside, with his one attempt at a Hollywood blockbuster--a late '90s big-screen version of the video game DOOM that was set to star Arnold Schwarzenegger--falling apart in pre-production (it was eventually made by Andrzej Bartkowiak in 2005, with Karl Urban and The Rock). De la Iglesia still hasn't had a major breakthrough in the US but enjoys a respectable cult following thanks to oddities like 1997's DANCE WITH THE DEVIL, aka PERDITA DURANGO, a road thriller with a bizarre cast featuring Rosie Perez, Javier Bardem, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Don Stroud, REPO MAN director Alex Cox, and James Gandolfini in a plot that involves homicidal lovers on the lam, explicit sex, kidnapping, rape, incompetent feds, voodoo, pedophilia, and a big rig transporting black market human fetuses across the US/Mexico border and isn't likely to be mentioned by Perez on THE VIEW anytime soon. He also tried his hand at formulaic mysteries with the forgettable Elijah Wood thriller THE OXFORD MURDERS (2008), but de la Iglesia's milieu is over-the-top insanity, and his latest, the horror-comedy WITCHING & BITCHING, finds the director in his primary comfort zone.
Owing a debt to many things, but primarily FROM DUSK TILL DAWN in its shifting structure, WITCHING & BITCHING opens very promisingly with a team of strangers pulling a jewelry store heist in the middle of a busy Madrid shopping square. They're dressed as costumed entertainers for the outdoor mall, which allows us the unique sight of a machine-gun-toting SpongeBob Squarepants. Ringleader Jose (Hugo Silva) is dressed as a silver-painted Jesus and brought along his young son Sergio (Gabriel Delgado) since he didn't want to miss a visitation day. A few of the makeshift gang are killed or apprehended, but Jose gets away with Tony (Mario Casas) and they carjack a cab, thereby involving driver Manuel (Jaime Ordonez) and his fare (Manuel Tallafe), with the cops and Jose's enraged ex-wife Silvia (Macarena Gomez) in hot pursuit. Heading to France, they end up in the small Spanish town of Zugarramurdi, known for its centuries-old witch trials. Sure enough, they've been lured there by a witches' coven led by Gracia (Almodovar regular Carmen Maura), desperate to sacrifice men to a giant, grotesque female god and anoint Sergio as "the chosen one," with Gracia's sympathetic, rebellious daughter Eva (Carolina Bang, de la Iglesia's wife) the sole voice of reason trying to help the guys out of their situation. WITCHING & BITCHING is all over the map, making obvious statements about men and women, with the guys venting that all the women in their lives are "witches" before running afoul of actual witches. And the witches spend their downtime talking about men and articles they read in Cosmo. In addition to shifting gears from heist thriller to spoofy horror, de la Iglesia also manages to work in demonic possession, supernatural rom-com, escalating homoerotic tension between the two detectives (Pepon Nieto, Secun de la Rosa) investigating the robbery, and the witches turning into a sprinting zombie horde before finally settling on a CGI-heavy knockoff of the remake of THE WICKER MAN, with ballbusting witches settling the score with misogynists everywhere. It's never meant to be taken seriously, right down to the casting of de la Iglesia regular Santiago Segura--the Spanish Clint Howard--and Carlos Areces (star of de la Iglesia's THE LAST CIRCUS) in drag as catty witches and a comical henchman played by Enrique Villen, who looks like the perfect genetic fusion of Marty Feldman and Sid Haig. There's a frenzied, anarchic Joe Dante-meets-Peter Jackson-meets Edgar Wright ethos here amidst the digital splatter and the embarrassing, Asylum-level CGI, but it basically degenerates into a series of undisciplined and increasingly random homages that never really come together. De la Iglesia's enthusiasm is admirable, but he simply doesn't know when or where to stop, and at nearly two hours, it's exhaustingly overlong for such slight material. (Unrated, 114 mins)
STRETCH (US - 2014) Written and directed by Joe Carnahan. Cast: Patrick Wilson, Ed Helms, James Badge Dale, Brooklyn Decker, Jessica Alba, Chris Pine, Ray Liotta, David Hasselhoff, Norman Reedus, Randy Couture, Shaun Toub, Ben Bray, Jason Mantzoukas, Kevin Bigley. (R, 94 mins)
VOD has proven to be a viable distribution channel in our post-SNOWPIERCER world, and Universal is hoping to replicate The Weinstein Company's unintended phenomenon with Joe Carnahan's STRETCH. Abruptly yanked from the schedule just a few weeks before its planned March 2014 release, STRETCH was one of several titles produced by Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions (INSIDIOUS, SINISTER) that distributor Universal decided to leave languishing in limbo on the shelf, along with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY creator Oren Peli's AREA 51 (completed in 2009) and Joe Johnston's thriller NOT SAFE FOR WORK (completed in 2012), among others (STRETCH's time gathering dust was relatively brief, having wrapped in 2013). Universal hasn't said much about the shelving of these films, but it's mainly that the typical Blumhouse production costs $5 million or less, and that Universal balked at spending "$25 to $30 million" to market and distribute the films. It's now the major studio mindset that anything less than a $150 million take at the box office is a flop and movies grossing $30 million domestically simply aren't worth releasing in theaters anymore. There's no such thing as a moderate hit. Something's either a blockbuster or it's a bomb and in that climate, there's no in-between. Outspoken NARC and SMOKIN' ACES director Carnahan wasn't happy with Universal's decision, especially since he had a proven track record after he helmed a blockbuster with 2010's THE A-TEAM and had a decent-sized hit with the critically-acclaimed 2012 Liam Neeson vehicle THE GREY, which "only" grossed $51 million. When Universal shelved STRETCH earlier this year, they allowed Blum the chance to shop it around to other distributors, and when no one bit, the rights reverted back to Universal, and seeing the success of SNOWPIERCER, they opted to release it on VOD rather than dumping it straight-to-DVD. In interviews leading up to STRETCH's VOD debut, Carnahan has more or less taken an "It is what it is" approach to the release, expressing his disappointment that Universal abandoned what he considers his best film thus far. Carnahan is so sure that moviegoers will dig STRETCH that he posted messages on Facebook and Twitter promising that if you didn't enjoy STRETCH and can send him a pic proving you paid to watch it, he'll personally refund your money.
Like the word-of-mouth buzz with SNOWPIERCER and it being The Little Movie That Could, all of Carnahan's incessant yapping only serves to publicize STRETCH, though you have to applaud him for standing by his work and his in-your-face enthusiasm in making sure people know about it. It's too bad STRETCH isn't going to be another SNOWPIERCER, nor is it Carnahan's best film (that would be NARC). But then, the filmmaker has always straddled the line between maverick and loudmouth, better known for the films he didn't make--walking off of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III during pre-production, the collapsed DEATH WISH remake with Liam Neeson, and his dream project, an adaptation of James Ellroy's 1992 noir novel White Jazz--than the ones he's made. Carnahan's an enthusiastic filmmaker with a terrific sense of humor in his writing, and one of the few people making generally smart, no-nonsense, manly movies for men in the old-school tradition of Walter Hill. Sometimes he just talks too much.
STRETCH is entertaining if a bit slight, definitely in the over-the-top style of SMOKIN' ACES, but set in a typically excessive vision of L.A. Failed actor Kevin Bryzkowski (Patrick Wilson), who unsuccessfully tried to market himself as "Kai Bruno" before giving up after losing a guest role on CSI: MIAMI and taking a job as a limo driver, has kicked his coke, booze, and gambling habit and gotten over his ex-girlfriend (Brooklyn Decker) dumping him for the quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. He's been paying off a $12K debt to his bookie Iggy (Ben Bray), who's been bought out by some Cantonese gangsters who want the remaining $6000 he owes by midnight. Kevin, or "Stretch" as he's known to his friends, is on thin ice with his boss (Shaun Toub), who's paid guys to hack into the computer system of rival limo company Cossack, run by a hair-metal-coiffed hulk known as "The Jovi" (Randy Couture) so they can steal their gigs. Stretch gets one-upped by the Jovi when he's late picking up David Hasselhoff ("You don't have any respect for the Hoff!" he scolds Stretch), so he gets revenge by jacking the Jovi's next client, Carnahan regular Ray Liotta, from a movie set. Liotta leaves a prop gun and a fake badge from the movie behind, and Stretch doesn't get it back to the set before stealing the Jovi's next pickup: insane, cokehead billionaire Roger Karos (an unrecognizable Chris Pine). Karos has Stretch drop him off at an EYES WIDE SHUT-type sex party while he sends him off on a series of dangerous errands throughout L.A., involving a money pickup, a drug deal, and an undercover FBI agent (James Badge Dale), in exchange for a $6000 tip to clear his debt, and all the while Stretch is pursued by Iggy's goons, forced to pose as hard-assed LAPD cop "Raymond Liotta," and is harangued by the taunting ghost of his mentor, legendary limo driver Karl With a K (Ed Helms), who got so fed up with the business that he blew his brains out in mid-job, "marking the first time in 20 years that someone else had to clean his limo."
Carnahan packs a lot of plot into STRETCH's 94 minutes, and most of it works. Wilson has rarely been this loose onscreen before, but that's nothing compared to the way Pine (uncredited, but arguably the second lead) dives headfirst into his role with no concern for his image or any modicum of good taste. It's a literally balls-out performance, as he's first seen skydiving in nothing but a vest and a jockstrap, landing on top of Stretch's limo as Carnahan introduces him via a taint shot as his exposed scrotum slides down the front windshield. Yeah, STRETCH is that kind of a movie. Pine's overtly demonic Karos (often shot in reddish Italian horror lighting) seduces the desperate Stretch with the promise of $6000, with the resulting AFTER HOURS-inspired parade of grotesqueries an obvious metaphor for the way the power players of L.A. use, abuse, chew up, and spit out generally decent people like Stretch (or, if you expand on it, Hollywood dicking over well-meaning filmmakers like, oh I dunno, Joe Carnahan). Elsewhere, Karos snorts mountains of blow and cavorts with an array of high-class prostitutes, to whom he's also known as "Captain Fisty." Liotta, who also had a memorable cameo as himself in WANDERLUST, is very funny as an alternate universe, asshole version of "Ray Liotta," getting an assistant's name wrong and flat-out admitting "I don't give a fuck" when he's corrected, and being furiously indignant over the Jovi picking up "a TV actor" instead of him, even though he has no idea who Hasselhoff is ("Don't know him...should I?") or what KNIGHT RIDER and BAYWATCH are ("A talking car? What the fuck?"). Norman Reedus also has an inspired bit as himself, in a flashback where Karl With a K helps him cover up a motel room bloodbath ("Is that a severed penis?" Karl With a K asks). As funny as it can be, we've seen this sort-of "L.A. as immoral, hedonistic hellscape" motif a thousand times before, and despite some enthusiastic work by Wilson and Pine, some genuinely funny bits of offensive humor, and some periodic respites from the obnoxiousness courtesy of Jessica Alba as a limo dispatcher and Stretch's dependable Girl Friday, it frequently comes off as a Carnahan tantrum, and a louder, more aggressively garish version of John Landis' underrated 1985 gem INTO THE NIGHT. The actors are obviously having a good time, and it's worth a look on a slow night once it hits Redbox or Netflix Instant. Enough of it works that only a shameless asshole would ask Carnahan for their money back, but let's cut through the shit here: it's an offbeat little film that will find a minor cult following and probably enjoy a long future as the kind of movie you stop at while channel-surfing, but it wasn't going to be a hit in theaters.
UPDATE (10/21/2014)
As of 10/21/2014, STRETCH and three other shelved Blumhouse productions--NOT SAFE FOR WORK, the Stephen King adaptation MERCY, and the horror film MOCKINGBIRD (directed by THE STRANGERS' Bryan Bertino)--were released on DVD by Universal as Walmart exclusives.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA: EXTENDED DIRECTOR'S CUT (US/Italy - 1984/2012) Directed by Sergio Leone. Written by Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, Franco Ferrini, Sergio Leone, and Stuart Kaminsky. Cast: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Treat Williams, Joe Pesci, Burt Young, Louise Fletcher, Tuesday Weld, Danny Aiello, Richard Bright, James Hayden, William Forsythe, Darlanne Fluegel, Larry Rapp, Richard Foronjy, James Russo, Amy Ryder, Jennifer Connelly, Scott Tiler, Rusty Jacobs, Brian Bloom, Noah Moazezi, Adrian Curran, Mike Monetti, Mario Brega, Robert Harper, Olga Karlatos, Arnon Milchan, Frank Gio, Paul Herman. (R, 251 mins)
SPOILERS: This review assumes you've seen ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. It's probably a safe bet that we'll never see a definitive, last-word version of Sergio Leone's final masterpiece ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Known for his legendary spaghetti westerns that made Clint Eastwood an international star, Leone set out to make the ultimate gangster film and in many ways, he succeeded. Though he made some uncredited contributions to Tonino Valerii's comedic western MY NAME IS NOBODY (1973) and Damiano Damiani's semi-sequel A GENIUS, TWO FRIENDS AND AN IDIOT (1975), Leone hadn't directed a film since 1971's DUCK, YOU SUCKER!, aka A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE, and he spent the better part of the 1970s prepping ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, based on Harry Grey's novel The Hoods. The rights to The Hoods were initially purchased by DARK SHADOWS creator Dan Curtis, who was nursing ambitions of breaking out of TV horror and making a name for himself on the big screen. Leone desperately wanted the rights to Grey's book, prompting his then-producer Alberto Grimaldi to cut a deal that saw Curtis signing over the film rights to The Hoods to Grimaldi and Leone in exchange for Grimaldi ghost-producing Curtis' 1976 film BURNT OFFERINGS. With the rights secured, Leone and a committee of screenwriters (among them frequent Dario Argento collaborator Franco Ferrini) began work on his vision of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, though it ultimately didn't begin shooting until June 1982. By that time, Grimaldi was no longer in the picture and Leone finally got the project going through Israeli producer Arnon Milchan, who was just making a name for himself by producing Martin Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY (1983) and would eventually go on to form his Regency Enterprises production company and become a major Hollywood player, bankrolling films like Oliver Stone's JFK (1991), Michael Mann's HEAT (1995), David Fincher's FIGHT CLUB (1999), and Steve McQueen's 12 YEARS A SLAVE (2013).
Sergio Leone (1929-1989)
Shooting wrapped in April 1983 and Leone spent over a year editing the footage. His initial, very rough cut ran around ten hours. He cut it down to six, and eventually down to 269 minutes. Still not satisfied, his official version screened at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, with a running time of 229 minutes. While the film and its majestic Ennio Morricone score were lauded at Cannes--but not winning any awards as it was screened out of competition--US distributor The Ladd Company, a division of Warner Bros., had already decided American audiences weren't seeing the 229-minute cut. Against Leone's wishes (Milchan, then new to the ways of Hollywood, has admitted "I should've fought harder"), The Ladd Company had assigned in-house editor Zach Staenberg to completely recut the film, jettisoning the vital flashback structure and putting the scenes in chronological order. Under orders from his bosses, Staenberg (often dismissively referred to by Leone fans and co-star James Woods as "the guy who edited POLICE ACADEMY," but he did go on to win an Oscar for his work on THE MATRIX, and in his defense, he was just doing what he was told to do) took Leone's film from 229 minutes down to 139 minutes, and that was the version released in US theaters on June 1, 1984. Needless to say, it was a disaster critically and commercially, with Ladd/Warner yanking it from theaters after two weeks following a barrage of negative press from major film critics who just saw the superior long version at Cannes less than a month earlier. Eventually, The Ladd Company relented and gave Leone's cut a very limited release (at 227 minutes, more on that in a bit) before it debuted on VHS and cable in 1985, but by then, the damage was done. Leone was heartbroken over the treatment given to his dream project in the US, and his health began to rapidly decline. The stress of the arduous shoot and the resulting massacre in the editing room took years off of his life, and he died in 1989 at just 59, looking at least a decade older. ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA was his final film.
Leone and his cast at Cannes in 1984
In the US, the long version went from 227 minutes back to Leone's "official" 229 minutes over the years, reinstating some snipped shots from a pair of rape scenes--one with Robert De Niro and Tuesday Weld, and an especially graphic one with De Niro and Elizabeth McGovern--that were trimmed so the long version could secure an R rating. The 139-minute version, released on VHS and shown on cable in the mid '80s, is now rightfully regarded as one of the most shameful instances of a studio cluelessly destroying a filmmaker's vision. It's since been buried in the Warner vaults, presumably never to be seen again, though it would be interesting to view again for curiosity's sake. Even in its "official" 229-minute form, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA leaves questions unanswered. Given the argument that the 1968 portions of the film are a dream being experienced by Jewish mobster Noodles (De Niro) in an opium den in 1933, it's possible that clarity was never meant to be had with the film. Perhaps it's hazy and incomplete by design. That still doesn't explain other mysteries of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, like the significance of Frankie Minaldi (Joe Pesci) turning up in the lobby of a hospital long after his portion of the story is over, unseen by Noodles and Max as they get off an elevator and never seen or referenced in the film again, unless something in Leone's earlier rough cuts showed that he has a role in the ill-conceived Federal Reserve robbery that proves to be the gang's undoing or he's an unseen power player pulling the strings of union leader Jimmy O'Donnell (Treat Williams). As unwieldy and wandering as dreams can often be, there will never be definitive answers for a lot of what happens in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, much like there can never be a definitive version. No matter how much gets put back in, the enigmatic elements remain. We're watching--presumably--the dreaming, drugged-out mind of a man consumed by guilt, who's just ratted on his friends and inadvertently gotten them killed. It's never going to make perfect sense.
The 251-minute restoration has been marketed as an "extended director's cut," but Leone's original pre-release version ran 269 minutes before he settled on the 229-minute Cannes 1984 cut. With Martin Scorsese throwing his weight behind the project, the restoration involved Leone's family members and various collaborators, though 18 minutes of footage was apparently tangled in rights issues and it would seem that the 251-minute version finds the film once again released in a compromised state (perhaps the real explanation is that the still-missing 18 minutes aren't salvageable?). Whether that full 269-minute version will ever see reassembly is still up in the air. The six additional scenes came from a workprint source, and when the "director's cut" played at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and was released on Blu-ray in Italy later that year, the image quality didn't win it any praise. It's been cleaned up significantly in the ensuing two years, but the added scenes still stick out like a sore thumb. Some look better than others, especially later on, but the first addition--Noodles encountering a cemetery director (Louise Fletcher, who was completely excised from all previous versions) when he visits the mausoleum where Max (Woods), Cockeye (William Forsythe), and Patsy (James Hayden, who died of a heroin overdose in November 1983, eight months before the film's release) are interred--looks the worst, by far. Faded and scratchy, it's hard to imagine what this looked like before it was cleaned up, but Fletcher's scene is usually cited as the most famous of the "lost" sequences, even though she doesn't really have much to do. Other than a few minutes of screen time for the ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST Best Actress Oscar winner, the biggest significance of this scene comes near its end when Noodles spots a black car that's following him, giving him more evidence that after a 35-year self-imposed exile, the ghosts of his past have finally caught up to him. Of the five other restored scenes--including a heated 1968 meeting between Max-as-"Secretary Bailey" and O'Donnell, Noodles getting defensive when a Jewish chauffeur (played by Milchan) disapproves of his lifestyle, and an additional scene after Noodles drives the car into the water after the gang pulls off the Detroit diamond robbery for Frankie and his brother Joe (Burt Young)--the most important gives us a much more thorough introduction to Eve (Darlanne Fluegel), Noodles' girlfriend in 1933, a prostitute with whom he took up after his brutal rape of love-of-his-life Deborah (McGovern), finally driving her away for good. In the 229-minute cut, Eve more or less appears and we can easily figure out that she's Noodles' girlfriend, and we didn't really need background on her to ascertain that, but by reinstating their introduction, the viewer gets a better read on their relationship and how Noodles still isn't over Deborah.
All of the scenes explain things in some way, but given the inherently enigmatic and impenetrable nature of the film and its construction, less can be more. Not less as in "139 minutes," but nothing in these additional 22 minutes makes ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA necessarily better, nor do they make anything worse. It's also a different Blu-ray transfer than Warner's previous release of the 229-minute cut, darker and with a more muted color palette. There are moments where it doesn't look all that great, and there's been chatter online--which I don't really buy--that the whole transfer was degraded to more closely match the inferior quality of the added scenes. While devoted fans of Leone and the film will want to see this cut, I'm not sure it surpasses the 229-minute version, which had a pretty good if not demo-quality HD transfer. At any rate, it's not a "director's cut." It's a big step toward the restoration of the 269-minute cut, but Leone more or less dismissed that as a definitive edition when he cut it down to 229 minutes and signed off on it. Maybe his feelings changed before his death and maybe he'd prefer the 269-minute version now and be cool with settling for this 251-minute cut instead, but he's not here to speak for himself, and much like the intricacies and the specifics of the film's deliberately ambiguous plot, we'll simply never know.
The two-disc edition of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA: EXTENDED DIRECTOR'S CUT lists "theatrical cut" as the second disc. This is not the 139-minute US theatrical cut--it's simply the 229-minute "official" version that you probably already own if you're a fan. While everyone is likely in agreement that the 139-minute Zach Staenberg cut is an abomination, it would be interesting to watch, much like Universal's botched, shelved "Love Conquers All" cut that Criterion included in their BRAZIL box set. Why not include it for the sake of completist fans? Don't bury it. Don't deny its existence. Present it as a cautionary tale of studio meddling gone horribly awry. Hell, get Staenberg to do a commentary over it. Can you imagine the stories he's got about hapless execs telling him to make those nonsensical cuts and re-edits? That's a missed opportunity. Fortunately, if you already have the 229-minute version, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA: EXTENDED DIRECTOR'S CUT is also available on its own in a single-disc edition on both Blu-ray and DVD.
Treat Williams, William Forsythe, James Woods, and Robert De Niro
at the New York Film Festival screening of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA:
EXTENDED DIRECTOR'S CUT in September 2014.
THE JUDGE (US - 2014) Directed by David Dobkin. Written by Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque. Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Billy Bob Thornton, Vera Farmiga, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jeremy Strong, Dax Shepard, Leighton Meester, Ken Howard, Balthazar Getty, David Krumholtz, Emma Tremblay, Grace Zabriskie, Denis O'Hare, Sarah Lancaster. (R, 142 mins)
THE JUDGE is a film that tries to be too many things and succeeds about half of the time. On one hand, it perceptively deals with the idea of family, the ties that bind, the consequences of one's actions, and ultimately, the love that triumphs over the adversity of grudges that have lasted the better part of a lifetime. It's also the kind of glossy courtroom drama that used to be commonplace in the late '80s and into the '90s. Its tonal shifts are whiplash-inducing, including one jawdropper of a subplot that seems more fitting for the raunchy comedies that director David Dobkin has made in the past, like WEDDING CRASHERS (2005) and THE CHANGE-UP (2011). Working from a script by Nick Schenk (GRAN TORINO) and Bill Dubuque, Dobkin throws a little of everything into THE JUDGE, and while he gets outstanding and fully committed performances by his stars, the film too often compromises itself, sacrificing honesty and raw emotion for grandstanding, cliched speeches that ensure every cast member gets some time in the spotlight, THE JUDGE is the kind of film where it's not enough for things to reach the boiling point for an embittered father and son as they have a knock-down, drag-out screaming match during a family get-together--no, the family get-together has to be in the basement because there's a massive tornado blowing through town, and of course, the argument extends beyond the basement as they take it out into the yard while battling violent winds before heading back into the house again.
Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr), is a hot-shot, high-powered, big-money Chicago defense attorney who has no qualms about getting his guilty clients off ("Everyone wants Atticus Finch until there's a dead hooker in the hot tub," he explains). Devoted to his job and never around for his young daughter (Emma Tremblay), he's in the middle of a nasty divorce after his neglected wife takes up with an ex-boyfriend. All of that takes a backseat when he's summoned to his small Indiana hometown after his mother dies unexpectedly. Hank has never visited after leaving 25 years earlier and has had minimal contact with his older brother Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio), and younger, possibly autistic (it's never specified) brother Dale (Jeremy Strong), who carries a Super 8 camera around at all times, filming everything (Clumsy foreshadowing alert! Yes, Dale's extensive collection of film reels will hold an important piece of information!). There's no love lost between Hank and the Palmer patriarch, stern local judge Joseph (Robert Duvall), who curtly thanks his son for attending and promptly ignores him. Just as Hank is about to head back to Chicago, he's called off the plane by Glen: "The Judge," as everyone calls Joseph, has been hauled in by the cops for questioning after a dead body is found in a ditch and his damaged car has traces of the victim's blood and hair in the grille. Complicating matters is that the victim is an area shitbag who was recently paroled after serving a long sentence for killing a girl--which he did only after The Judge gave him a light, 30-day sentence for his earlier harassment of her in the first place. This scandal was the one smudge on The Judge's otherwise exemplary career, and there's overwhelming evidence that he ran down the parolee with the specific intent of killing him. The Judge hires wet-behind-the-ears townie lawyer C.P. Kennedy (Dax Shepard), who can't stop vomiting before court every morning, and when Kennedy proves too inexperienced to deal with special prosecutor Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton), sent in from Gary, and the kind of impeccably-dressed, merciless attack dog who brings his own expensive, Sharper Image-looking, gadgety metal water glass to court. The Judge reluctantly sets aside his differences with his middle son and accepts his legal services.
When THE JUDGE deals with old wounds reopened by Hank's return, it works very well. There's numerous moments of blunt realism in the way Dobkin and the screenwriters rely on family shorthand to convey things that only a family know but we can perceive. When Hank is greeted by Glen, there's an odd way they won't look at each other and you wonder why Glen half-heartedly uses his left hand for a handshake. That's followed by mention of Glen's once-promising baseball career being derailed by an accident, and though it remains unspoken for most of the film, it's clear that there's some involvement in this accident on Hank's part. Hank ran away and never looked back, and his high-school girlfriend Samantha (Vera Farmiga), who owns the diner she worked in as a teenager, won't let him forget it. Incidents are referenced and they don't need to be fully explained for the audience to grasp the significance they hold in the lives of these characters, and that's where THE JUDGE often excels.
Where it stumbles is when it devolves into various plot contrivances, medical crises, and hackneyed courtroom histrionics. Hank learns early on that The Judge is secretly getting chemo treatments for advanced colon cancer, and it's caused memory issues that come and go as the plot mandates. And after the ludicrous father-son argument in mid-tornado, they of course get a chance to hash out all of their issues on the witness stand, culminating in a guffaw-worthy shot of the trial judge (Ken Howard) starting to tear up. And there's that whopper of a subplot involving cute bartender Carla (Leighton Meester) that appears to be heading in one direction that the filmmakers don't have the balls to attempt in a major studio movie, and yet somehow, the way they explain themselves out of it manages to make it even more awkward given one character's non-reaction and the fact that the whole tasteless episode is played for laughs. On one hand, it's admirable what Dobkin tries to get away with before backtracking, but on the other, it's tacky and doesn't belong in this movie. At 142 minutes, THE JUDGE runs a good 30 minutes too long, and Meester's plot thread could've--and should've--been completely eliminated.
Aside from the writing in its more successful introspective and honest moments, it's Downey and Duvall who carry this through. Downey's persona works perfectly for an unscrupulous lawyer and Duvall, comfortably in his "crusty old coot" wheelhouse, at least has better material to work with than bombs like Thornton's unwatchable JAYNE MANSFIELD'S CAR and the terrible A NIGHT IN OLD MEXICO provided him. There's still an unfortunate desire by mainstream Hollywood to turn geriatric actors into dirty old men, as set forth by the Burgess Meredith Amendment. A feared, respected authoritarian taskmaster like The Judge doesn't seem the type to mockingly chide Hank because his wife "played Hide the Pickle with some other guy." Inconsistencies and assorted silliness aside, THE JUDGE is worth seeing for the performances of Downey and Duvall, but Dobkin has been given a strange amount of leeway in what made it to the final cut. This thing could've used another run through the editing room and quite a bit less overbaked courtroom melodrama. Or it could've settled on being a either a glossy, commercial courtroom thriller or a gritty, in-your-face look at frayed family dysfunction, because in committing fully to neither, it comes up harmlessly entertaining but curiously lacking.
Based on a 1989 novel by genre-hopping author Joe R. Lansdale (BUBBA HO-TEP), COLD IN JULY is the latest film from the team of director/writer Jim Mickle and writer/actor Nick Damici. Their previous efforts--2007's MULBERRY ST, 2011's STAKE LAND, and 2013's WE ARE WHAT WE ARE--were firmly grounded in the horror genre, and while the crime thriller COLD IN JULY is a departure for the duo, it doesn't lack for terrifying moments and its share of disturbing plot developments. COLD IN JULY veers all over the place in tone, but Mickle and Damici's script and Mickle's confident direction handle these shifts with expert precision: one false note or overplayed line reading could've stalled or even derailed the momentum. And it is a relentlessly-paced piece of work, exhilarating and unpredictable, audacious and wild, the hard-boiled crime equivalent of Adam Wingard's YOU'RE NEXT. Mickle wears his love of John Carpenter on his sleeve, down to the Carpenter font title card and the pulsating, synth-heavy score by Jeff Grace. IFC didn't give this much of a release (73 screens, grossing $423,000) and primarily relegated it to VOD, but it's one of 2014's best films, anchored by a trio of pitch-perfect performances.
Set in East Texas in 1989, the film opens with picture framer Richard Dane (Michael C. Hall) and his schoolteacher wife Ann (Vinessa Shaw) awakened in the middle of the night by a burglar. After nervously loading his gun, Richard confronts the intruder and kills him after his finger slips on the trigger. It's an open-and-shut case of justifiable homicide for local cop Ray Price (Damici), who IDs the intruder as one Freddy Russell and arranges for the county to give him a quick burial. Trouble arrives in the form of Freddy's recently-paroled ex-con father Ben (Sam Shepard), who's none too pleased with Richard for killing his son and promptly begins threatening him, following him around, showing up at his young son's school, and eventually terrorizing his family. When Price informs Richard that Ben was arrested just over the Mexico border, Richard is relieved that the threat is gone but when he sees a Wanted mugshot for a "Freddy Russell" at the sheriff's office, he can see it's obviously not the guy he killed. Price starts behaving in an overly evasive fashion with Richard, enough that Richard starts following Price around, leading to the first of the film's unexpected detours. Needless to say, Price is hiding something and an unlikely alliance is formed between Richard and Ben--Richard wants to know why Price is lying to him and Ben wants to find out what's really up with his missing but very much alive son (played by Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn's son Wyatt Russell, a dead ringer for his dad). Ben calls in a favor from his Korean War pal, pig farmer/flashy private eye Jim Bob Luke (damn near career-best work by Don Johnson), whose investigation into Freddy's whereabouts takes the film into some grim places involving the "Dixie Mafia," prostitution, and snuff films, prompting the three men to take matters into their own hands.
Hall, Shepard, and especially Johnson (who doesn't appear until nearly an hour in and when he does, he immediately steals the film from his co-stars) make such a terrific and oddly likable team that even a blatantly comedic sequence involving a car accident somehow manages to fit in with the brutal goings-on. Mickle and his regular cinematographer Ryan Samul create an extremely stylish look for COLD IN JULY, with garish reds, greens, and blues that give it an almost giallo hue at times. This extends to the gore-drenched finale, where Mickle manages to make something stunningly artistic out of blood from a blown-off head splattering a ceiling light and turning the room into a dark shade of crimson. Some elements of COLD IN JULY are reminiscent of the Coen Bros. in BLOOD SIMPLE mode, but it really is its own film, and it's the definitive cinematic statement thus far from Mickle and Damici, who've made some interesting yet flawed films but haven't knocked one out of the park until now. The brazenly original COLD IN JULY is the cold-cocking, knock-you-on-your-ass real deal. Nice job, guys. (R, 110 mins) OBVIOUS CHILD (US - 2014)
Jenny Slate's time as a featured player on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE in the 2009-2010 season got off to the worst possible start when she secured her place in SNL lore by dropping an F-bomb during her first on-camera appearance. She wasn't brought back for a second season but has spent the subsequent years busting her ass on TV, with recurring roles on BORED TO DEATH, HELLO LADIES, PARKS AND RECREATION, HOUSE OF LIES, and MARRIED, and guest appearances on numerous others. She's continued building a name for herself in stand-up comedy circles, and OBVIOUS CHILD was supposed to be her big-screen breakthrough. While it received critical accolades and was riding on significant Sundance buzz, it didn't quite bring Slate into the mainstream as a headliner. It grossed just $3 million, which isn't bad for something only rolled out on 200 screens, a better tally than most things hailed as game-changers on the festival circuit only to land with a thud with the general public. Expanding her 2009 short film of the same title, which also starred a pre-SNL Slate, writer/director Gillian Robespierre handles sensitive and potentially divisive issues and takes risks in presenting a main character who she isn't afraid to show in a warts-and-all fashion. In a remarkably vanity-free performance, Slate is aspiring stand-up comic Donna, who's just been dumped by her thinks-antiperspirant-in-deodorant-causes-Alzheimer's boyfriend (Paul Briganti) right before she learns the indie bookstore where she's worked for five years is closing in a few weeks. Heartbroken Donna's sets at the comedy club turn into drunken, meandering rants, and she ends up having a one-night-stand with nice-guy video-game designer Max (Jake Lacy, "Pete" on the final season of THE OFFICE), and can't bring herself to tell him when she finds out she's pregnant several weeks later and has decided to get an abortion.
OBVIOUS CHILD handles its subject in as mature and matter-of-fact fashion as any film dealing with abortion has, and that includes Slate's portrayal of Donna, who's introduced as someone who doesn't seem to take things very seriously but her situation forces her to grow up fast and see her life in different ways. Robespierre isn't afraid to let Slate sometimes come off as mildly irritating at times, and despite the glowing reception she gets from the comedy club audience, her stand-up isn't always that funny. There's a tendency throughout to rely on Donna's obsession with scatological and bodily function-based humor and observations--though this isn't a grossout comedy, there's lots of talk about such things, and the moment Donna decides to go home with Max is right after they're pissing in an alley together and he accidentally farts in her face. It's presumably to make Donna (or Slate) a "real" and "just one of the guys" type, but Slate plays "real" emotion better in a beautifully-acted scene where she lays it all out for her judgmental, dismissive mom (Polly Draper), who responds with open arms, sympathy, and a revelation that she had an abortion herself during college. Slate and Draper play this scene perfectly and it's one of OBVIOUS CHILD's best moments. Slate's initial tendency toward the annoying and being the type who ends every sentence with, like, a question mark? dissipates as the film goes on, and her performance grows more steady and assured as Donna matures. In the end, OBVIOUS CHILD is a short and slight little character piece, charming and raunchy in equal doses and sometimes overly reliant on indie hipster tropes (it is set in Williamsburg and Brooklyn, after all), but admirably, other than a few cliches like the obligatory gay best friend (Gabe Liedman), a romantic comedy that isn't really interested in most conventions of the romantic comedy. Also with Richard Kind as Donna's dad, Gaby Hoffmann as her roommate, and David Cross in a small role as a comic friend who just scored a pilot deal. (R, 84 mins)
LEFT BEHIND (US - 2014) Directed by Vic Armstrong. Written by Paul Lalonde and John Patus. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Chad Michael Murray, Cassi Thomson, Nicky Whelan, Jordin Sparks, Lea Thompson, Gary Grubbs, Martin Klebba, Georgina Rawlings, Quinton Aaron, William Ragsdale, Alec Rayme, Lolo Jones, Lance E. Nichols, Han Soto, Stephanie Honore, Major Dodson. (PG-13, 110 mins)
Since the surprise success of THE OMEGA CODE back in 1999, the release of grass-roots, evangelical, faith-based titles has been a semi-regular occurrence in American multiplexes. Usually released with little or no secular fanfare, these titles are heavily promoted through Christian and right-wing media outlets and many congregations bus their members to the theater in what's essentially a big-screen sermon. The existence of these films, often referred to by secular smartasses as "faithsploitation" or "Christsploitation," isn't a bad thing in and of itself. Like any genre, they have a target audience and there's even been some mainstream crossover with the likes of SOUL SURFER (2011) and HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (2014). These films preach to the converted and their audiences are happy as long as they hear the message they came to hear. And from a working actor standpoint, they keep C-listers and past-their-prime character actors like Kevin Sorbo, John Schneider, Lee Majors, Eric Roberts, Dean Cain, Bruce Davison, Craig Sheffer, and James Remar employed. The problem with these films is that they're almost always cheap and shoddy-looking, almost as if the creative forces behind them know that it doesn't matter anyway because the message is the important thing. Costly religious films were made in the Cecil B. DeMille days of old but there's no need for that level of expense and craftsmanship in these kinds of modern faithsploitation offerings where you can just imagine the producers saying "Whatever, that's as good as it needs to be." They know it won't matter. The movie gets released, the congregation says it's uplifting and has a positive message, and Kevin Sorbo's kids eat.
LEFT BEHIND (2000) was one of the films released in the wake of the mainstream success of THE OMEGA CODE. Based on the bestselling series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, it told of The Rapture, the event where those who truly believe in God leave Earth and ascend into Heaven, and the sinners Left Behind must combat the forces of darkness until they accept and believe. The Kirk Cameron-starring LEFT BEHIND was an apocalyptic look at the End Times and spawned two sequels, LEFT BEHIND II: TRIBULATION FORCE (2002), and LEFT BEHIND: WORLD AT WAR (2005). From the moment it was announced, there was an incredulous sense that the reboot of LEFT BEHIND was some kind of elaborate prank. But as time went on and updates were routinely posted by internet news outlets, and as snippets of scenes and a trailer eventually made their way online, it became a painful reality that, yes, there's a new LEFT BEHIND. And somehow, it stars Academy Award winner and former actor Nicolas Cage.
Cage is airline pilot Capt. Rayford Steele (played by Brad Johnson in the original films), a fallen sinner who's cheating on his born-again, Bible-thumping wife Irene (Lea Thompson) with flight attendant Hattie Durham (Nicky Whelan). He lies to his visiting-from-college daughter Chloe (Cassi Thomson) when he says he was just called in for a flight to London just as she gets home--he and Hattie had the trip planned for several weeks, even securing tickets to see U2 while they were there. Chloe heads to the family home to visit Irene and entirely too wholesome younger brother Raymie (Major Dodson), while Steele begins what should be a routine flight from JFK to Heathrow. Midway through the flight, several passengers, including all of the children, vanish into thin air, their clothes just lying in a pile where the person once was. At the same time, Chloe is at the mall with Raymie and Raymie disappears while she's hugging him, his clothing falling to the floor. Chloe frantically heads home and finds the shower running, with Irene's earrings and necklace lying over the drain. Chaos ensues on the ground and in the air, as Steele, after losing his co-pilot (FRIGHT NIGHT's William Ragsdale) and turning the plane around to head back to JFK, teams up with passenger and intrepid celebrity TV news reporter Cameron "Buck" Williams (Chad Michael Murray, in Cameron's role) to ensure the safety of the hysterical passengers after a mid-air collision with a pilotless jet causes a massive fuel leak. As you might expect, it doesn't take long for the previously dismissive Steele to realize the error of his ways and accept God as his co-pilot.
Those who are Left Behind were left as such in order to believe and therefore earn their chance at salvation, but one thing that has no chance of salvation at this point is Cage's career. I expect to find people like Chad Michael Murray and William Ragsdale in a LEFT BEHIND movie. Even if he's only doing B-grade actioners that go straight to VOD, Cage has still been steadily employed even as his big-screen career has taken a nosedive. For an actor in a major career lull, the faithsploitation genre is usually a desperate last resort, something that only requires a couple of days' work and they get their check and move on to the next job. Cage is a willing participant in this and seems unaware of the amateur-night fiasco around him. Everything about LEFT BEHIND '14 screams "sub-Lifetime" in its standards of filmmaking, from the hilariously unconvincing job Baton Rouge does passing itself off as NYC to the intrusive score that vacillates between soaring, inspirational, would-be John Williams to sax-heavy smooth jazz at ludicrously inappropriate moments. It's the kind of film where complete strangers break out into intense theological debates at random moments as screenwriters Paul Lalonde and John Patus, who wrote the original LEFT BEHIND, aggressively shoehorn their talking points into the already-stilted dialogue.
Where LEFT BEHIND '14 differs from LEFT BEHIND '00 is that it drastically scales down its focus to Chloe and the chaos in her immediate vicinity (of course, people of various non-white ethnicities are seen looting plasma TVs and stealing money from left behind wallets in the immediate aftermath of the Rapture) and Steele and Williams dealing with the situation in the air. The Satan surrogate Nicolae Carpathia, played by Gordon Currie in the original films, isn't even seen here. Lalonde, Patus, and director Vic Armstrong instead whittle this LEFT BEHIND down to a sermonizing disaster movie (those who have read the book say this new version only covers approximately the first 40 pages), with a heroic Cage doing his best Robert Hays to get the plane down on the ground as it's running on fumes. Cage is surprisingly restrained--or half-asleep--throughout much of the film, only cranking up the Cageness when Steele has his Come to Jesus moment, looking at his ascended co-pilot's left-behind watch and seeing "John 3:16" engraved on it, then frantically perusing a departed flight attendant's day planner and having a blubbering breakdown when he sees "Bible Study" on the next day's date, with those two items being all he needs to conclude that his wife was right all along.
Veteran stuntman and stunt coordinator Armstrong worked on many 007 films between YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967) and DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002), and served as the stunt double for George Lazenby in the Bond entry ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1969), Christopher Reeve in SUPERMAN (1978) and Harrison Ford in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981). In recent years, the now 68-year-old Armstrong has handled second unit directing duties on major Hollywood films like I AM LEGEND (2007), THOR (2011), and JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT (2014) among many others. He's an odd choice to helm LEFT BEHIND, not just for the kind of movie it is or that it calls on none of his skills as a stunt expert but because it's just his second film as a director and the first since the 1993 Dolph Lundgren actioner ARMY OF ONE, aka JOSHUA TREE. Armstrong's effort here is undistinguished for the most part, with unconvincing CGI and greenscreen, and some oddly antiquated use of mattes and miniatures for a good chunk of the climactic crash landing. That sequence is almost charmingly Antonio Margheriti-esque in its dated execution, and as laughable as it looks, the miniatures may still be preferable to the whole thing being CGI'd as the airborne mayhem was in this year's earlier NON-STOP. So, if nothing else, while the shaky matte work is total bush league and the NYC skyline looks like Armstrong just projected the Troma intro onto a screen in front of the actors, LEFT BEHIND might make you a believer in the use of practical miniatures like they used to do.
True to disaster movie form, LEFT BEHIND '14's passengers are played by an odd grouping of actors beyond the inexplicable participation of Cage (I'd call this the STRIKE COMMANDO 2 of his career, but it's obviously too early to make that call) and BACK TO THE FUTURE's Thompson: you get 2007 AMERICAN IDOL winner Jordin Sparks, who also sings the closing credits song, blaming the event on her estranged pro quarterback husband; PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN's Martin Klebba as a surly little person with a huge chip on his shoulder; Olympic athlete and DANCING WITH THE STARS contestant Lolo Jones; folksy character actor Gary Grubbs; and Quinton Aaron, who you probably haven't thought of since THE BLIND SIDE. But the real story here is the once-unstoppable Nicolas Cage, a daring actor who blazed trails and lived on the edge but who's now teetered off beyond self-parody and past the point of no return with LEFT BEHIND. Earlier this year, JOE looked like it might revitalize his stagnant career until Lionsgate buried it. It's still a terrific film and it was his best performance in years, but hey, what's the point when he's already got this lined up? I get that actors need to work, but Cage can't possibly need the money badly enough to humiliate himself in an endeavor this beneath him. But maybe it's not beneath him. He's fully self-aware and has become his own punchline, a trained monkey in a carnival of "Nic Cage Freaks Out!" YouTube clips. At what point does someone close to him stage an intervention? This is a film that looks positively embarrassing on the big screen, from its terrible visual effects to the clunky dialogue forced on its actors. Even someone like Chad Michael Murray, the former ONE TREE HILL teen idol and current journeyman actor who very likely has no Oscars in his future, has to know this is garbage, and he's actually been in something as nonsensical as the cartographically-challenged THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT 2: GHOSTS OF GEORGIA. The characters in LEFT BEHIND are nothing more than puppets mouthing the message, and it doesn't matter how awkwardly such proclamations are worked in as long as the audience hears them. Films like this have no subtlely or nuance, and while LEFT BEHIND '14 tones down the proselytizing a bit in order to appeal to the commercial audience they presume Cage will draw by turning it into AIRPORT '14: THE RAPTURE, that only heightens the cynicism of the whole thing. In short, there is no reason for this film to exist, and there's no excuse for Cage agreeing to be in it.
