pc_dean Reviews

Underworld (2003)

A-Vamping We Will Go

[7/10 · 7 November 2003]

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but a good while ago, vampires stopped being hideous corpse-rats and aloof Mitteleuropean aristocrats with funny accents. In many cases, they even stopped being bad guys. Your average vampire these days is slick, sexy, and angst-ridden, living an eternal Gothic bacchanal. What, precisely, is so inherently sexy about a reanimated corpse has always escaped me. I blame Anne Rice. Or maybe that Keifer Sutherland movie. Anyway, that particular strain of vampire fiction has always impressed me very little; nothing wearies my patience quite like some pretentious navel- gazing twit done up in black, pausing to murder a cute starlet before whining about the dreariness of existence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, somebody hand me a wooden stake.

That said, I have to admit that `Underworld' is a pretty decent movie. It treats its vampires vs. werewolves war scenario with a trifle too much seriousness, and borrows heavily from other movies in its visual vocabulary, but it throws enough talent at the problem on both sides of the camera that it pulls through. Besides, it can't help but be better than the leaden, preening `Interview With the Vampire'.

Our bloodsucking heroine is Selene (Kate Beckinsale, very fetching in a patent- leather bodysuit), who is a `Deathdealer', one of the leather-trenchcoated button men of the vampire world. The Vamps, we learn, have been duking it out for centuries with the Lycans (a fancy name for your garden-variety werewolf). Throughout, the human race has been oblivious to the fighting, which apparently means ignoring a couple of gory firefights a week. The exact casus belli here is unclear for much of the movie, and even the characters don't really know since, as Selene tells us, researching history is forbidden. Boy, that's never a good sign. The war is as much a conflict of dueling fashion sense as anything else: the Vampires are sleek dilettantes who loll around on vintage furniture in grandiose mansions, sipping blood from crystal goblets and exchanging sardonic smirks, while the Lycans are hairy and unkempt rowdies who live in the sewer and amuse themselves by beating the snot out of each other. The Vamps dress in fancy evening gowns and tailored leather; the Lycans' idea of high fashion is an old Bundeswehr jacket and no shirt. The Vampires have guns with lots of polished chrome compensators and electronic doodads stuck all over them (they do target practice on Renaissance busts); the Lycans are fond of AKs and oversized Desert Eagles. Interestingly, the Lycans all appear to be male. Can't imagine why. Anyway, while out snuffing a couple of Lycans, Selene notices that they seem to be following Michael (Scott Speedman), a medical intern at a local hospital, and also discovers that the sneaky wolves have developed special vampire-piercing bullets made with irradiated liquid sunshine. She decides to check into Michael more closely, over the opposition of her vampire colleagues, and discovers not only the roots of the war, but also that everything she has believed all of her undead life is, er, inaccurate.

The movie is set in a Stygian and rainy City With No Name, located somewhere in eastern Europe (`Underworld' was shot in Budapest and Prague). Director

Len Wiseman films the place with a lot of gray filter and shadow, which gives all the characters the wan, ashen appearance of the walking dead. The atmosphere is a definite plus for the movie, though it's hardly original. If vampires were real, this is where they'd live - they wouldn't stand out for not having a tan. Kate Beckinsale gives a subtle and effective performance as Selene, though I'm not sure if it is the one intended. She seems to be written as a steely warrior, but Beckinsale comes off too delicate and waifish for that. Frequently in her combat scenes, she looks disconcerted, uncomfortable, and a little scared. She's competent but not confident, and seems like something of a shyly charismatic tomboy who's a vampire but isn't really into it. When she walks through the grand hall of the vampire hangout, the in-crowd vampires just stare at her with what might be disdain, and she doesn't give them the time of day (well, night I guess). Selene is, essentially, an orphan a couple of times over, and Beckinsale's performance gives a definite sense of the vulnerability this entails. Frankly, I thought all this made her a more interesting and appealing character, whose courage comes from control of fear, not absence of it, but I'm not sure it's what the creators had in mind. And you do sort of keep expecting other characters to put their arms around her and say, `There, there, Sweetie, werewolves aren't really real, they're just make-believe.' Wiseman selected quite a good cast for the movie, even in small roles, and this helps immensely in making `Underworld' entertaining. Speedman is fine in his secondary role, though he and Beckinsale's inevitable romantic bonding is a little unconvincing. As the Lycan boss, Michael Sheen creates a compelling portrait of ferocity that becomes oddly sympathetic, particularly when his grievance against the vampires is given an airing. The only weak spot in the cast is Shane Brolly, who plays the cowardly but devious vampire chieftain Kraven (the legendary vampire warrior-king he is playing Prince John for is called `Viktor'. Such is `Underworld's idea of symbolism). The fact that Kraven is something of a sissified drama king does not excuse Brolly's hyperventilating all his lines like he's climbing Everest or something. Viktor, incidentally, is revived as a desiccated mummy in the course of the story, and Bill Nighy plays him with eerie, amoral dignity even through many layers of prosthetics.

The ending leaves room for a sequel, as is increasingly common among action movies, all of whom have decided to at least leave the option of creating a franchise. I mean, pretty much everything gets a sequel these days. And you could do worse, I guess. After all, how many books did Anne Rice write?

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

There is (Still) No Spoon

[4/10 · 7 November 2003]

Here is wisdom: Everything that has a beginning has an end. A long, plodding, painfully drawn-out end. Here is more wisdom: Some things are better left to the imagination. There is no spoon.

The Matrix trilogy limps to an less-than-satisfying conclusion in The Matrix Revolutions, which makes a lot of the same mistakes that made Reloaded such a disappointment. How did this happen? The first movie was so cool, so exhilarating. It nodded politely to all its blended sources, before pouring them all together and creating its own intriguing story, with layers of reality stacked helter-skelter. It created a sensation, defined moviemaking for a generation, and inspired musings by fans ranging from obscure ramblings on websites (um, hi there) to doctoral theses. Forget The Phantom Menace - The Matrix was the real successor to Star Wars. And that, I think, is the problem. The Matrix series has become so intent on itself as post-modern myth that it forgets to be fun. Both sequels ratcheted up the mumbo-jumbo while discarding the endearingly loopy pseudo-religiosity that gave the first movie its charm. They increase complexity and reduce joy. There is no reason whatsoever why the sequels should turn out to be more talky than the first one, which had to set up the whole scenario in the first place, but that's exactly what happened.

I won't bother too much with plot summary, especially since it's so convoluted and strange, expanding on the revelations in Reloaded about the nature and history of the Matrix. Anyway, the Bad Guys are still on their way to trash Zion, and Agent Smith is still replicating like a crazed Xerox machine in a bid to take over the Matrix.

Revolutions, like Reloaded, errs in setting comparatively little action inside the Matrix itself. The Matrix, and the heroes' ability to distort its reality to their advantage, was the element that made the original stand out, and gave it the wow factor that made it a modern classic. It's the series' best card, but they seem reluctant to play it. It was far more dramatically effective to dream of Zion than to see it, and that was before we knew that it looked like some kind of industrial-park hippie commune. There is too much of Zion in Revolutions, too much of its unwashed squalor, its strange caveman fetish, and the stuffy school board that runs it (including Cornel West, whose acting skills suggest he should stick to extorting money from Harvard, or Princeton, or whatever school he's milking now).

But Reloaded gave us a nifty car-chase set piece to partially redeem itself for being so dull and earnest. Revolutions instead gives us a slug-match at the rusty gates of Zion between invading robo-squids and the goofily impractical weaponry of Zion's defense forces. I need to talk about these for a sec - they have these giant robot frames with machine guns in each hand, but with no targeting system or any kind of shielding for the operator. Who designed these things? Undertakers? The fight scene itself is big and loud, and not without visual dazzle, but it's nothing you haven't already seen, and better. The in- Matrix theatrics are limited to a floor-to-ceiling shootout in the basement of a nightclub, and the final fistfight showdown between Neo and Agent Smith. They are amazing scenes of technical artistry, but then they're over.

The Matrix series provided the perfect vehicle for Keanu Reeves, who is, to put it kindly, not a deep actor. Reeves has made the most of his spacey quality, and turns his flatness into an impressive sort of Zen charisma. There's really no other actor who could have pulled it off as well. And though she is more talented, he and Carrie-Anne Moss do have a certain quiet chemistry together. The real disappointment in Revolutions is Laurence Fishburne. He was perfectly cast as the inscrutable master, communicating wisdom and self- possession, with just the right leavening of humor. In Reloaded, he had that awful scene where he bellowed that weird speech on the rock in Zion -

Morpheus should never have to raise his voice - but his freeway sword battle was thrilling. By Revolutions Fishburne looks pudgy and spent, and doesn't get any good scenes. It's as if Morpheus is so far past his prime that they only keep him around out of pity.

There's still Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. Weaving's unmistakable stilted line deliveries have become part of film lore, perfectly capturing the sense that something about the world was slightly. . .off, and one of the subtle signs that the machines' understanding of humanity was incomplete. In Revolutions Smith is working solo, and becoming a threat to human and machine alike. He has an entourage of clones, though the effect is more comic than chilling.

Revolutions also sees the return of the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) and his chilly consort (Monica Bellucci). I never understood these characters' purpose, and still don't. Their presence in the second movie seemed like an unnecessary detour, but one imagined they were being introduced because they would become significant by series' end. They don't - they actually get less screen time in the final chapter than the second. This is probably just as well, since whenever they were on screen in Reloaded, it stopped the movie dead.

The ending is obtuse, and leaves you going, `Well, NOW what?' If the Wachowskis hadn't announced that the trilogy was ended, I would think they were leaving themselves open for a fourth movie (`The Matrix Obfuscations', perhaps).

This review ended up being little more than a litany of complaint. But mulling over the movie, one thing was clear: I wish they had just left the first movie alone. A bad sequel is a kind of betrayal, as any fan of `Robocop' or `The Hidden' will tell you. Oh, well, while I'm at it, here's a prediction off the top of my head: the next Star Wars movie, when it finally comes out, is gonna suck too. You're welcome.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)

Como se dice "Spaghetti Western?"

[8/10 · 23 September 2003]

Evidently, Robert Rodriguez has decided that he wants to be Sergio Leone when he grows up. And if his latest movie is any guide, he's well on his way. Not that this is a bad thing. Leone is most famous for his `Spaghetti Westerns', which shook up the creaky black-vs-white-hat conventions of the Western form that became entrenched during the 1950s, and made an icon out of a former gas station attendant named Clint Eastwood. There's a lot of Leone in `Once Upon a Time in Mexico', Rodriguez's latest entry in his signature `Mariachi' series, following El `Mariachi' and `Desperado'. The new movie, whose title is an homage to Leone's `Once Upon a Time in the West', is an epic opera of blood, dust, and vengeance that would have made the master smile.

Mexico follows series hero El Mariachi (amusingly called `El' for short) as he is dragged from the shadows of obscure legend and into the sneaky plotting of a gleefully amoral CIA operative (Johnny Depp, every inch the charming sociopath). The plot concerns an attempt by a corrupt general in the employ of a vicious cartel boss (Willem Dafoe) to assassinate Mexico's president and seize power in a coup. Depp wants to prevent the general's rise to power (but not, he makes clear, the murder of the president), and to that end enlists/ dragoons Banderas, who has a serious grudge against General Marquez.

Rodriguez aims for epic sweep, and the story becomes quite dense and twisty, involving a great many characters, including Eva Mendes as a cagey federalista, and Ruben Blades as a retired FBI agent who has lost too many friends and seen too many enemies escape. The grand scheme of the plot both helps and hurts the movie; it's involved and interesting, but contributes to the movie's being somewhat overlong and losing its focus by the end. `Mexico' is less comedic than `Desperado' (though it has some charming jokes and references to the earlier movies - check out the Chihuahua's name tag!), and touches more directly on serious issues affecting contemporary Mexico, including corruption in the military, the narco-tyranny of the cartels, and the fragility of democratic institutions in a country wracked by conflict. Rodriguez has said he did not intend `Mexico' as a political statement, but the movie is heavily and often poignantly flavored with Mexican patriotism.

Rodriguez knows how to handle a cast, and this one, which includes faces who have worked with him many times before, does not disappoint. Whatever else he may do, Antonio Banderas will probably always be remembered for the character he creates in these movies. His Mariachi is a hero of wounded power, whose brooding silences, quiet voice, and soulful eyes remind us that revenge, the most common action-movie motivation around, is inexplicably linked with horrific loss. Banderas' characterization is so good, that one quickly forgave him for stealing the role from Carlos Gallardo, who likably originated it in `El Mariachi' (Gallardo has, happily, not been cast aside; he had a cameo in `Desperado', and has shared producer credit on the entire series).

No one, however, is having nearly as much fun in this movie as Johnny Depp, whose Agent Sands is a happy-go-lucky nihilist who carries off any scene that isn't nailed down. He is a remorseless murderer, but a charming one, and so by the perverse moral logic of movies, sympathetic; he also provides the bulk of the comic relief. His presence in the movie is not nearly as extensive as you might think, given his prominent billing (the same is true of Salma Hayek, who is billed second, but whose role is essentially a glorified cameo).

Cheech Marin and Danny Trejo, frequent Rodriguez collaborators, appear as vivid lowlifes (though not the same vivid lowlifes they played in `Desperado'; those were deceased by the closing credits). Blades is excellent as the reluctant FBI agent, a tired man of integrity who discovers that years of retirement cannot dim his anger at the ones who got away. Dafoe is appropriately sinister, though his performance makes one keenly aware just how cliched the Latin American drug kingpin villain has become. Mickey Rourke serves as Dafoe's right-hand man, and seems to be channeling the late, great Johnny Cash in what I have to confess is the only Mickey Rourke performance I have ever truly enjoyed. The main problem in the cast is not bad performance, just that the huge scope Rodriguez brings to the movie involves too many people, and limits the amount of time each has to establish themselves. Enrique Iglesias and Marco Leonardi, in particular, create less memorable characters as Banderas' backup men than did Gallardo and Albert Michel Jr. in `Desperado' (who didn't even have any lines.)

When, in true Western style, Banderas inevitably straps on his six-million- shooters to do battle with the Bad Guys, Rodriguez also delivers thundering, amped-up action sequences, which evoke the Hong Kong style without merely imitating it. Rodriguez's gun battle set pieces are ballistic expressions of gruesome joy, and he gives us a number of them, including a frenetic running battle and motorcycle chase (appropriately set to `Pistolero' by Juno Reactor, the hardest-working electronica band in movies), leading up to a ferocious street battle during the coup attempt on Dia de Los Muertos. Fans of Leone will notice many of his trademark close-ups of squinting eyes and poetic, stylish showdowns. Rodriguez also tweaks playfully with the visual vocabulary of Westerns; instead of horses materializing on the horizon or the noon train steaming in the distance as harbingers of impending danger, we get battered pickup trucks driving in clouds of dust, laden down with grim, unshaven men with sunglasses and automatic weapons. The Banditos Cometh. `Once Upon a Time in Mexico' is not quite as good as its predecessors, but it still provides a blazing good time for Western fans and gun fetishists alike. Count me in.

Wrong Turn (I) (2003)

The Hills Have Cliches

[4/10 · 10 June 2003]

Well, the title's accurate, I'll give them that. Wrong Turn feels a little like a movie out of time, a holdover from that period in the late 90s when latter-day horror movies were all the rage. Those movies took the formula of the slasher movies popular over the previous decade, and injected a hip, self-aware sense of irony into them. We screamed, we laughed, we found out all about what people did last summer. As movie after movie tried to cash in on the revival, though, all the cleverness leaked out of the genre, leaving merely re-hashed versions of the old splatter flicks. As they say, here we go again. You know the story, sing along: Six photogenic twentysomethings end up stranded in The Middle of Nowhere RFD, where they become prey for a clan of freakish savages who live far from the bounds of civilization (you know this because cell phones won't work). There's slicing, and dicing, and creepy houses in the woods, and, oh, you know. That's pretty much it. Just another iteration of what I like to call the `NRA Plot'; that is, one that would be resolved by the end of the second reel if any of the principal characters had thought to bring a repeating rifle or two. Or if they had at the very least taken one of the thuddingly obvious opportunities they are given to procure one.

Most movies of this type use a rather generic setting, so as to fudge the fact that it's really the Angeles National Forest. In contrast, Wrong Turn sets its bloodletting in `Greenbriar Back Country', West Virginia, the state that most frequently ends up on the wrong side of Americans' regional elitism. We are treated to several helicopter shots sweeping over the treetops, as thundering ominous music plays in the background, like some sort of travelogue made by Wes Craven. Message: we're in scary country, folks. Like most movies of this type, the heavy subtext of Wrong Turn is all about urbanites' uneasiness about rural areas and the people who live there. After all, the reasoning goes, if someone chooses not to live in the city, with its all-night delis and trash pickup, well, there must be something WRONG with them, mustn't there? Naturally, pretty much everyone the protagonists encounter is a toothless, oil-stained stereotype of various degrees of grotesqueness (not too many, though - we don't want to blow the makeup budget). Don't look for this movie to play too long in Wheeling. Actually, Wrong Turn was filmed in a very pretty part of Ontario, but we digress. It feels a little unfair to pile on this movie: director Rob Schmidt, who made Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, gives it the old college try (specifically, Shrieking Coed U.) It's not totally awful, it's at least competently put together, and even provides a decent scare or two. But it doesn't break any new ground, it doesn't play with the conventions of the genre, it doesn't bring anything fresh. We've seen the `pretty young things get picked off like guests at an Agatha Christie weekend retreat' plot innumerable times before, and the `urban travelers' terror of predatory rural folk' theme in Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Breakdown, and Southern Comfort, to name just a few. I'd always thought The Blair Witch Project was over-hyped and overrated, but I have to say it's looking better and better. The young cast turns in serviceable performances, hampered as they are by the hackneyed dialogue. Desmond Harrington, in particular, makes a good laconic hero, and Eliza Dushku a likable but prickly heroine. On the other hand, Jeremy Sisto's junior-college Jeff Goldblum schtick becomes wearying very quickly. From its extraneous-characters-get-pureed opening to its painfully obvious `surprise' finale, Wrong Turn is just a heaping plate of the same old same-old. Characters poke around the mandatory spooky cabin, finding enough ominous clues that it would be clear to the functionally brain-dead that YOU ARE IN A BAD PLACE. GET OUT. But, these are horror movie characters, people evidently born without whatever gene it is that promotes self-preservation.

I suppose it's a matter of taste: if you just can't get enough of this type of plot, by all means, see Wrong Turn. There are far worse examples out there. But even by the standards of cheap horror movies (which I admit to a certain fondness for), it's just middling fare, painted entirely by the numbers. Frankly, it may be childish, but just once I would like to see a movie about a pack of demented hilljack freakshows who run across a van-load of vacationing Green Berets, played by Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Ironside, William Fichtner, and Hugo Weaving. It'd be a very short movie, but it would at least be a refreshing change of pace, which Wrong Turn is definitely not.

Basic (2003)

Soldiers of Misfortune

[3/10 · 25 May 2003]

When you watch a lot of movies, you develop a set of signposts that often tell you what to expect. One of my personal favorites is the use of the phrase `nothing is what it seems.' This signals to me that we're in for a roller-coaster of contrivance, that will attempt to use clumsy intrigue and half-wit conspiracy- mongering as a cover for slipshod writing and lazy plotting. Basic uses this phrase early (and in the trailer), and means every word of it.

The movie tells the story, if you want to call it that, of the investigation into the disappearance of a group of US Army Rangers during an exercise gone horribly awry. Six Rangers, led by their bullying, maniacal trainer Sgt. West (Samuel L. Jackson), went into the Panamanian jungle in the teeth of a brutal hurricane, and seventeen hours later one is found by a helicopter, carrying a wounded comrade and exchanging gunfire with another. The walking survivor, Ray Dunbar (Brian Van Holt) is taken into custody, but the Provost Marshal of the base (Connie Nielsen, in an awful performance) is unable to get anything out of him. The base commander calls in Tom Hardy (John Travolta), an old frien and former Ranger, currently a DEA agent under a cloud of suspicion, to try and unravel what really happened in the jungle and why.

At first glance, this setup seems to be leading toward a primal tale of murder and madness among soldiers cracking under strain, a sort of camouflage-colored Lord of the Flies. But, as we have been warned, Nothing is What It Seems. As the two surviving members of the unit tell conflicting stories, and hints of

misconduct and criminal activity begin to surface, the movie takes on the characteristics of a whodunit, told in Rashomon-style flashbacks. This, coupled with the presence of Travolta, lends Basic an uncomfortable resemblance to 1999's seedy mess The General's Daughter. While Basic is a better movie, rest assured that that is extremely faint praise. It jettisons any semblance of logic early on, and never gets it back.

The performances of Basic's cast are a mixed bag: Travolta is watchable as usual, and he brings a believable sense of self-assured cool to Hardy, but he is frustratingly unable to contain his hammy instincts. The quality of a Travolta performance appears to be inversely proportional to the volume of his voice.

When he's quiet, he's very good; when he yells, he quickly becomes a cartoon. This movie has enough credibility problems - it doesn't need a cartoon hero.

If Travolta is mixed news, Connie Nielsen is plain bad. It's not so much that she can't seem to make heads or tails of the convoluted story - heck, no one can. But she seems less to be stymied than just exceptionally stupid. The scenes that are supposed to establish romantic tension between her and Travolta fall laughably flat. To top it off, she is saddled with some Hollywood nimrod's notion of a Southern accent, which blinks on and off like a turn signal.

The smaller roles, though, fare much better. Van Holt as the prisoner does especially well, flavoring his defiance with feral intelligence. There is also nice work by Taye Diggs as the unit's misfit and Tim Daly (where has he been since `Wings' folded?) as the base commander. The most memorable, though (and you sort of knew this already) is Jackson. He has the lunatic drill instructor bit down pat, and delivers it with relish. His is the one character in Basic who is supposed to be larger than life, in part because he is seen in flashback, which means that we are seeing not the man himself, but other people's impressions of him. In his commando sweater and poncho thrown over one shoulder like a warlord's cape, he looks twenty feet tall and invincible. Still, one of Jackson's great talents is his ability to project nuance and smarts to even the most unsubtle characters. His Sgt. West is the shadow leaning over the whole incident, and the movie would have been smart to take more advantage of that.

The real disappointment in the supporting cast is the normally talented Giovanni Ribisi as the wounded survivor, a hospital-ward weirdo who is supposed to seem mysterious but mostly comes off as jokey and annoying. Ribisi seems to have shoplifted his performance from Gary Oldman in Hannibal, down to his marble-mouthed line deliveries.

Though Basic is shabbily conceived, it is at least presented well by John McTiernan, who manages to wring what tension may be had from the loopy script. The movie is lacking in the action set-pieces McTiernan usually employs, but he nails the atmosphere just right. The use of weather to convey emotion is certainly overdone, but it is still effective when done right, as it is here. The pounding, ever-present rain and the dim, shadow-tinged interior lighting gives the movie the feel of an approaching end, a kind of despairing resignation to horrible things. It's a shame that the drama can't keep up with its own visual metaphor.

The main problem with Basic is that it doesn't know when to stop. Its lapses of realism and logic pile higher and higher, from technical trivia (one of the MIA Rangers is female; there are no women in the infantry, one of many reasons it's not the most pleasant assignment) to larger points of plot and motive (a twist central to the story is as thin as Kleenex). Time and time again, screenwriter Vanderbilt paints himself into a corner, then knocks out a wall. Finally, after several false endings, it goes for a fever-dream of a conclusion that throws the whole shebang into doubt without resolving anything. In The Usual Suspects, a similar trick was elegant and fraught with existential cleverness; in Basic, it's a cheap dodge. In the end, it's almost impressive how little sense this movie makes on any level. It has its merits, but strains your suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point, and washes its credibility away like bloodstains in a rainstorm.

Minority Report (2002)

I See Potential Dead People

[8/10 · 21 August 2002]

Reportedly, at some stage of its life, "Minority Report", based on a Philip K. Dick short story of the same name, was being developed by Paul Verhoeven as "Total Recall 2", which would connect the pre-cogs of "Report" with the psychic Martian mutants of "Recall". Spielberg's is a better movie than that one would have been, but still fails to be quite as good as its potential.

It's 2054, and the notoriously lawless District of Columbia has become a tranquil place, largely through the efforts of the Precrime Division of the D.C. Metropolitan Police (which, to judge from the sleek Precrime HQ, got a major funding increase at some point). The cops of Precrime, led by Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise), intervene in murders before they happen. They can do this courtesy of the pre-cogs, a trio of clairvoyant savants who spend their days sedated in a pool of nutri-muck, receiving images of future violent deaths, along with the names of the victims and perpetrators (the pre-cogs are named, in a cute but obvious touch, Arthur, Dashiell, and Agatha). The cops analyze the images to determine where the killing will happen, then zip to the scene in a hovercraft that looks like a cross between Boba Fett's Slave-1 and a malevolent seashell, nabbing the killer before the victim's blood is shed. The offender is then locked up (there's no trial; after all, the pre-cogs are never wrong) in a suspended-animation prison.

Precrime has been such a success that there is interest in expanding it nationwide (how they will do this with only three pre-cogs is never clear), and Anderton and his mentor (Max Von Sydow) are visited by an unctuous federal agent (a creepy but charismatic Colin Farrell) who is examining the Precrime program for flaws that might compromise public trust. And soon, Anderton has serious problems of his own: the pre-cogs finger him, for the murder of a man he has never met. He makes a run for it, trying to dodge his colleagues and find out what's going on. Someone has set him up and he doesn't know why, but it may have to do with an old Precrime case that keeps turning up like a bad penny.

Visually, the movie is stunning. Spielberg fills his future world with fascinating stuff, alternately awe-inspiring and unsettling: roads are choked with aerodynamic cars that drive up the sides of buildings. Passive retinal scanners in public places identify you as you walk by, generating slick commercials that call out to you by name (public ID checkers and their effects on fugitives also cropped up in last spring's "Impostor", itself based on a Dick story), while a shopping center's walls teem with ghostly animated ads. In another memorable sequence, the residents of a government housing block stop whatever they are doing to submit to the attentions of "spiders", tiny self-guiding retinal scanners on spindly legs, which almost become characters in their own right (one, for instance, seems to be a bit smarter than the others).

Unfortunately, Spielberg is unable to contain his puckishness, and the action scenes are staged with a liberal dose of slapstick humor. It's nice that Spielberg doesn't take himself too seriously (there was a whiff of that in "A.I.") but it doesn't fit with the solemn tone of the proceedings. It's as if Tom Hanks had, in the midst of "Saving Private Ryan", pulled out a bullwhip and hitched a ride on a Wehrmacht truck. "Minority Report" raises a lot of heavy Orwellian questions, but it's far more eager to play than think.

Tom Cruise is probably the only Hollywood leading man to get this far in his career without ever playing a cop. It's sort of strange: with his clean-cut, chiseled features and clipped line deliveries, he's a natural for it. He plays Anderton with believable, brisk competence, and he looks appropriately like the Brave Man of the Shiny New Future, but we don't really get from Cruise the inner turmoil that others describe in Anderton. When he has a moment of unhinged emotion, we sort of wonder where it came from. It would have been interesting to see what someone like Ed Harris would have done with this role.

Anderton grabs a pre-cog (the female, natch) to help him find the truth. Samantha Morton's Agatha is a haunting and delicate presence as that sci-fi staple, the innocent with great power (the religious overtones of the pre-cogs are hinted at repeatedly, especially in the funny reaction of a sleazy virtual-memory dealer upon meeting Agatha). When Morton gives voice to her visions, and pleads fruitlessly not to see them fulfilled, we have the sense of someone with an awesome and terrible gift. Still, I think it's safe to say that Sinead O'Connor has pretty much killed the buzz-cut look for women.

Other bright spots in the cast: Tim Blake Nelson has a quirky turn as Gideon, the warden and sole staff member of the coma-prison (itself an oddly beautiful Kubrickian creation). And the always welcome Lois Smith scores as the reclusive doctor responsible for the pre-cogs, though her scene degenerates into pointless weirdness.

The story is well-paced and interestingly twisty, but it sacrifices more and more credibility as it goes. "Minority Report" is almost, but not quite, good enough to coast smoothly over its logical potholes. It's smart, but not quite as smart as it pretends. Philosophically, it sets up an extreme position and then argues against it. Sure, locking people up without trial for things they haven't actually done (yet) is a Bad Thing, but the movie inadvertently sabotages its point with a montage of living, breathing victims who would otherwise have been raped, shot, and slaughtered. It's shown in passing, but it sticks with you.

The movie's good, but it's good when it could have been phenomenal, and that's bad.

Reign of Fire (2002)

Here There Be a Silly Movie (possible spoilers, I guess)

[4/10 · 20 July 2002]

Q: What's the difference between a fire-breathing dragon and a mid-summer movie?

A: One is a lumbering monster with a tiny brain that rains death and destruction, and the other is just a big lizard.

"Reign of Fire" is basically "Waterworld" with gasoline, with all that that entails. The story begins in London in 2008, when a tunnel crew unearths a massive underground chamber containing a dragon who, like most of us, is a little cranky first thing in the morning. The dragon, oddly, sleeps through the breaching of its den with a massive roaring drilling machine, and only wakes up when it is nudged. All of a sudden dragons are greeting the dawn all over the world and torching things with more reckless abandon than the U.S. Forest Service. The world is shortly destroyed, as we learn in a drawn-out opening sequence involving an unseen narrator writing in a journal, though he doesn't seem to be writing what he's saying. Most of the story takes place in 2020, where a society of refugees led by Quinn (Christian Bale) lives in a decrepit English castle, hiding from the dragons.

Things can only get so bad in Europe, of course, before the Americans show up, and show up they do, in an armored column of the Kentucky Irregulars, led by tattooed, bald nut case Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey). He has a crazy idea that entails killing the boss dragon, since it is the only male dragon of the millions around the globe (must be a busy fella).

It's critical in post-apocalypse movies to establish a credible and vivid world, with a balance of the modern and the primitive, and a sense of how societal priorities have changed to suit the new reality. The classic case was the jury-rigged ingenuity of the "Mad Max" movies, where V8 engines were prized and gasoline more precious than life. They weren't necessarily realistic, but they were believable, because they established a set of rules and stuck by them. "Reign of Fire" is all out of whack in this department: the castle-dwellers are on the brink of starvation, but seem to have a limitless supply of electricity, without even a cursory explanation of where it comes from. As part of their security net, they use massive searchlights to monitor the night skies. Uh, way to keep a low profile, guys. Van Zan's people, on the other hand, apparently have an endless supply of fuel, enough to maintain a gas-guzzling tank and a helicopter(!) with again, no hint of how. Not to mention the fact that the world was supposedly nuked to get rid of the dragons, yet the word "radiation" never so much as passes anyone's lips. Plus, the movie can't even keep track of its own timeline.

All this could have been forgiven if we got some gut-wrenching army n' dragon smackdowns. Van Zan is supposed to be a fearsome dragon killer, so you would figure that he and his militia would have some savvy anti-dragon tactics figured out, from the painful lessons learned by the doomed struggle of the world's armies, but no. When they take on a dragon in the castle environs, their plan of attack is so suicidally ludicrous it would take a minor miracle to work just once. Without going into too much detail, it involves ground-based radar monitors, a high-tech computer tracking system, and skydivers, all to try and bring the beast to earth so McConaughey can kill it with an axe. Seriously.

The movie has its good points, though: it is capably directed by TV veteran Rob Bowman, who at least manages to imbue the ridiculous proceedings with some sort of dramatic tension. The climactic battle is pretty impressive, and there is an awesome scene of the dragon hovering over the militia while lines of tracers whip through the night sky and the smoke roils under his wings. Wolf Kroeger's production design isn't bad, the landscape is suitably scorched and desperate, though it looks like they might have swiped some sets from "Enemy at the Gates". The dragons themselves, of course, are amazing. They are truly mean hombres of fluid reptilian grace, whose jaws leak flaming liquid as they breathe. They (almost) convince you that they really could have destroyed the world, that they wouldn't have been swatted from the sky in two seconds by any F-18 pilot with half a brain and a rack of heat-seekers. But then you expect great effects from even the most dim-witted of movies these days.

Like most monster movies, "Reign of Fire" suffers badly when the monsters are offscreen catching a smoke break, and we are left with flat characters speaking silly dialogue in a tepid story. Bale is all right, though his character comes off as something of a weenie. McConaughey, meanwhile, has no chemistry with anyone or anything on screen. He's a buffed-out paramilitary psycho, but not an interesting one. You can't figure out how he became the leader (maybe he was the only one who could drive a tank). The most engaging character is Alex, the helicopter pilot, played by Izabella Scorupco (the luminous computer expert in "GoldenEye"), who isn't given much attention by the script, but who seems like she would have been a better choice to lead the militia. Too bad she wasn't the main character.

But the humans aren't the real stars anyway. I sort of picture a dragon, guzzling an Evian bottle of lighter fluid, and barking into his cell phone:

"I'm telling you, Marty, I've had it! C'mon, I can fly! I can breathe fire! That idiot T-Rex gets a three-picture deal with Spielberg, and what do I get? First "Dungeons & Dragons" and now THIS! Whaddaya doing to me? Get me a meeting with Katzenberg, or I torch Burbank."

About a Boy (2002)

The Urbane Jungle

[8/10 · 27 May 2002]

"About a Boy" is the story of a superficial hipster who discovers his humanity, who comes to learn of his need and capability to love, through a paternal relationship to a troubled young boy.

Even so, it's still worth watching.

Will Freeman (get it?) is a London man-about-town who has raised superficiality to a form of high art. He has no job, no interests, no close friends. He lives off the royalties from a song his late father wrote years before (it's not a very good song, either, and watching Will's reaction as it stalks him everywhere he goes is a lot of fun). Will's time is filled with nothing: he watches TV, he has his hair done, he plays pool, he chases women, but he has no substantive existence. And that's just how he likes it.

He hits upon a scheme to focus his skirt-chasing on young single mothers, who are eager for male attention but skittish about emotional commitment. This plan brings him into contact with 12-year-old Marcus, a bright but miserable kid who divides his time between torture at school and his unstable home life with his hippie mom (Toni Collette). Marcus decides he needs a backup support system, and schemes by persistence and blackmail to recruit Will as a surrogate father.

The scenario lends itself to being a kind of post-modern "Parent Trap": cute kid brings together two people who are just so gosh-darn perfect for each other that the only reason they aren't together is that they have to drag it out so the audience can finish its popcorn. But this movie refuses to follow any easily-spotted pattern, and there are too many other characters and relationships spinning in its orbit anyway. "About a Boy" takes any number of relationship comedy ideas, any one of which could have its own pedestrian high-concept movie built around it, and mixes them , blender-like, into its narrative. It keeps all these balls in the air by maintaining an extremely sharp and witty edge. In the saccharine world of change-your-heart movies, it's a big shot of insulin. But in being so, it manages to beat the sweeties at their own game: its moments of emotional weight are all the more effective because we're not under constant empathy fatigue.

To look at Hugh Grant, even in the movies where he plays insufferably cute, is to see a man who could brilliantly portray a rat fink, since he seems to have a lot of experience (just ask Elizabeth Hurley). And his Will is a virtuoso of callow self-involvement. He doesn't kid himself; he is content in his shallowness, as his caustic and funny narration makes clear (being that empty apparently requires a great deal of self-knowledge). It is this narration that is one of the best parts of Grant's performance: his onscreen reactions are in perfect synch with his offscreen words, which makes his internal monologue a vital part of the movie instead of a clunky device. Grant expertly walks a tightrope between pathos and obnoxiousness, since if he were too likable or too nasty, he wouldn't hold our interest the way he does.

Naturally, Will's shallowness is a mask for some deep and roiling emotions that he refuses to deal with, regarding his father and his upbringing (and that freakin' song). This is nicely understated: we are never subjected to teary emotional confessions or wrenching anecdotes on his part.

As Marcus, Nicholas Hoult creates a presence to match Grant's. The boy is both smart and troubled, but they don't become the kind of overbearing cardinal traits that usually dominate and define children in movies. His most prominent characteristic is a kind of morose calculation: he doesn't gravitate toward Will out of sentiment or affection, but just decides that he needs some "backup" and figures that, realistically, Will is what he has to work with. And work he does: the movie lets us watch as a relationship based on mutually beneficial deceit gradually and almost defiantly becomes real and deep. Hoult's interior monologue is almost as funny as Grant's. It reveals a kid who has grown up fast, who is wry and self-aware but still, and palpably, just a kid.

As Marcus's mom, Toni Collette sheds the maternal seriousness and scientific stare that have become a sort of trademark for her in movies like "Changing Lanes" and "The Sixth Sense". Her role isn't too big, but she gives us a compelling portrayal of loving but freaked-out instability with the screen time she has. Only Rachel Weisz fails to make much impression, as a love interest of Grant's: she's not bad, but it's tough playing a late-coming and slightly underwritten character, when everyone around you is so good.

The script by Nick Hornby and Peter Hedges is clever and fast-moving, so much so that at the end of the movie, you are impressed by the sheer amount of things that happen in "About a Boy". Directors Chris and Paul Weitz (the "American Pie" guys!) keep things going at a brisk pace, with a minimum of showy camera work, though there is a rotating pan of Hoult in the schoolyard that is beautifully executed and well-placed. It deftly evokes self-involved urban cool, the terrors of junior high, the pain of missing pieces in your life, and the peculiar joys of families, ersatz and otherwise. Though the story strains its own believability at times (it's hard to figure how Grant gets into all these parties if he doesn't know anyone and just mostly watches TV), it charms its way to forgiveness, or at least acceptance. Its lessons are familiar, but nicely rendered: Everybody needs backup. Everybody has something to offer other people. And sometimes, you just have to get out there and sing Roberta Flack with your eyes closed.

I'm pretty sure they meant that last part metaphorically. No, seriously, stop that. Please.

We Were Soldiers (2002)

Choppering into the Little Big Horn

[7/10 · 3 May 2002]

If LtCol Harold Moore did not actually exist, it would be necessary for Hollywood to invent him. A tough-talking, straightforward leader of men, equal parts swagger and heart, he loves his troops like his own children, refuses to leave the combat zone while his boys are in the sharp end, and sheds tears for the fallen in between barking orders into a radio handset and shooting charging enemies through the head. The crazy thing about Moore, and about "We Were Soldiers" in general, is not how much is Hollywood hokum, but how much seems to be but isn't. Moore is a real person and he was by all accounts (including, but not limited to, his own) a tough soldier, a shrewd commander, and the kind of crazy SOB who would be the first to go in and the last to leave.

"We Were Soldiers" is the story of Moore and his 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry (Custer's old unit) in the Ia Drang valley, the first major confrontation between American and Vietnamese troops. This alternately brilliant and exasperating movie is based on a book by Moore and UPI reporter Joe Galloway, with the cumbersome but oddly poetic title "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young". It begins with Moore's assignment to the Army's first dedicated air cavalry unit, which is among the first US combat troops sent to Vietnam. What starts as a mission to destroy an enemy force that attacked an American base becomes a brutal siege as the Cav are surrounded and trapped, 395 men pitted against nearly two thousand of the enemy.

Moore is played by Mel Gibson, who adeptly portrays both the paternal kindness of a decent man and the manic glint so common in good infantry officers. Unfortunately, the movie focuses so much on him that it loses some of its big-picture scope. After a while it begins to seem that Gibson is everywhere; no firefight can commence unless he fires the opening volley, no act of valor passes without a shot of Gibson's eyes welling up with pained pride at the sacrifice of his soldiers. A little of this is good, too much of it is bad. Moore probably was larger than life, but Gibson's Moore almost threatens to be larger than the movie.

The supporting cast is led by Sam Elliott, whose Sergeant Major Plumley is destined to take his place among the greatest flinty NCO portrayals in film history. Barry Pepper plays Galloway, and delivers the movie's intro and epilogue, though he doesn't appear until late in the movie. The movie parallels the story of the battle with that of the officers' wives, led by Madeleine Stowe as Julie Moore. The wives' story is given some short shrift (and some very clumsy scenes), though it is in parts so wrenching it is almost a relief to return to the war zone.

One memorable passage in Moore's book likens the sound of a bullet hitting flesh to that of a canoe paddle slapping wet mud, an image that is at once comical and horrifying. We have come to expect graphic carnage from our war movies these days. However, instead of the rapid-fire speed-lapse photography seen in "Saving Private Ryan's" unforgettable Normandy sequence, writer/director Randall Wallace offers more straightforward depictions of the businesslike horrors of close combat: he doesn't use a lot of camera tricks to communicate the concept of chaotic violence, he just fills the screen with chaotic violence and lets us watch it in its unflinching fury. And call me an air-show junkie, but he has some beautiful sequences of Hueys diving over hilltops, flying in through smoke, etc.

Most latter-day war movies give a nod to the enemy, making him human, not a faceless monster. For all this movie's flag-waving sentimentality, it's actually better in this regard than most. The Vietnamese are not fearless stoics; we see a young NVA infantryman panting and wide-eyed with fear as he charges the equally afraid Americans (something even anti-American screeds like "Platoon" never showed). It's also instructive to watch Moore and his opposite number (Don Duong) moving among their troops doing similar things: offering encouragement, making stirring speeches, and plotting the demise of the other.

This is a battle picture, a movie that exhaustively analyzes a single big-picture event in a war. While movies of this type have been made for years, this is one of the very few to come out of Vietnam. The pantheon of great (and not-so-great) Vietnam movies all have one thing in common: they portray specific events that did not, strictly speaking, actually take place. Those movies are more about Vietnam as a general phenomenon than about anything that quantifiably happened there. In this way, "We Were Soldiers" represents something quite daring: Wallace has made an early-40s WWII movie about the Vietnam War.

And that's part of the problem: the movie has far too many places where it goes for overblown sentiment and emotional manipulation, often hokey to the point of embarrassment. The fact that many of the cliches are true and many of the corny Hollywood moments are based in fact does not excuse slathering them in high melodrama. This is doubly a shame because these scenes overshadow some stunning moments that work better for being small: none of the shots of Moore's eyes misting at the loss of his men can match the power of a scene that shows him standing by himself, his back to the camera as his shoulders shake with his unseen sobs. This is a good movie, but it misses its chance to be a great movie because it doesn't trust us in the folding seats to adequately grasp the point.

When "We Were Soldiers" goes wrong, it makes you want to roll your eyes. But when it gets it right, it cuts straight through to you with a sound like a canoe paddle slapping wet mud.

The Sweetest Thing (2002)

Tasty Confection of Empty Calories

[7/10 · 1 May 2002]

It seems risky to open a romantic comedy with a broadside against a heroine we haven't even seen yet, especially when she's played by Cameron Diaz, who has adorability the way the Air Force has jet fuel. Still, "The Sweetest Thing" opens with a series of interviews with various men about their relations, brief and extended, with the movie's protagonist, Christina Walters. The opinions expressed are uniformly bitter, especially those of a guy on a stationary bike who gets quite exercised (nyuk nyuk) on the subject.

Christina is a San Francisco party girl, unattached and aggressively so, who flirts with a guy in a nightclub and brushes him off, but finds that she can't get him out of her head. Her roommate (Christina Applegate), seeing her friend's state, shanghais her into a road trip to crash a wedding Mr. Nightspot mentioned he would be attending.

That's pretty much it for plot. Most of the movie concerns the misadventures the two women get into on their way, and a central plot twist that anyone who was paying attention spotted right away. At first, "The Sweetest Thing" seems destined to become one of those "Sigh, Where Are All the Nice Guys?" movies, an archetype that wears heavily on the nerves of that segment of the audience composed of lonely and embittered ex-Nice Guys sitting dateless in the dark (I won't mention any names). The movie thankfully veers away from that, and from an apparent temptation to use a relationship self-help book as a plot-structure guide. Still, while the unusual opening may lead you to expect an edgy, different movie, it's fairly conventional, clever rather than brilliant, twisting cliches rather than avoiding them. Like many others, the people who made "The Sweetest Thing" confuse edge with raunch, as though gross-out comedies were something new and ground-breaking. While this one differs in being from the female perspective, that smells more like novelty than innovation. Some of the jokes are inspired, some old, and many out of place (a visual gag involving an Arab and a Jew, which was funny in "The Naked Gun!" is, in light of current events, a little cringe-inducing).

In the end, though, none of that stuff really matters much: movies like this rise and fall on the charm and energy of the cast, and that deck is pretty stacked here. In the lead (you could say the title role) Diaz is appealing and authentic, and doesn't shy from showing Christina's self-centered streak. There was likely speculation in the studios that this would be Diaz's "Pretty Woman", a romantic comedy that would showcase her magnetic charm and pave the way for a string of similar roles, but I doubt that will happen. Diaz is too quirky and exuberant a performer for most traditional romantic-heroine roles, which are typically a little bland (the better, one guesses, for us to project our daydreams on). She could do it, but she would have to dumb down considerably, and that would be a shame; she's a national treasure just the way she is.

Good as Diaz is, though, a real revelation in this movie is Christina Applegate, as Diaz's lawyer sidekick and romantic field marshal. With her deft timing, hilarious facial reactions, and spot-on comic deliveries, Applegate very nearly pulls off the impossible task of stealing a movie from Cameron Diaz. As the third roommate, Selma Blair is definitely a side show, but turns in a likable good-sport pay-your-dues performance as the butt of some very out-there gags, in particular a funny scene where a trip to the dry cleaners' turns into a nightmare episode of "This Is Your Life". The Guy in Question is played by Thomas Jane, who does well despite being somewhat over-idealized, as objects-of-affection tend to be in these movies. He and Diaz manage to keep their initial meeting scene from descending into overbearing cuteness, and his scenes with his brother (Jason Bateman, remember him?), nicely capture some of the ways that men, especially brothers, talk to each other. Still, you get the sense from Jane that he's a little out of his depth here, that he'd rather be back battling the hyper-intelligent sharks of "Deep Blue Sea". At least there he knew where he stood.

"The Sweetest Thing" ain't deep, but it's pleasant, and it goes down easily (that's not what I meant, get your mind out of the gutter). Cameron Diaz is a joy both to look at and to watch. Besides, can anyone really hate a movie that puts her in a stars-and-stripes bikini? Well, some people could, I guess, but I'm certainly not among them.

We've been a very good audience, so we get a cookie. And that, after all, is why we came in the first place.

Resident Evil (2002)

All Work & No PlayStation

[8/10 · 16 March 2002]

Making movies out of video games is tough work. After all, video games typically feature shallow, simplistic plots, dialogue that is corny, head-scratchingly obtuse or unintentionally hilarious, and acting that is by turns monotonous and overwrought.

Actually, come to think of it, that pretty well describes the typical Hollywood early-spring release.

The "Resident Evil" series of survival-horror games is essentially a hodgepodge of various horror movies, and so the movie based on it is, if you can imagine, a hodgepodge of various horror movies. The plot concerns dark doings in "the Hive", a secret underground lab run by the sinister Umbrella Corporation, a bio-stuff manufacturer that is what Pfizer would be if Victor Frankenstein were on the board of directors. An experimental zombie-creating virus is released in the Hive, prompting a response by its overseer, a smarty-pants computer with a child's persona and a number of gleefully sadistic security systems (anyone with a fear of elevators should skip the first couple scenes). A team of corporate commandos moves in, with a number of comically elaborate weapons but few names (their medic's nametag reads, "Medic".) They are to secure the lab (under the circumstances, they might have better sent a crack squad of expert morticians) and shut down the computer. Along the way, they seize a couple living in the house that provides cover for the Hive entrance, as well as a cop who was sneaking around, and, for reasons that aren't quite clear, take them along into the Hive. The couple is suffering memory loss due to nerve-gas exposure, and no one is what they seem. But you knew that already. From there "Resident Evil" turns into a zombie-killing haunted house war movie, as the heroes have to battle not only the computer, but a hellish host of undead creatures. And it's pretty fun.

The director is Paul Anderson, who also made "Mortal Kombat", and like that movie, "Resident Evil" is better than it really has any right to be. Anderson has a sure hand for creepy technological spaces. He is economical with light, and manages to make the Hive both shadowy and harshly lit, with its flattening florescent lighting that make the heroes look half dead themselves. This sense of place is very important: among the hallmarks of the "Resident Evil" games are their effectively creepy atmospherics. Playing often finds you strolling through the eerily quiet scene of some past carnage, while unsettling ethereal music plays in the background. Anderson does not incorporate specific places from the games (as he has dispensed with the games' familiar characters), but there are echoes of them in the darkened hallways and flooded labs of the Hive. The movie also retains the games' problem-solving sensibilities, and there is a great deal of shutting off/restoring the power, opening coded locks, etc.

The acting is good, if a bit underdeveloped. This is a relief, since the "Resident Evil" video games seem to prize sub-competent voice acting. Milla Jovovich plays the main character, Alice (Get it? Alice goes down the rabbit hole? 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore'? Oh, never mind.), and her performance starts flat and inflates slowly over the course of the movie. I get that it's supposed to convey her memory loss, but it's still a bit uneven. Jovovich works better when she doesn't speak, displaying a quiet, cornered-animal defiance that works well in this type of setting. Plus her other, um, visual qualities. As commando Rain, Michelle Rodriguez seems to be channelling Jenette Goldstein's immortal Pvt. Vasquez from "Aliens", and setting herself up for a long line of sneering toughgirl roles. The weak link is Eric Mabius, unconvincing as the cop, whose resume supposedly boasts Quantico and the NSA, but is largely useless when the Bad Things come (though he does oddly resemble game hero Chris Redfield). A better performance comes from Martin Crewes as a high-strung commando, who gets to do a gratifying twist on the old "I'm surrounded, but at least I've got one bullet left" scene.

The visual style and fast pace of "Resident Evil" largely overcome its sometimes faulty internal logic: the transmission of the virus seems more rooted in script convenience than anything else, and the computer, while supposedly coldly logical, comes off nuttier than trail mix. There is also an unintentionally funny twist as the heroes are stressing over how to kill the bullet-sponge zombies. They need the computer to explain to them what anyone with even passing knowledge of horror-movie physiology already knows: the zombies' weakness is massive trauma to the cerebral cortex, i.e. shoot them in the head. Really, what's wrong with these people? Haven't they ever seen a George Romero movie?

John Q (2002)

Take Your Medicine (possible spoilers)

[5/10 · 18 February 2002]

"John Q" is the kind of movie Frank Capra would have come up with had he been a bitter burnout under the pressure of a heinous studio deadline and half a bottle of barbiturates.

The movie starts out promisingly enough. We meet John Quincy Archibald (Denzel Washington), a hard-working, decent Chicagoland machinist. He is having money problems in the slowing economy, but dearly loves his wife Denise (Kimberly Elise) and 9-year-old son Mike (Daniel E.Smith). In the first few scenes we get to know and like the Archibalds (good thing, too, or the movie would be even tougher going) before the trouble starts. Mike collapses during a Little League game and his parents learn that his heart has a rare defect that will cause him to die unless he gets a transplant.

Thus begins the best part of the movie, as John Q slowly realizes the cruelty of the deck stacked against him. Not only has his insurance coverage been changed to an HMO (boo, hiss) without his knowledge, but his status has been downgraded to "part-time", as he works less hours. Vainly fighting against a system that won't help him, can't help him, could have helped him but he filled out the wrong forms, he becomes increasingly desperate, until, having exhausted everything he knows how to do, he pleads, cajoles, begs, and finally pulls out a gun.

At this point, everything is set for a fantastic issue picture and character study, as John Q seizes control of the emergency ward and demands that his son be placed on an organ donation list. The scenario calls up pretty heavy questions of individual and societal morality, of how far we can or might go. Is what John Q does understandable? Is it right? Is it terrorism? What would we do?

Unfortunately, the movie either shrugs off these questions or gives pat, glib answers, in favor of a standoff thriller that doesn't work. The police show up, with a weathered negotiator (Robert Duvall), and proceed immediately to break every rule of hostage negotiation: they allow crowds into the containment area. They place legions of cops in plain sight right in front of the hospital. They give out personal information in negotiations. They put third parties on the phone to talk to John. They don't talk to his family or friends (and only briefly to his wife). They make concrete assurances they can't possibly keep. They send his son in. They have a special-ops officer in full BDUs plus the chief of police(!) stand next to Duvall while he negotiates with a distraught man waving a gun. They make a move on John Q using one lone guy in the vent shafts to take a shot so dubious even Carlos Hathcock wouldn't have tried it. And more. If I were a member of the Chicago PD's famously patient Hostage/Barricade/Terrorist Unit (which in its first ten years resolved over 200 incidents without killing anybody) I'd be inclined to sue for slander. Incidentally, the movie credits as "SWAT Consultant" something called "Final Option", but nobody from the Chicago police. Small wonder.

The movie glosses over the more subtle aspects of hostage situations. With few exceptions, John's eight hostages (kinda sparse for the ER of a big-city trauma ward, but oh well) Stockholm with him in nothing flat, and only one ever asks to use the bathroom (we never see what, if anything, John does about that). He also becomes a folk hero almost instantly.

If "John Q" is a mediocre hostage drama, it's a downright irresponsible moral statement. Because the movie obviously approves of what he's doing, it doesn't examine the implications of it. John allows a critical gunshot victim to enter the ER (after shooing away the paramedics), then makes a neophyte resident and a specialist in the wrong specialty work on him without proper staff or equipment. The movie sells this as an act of great humanity, never mind the risks to the man's life. Shutting down a big-city ER potentially puts a lot of people at risk, but the movie essentially leaves that issue alone. While it's easy to sympathize with John, it's impossible to sympathize with the crowd that gathers to cheer him on and hiss and berate the cops on the perimeter. After all, they're cheering for a man who has stated his intention to start killing hostages (most of whom had nothing at all to do with his son's case) in one hour if his demands aren't met. Do they assume he's bluffing? Do they care? Does the movie? We're never sure.

The movie's analysis of the health-care issue also fails to satisfy, relying mostly on shrillness and easy targets. Toward the end of the movie we get a montage of wealthy liberal blowhards bemoaning the greed and heartlessness of the "medical establishment" (in a sad irony, sitting silent in one of these clips is the late Ted Demme, who died of heart failure shortly before this movie was released). But the fact is that socialized medicine schemes and rampant lawsuits can screw things up just as badly. While I wouldn't want my barricade pic to devolve into debates on cost/benefit ratios and risk assessment, some acknowledgement of the complexity of the issue would have been appreciated.

It is greatly to "John Q"'s benefit that it has Denzel Washington, an actor of such talent and gravity that he lends credibility to any fool thing he's in. From his breakfast table to his siege, he makes a real and likable person out of John Q, and his increasing desperation is vivid and real. It is only because of Washington that this movie functions on any level at all. It's a shame Capra never got to work with him. With the exception of Kimberly Elise's moving performance as Mrs. Q, the rest of the cast is not up to snuff. Duvall seems to be a hazy carbon copy of the tired cop he played in "Falling Down", Anne Heche is an icy caricature as the hospital director (named "Payne", no less), and Ray Liotta leaves little impression as an underwritten glory-hound police chief. Eddie Griffin is along as a hostage to provide comic relief. He provides none. James Woods is a little better as the cardiac surgeon John holds hostage, but he isn't given much interesting to say.

Reportedly, director Nick Cassavetes was drawn to this movie because of his daughter's medical problems (the movie is dedicated to her), so it's easy to see where his sympathies lie. But "John Q" pretends to raise tough questions only to dodge them (the ending is the ultimate dodge) and seems to want us to swallow a pretty undigestible philosophy: that using violence to stop a gunman threatening to kill eight innocent people is wrong and reprehensible, but terrorism in the name of universal coverage? Well, that's okay.

Gosford Park (2001)

Screaming Blue-Bloody Murder

[10/10 · 17 February 2002]

Among the many life lessons I've learned at the movies, high on the list is this: If you value your life, never spend the weekend at a British country manor. Those places kill more people than Dodge City on a hot day.

Just such an ill-fated overnighter fills in the story around "Gosford Park", Robert Altman's sharp, insightful examination of the class system and social mores of pre-war Britain. An aging gent (Michael Gambon), who, unlike much of the peerage then and since, actually has the money to go with his title, hosts a pheasant-shooting party at his giant country estate. Invited are various relatives, friends, enemies, hangers-on, and schemers. There is, of course, a murder, and no shortage of nasty motives and dirty secrets that show a seamy side behind the proper setting. The murder mystery is the engine that drives the plot, but there are numerous stories going on at once, which Altman skillfully weaves in.

Mostly, the movie is a portrait of the upstairs/downstairs culture of Britain: the numerous servants, cooks, valets, etc., and how they interact with those they serve (how many movies credit a Technical Advisor for "Butler"?). We see the ways in which the class structure can be breached, and the ways in which it can't. This phenomenon extends to other parts of society as well: we see a police inspector (wonderfully pompous Stephen Fry) who snaps at his John-Bull constable for fretting about forensic preservation while his boss is trying to glad-hand the toffs.

Surprisingly for movies of this type, "Gosford Park" never descends into full-throated preaching on the subject. The points it makes are subtle, and while some of them are devastating, the movie itself does not seem to make judgements about what it shows us; that it leaves to us. In fact, one of the striking things we learn is the way the caste system was enforced just as rigidly from the bottom as it was from the top.

Much has been made about Altman's looting of top-drawer British talent for this movie, and it is all deserved: there is not a bad performance in the bunch. Especially noteworthy are Maggie Smith, as the cattiest grande dame you ever met, Emily Watson as a knowing maid, coolly unflappable Clive Owen as a secretive valet, and Kelly MacDonald as the main protagonist, a shy Scots maid whose innocence masks a sharp mind. Even the token Yanks, Bob Balaban (who receives "idea" credit) and Ryan Phillippe, manage to hold their own, with Balaban especially funny as a high-stress Hollywood producer of, of all things, Charlie Chan movies.

Altman juggles all this particularly well, as he tends to do with such movies, neither spending too much time on a particular sub-story or neglecting it. His photography also does a good job contrasting the lush, fancy dining rooms with the darker basement corridors of the servants. He throws us enough of the conventions of the drawing-room mystery to keep us entertained, but doesn't overplay it. We see a lot of playful zooms on various bottles labelled "Poison", but there is no Miss Marple gathering everyone together and pointing out that only Lord Bustle-Thwaite could possibly have known about the secret passage into the smoking-lounge, etc.

The script by Julian Fellowes is crisp, witty, and consistently involving, even over two and a half hours (it's a rare mystery that takes such time getting to the actual murder). It is packed with small, revealing moments: a butler grabs a quick smoke, two maids dance in a dining hall to the music coming from the drawing room, a man of rank slips into a basement pantry to eat strawberry jam with a spoon. The solution to the mystery is a bit on the obvious side, but still affecting.

If there is a fault to the movie, it is that it is difficult to keep everyone straight and figure out who is saying what to whom about whom else. All the characters (and there are a lot of them, dames and ladies and earls and whatnot) are introduced in a whirlwind right at the beginning; just to complicate matters, the servants are called alternately by their own names and their bosses', and everyone is also involved in their own little intrigues and storylines (this difficulty might just be me: I had no trouble tracking the various grunts, snake-eaters, and mech jockeys of "Black Hawk Down", but throw a couple of viscounts at me and I'm toast.) A second viewing would probably clear a lot of that up; still, you might bring a notebook.

"Gosford Park" is a rare great thing: a deep but unpretentious script, attacked by a skilled director and a stellar cast, rounded out by beautiful art direction, photography, and music. It's a chance for those of us who lack the proper breedin' to see a culture that is largely but not entirely gone. Still, if you ever find yourself at a rustic English manse, remember these tips: wear Kevlar under your evening wear, eat only out of cans, and keep an eye on that butler. He looks kinda shifty.

Black Hawk Down (2001)

Brilliant, unsparing war story

[10/10 · 11 February 2002]

A city is the worst possible place to fight a war. The distances are short, the fields of view restricted, and the presence of high windows and rooftops means that an attack can come from any direction with no warning. Your long-range fire-support options are limited severely by the terrain, the main guns on your tanks are all but useless, and your armored vehicles are vulnerable to ambush in the tight, narrow streets, where an enemy can rain fire down on their weakest points. Cities are also full of people who don't want anything to do with the war, whom you have to be careful not to kill, even if your enemy displays no such compunction.

Ridley Scott's visceral, intense movie "Black Hawk Down" gives us a ground and air view of the worst urban fighting encountered by American troops since Hue City. As the movie begins, U.S. Army troops in Somalia are attempting to crash a party and grab Mohammed Farah Aidid, the warlord who ruled the port city of Mogadishu (called "the Mog" or "the 'Dish" by American grunts, who nickname everything as a matter of course, including each other). What is supposed to be a quick mission turns into a desperate battle that lasts through the night, as two Blackhawk helicopters are shot down and the security elements are surrounded by Aidid's street-gang-cum-militia, laden with AKs, RPGs, and a supply of the narcotic leaf "khat."

The movie is first and foremost a battle picture, and Scott has pared down most other details. Policy wonks are sure to be disappointed, as there is little discussion of the politics of the U.S. intervention in Somalia, or of the decisions affecting and affected by the outcome of the battle. There is no pondering about whether the mission was right or wrong, or what could have been done about Somalia. What info we get on the Somali civil war is relayed in a few short screen blurbs at the beginning. There is only a brief reference to the decision by Clinton's then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin not to authorize the use of armored forces in support. If that is the sort of thing you like, read Mark Bowden's book. The movie is more concerned with covering fire, roadblocks, and hot brass sliding down the collar of your flak jacket.

And that is all to the better. What Scott has done in foregoing big-picture issues is deliver a focused and relentless depiction of combat, complete and convincing in its details: rifle slings jury-rigged with tape and 550 cord, spray-painted sniper rigs, sweat, blood, and agony. The picture is full of small memorable moments, too many to count, and what philosophical points it makes (mostly about the sometimes heartbreaking ingenuousness of American GIs) are subtle and easily missed. There aren't a lot of director's tricks (not that you notice anyhow), including, oddly, less of the sped-up action sequences Scott loved so much in "Gladiator".

There are inherent difficulties associated with war movies; it can be difficult to tell the characters apart, or know exactly what each group is trying to accomplish, but Scott manages this aspect surprisingly well (for viewers, being ex-military or reading the book will help a great deal). The movie's look works to its advantage as well, making the city (Rabat, Morocco, in the role of Mogadishu) look dangerous in grim, spooky night and harsh, merciless daylight. The movie also contains some of the most eerily beautiful shots of helicopters in formation since "Apocalypse Now."

Battle movies tend to focus on a great many small stories. Josh Hartnett's Sgt. Eversmann is the nominal protagonist, but we do not follow him all the time, or even most of the time. As a result, we do not get a lot of insight into the particular characters. In early scenes, they are sketched rather than drawn: there's the untested kid, the office hack who wants to prove himself, tension between the straight-laced brass (Jason Isaacs, last seen as the sadistic British Dragoon in "The Patriot") and the free-wheeling special operators, etc. The characters are given brief moments in which to establish themselves, and we're off. Some of these work better than others; Hartnett's dialogue establishing him as an "idealist" is especially clumsy and unconvincing. The actors are no slouches, and there are capable performances all around, but the event is the real story here.

You could knock this movie for its lack of larger context, for not examining bigger issues, for not having deeper dialogue, but these criticisms are not exactly fair. "Black Hawk Down" is intended to give us a glimpse of something that happened, something horrible and heroic, and to give us some idea of what it was like to live through it (or not live through it). All most people remember of the battle of Mogadishu was the dead stripped American pilot, dragged by a truck while the people we thought we were helping spit on him. This movie shows us the insides of an event we thought we understood well enough, and shows us that there can be great valor even in defeat. When I was in infantry school, I knew a guy who was former Army, a member of the same Ranger unit that got trapped in Mogadishu. He was ribbed once about "losing the fight", and he exploded. Nobody understood what happened, he said. Nobody knew the real story.

Here's to you, Wickstrom. They know now.

Impostor (2001)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Set Design?

[7/10 · 8 January 2002]

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Call it "Blade Jogger".

Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, the author who write the source material for "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall", "Impostor" explores some of the same questions about the nature of human existence and memory as those

other movies, though not as thoroughly. The story itself was written in 1953, and its Cold War heritage can be glimpsed in its themes of overarching government, fanatical suspicion of an insidious enemy, and the scientist's fear of his own creation, which would have been at home in any "Twilight Zone" episode.

The year is 2079, and Earth's multinational government (uh-oh) is waging a war with some interstellar nasties from Alpha Centauri (whom you never glimpse, a nice touch). Spencer Olham (Gary Sinise) is a scientist working on "The Project", a massive weapon system that is supposed to tip the balance in the war, except that it's quickly forgotten so we can get to the main plot, which is sort of "Blade Runner" in reverse: Olham is suddenly arrested by a fanatical secret policeman (Vincent D'Onofrio), who declares that he is not Olham at all, but a cyborg implanted with a bomb and instructions to assassinate the Chancellor, the frosty dictator of Earth who vaguely resembles Hillary Clinton on an anger-management bender. Olham escapes, but is now a wanted man. Worse, the sedation serums the MG-Men injected into him are causing him to hallucinate, and his grip on reality is severely shaken by the whole thing. He flees into the Forbidden Zone (it ain't a dystopic sci-fi movie unless it's got one of those), where he links up less than willingly with an outland rebel (Mekhi Phifer), and tries to find evidence that will prove who he is.

The movie owes a lot to "Blade Runner", both in its plot and execution, but it lacks that movie's vividly realized future society and philosophical heft. "Impostor" has the feel of a short story, sharp but not particularly deep (its ending is less a coda than a punchline), and it plays skillfully with the paranoia element that is always present in Dick's work. It is helped here by the quality production design, and director Gary Fleder's feel for darkness and steam, as Sinise scrambles madly through pipes and access tunnels evading D'Onofrios stormtroopers with their Glock 18s and FN P90s a-blazing (Glock aficionados will be amused at a scene that hinges on the assertion that the things have external safeties. Whoops.) The major flaw of the story itself is its occasionally draggy pacing. Supposedly, "Impostor" was originally intended as part of a three-story anthology movie, but was expanded and given its own showcase. It was, perhaps, expanded a bit too much, and clumsily, as various ideas and questions are tossed around and hastily dropped.

Gary Sinise earns a lot of credibility for the movie, although his characteristic nasal voice and shifty expression make him more convincing as a half-crazed fugitive than a solid citizen. He also carries most of the movie's emotional load, since his character is the only one who manages to strike more than two emotional notes. Madeleine Stowe is particularly absent as Olham's doctor wife. Her character is obviously confused and overwhelmed by the hand fate and the screenwriter have dealt her, but Stowe never gives us anything else. Olham insists that his wife is his salvation, center, and muse, but we'll have to take his word for it. Similarly, as the Zoner who helps Olham, Mekhi Phifer doesn't lend his character much depth, though he, like all outland rebels in dark-future movies, turns out to be a tiresome scold. The fine Tony Shaloub (in third billing) is introduced as Olham's friend, and then is quickly tossed away.

But the most disappointing work comes from D'Onofrio, who takes what could be a fascinating character and makes nothing out of it. His Maj. Hathaway needs to balance out Sinise's Olham, and therefore requires a great deal more nuance and depth. He needs to be a bad guy who never doubts for a second that he's the good guy, and can, with charismatic ferocity, almost make you believe it (you can hear that in writer Scott Rosenberg's dialogue). D'Onofrio's over-mannered performance makes him a cardboard thug, which isn't as interesting, and doesn't fit into the end of the story as well. This part needed someone like, well, Gary Sinise, though I guess he was taken.

Its faults aside, "Impostor" is an effective little paranoid sci-fi thriller, despite its half-hearted pretensions that it is something more. Sci-fi movies live or die on their realization of the sci-fi setting, and "Impostor"'s setting, with Fleder's direction, Robert Elswit's eerie blue cinematography, and the production design by Nelson Coates, nails it quite well. From the gleaming cookie-cutter buildings draped with vague, ominous slogans ("For Our Children"; "There Is No Alternative") to the trash-strewn underbelly of the city and the crushed and dirty Forbidden Zone, "Impostor"'s world convinces, and is used to good effect.

And, it reminds us once again of that fundamental truth of life: though you may love and trust someone implicitly, that doesn't discount the possibility that they could be an evil alien robot waiting to fill you with lead the minute your back is turned, or even that you could be an evil alien robot yourself, and not even know it until the second you go off. I like a movie with a moral.

Vanilla Sky (2001)

How the Other Half Half-Lives (possible spoilers)

[6/10 · 16 December 2001]

"Vanilla Sky" is Cameron Crowe's remake of "Abre los Ojos", a surrealist Spanish movie, which, like so many surrealist Spanish movies, I didn't see.

The remake takes place in New York, and, as required by federal law, opens with a helicopter shot of Manhattan that passes directly over the buildings until midtown resembles a grid of concrete layer cakes. David Aames (Tom Cruise) is a cocky young magnate who runs a Maxim-oid magazine which he inherited from his father. Surrounding him are Julie (Cameron Diaz), a singer with whom he engages in (for him) recreational sex; Brian (Jason Lee), his cool-geek novelist sidekick; and Sofia (Penelope Cruz), a mysterious ballerina that his buddy brings to a party. Sparks fly between Cruz and Cruise, causing jealousy all around, leading to something I guess you would call a romantic parallellogram, ending in a car wreck that disfigures Cruise's face and cripples his cockiness. He has to rebuild his life, while struggling against "The Board", seven sourpuss executives determined to steal his company.

This is told in flashback: Cruise is in custody for murder, talking absently with a police psychologist (Kurt Russell), monitored by an ill-tempered guard who is itching for an excuse to throttle Cruise silly (maybe he saw "Cocktail"). The story shifts between reality and dreams frequently, which is alarming to Cruise. He doesn't know when he's dreaming or not, what is real, and what happened or what he only thinks happened. One minute he's sharing a cozy moment with Cruz, the next he's with Diaz (one wonders how, exactly, that constitutes a problem). Is he going crazy? Is he dreaming? After a while of this, I was in agreement with the dyspeptic guard: gimme five minutes in a room with the screenwriter and a rubber hose; I'll get this narrative-structure thing straightened out.

We spend too long early on observing Cruise's party lifestyle, watching pretty people flirt blandly with one another. The scenes are shallow, the dialogue cutesy, until the movie threatens to become yet another dull, talky, New York-set relationship comedy (I kept expecting Edward Burns to wander into a shot). By the time it takes a serious turn with Cruise's disfigurement, we have little invested in the characters. Cruise's plight seems less about profound crisis than vanity: his face is messed up, but it's not THAT bad. He's still Tom Cruise, for Pete's sake. He no longer has stunning women throwing themselves at him every three frames or so, but then, some of us have to live with that reality every day.

The acting is effective and involving, if familiar. Cruz played this role in the original; she's on friendly territory. And she's not alone; "Vanilla Sky" sometimes feels like a weekend retreat for characters from other movies: Tom Cruise from "Jerry Maguire" meets Cameron Diaz from "A Life Less Ordinary" meets Jason Lee from "Mallrats" meets Kurt Russell from "Unlawful Entry". While Cruise has played parts like this before, there's a reason: he's good at it. His David, post-wreck, is not always sympathetic or readable (especially while behind a "Halloween"-style therapeutic mask), but he's never uninteresting. What credibility David's problems have stems entirely from Cruise's performance, and it's a lot to shoulder. The characters do develop, it just takes most of them a long time to get around to it.

I should come clean, too, that I am an inveterate Cameron Diaz junkie (proof: I made it through "Keys to Tulsa" AND "Very Bad Things". My AMPAS Medal of Valor is pending.) So I'll skip some hagiography and say she's good in a relatively small role. Her confrontation with Cruise is deranged, disjointed, a little degrading, and heartbreaking. Julie's nuts, but she's also a girl in love, who has been treated rather callously, and we find ourselves wanting to kick Cruise in the head (at least I did; but I get like that). Diaz is also the first to invest her character with any kind of inner life, any signs of something under the surface. Cruise doesn't manage that until the second reel, Cruz even later; Jason Lee never gets far beyond amiable goofiness.

The movie is visually powerful, and that goes a long way. Crowe infuses it with dreamy imagery and well-chosen music that smoothes over some of the clunky, predictable moments in the script. The ending reveals a nifty premise well brought off (though you'll likely see it coming), and the last scenes have a weird Zen beauty to them, though they list a bit under the weight of some New Age silliness. Unfortunately, even though we appreciate the well-crafted conclusion, there's still all the UPN-grade dramaturgy we had to slog through first.

"Vanilla Sky" aims for highbrow surrealism, but the movie it most called to mind was "Total Recall", which explored many of the same themes (granted, with more stuff blowing up). However, its attempt with "The Board" to inject paranoia into the story doesn't take. Good paranoia movies work because they weave a just-plausible layer of conspiracy into real life. Because "Vanilla Sky" is so unreal already, there's not much to be paranoid about. How is "The Board" supposed to dictate the reality in Cruise's head? How is anybody?

I don't exactly counsel against seeing "Vanilla Sky". There is enough talent wrapped up in it to make it slightly more than the sum of its flawed parts. And, hey, anything for Cameron Diaz.

The One (2001)

Get Down With Your Bad Self

[6/10 · 5 December 2001]

It's a peculiar feature of life as an action hero that, every once in a while, you gotta kick your own keister. Many is the action movie that has its hero teaming up with or fighting against a carbon copy of himself, played by himself, and invariably leading to an extremely confusing climactic battle. It happens in all kinds of movies for all kinds of reasons, though it seems more likely to happen to you if you parlayed your martial-arts fame into a movie career. Jackie Chan did it in "Twin Dragons" and Jean-Claude Van Damme has played any number of twin brothers separated at birth, etc. (I forget exactly how many, as I tend to forget most things about Van Damme if I can help it). Even Christopher Reeve got down, dirty, and Jungian in a junkyard in "Superman III". The undisputed king of this sort of thing, however, is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has played opposite himself at various times in "Total Recall", "The 6th Day" and "Last Action Hero". Schwarzenegger is the best at this particular game, since he tends to play it for laughs, cannily aware that the cosmic unlikelihood of there being two guys like Arnie in the same physical plane is inherently funny. "The One" is Jet Li's turn in the duality saddle, and as my sister pointed out when she saw the preview, this at least solves the problem of finding an actor capable of going a couple of rounds with Jet Li. Interestingly, the movie was apparently intended as a vehicle for wrestling star The Rock, but when he declined in favor of "The Scorpion King" it was offered to Li.

The conceit behind this movie, as we are informed during the opening credits by the kind of stentorian narration usually found in shows like "In Search Of...", is that our universe actually consists of numerous parallel dimensions, some close to ours, some completely different and many unaware that this state of affairs even exists. The whole shebang is overseen by the Multi Verse Agency, a sort of cross between the FBI and the Interstate Commerce Commission, which regulates who can go between worlds and when. The problem arises when a rogue MVA agent (Li) discovers after he is forced to kill an alternate self in self-defense while on assignment (one wonders if his family sued him on behalf of himself), that he becomes much stronger. Y'see, each time you die in another dimension, your "power" is evenly distributed among the yous that remain, and in the end, there can be only - oh, you know. Anyway, Evil Jet begins to use his black-market dimension-jumper to hop around committing multiple suicide (as it were), in hopes that he will be the last Jet left, and in so doing, gain the power of a god. The MVA, concerned that this kind of dimensional paradox could destroy all reality as we know it (no one really knows; more on this in a minute) dispatches a pair of agents to stop him (you'd think in such an emergency they'd send more guys, but never mind) from killing his last self (Li, again). This unfortunate is an LA County Sheriff's deputy (in our reality, natch) who can't figure out why all of a sudden he is faster than a speeding bullet and all the rest of it.

Now, here is where the thinness of the plot begins to intrude on the audience's placidity. It stands to reason, we think, that sooner or later, if there are numerous copies of you throughout the multiverse, there would always be one that was the last to die eventually, and this has been the case throughout history, so why WOULDN'T they know what happens? Also, if every time you die you get stronger (try to keep up with me here) people would get stronger and faster as they got older because more of themselves would have died in other universes, only they probably wouldn't die very often, since they were getting stronger like everybody else. The Olympics would be full of 80-year-old beneficiaries of bus accidents in distant universes. My head is starting to hurt. I guess if you merely accept at the outset that none of this makes any sense at all, you're better off.

Jet Li is not a bad actor, but like many actors not native to English, he has a restricted range when acting in his adopted language. His best performance in an American movie was "Lethal Weapon 4", which he stole handily with a reptilian smile and a few subtitles. He is fairly convincing as Good Jet, an affable sort of guy who likes his job, loves his wife, and can't figure out what's going on (the audience can relate). As the cocky, wisecracking Evil Jet, he sounds stiff, with an affected sneer more than a genuine sense of a man comfortable in his own badness. The supporting cast of Good Jet's cop buddies and concerned wife (Carla Gugino) are serviceable but unremarkable. As the MVA agents tailing Evil Jet, Jason Statham and Delroy Lindo have some decent byplay, but they aren't Gibson and Glover by any stretch. And the movie never does explain where they get the muscle car they drive through a couple of different worlds (some kind of interdimensional rental agency? Imagine the return fees.)

The movie has some style and imagination early on, having particular fun with the idea of parallel and slightly different universes. We see the same scene in a couple of different versions, with the same person occupying a different role, in one universe a cop, in another a prisoner (and I have to admire a movie that can differentiate between the LAPD and the Sheriff's Department). Gugino is in one universe a sweet veterinarian, in another a spike-heeled femme fatale. There is also a funny moment during Evil Jet's early sentencing, where we see a slide show of his 200-odd victims, played by Jet Li in a series of wigs in front of different blue-screen backgrounds. Unfortunately, the imaginative possibilities of parallel universes are ignored except for a few throwaway gags, in favor of showing Evil Jet using a pair of police motorcycles as maracas. Of course, since the whole thing doesn't make any sense in the first place, perhaps this is for the best.

The stunts are impressive, of course, and we get some cool slow-mo effects of the super-fast Jet kicking the hell out of gangs of extras as they arc away like leaves in the wind. The inevitable final confrontation is a little underwhelming, and even though one of the Jets has the courtesy to wear a different shirt, it's difficult to tell exactly who is whipping whom at any given moment. Overall, the movie is so-so, interesting but sloppily constructed, though better than the aggressively lackluster "Kiss of the Dragon". Jet completists will go for it, as will moderately undemanding fans of sci-fi rear-kicking movies, but it doesn't achieve its potential.

Still, if you see this movie, be sure to stay until the end to witness one of the most head-scratchingly superfluous credits of the year, as we are informed that "The One" was "Filmed on location in Los Angeles, CA." You don't say.

Behind Enemy Lines (2001)

Not Bad Post-Cold-War War Movie

[8/10 · 2 December 2001]

"Behind Enemy Lines" is a kind of Clinton-administration "Top Gun", a Bosnia story of raring-to-go fighter pilots kept in tight operational quarters, if their missions aren't scrubbed on the flight deck by NATO hand-wringing over the "peace process", loosely defined as when warring factions agree to massacre fewer civilians that week. The story concerns Lt. Chris Burnett (Owen Wilson, with hair that's pretty long even by Navy aviator standards), an F-18 jockey on the USS Carl Vinson off the Bosnian coast. He wants to fight a war, to "punch a Nazi in the face", and is frustrated by the NATO leash, and the lack of a real war to fight (seems almost quaint now, doesn't it?). He gets shot down when he strays off course during a photo recon, and has to dodge marauding Serb forces to survive while the allies try, with varying levels of enthusiasm, to rescue him.

Naturally, there is a dual conflict here: while Wilson is battling unshaven war criminals, his warhorse CO dukes it out with NATO brass, in the form of a scowling Spanish naval officer, less concerned about the downed pilot than the fate of the "Cincinnati Accords" (a deft play on the real-life Dayton Accords, and a reference, perhaps, to Cincinnatus, a philosopher who urged civil control of military forces). As Rear Adm. Riegert, Gene Hackman cuts a familiar figure in Navy khaki. Marine veteran Hackman carries with him a certain martial authority, and he is able to use it without conscious effort. Here, his battle-weary face reveals more of his character than his battle-weary dialogue. Joaquim de Almeida does what he can with the NATO officer; to his credit, he maintains credibility, even while delivering the inevitable speech about how little Wilson matters next to the prospect of peace. While this is a classic war-movie boo-hiss moment, de Almeida lends it such sincerity that you think, gee whiz, the guy's kinda got a point. As Burnett, Owen Wilson is fine, though the part isn't too far removed from the breezy, callow types he has played in the past (also, for a downed pilot on the run, he doesn't sneak around very much; at times he looks like a jogger who's gotten a bit lost).

The movie is at its best as a portrait of the mutagenic madness of the Yugoslav civil war, and wisely, the movie avoids a lot of speechifying on the subject. It prefers to paint a visual picture using images and vignettes, which are striking enough to raise the movie above its modest action-flick ambitions. The color scheme on the ground is all black mud and shattered concrete pallor: even the snow is gray. The landscape (the Slovak Republic, standing in for southern Bosnia) is shown with all the weirdness that makes this the most sadly surreal of modern wars: refugees sipping Coke and hiding out in strip malls, while hard-faced men in track suits prowl among blasted religious statuary, and plant trees atop mass graves. In one of the movie's most poignant moments, Wilson watches as a man and a little girl seem to be playing a sort of odd skipping game, and when we see what they're doing and why, it is quietly devastating.

The photography is impressive as well: the scenes of whiz-bang American technology are shown in frenetic stop-motion and fast-motion, and by contrast, there is a nifty slow-mo shot of the effects of a land mine, which, in a more self-indulgent movie, we would have seen several times in a "Matrix"-style rotating pan. Here, first-time director John Moore plays it like a ballet. On the speed side of things, we get a cool scene where Wilson's F-18 engages in a lethal pas de deux with a pair of streaking Serbian SAMs while warning lights flash all around.

Unfortunately, the movie starts to shudder near the end. We get characters and situations that might develop into something promising, but don't. There is a half-hearted half-plot involving evidence of genocide that is flip and unconvincing. Much like "Three Kings", "Behind Enemy Lines" underplays its strengths and gambles its credibility on a big corny climactic action scene. Hackman and a Marine Recon platoon (using the wrong machine guns, dammit, Hollywood!) throw together what MEUSOC officers like to call a "hasty TRAP", involving far too much footage of Wilson sprinting across an open field while half a company of Serb mech infantry unloads behind him. The scene is well filmed, and I have nothing against a little GI triumphalism, indeed it's one of my very favorite things: it's just a shame to see a movie start so well and finish so cheaply. "Behind Enemy Lines" is not a bad movie (except for that lousy direct-to-video title; too bad "Rules of Engagement" was already taken). But it isn't quite the surprise gem it could have been.

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

Black and White and Gray All Over

[9/10 · 26 November 2001]

Billy Bob Thornton has the perfect face for film noir. His craggy, drawn features lead up to sunken but large and staring eyes, and cheeks that look to be made out of plaster. Particularly when shot in black and white, his face becomes a landscape of shifting shadows, while he doesn't move a muscle. He is able to give the impression of a man at war with himself even while sitting perfectly still and staring ahead. He's Jeremy Irons, only without that unsettling accent. The Coen brothers take great advantage of their stars' granite physiognomy throughout "The Man That Wasn't There," constructing several shots around Thornton staring into a point just slightly away from the camera, impassive as an Easter Island head, moving only to smoke an ever-present cigarette while the obligatory noir voice-over narration runs. His voice is perfect, too: a kind of calm, measured rumbling, which describes incredible events but never seems amazed by them. Thornton says "I don't talk much," and it's true: he doesn't do much either, but he is still fascinating, and commands our attention.

The Coens take great relish in the noir conventions, even beyond the 1940s setting and the black and white photography (let's face it, we're so used to '40s movies in black and white that color would look a little weird). The story follows classic lines (with a few wild divergences): Thornton's character is a barber in one of those small postwar California towns that Hitchcock was so enamored of. He comes up with a scheme to raise some money, which naturally spins a little beyond what he anticipated. That's all I can say in good conscience, and the plot goes pretty far afield (I mean REALLY far afield, catering to fans both of Dashiell Hammett and "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers"). But really, you know what to expect, if you've ever seen one of these movies before: greed, dark secrets, and murder, in a world of fedoras, cigarette smoke, snapping lighters, and deep moral turpitude. A world where nothing or no one is what they seem, and the only sure thing is that, in the end, some sap is gonna get it.

As good as Thornton is, he can't carry the movie alone. Fortunately, he is surrounded by a top-notch cast, including a lot of familiar Coen veterans, and it is this that really makes this movie work. Michael Badalucco puts in a hilarious turn as Thornton's gabby brother-in-law, Frances McDormand is effective in her relatively few scenes as his brittle wife, and James Gandolfini plays yet another boorish tough guy to a turn. Practically shoplifting the movie is Tony Shalhoub, playing a fast-talking Sacramento lawyer who doesn't so much speak as summate. His discussion of Heisenberg is almost worth the ticket price alone. Christopher Kriesa and Brian Haley get a lot of mileage out of their brief appearances as a pair of slightly dim cops (aren't they all in these movies?)

Joel Coen, who directed, makes sure that the movie is consistently interesting to watch, too. Black and white photography being mostly about shades of gray, noir is perhaps the only genre that benefits from the relative primitiveness of its visual technology. Coen, therefore, sticks with it, unlike the colors he used in the '30s themed "O Brother Where Art Thou?" which managed to be both more fanciful and less surreal than this movie. He uses the light-and-shadow character of black and white to great effect here, carefully crafting his images to make best use of it. In fact, if the movie has a fault, it's that the images are a little TOO carefully crafted. The purest noir was cleverly filmed, but it allowed its cleverness to seep into the background. You have to watch a few times to pick up on how sharp the filmmaking is. Coen is unable to hide his arty cleverness, and so in the end, fun as it is to watch, the movie is a bit too pretty to truly capture the essence of its forbears. Perhaps realizing this, the Coens tweak the conventions mercilessly, and inject a streak of humor that is funnier for being played so straight (there are lots of funny lines, but don't be surprised if you are the only one in the theater laughing. Actually, don't be surprised if you are the only one in the theater, period.) The movie does require a bit of patience; the pacing is intense but quite slow, and the story wanders like a drunk driver. In the end, it is somewhat debatable whether the twisty plot is fully resolved, or whether that even matters. "The Man That Wasn't There" is best viewed as a wicked cinematic joke, and in that regard, it succeeds, in (Sam) spades.

But what do I know? I'm just some sap.

Thir13en Ghosts (2001)

Paging Dr. Venkman

[4/10 · 31 October 2001]

Do you ever wonder where they find the people in horror movies? You know, the people who walk into rooms covered with sinister-looking messages in indecipherable languages and just frown a little and say "Hmm, I wonder what it means?" People who walk blithely with only a candle into places no sane person would set foot in without extensive prepping by artillery fire?

Wherever they get them, there must be quite a supply, 'cause, boy, they sure don't last long. (It may be the same place where they get the cops in B-action pictures).

Now, I'm not saying that such people (I understand the technical term of art is "idiot in the attic") cannot be a source of genuine entertainment and suspense. But they need to have a good movie around them. "Thirteen Ghosts", or more technically "Thir13en Ghosts" (which, if you think about it, is almost twice "Se7en", only without the atmosphere of impending existential doom) is not that movie. It might have been, if only the writer had worked half as hard as the production designer.

The plot concerns Arthur, a math teacher trying to recover emotionally and financially from a tragic event, who is visited by the creepiest lawyer Central Casting could come up with. Creepy, esq. informs Arthur that his eccentric uncle Cyrus (F. Murray Abraham, trying valiantly to erase any memory of him as a good actor) has left him a house and a pile of money. No one in the audience would trust this guy to pour them a glass of water, but Arthur and his family follow the lawyer to the house, since they are natives of the Land of Suicidally Stupid Horror-Movie Characters (motto: "Let's split up."). This despite the fact that the house (and Uncle Cyrus' unsettling video will) has glass walls, tons of cryptic writing and eerie symbols, and images of rotting, gape-jawed skulls. I guess that's what the real-estate market will do to you. The house is full of ghosts that Uncle Cyrus captured with his band of ghost-hunters (think of the Ghostbusters, only with Reynolds-and-Saran-wrap jackets and no sense of humor) have imprisoned. They need the ghosts to harness their energy to power an ancient device that - oh, never mind.

There is a great deal of running away from various mutilated and disgruntled ghosts (who can only be seen with special glasses), which at least gives the cast a break from speaking their flat and uninteresting lines. Tony Shalhoub lends Arthur some tortured dignity, and of the characters who get the most screen time, his is easily the most credible performance. Also trapped in the house are his two children, played by Shannon Elizabeth and Alec Roberts. Partisans of the winsome Ms. Elizabeth should note that, despite her prominence in the movie's marketing, she disappears from the action for a very long stretch. Embeth Davidtz shows up as a kind of undead-rights activist with a spell book and a bag of TNT blocks (when trapped in a haunted house, it's always advisable to bring at least one cast member from "Army of Darkness"). Matthew Lillard, who places an undue dramatic value on annoyance, plays an angry psychic (aren't they all?) who was helping Cyrus get the ghosts.

The ghosts are really the most interesting part of the movie, as you might expect. They are a diverse group, and their disparate energies are required to - oh, forget it. But I was hoping for more back story on them, like who they were, how exactly they met their sundry bad ends, or why it was their bad luck to end up as the ethereal equivalent of the Energizer Bunny. But little development of the ghosts is forthcoming, except for a few vague hints here and there, enough to pique your curiosity, but not enough to satisfy it much.

In the end, "Thirteen Ghosts" adds up to less. The house is cool (I can't imagine what the glazier's bill looked like), and some of the ghosts are intriguing (though quite over the top). Mostly, it's "Ghostbusters" without the wit, and "The Sixth Sense" without the depth. But never fear; we aren't likely to run out of idiots in the attic anytime soon.

From Hell (2001)

Saucy Jacky's Bloody Good Time

[9/10 · 31 October 2001]

"From Hell" is not really a horror movie, though it has some gruesome and disturbing moments, but rather a modern serial-killer movie given an unusual setting, delving into our fascination with the first truly famous serial killer in history.

One of the nice things about making a Jack the Ripper movie is that it is a historical story, which lends it a certain gravitas and a built-in interest factor, but since history doesn't know for sure who the guy really was, you get to make up your own ending. "From Hell" seizes on one of the more far-out (and frankly, historically implausible) conspiracy theories surrounding the mysterious stalker of Whitechapel. Still, in Ripper lore there is plenty of "evidence" that can be construed to support just about any theory you can think of, and while the movie takes a few liberties with the historical record, a great many details are rooted in established fact. While I wouldn't view this movie as a conclusive examination of the case, it gives the story enough credibility that it functions quite well as a thriller.

The story follows Inspector Frederick Abberline (Johnny Depp), the detective charged with catching the killer (oddly, they consistently refer to him as "Jack the Ripper", even while the movie acknowledges that the letter bearing that name was probably a fake), while he navigates the seamy alleys of the East End, trying to protect the streetwalkers that seem to attract homicidal wrath (among them Heather Graham, as "Black Mary" Kelly; interesting casting choice, that) and contending with the interference of Scotland Yard's shadowy and muscular Special Branch.

One irritating thing about the movie is in the character of Abberline. Understandably, the movie makes him younger and sleeker so he can be played by Johnny Depp (the real-life Abberline was forty-five and married with children while investigating the Ripper case), but it also subscribes to the annoying convention of mythologizing the "profiler". I swear if I see one more psychic detective who gets otherworldly "vibes" about a case, I'm going to hurl my copy of "Journey into Darkness" through the screen. Hollywood seems uncomfortable dealing with profilers for what they are: experienced detectives who are able to detect patterns in a crime and extrapolate what kind of person they are looking for. Isn't that impressive enough? Abberline was, by most accounts, a dedicated and methodical investigator, but here he is a slightly dissolute dope fiend who gets flashes of the future and "sees" the Ripper's future victims while in an absinthe or opium-induced daze. Often, the "psychic detective" thing is used as a cheap springboard for a lazy screenwriter to avoid having to think about how the pieces of a puzzle might fit together; in this movie the "visions" are not only distracting, they're really unnecessary: they reveal little that a sharp guy like Abberline couldn't figure out from available evidence. They must have been interesting to film, though; I guess that's why they're in the movie.

Twin directors Albert and Allen Hughes made their mark in the 90s with the acclaimed "Menace II Society", one of the raft of inner-city neo-gangster opuses that were in vogue at the time. It seems the Hugheses made a deliberate attempt to make a movie as different from that as they could, and it would seem a shrewd move. After all, it took John Singleton a couple of movies to escape from the 'hood; and, remember what happened to Matty Rich? Yeah, me neither. Though "From Hell" is a story of another blighted urban landscape, there's not a drive-by in sight. Well, maybe by hansom cab.

The Hugheses make good use of the fetid, dire streets of 1880s London (actually, the movie was filmed primarily in the Czech Republic; apparently, London just ain't seedy enough anymore). They play with light in interesting ways, silhouetting the spires of London's palaces and cathedrals against a roiling red sky, suggesting that if we aren't actually in Hell, we're at least in a pretty close suburb with bus service there. The Ripper's hansom cab has twin lanterns that sputter with bilious green light; it looks like a primordial monster slithering through the night, which is a neat visual (useful, too; hansom cabs all look pretty much alike otherwise).

The cast is good, although more so in supporting roles than lead ones. Depp is fine, though his accent is weird. Heather Graham is better than I expected her to be, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it wouldn't have been too hard to find a better actress (probably for less money). Ian Holm does well as a retired surgeon who advises Abberline on the investigation, an old man with an infirm arm and a few too many secrets to keep. Also standing out is Robbie Coltrane, as Abberline's loyal, over-literate sergeant. Fans of "The Elephant Man" will take special interest in a certain historical cameo.

The movie is well-paced, well-filmed, and delivers the thriller goods in fine style. It doesn't hold up to too much scrutiny, especially among those familiar with the real case, unless they're willing to be good sports. There are a few spots where, eager to fit in as many authentic details as possible, the characters do things that don't make much sense, and the exact motivations for some of the Ripper's actions are not made clear. I suppose you shouldn't expect too much clarity form a movie about an unsolved case. Ripperologists and aspiring forensic historians should not so much suspend their disbelief as zip it in a bag and leave it at the box office for a claim stub; you can pick it up when you leave.

Iron Monkey (1993)

Kicking Evil into Next Week

[9/10 · 14 October 2001]

Ah, the eternal charms of Saturday Afternoon Kung-Fu Theater, a tradition with a long history in America, and a far longer one in Asia. A hero, maybe noble, maybe not, wanders into a troubled land, good and evil clash, great rivalries are settled, but only after a great many extras get smacked around to sound effects that resemble someone taking a blackjack to the produce section.

If that's all we expect, we are rarely disappointed. So it's just icing on the cake when, in addition to the kung-fu smackdown, we get a story that makes sense, characters that compel, and a director who lavishes attention on each scene, even when someone ISN'T getting their f****y kicked. That's why "Iron Monkey" (for simplicity's sake, I'm just going to use the Westernized title; purists can go get stuffed) is such a welcome treat. After the stunning success last year of Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", perhaps it was realized at last that American megaplexites might finally be able to appreciate a kung-fu movie done as quality cinema.

Woo Ping Yulen, who made his mark in Hollywood as a fight choreographer, is the main guy on this one, and it is apparent that while he certainly knows how to run a fight, he also can direct a movie as well. Too often, when stunt or special-effects gurus take to directing, they run out of patience during scenes that don't reflect their speciality, but Woo Ping is not one of these. Some of the best moments in this movie take place when no one is fighting at all: particularly memorable is a scene in which a couple of Shaolin super-pugilists cook dinner.

Not to say the action scenes aren't up to snuff; they are. The energy never flags, even during extended melees, and while the brawls often involve the same elements, you never feel as though they are repetitive. The fighting is bone-crunching hard and dirty too. The combatants in "Crouching Tiger" soared through the air like graceful birds, whizzing and turning in artful patterns as they pursued one another across rooftops, but the fighters in "Iron Monkey" collide, crash, and mix it up, re-assembling their shattered hands and bleeding more than a little bit. Rarely a moment goes by when someone isn't hurtling through a splintering bamboo wall. Woo Ping also makes good use of my personal favorite kung-fu convention: the hero, just having laid waste to four or five malefactors in rapid succession, lands back to earth, often atop a table, coiling like a snake, with just the hint of a smirk, before the battle is rejoined.

The story is simple and familiar: an itinerant monk/physician/five-fingers-of-death type wanders into a satellite Chinese province ruled by brutal, corrupt officials (hmm, some things haven't changed much), who are bedeviled by the mysterious "Iron Monkey", a masked vigilante who rips off the overlords and distributes gold nuggets to the poor and desperate. The newly arrived wanderer, who devastates bands of ruffians with only an umbrella, is strong-armed by the corrupt governor into hunting down Iron Monkey, lest his young son be killed. But the script is good, the dialogue and translation make sense (it is also subtitled, which helps a lot), and the actors give such life to the characters, you'd swear you haven't seen their ilk in every other kung-fu movie ever made. The stars, Rongguang Yu as Iron Monkey, and Donnie Yen as the archetypical good man forced to do wrong, display the type of solemn magnetism that raises stuff like this above the ordinary. Also memorable are Jean Wang as the lovely but formidable Miss Orchid, and Shun-Yee Yuen as Chief Fox, a sort of Ching Dynasty version of Claude Rains in "Casablanca".

Many people may dismiss this movie as a second-rate import clunker riding the coattails of "Crouching Tiger", and it would be a shame to do so. While it certainly lacks "Tiger"'s epic sweep, it is also less determined to be philosophically inscrutable, for which I think I liked it a little more. In any event, "Iron Monkey" at least softens the blow caused by the postponing of "Windtalkers." As the saying goes, if this is the sort of thing you like, you'll really, really like this.

Zoolander (2001)

Good Guys Wear Mousse

[8/10 · 10 October 2001]

"Zoolander" puts forth the notion that male models, and Fashion People in general, are shallow, self-obsessed, and sneeringly unaware of their own ridiculousness, and also that the bulk of international intrigue and diabolical scheming can be traced directly to the fashion industry. While this makes it plausible to argue that it is in fact a documentary, it is actually proof that Ben Stiller is one of the best satirists working in movies today. Okay, so it's a narrow field; but he is still a funny, funny guy, especially when you eliminate the Farrelly brothers, who would be lost without their casting director.

Derek Zoolander (Stiller) is a famed male model, a man so shallow that he's actually convex. Crushed at being eclipsed by a younger rival, he is recruited into a shadowy plot to become a brainwashed assassin for the international clothes cartel. It's kind of like "The Manchurian Candidate" as imagined by Details magazine.

Naturally, much is made of Derek's dimness, and that of male models in general. Though much of it is funny, it does wear thin after a while. The movie is a lot funnier when instead of mocking fashion types as empty heads, it aims at the conventions of the industry itself, as in a scene where Derek and his fabulously-dressed buddies' magazine-spread romp at a gas station spins hilariously out of control, or a "Bloodsport" style confrontation between rival models "at the old Members Only warehouse". The best gag in the movie concerns the concept behind a new fashion line, which is at once screamingly funny and scathingly true. The numerous movie references are also well-brought off, and it is great fun to see familiar spy-movie conventions transplanted to the world of style, as in a meeting of faceless international villains of fashion ("I trust you want to live to see your spring line.") The brainwashing takes place in a special "day spa" overseen by a Rosa Klebb-style dominatrix (Milla Jovovich) and her impeccably-clad goon squad who are always perfectly posed, even when tossing intruders out the steel doors.

The cameos by notable real-life Beautiful People are a tad excessive, and lend "Zoolander" an in-jokey quality that it doesn't need, and dulls the edge on the sendup until the darts are more like Nerf arrows. Fortunately, most of the cameos are too fast to count, and they often do little more than walk by the camera (the movie often feels an annoying urge to name-drop and flash labels on the screen, lest you miss a card-carrying glitterati). An exception is David Bowie's funny turn as a kind of haute-couture Mills Lane. But the central cast is the real show here. Stiller's evocation of Zoolander's patented "looks" are hysterical. Owen Wilson's blank stare, misshapen nose, and ludicrous New Age claptrap make him a great foil as Hansel, Zoolander's scooter-slinging upstart rival. David Duchovny does a great parody of his "X-Files" persona, just as he did in "Evolution" (I get a feeling this will be the arc of Duchovny's future career, at least until he gets a better agent). Christine Taylor also makes a fine straight man as a reporter covering the Zoolander beat. However, Will Ferrell does his level best to steal the show as Mugatu, a crazed designer, who plots political murder without batting an eye, but gets all hissy when there's too much foam in his latte.

Oddly, "Zoolander" is helped somewhat by the ineptness of its trailers, which for some reason chose the more lackluster jokes to showcase, the ones that display Stiller's weakness as a writer and director: he is too often shy about trusting the audience to get a joke, and feels a need to over-explain or over-stage a gag until it ceases to be funny. This instinct has hamstrung more than a few dynamite jokes in his career, and he needs to muzzle it. Some of the funniest gags in "Zoolander" are the ones we see in brief, subtle passing, not the ones that have giant neon arrows reading "Comic Moment".

"Zoolander" may or may not be more amusing to those who are hip to the world of fashion. I frankly wouldn't know. But even those of us who couldn't pick Donna Karan out of a police lineup or wouldn't know a Manolo Blahnik if it kicked us square in the face, can appreciate the satiric skewering of those who do. Even more, perhaps.

There is, at the end, an unintentionally sad note to the comedy. In the final credits, the movie gives special thanks to the Explosives Unit of the New York Fire Department. God bless them every one.

Don't Say a Word (2001)

Ve Haff Vays of MAKING You Talk...

[7/10 · 8 October 2001]

They say there's nothing new under the sun, and that's especially apt in sunny Hollywood. So it's tempting to ask, merely as a theoretical exercise, "can you make a movie that is essentially a model kit assembled from other movies, and still make it effective?" "Don't Say a Word" proves that the answer is "Yes." WHY you would want to set out to do such a thing is another question; you'll have to ask the producers about it.

In the movie, Michael Douglas plays an affluent, happily married psychologist who has to contend (as Michael Douglas does in every movie), with a seriously disturbed woman. The femme-looney in this outing is Elizabeth Burrows (Brittany Murphy), a 10-year, 20-institution veteran with enough contradictory diagnoses to sink a DSM textbook. He is called in to consult by a colleague (Oliver Platt) and then is bewildered as a shadowy band of Bad Guys snatch his daughter and demand that he work his famed empathy thing with poor Britt and get her to give him a ten-digit number that they need. Her dad, it seems, ripped them off during the heist of a precious red jewel, and they need the number to find it. Douglas figures out that while she has problems of her own, Elizabeth has been confounding her doctors by imitating various symptoms, in effect, staying institutionalized to hide from the evildoers. Me, I would have gone to Tahiti; to each his own.

The kidnap-flick tropes then come in fast and heavy: the Panicked Discovery, the Initial Phone Call, The List of Rules (no cops, yada yada), "No Deal Til I Talk to My Daughter", the Desperate Clock-Race Across Town, the Tough Female Detective trying to Figure It All Out, and more. We get a host of other familiar faces, too: the Bad Guys are a band of high-tech thieves (which are so common in movies, they must have a hell of a union), with black leather jackets, sleek laptops, and a guy whose job during the robbery is to stand in the middle of the bank with a stopwatch calling off the time, as though they were at the Olympic trials for the 100-meter Felony.

But all this is skillfully handled, with just enough tweaks to the familiar formulas to make it feel fresh. At one point, Douglas makes the kidnappers relocate to meet him, a nice twist on the usual "kidnappers run the bagman all over town" scene. And the bit with the mental patient, well, it beats can-we-raise-the-money-in-time? For his part, Michael Douglas does well, though he is a little too slick to portray besieged decent men. My hunch is that Harrison Ford was first choice to play this role. Famke Janssen is good as his wife. Though the script gives her little to do, she is really the one who makes us feel the panic and despair that attend the abduction of a child, and though it's a familiar movie scenario, it is still able to play on the nerves quite effectively. The little girl playing Douglas' daughter does well, too, cute but not cloying, smart but credible; there is an amusing scene where she attempts to make conversation with the hulking, tattooed murderer who is guarding her, eventually cajoling him into making peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. And, carrying on the proud tradition started by Alyssa Milano in "Commando", does her level best to foil her captors.

The Bad Guys are a little disappointing. They are assigned quirks rather than characters (one never appears to have a name). As the head villain, Sean Bean makes what he can of his feral charisma, but he literally phones this performance in. I think the poor guy is doomed to spend the rest of his career playing Hibernian heavies in leather jackets. Their operation seems a little too well-orchestrated, especially since the movie supposedly take place less than three weeks after they've been sprung after doing a dime in Attica (where one guesses they studied electronic eavesdropping in between lifting weights). And while the movie doesn't say how much the priceless rock is worth, by my estimation, after splitting the proceeds and covering their overhead, surveillance equipment, and tattoos, the gang should have just enough left for a celebratory lunch at the IHOP.

The best performance is by Brittany Murphy as the twitchy, wary Elizabeth. With her weird hand gestures and tuneless singing, this character could have been really annoying. But Murphy makes her guileless and affecting. Watching her stare out her barred window at the tugboats in the river, your heart breaks just a little.

The story is not always credible, especially the parts involving Jennifer Esposito as the detective, who is really a sideshow anyway. We also see several New Yorkers who are surprisingly pliant when deprived of everything from cell phones to speedboats. And the parents adhere blindly to the "don't tell the cops" rule, even after it is laughably impractical to do so.

The thing that really makes the movie work is the setting and the way it is shot by director Gary Fleder, who made the underrated "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead". Fleder puts us in claustophobic, oppressive places, from underground morgues to puke-green institution hallways with prison doors and disturbing graffiti, to the fog-shrouded darkness of Potter's Field, graveyard of the anonymous dead of New York City. Even Douglas' luxury apartment seems at tight quarters, and these places are filmed in such a way to make this close to a horror movie. The dark climax is formulaic, but give a neat twist in location. The number, incidentally, doesn't refer to an uplink code or satellite designation or encryption key or any of the usual millenial McGuffins of late. What it represents is something surprising, sad, and refreshingly old-fashioned. Which kind of goes for the rest of the movie as well.

Ghosts of Mars (2001)

Assault on Planet 13

[7/10 · 27 August 2001]

Mars has fascinated humans for years. It's the closest planet to us, and the only one that comes close in terms of livability. Its forbidding landscape and dire red color scheme are magnetic (at least in movies; I can't tell you how disappointed I was when that little NASA toy-car thing sent back pictures and Mars looks like Utah. No red sky, even.)

But Mars has a curse. You just can't make a decent movie about it. Think about all the Mars movies in history (...Attacks!, Mission to..., Red Planet, Angry and otherwise, Santa Claus vs. the Martians, etc.), none of which have been able to rise above the "not bad, not great" category, if even that. The lone exception to the Mars Curse is "Total Recall", which is a fine film, but it can be persuasively argued that it never actually takes place on Mars at all.

Throw "John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars" on the "not bad" pile. Many have argued that it's not really a Mars movie, but a Western with a weird setting, which is indirectly true. It's mostly a re-working of Carpenter's classic "Assault on Precinct 13", which was, itself, based on "Rio Bravo". (I wonder when John Carpenter is just going to give in and make a bonafide Western. You can tell he totally wants to.)

While I'm on the subject, can someone tell me why John Carpenter seems bent on titling all his recent movies with "John Carpenter's", as if we'll forget? It implies, oddly enough, that he didn't actually direct it, the way "Ian Fleming's James Bond" books were published long after Fleming was, technically, dead.

Anyway, the plot involves a squad from the Martian Police Force doing a prisoner transfer from a mining colony. Mars, it seems, is run by the "Matronage", a kind of Lillith-Fair dictatorship, which is a neat twist and gives some original zip to the movie. The transfer is quickly forgotten, as some sort of primal ghostly force is possessing the locals and turning them into a blood-crazed cabal of body-pierced mutilation enthusiasts (the movie often resembles a Slipknot video run amok). The throngs are led by a bulked-up Maximum Leader who looks like Marilyn Manson's steroid-pumped older brother. The cops and criminals join forces with the contents of the Hollywood Gun Shop, and mow down the screaming hordes in an effort to escape. One wonders why Merchant-Ivory didn't pick up this project.

The intriguing setting, the impressive visuals, and some creepy early scenes build up a lot of audience goodwill, which the film then chips away at relentlessly, as if willing itself to mediocrity. The narrative is clumsy,

with way too much reliance on flashback. The story itself is primarily told in flashback, which is understandable even if it does reveal too much about what's about to happen. But do we really need flashbacks within the movie to show us things we've already seen? There are also too many pointless camera tricks, such as time-lapse dissolves in scenes that don't merit them. The characters are needlessly stupid, especially the cops; they too often resort to using their guns in baseball-bat fashion, when they still have plenty of ammunition.

The cast, unfortunately, is not up to the task of raising the movie above the bar. Natasha Henstridge, whose onomastically-pleasing name is inevitably abbreviated in movie criticism as "that chick from 'Species'", is wooden and uncompelling as the pill-popping police lieutenant. She is standing in in the role for an injured Courtney Love, who would have been more effective, if less pleasant to look at. Clea Duvall is wasted as a spaced-out and mostly useless rookie; she seems about as comfortable with a Beretta in each hand as Quaker Grace Kelly in "High Noon". But Duvall is at least more memorable than that other rookie, whatsisname. Pam Grier puts in a good-sport appearance as the commander, but her scenes are brief. And there is the obligatory Smart Person Who Explains It All, whose line deliveries and pseudo-science are such that you will wish the others would feed her to the Manson family outside.

The only standouts in the cast are Jason Statham as the weary (but horny) sergeant, easily the most tactically compentent of the MPF contingent, and Ice Cube as the prisoner whose transfer is in such turmoil. Mr. Cube's unfocused, pinch-faced rage and dumbfounded bravado are pitch-perfect, and he has all the funniest lines. (Ironic that in a movie about a distaff-dominated society, the best performances are by men).

"Ghosts of Mars" will not rank among John Carpenter's best work (and here I am specifically thinking of "Big Trouble in Little China"), but despite its deficiencies I enjoyed it. Carpenter still has it, and when he's good, he's very good. Desperate-survival-against-the-murderous-armies has a primal power as a story archetype, and there's plenty of gun-blazing, head-bashing, flying-buzzsaw-dismemberment fun to be had by all. The music's pretty good, too. And there's something about Henstridge and Duvall in black leather SWAT uniforms that just pushes a button somewhere. Maybe it's just me.

If you fight, you can enjoy this movie in spite of its efforts to the contrary, but you will be a little battle-weary by the time the credits roll. Not everyone will be inclined to put forth the effort. But hey, can you really hate a movie whose villain is billed as "Big Daddy Mars"?