Gone Baby Gone: Grade B

B
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Casey Affleck, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, Michelle Monaghan; Co-writer and director: Ben Affleck.

This crime drama has the look and feel of novelist Lehane’s earlier movie, Mystic River: Boston setting, working class neighborhood, exaggerated New England accents, missing child of a cop, police corruption, etc. It’s a rehash, but that doesn’t necessarily make it bad since the earlier movie was quite good. Ben Affleck is no Clint Eastwood, however. The directing in this movie is noticeably clunky. Characters walk like wooden puppets to their marks so they can announce their lines. The dialog is also artificial. Characters speak only clever, multi-layered declarations and make only deeply meaningful, pithy remarks. Nobody speaks normally. Does a working class detective who can barely mumble his lines really use the word, “ignominious” in casual conversation? All characters except Affleck's are two-dimensional. Characters are always posturing rather than being the ordinary people we are supposed to believe they are. To top off this television-like exaggeration is a swooping, panning, diving, zooming camera that is extremely distracting but which is the trademark of cheesy television drama. I am just not adapted to that syntax.

Casey Affleck carries this movie almost single handedly, despite the fact that he mumbles so badly that I missed about a quarter of his lines. He is a working class detective with his unlikely “partner” Monahagn who does nothing but tag along with him. He is searching for a missing toddler. That doesn’t sound terribly engaging, and it isn’t, so there are extensive shots of newspaper headlines and TV announcers waxing apoplectic over the incident. Again we are supposed to accept mass media, television-driven values of what counts as "major news." Freeman is the police chief who had his own daughter kidnapped and killed once, which gives him license to pontificate repeatedly about the importance of finding the little girl. Ed Harris is a police detective on the case, but his performance is so overdone that his character is a mere cardboard cutout. There are multiple surprise revelations, nearly all in the last 30 minutes. The movie is a slow starter, and there is an embedded segment about a missing boy – entirely different case – that should have been cut out. The saga of the missing girl ends, then ends again, then ends again, and it just won’t quit. This is clever writing at its worst, calling attention to its own cleverness so often that the story becomes implausible and you lose interest. I did, anyway.

There is a legitimate moral quandary at the climax point, framed rather suddenly as a whole line of unlikely twists and turns unfold. Casey Affleck’s performance is outstanding however and that alone raises this humdrum picture slightly above average.

American Gangster: Grade B

B
American Gangster (2007)
Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor. Director Ridley Scott.

It may be unfair to compare this movie to The Godfather, but if you’re going to do an American gangster movie, you have to be ready for that. Well, this is no Godfather. The characters are two-dimensional, despite obvious efforts to round them out, with a child custody struggle for Crowe, a romantic relationship for Washington. But those subthemes are formulaic and fail to get us inside the character. In The Godfather you had the sweep of history, the ethnic bond of family, driving ambition, and the principle of vendetta all giving context to the characters’ actions. This movie, by contrast, is straight cops-n-robbers, without developing the psychology of either side.

Washington’s drug-dealing kingpin is slick but too cool, never vulnerable except once when he burns a chinchilla coat. But his self-blindness that led up to that was not consistent with his character in the first place. Crowe’s detective is a sloppy, taciturn, self-indulgent, down-on-his-luck working class cop who nevertheless has the mind of a brilliant attorney and the moral fiber of Elliot Ness. We don’t know why he returned a seized million dollars to authorities. Just because it was the right thing to do? Okay, but how did his character escape the pervasive police corruption so well documented in this movie? We have no idea. The characters are flat, even though they are based on a true story and the real-life people who are shown in the DVD extras. A straight documentary film might have been more nuanced than this fictionalized story.

There are plenty of questions to raise about the story. Do we really believe that Washington would step from a diner, shoot a man through the head at noon on a city street with a hundred onlookers, then just go back to his lunch? Does a criminal who “names” corrupt police officers provide enough evidence to convict? Would the prosecution really forgive and forget the military connection that made the whole drug smuggling operation possible? And what was the point of cameo roles by Cuba Gooding and Armande Assante? They contributed nothing more than the dozens of naked women who add gratuitous nipples to the screen. Finally, we have to ask, what was the point of this movie? Morality or legality are never seriously considered. There is no significant character development. Why did this movie need to be made? There is plenty to enjoy, including fine acting, directing, and cinematography, but despite being engaging and watchable throughout, the movie has a disappointing lack of fizz.

Eastern Promises: Grade A

A
Eastern Promises (2007)
Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortenstern, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl. Director David Cronenberg. Mostly English, with some subtitled Russian.

It’s Russian mafia trafficking in women vs. Chechen criminal gangs, all in modern London. Into that dark, cold, extremely violent world stumbles Watts’ character, after a young, pregnant Russian girl arrives at the hospital where she works. The girl dies, the baby survives, and so does the girl’s diary, which reveals incriminating facts about the Russian gang’s operations. Before the diary is translated, Watts tries to find a relative, to prevent the baby from going into foster care, and discovers “godfather” Mueller-Stahl’s restaurant. He learns of the diary and sends thug Mortenstern to get it. Meanwhile there are murders and retaliatory murders between the Russian and Chechen gangs. There is more than a little allusion to the Godfather series, but this movie actually reminds me a lot of 1994’s Little Odessa. I kept expecting Tim Roth to appear. There are many unexpected events and shocking scenes that jolt you upright in your chair. There is a fight scene in a public bath house where Mortenstern, completely naked, defends himself against two assassins with knives. The vulnerable flesh against the hard tile is almost more painful to watch than the bloody slashing. It is a memorable scene that held me breathless. But there is more than violence and gore here. Both Mortensterns’ and Watt’s characters develop plausibly as events continue, and the intellectual thread of the plot is engaging. Although the ending is a little too pat, it works. Watt’s character often behaves in the infuriatingly stupid ways that characters do in cheap horror films. There are some loose ends, and that always bothers me, but they are minor. While not for the queasy, the movie is a memorable masterpiece of filmmaking.

Lonely Hearts: Grade D

D

Lonely Hearts (2006)

John Travolta, Janes Gandolfini, Salma Hayek, Jared Leto, Laura Dern; Writer & Director Todd Robinson.

Travolta and Gandolfini are 1950s era detectives on the trail of a pair of con artists (Leto and Hayek). Leto romances elderly women to rob them. Hayek hangs around looking beautiful while he does this, and sometimes kills the women and helps cut up the bodies. Meanwhile, Travolta is supposed to be having an affair with Dern, but that relationship is lifeless and pointless. This is a tired theme, done much better as a comedy by Michael Caine and Steve Martin 20 years ago (and it was a remake even then). There is no humor in this version, which is just a long trail of dark, sordid episodes as the con artists swindle one victim after another. Gandolfini does his Tony Soprano shtik without self-irony, Travolta frowns a lot, but the only decent acting is from Hayek, who gives a fine performance despite a stupid role. Music and directing are mediocre at best. Costumes and sets try to make up for a weak narrative, but only detract. Were police station walls really painted in Sears green, including the wainscoting? A large stellar cast like this is usually a bad sign, and this project proves that rule.