Dream Home: Grade B

B

Dream Home (2010)

Josie Ho, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Eason Chan, Hee Ching Paw, Kwok Cheung Tsang; Director Ho-Cheung Pang (Cantonese Chinese; Subtitled).

There is a movie in theaters now with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz called “Dream House.” A family becomes the target of a serial killer in that movie. I haven’t seen it.

This film is called Dream Home, and is from the point of view of a serial killer. A young woman has scrimped and saved for a lifetime to afford the perfect apartment by the sea. But alas, the building is fully occupied and nothing is for sale. Solution? Kill some occupants, creating instant vacancies.

In fairness, I need to say the victims are not just “killed,” for that sounds tidy. No, these victims are violently, bloodily slaughtered, using knives, boards, fists, and garrotes. This is an extremely violent, bloody, Hong Kong horror/slasher film. Nevertheless, I found it enjoyable.

One reason is that there is a balance between the young woman’s ordinary everydayness, at work, with her friends, with her family, versus her forays into serial murder, so you don't overdose. There is no attempt to provide psychological continuity between those two halves of herself. The movie plays it as if the gory murders were the most reasonable thing in the world for a person to do. There is no suggestion that she is a conflicted Jekyll/Hyde. So realism is out the window, but still, the story is marginally plausible.

Also, the murders are very creative, almost humorous. What I mean is that they are so gory and brutal, you can’t for a moment take them seriously. They are just real enough to make you gasp, and you will. For creative murders in the filmic art, you can’t beat these. I doubt that you have seen murder by vacuum cleaner, for example. Finally, the acting is better than not bad. So if you can get past some extreme violence and blood and guts, this is one of the better in the Hong Kong slasher/horror genre.

Drive: Grade A

A
Drive (2011)

Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Oscar Isaac; Director Nicolas Winding Refn.

Gosling is a young, impoverished, ex-con Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver for burglaries. He befriends a single mom neighbor (Mulligan) and maybe there is a romantic interest there too, but her husband comes home from prison and it is tense. Nevertheless, when the husband gets caught in an extortion deal, the driver agrees to drive for him on one last heist, which, predictably, goes wrong. But Gosling ends up with the money so now the mob is after him and Mulligan too. He fights to freedom in several gruesomely bloody scenes, but realizes he is “no good” for the girl and drives away into the sunset (severely wounded).

What makes the movie good is Gosling’s very quiet performance, which I attribute to excellent directing as much as excellent acting. The book is extremely terse, with not a single spare word, and that economy is transferred to the screen in spare dialog, a perfect artistic choice. Gosling has hardly any dialog, expressing his moods and thoughts through subtle facial gestures and big dramatic actions, like decapitating a guy by repeatedly stomping on his neck. Usually, it is only mature actors who have the skill and the courage to act quietly though. It is a pleasure to watch Gosling perform. Albert Brooks, who usually grates my nerves, does a completely believable job. Mulligan has a terrible, passive role, so she doesn’t have much to do but look beautiful, which she does well.

The photography is outstanding, including the difficult inside-the-car shots, and the music is tense but not too intrusive. The director keeps the action tension very high. The car chases are not too clichéd, but at times hard to follow, like how, exactly Driver got undetected to the freeway underpass to hide from the helicopter. The cars look and sound good, too, Bullet-esque for the Mustang. The main problem is the driver’s character, which unaccountably drifts from earnest, sensitive mechanic and friend, to cold-blooded psychopathic killer. In the end, he apparently realizes his own psychopathy and that’s why he leaves town, but that doesn’t explain who he was when we met him. It’s a violent, bloody movie, not for everyone, but a thoroughly entertaining action film.

The Last Circus: Grade B

The Last Circus (Balada Triste de Trompeta) (2010)

Carlos Areces, Antonio de la Torre, Carolina Bang; Writer-director Álex de la Iglesia.(Spanish, subtitled).

This is one of the strangest movies I have seen in a long time; a dark, violent, horror movie; a bloody splatter picture; also a farce, a cutting political satire, and a sweet romantic comedy. It is so mind-blowingly, creatively original that I have to give it high marks. Its 107 minutes grind on too long however and the story degenerates into meaningless chaos as it comes to its prolonged, tragic finale, so it gets graded down for that.

Set in the 1930’s and the Spanish civil war, a group of circus performers is forcibly drafted into Franco’s army, but the head clown refuses and ridicules the nasty officer. For his efforts he is imprisoned, tortured, and killed, but not before he advises his confused young son to be a sad clown, not a happy clown, because life is no longer happy. The son grows up and joins a circus as an incredibly incompetent sad clown. He is so bad that he actually makes people laugh. Ironically, the circus’s happy clown is actually a psychotic woman-beater who lords it over him just as the fascist soldier humiliated his father. The pathetic, dumpy and weak sad clown naively falls in love with the happy clown’s girl, the beautiful trapeze artist, and is consequently beaten to a pulp. Retaliating, he attacks the happy clown, ripping his face apart with a farrier’s hook, in one of several extremely violent, bloody scenes, that are yet somehow squirmingly comedic because of the costumes and sets.

The sad clown escapes the police by running into the forest and living naked in a cave like an animal. A hunter finds him and takes him home as a curiosity, and you’ll never guess, the hunter is the very army officer who killed his father. The sad clown plots his revenge, but first he improvises a fantastic clown costume out of draperies and props suggestive of papal garb.

But suddenly the happy clown reappears, not dead after all, but horribly disfigured, in a fantastic makeup job. Further tragicomic-horror clown battles ensue, including a chase up a church steeple reminiscent of the chase up Mount Rushmore in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. There are also visual allusions to Picasso’s Guernica, Puccini’s Pagliacci, and to other historical and cinematic landmarks.

The original title, A Sad Trumpet Ballad, may have some significance that escapes me, but is otherwise just the name of the musical sound track. The cinematography, and especially the lighting, are exceptionally striking throughout the movie. Costumes and makeup are unbelievably creative, as is the writing itself. Directing is excellent and well paced, until the last act. Violence and sexuality are integrated into the allegorical civil war theme and used well. Ultimately, the movie does not present a single, easy to grasp political message, or comedic tone, or horror theme, but is a dizzying pastiche of many of those, engaging the viewer on multiple levels of relentless creative turmoil.

Machete: Grade A

A
Machete (2010)

Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba, Steven Segal, Don Johnson, Robert De Niro, Cheech Marin, Jeff Fahey, Lindsay Lohan; Co-writer and co-director Robert Rodriguez. (Spanish and English, with subtitles).

Trejo is Machete, a violent, machete-wielding, Mexican police officer, expert at decapitations, who was double-crossed by a drug lord (Segal). His wife is murdered before his eyes and he is beaten, stabbed, and left for dead in a burning building in Mexico. But like Bruce Willis in the Die-Hard series, Machete can’t really be killed, or even seriously injured. He survives and escapes to Texas as an illegal day laborer. There, a shady lawyer (Fahey) hires him to kill a U.S. Senator (DeNiro), but he is double-crossed on that deal too and again barely escapes with his life.

It turns out the senator is actually in the employ of the drug lord, manipulated by his chief of staff, and in cahoots with murderous border vigilantes. But Machete finds allies in “The Network,” an implausible group of legal and illegal Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who are ready for armed revolution, led by a young, attractive woman who runs a taco truck (Michelle Rodriquez), and from an equally unlikely ICE agent (Alba), working alone to track down The Network, then Machete, then the Minutemen, then the Senator’s aide, then the drug lord. After an hour and a half of nonstop knives, gore, cars, guns, and breasts, the world is made right again.

The violence is intentionally ludicrous, a comic form following Tarentino’s Kill Bill. (Rodriquez and Tarantino have collaborated in the past). This film alludes to the violent and vulgar exploitation movies of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, in the US and Australia, so there is the faux scratchy film stock and many of the same cinematic and dialogic conventions, but I don’t think this is supposed to be one of those films. This movie is very self-conscious, to the point of irony, about its violence, and even the vulgar language and gratuitous female nudity is comic-ironic. So I classify it as a comedy, despite its theme of blood and violence. The final gun battle should be proof enough of that, when a fleet of low-rider cars with jumping hydraulics attacks the bad guys’ fort. I think this movie is part of an emerging genre, the comedic, ironic slasher movie, “slashironcom”.

Besides great stunts, creative photography, and comedic violence, Machete also has a serious political message, namely that US immigration policy is ineffective, unfair, and small-minded, even though the US economically depends on illegal labor, and so immigration policy should be overhauled. It’s a message I happen to agree with, and although it is delivered with hyperbole, I’m glad to see it out there.

Casting is a notable feature of this movie. Trejo is a big, mean-looking, scar-faced tough guy, reminiscent of Mickey Rourke in some of his roles. That’s interesting. DeNiro may have been in the film for political reasons, but it is always a pleasure to see him. Alba and M. Rodriguez are easy on the eyes, but look too much alike to both be playing alpha females. Alba’s role however is courageous for her, and may be a career changer, from just another pretty face to someone with ideas and commitment. Segal is an unintentionally humorous self-parody, especially when he knife-fights Trejo. Lohan, in a tiny role, is so vacant that she evokes only sympathy. Cheech Marin is a standout as a priest who puts aside his vow of nonviolence. For viewers who are not freaked out by (fake) blood and unrelenting (fake) violence, this film is a pleasure, start to finish.

Leaves of Grass: Grade B

B

Leaves of Grass (2009)

Edward Norton, Keri Russell, Tim Blake Nelson, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon. Writer-Director Tim Blake Nelson.

Edward Norton displays his remarkable talent by playing twin brothers, one a professor of philosophy at a Northern university, the other a pot-growing redneck in Oklahoma. The professor escaped his steamy southern hometown and his eccentric (if not crazy) brother and mother (Sarandon) years ago, and has made a name for himself, when he is tricked by a false report of his brother’s death into returning to “Daisyville” or whatever the town’s name was. But his brother is alive and wants the prof to show himself to the locals to provide an alibi while he, the pot-grower is in Tulsa dealing with a problematic drug lord (Dreyfuss). Needless to say, the plan does not go well and disaster ensues.

The story is not believable, and the characters unconvincing. For example, the redneck brother convinces the professor to suck on a bong, his first day there, and he agrees. Believable? Not to me. Likewise the prof agrees to the wacky impersonation scheme because, well, because I don’t know why. Then he falls in love, and who wouldn't, with an enigmatic teacher (Russell) because she quotes Walt Whitman. Then a random orthodontist suddenly turns sleuth, discovers the impersonation, and buys a gun to threaten the brothers, for reasons never made clear. Right: an orthodontist would do that. It’s just bad writing.

The dialog is stilted and unimaginative ( “I can’t believe I’m doing this”). There are some redeeming story virtues, such as having the two brothers use distinct vocabularies and grammatical constructions (and accents, too, of course). There are some really funny lines, though far too few, and all the performances are strong, despite the weak material.

Cinematography is traditional and unobtrusive. Music is twangy Okie tunes, presumably genuine, but they drove me up the wall, forcing emergency >>FF. Pacing is unreliable, with lots of sagging dead space, such as cars and trucks driving around (so the dreadful songs could play).

Despite these serious flaws, I recommend the movie just because Norton is so unbelievably good.

The Killer Inside Me: Grade B

B

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, Ned Beatty; Director Michael Winterbottom.

Casey Affleck is a revelation in this crime drama set in the 1950’s. His superb acting animates the main character, Lou, a psychopathic small town sheriff in the south, a well-worn cliché, to be sure, but he breathes life into it. The story gets off to a shaky start when he is ordered to run a prostitute (Alba) out of town, but decides to kill her instead, by beating her to death with his fists. (There is plenty of bloody brutality in the movie, especially directed toward women – another tired cliché we don’t need repeated). Why does he do that? There is some sketchy backstory about how a certain guy in town may or may not have facilitated the death of his brother years ago, in a construction incident that may or may not have been an accident. So when this other guy shows up at the prostitute’s place as arranged, Lou shoots him with her gun then places the gun in her hand, thus achieving revenge. But a detective from out of town is not satisfied with the evidence and relentlessly sniffs around until the predictable revelation and conflagration at the end.

So if this movie is just one predictable cliché after another, why give it such a positive rating? Acting is the main reason. It is riveting throughout, especially Affleck’s version of a calm, polite, friendly, cold-blooded psychopath. Directing is excellent. Sets and scenes are perfect. Cinematography is perfect. Costumes are perfect. The old cars are lovely. And the music is fantastic, mostly authentic period country, like Hank Williams, Carl Perkins, etc., but also with some very fine operatic interludes (Puccini, I think). This movie is so well constructed that you just have to give it a break and overlook the dreadful misogyny and clichéd story.

The Killing Gene: Grade B

B

The Killing Gene (2007)

Stellan Skarsgård, Barbara Adair; Director Tom Shankland.

This British crime drama is violent, bloody, and brutal. There is torture, mutilation, rape, and lots of blood. I generally dislike gory violence and especially, torture, because it is almost invariably gratuitous – blood for the sake of blood. Pure sensationalism. But not in this film.

The idea is that a rape and mutilation victim who recovered and survived into adulthood wants revenge on the police detective and several others who failed to capture her tormentor. But the interesting thing about revenge is that it does not work. Let’s say you track down and kill the person who did you wrong. The perpetrator gets little or no satisfaction from that, and the victim of revenge typically feels anger but not remorse. Nobody is satisfied, nobody learns anything, and the project is a failure.

What if you just beat up and mutilate your tormenter? Same thing: It does not make you whole, and it is not a situation in which the tormenter has an inclination to remorse. Again it fails. I had thought that the perfect revenge movie could not be made therefore, but this one comes close.

The vengeant woman’s strategy is to capture her victim and, somebody that person loves. Then she tortures that person until they agree to kill the person they love to end the pain. That’s her revenge, to watch her tormenter suffer both physical and emotional pain the way she did. That might work, psychologically.

In this movie, she kills the victim after the victim kills the loved one, whereas it seems it might be better to let that person live with the psychological pain of what they did. That would be better revenge. And she not only kills them but mutilates them by carving messages into their flesh (before or after the torture is not clear). What sense does that make in the context of the revenge theory? Not much, so that mutilation aspect borders on the gratuitous.

Nevertheless, there is an overlaid story that she is or was a mad scientist of some sort who had studied the genetics of altruism and was interested in finding out if the genetic predisposition to care for your loved ones can be overcome by torture. That is a pretty weak experimental question, and in the final scenes, the victim and the loved one are not even genetically related. So overall the story does not make a lot of sense, but it is well acted, well photographed, thought-provoking, and I liked its new theory of revenge, so I give it a paradoxical B even though I dislike blood and guts movies as a rule.

Bad Lieutenant: Grade B

B
Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call: New Orleans (2009)
Nicholas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer. Director Werner Herzog.

This remake of the 1992 picture starring Harvey Keitel is almost as good, thanks to extraordinary acting by Cage. He has genuinely acted before in movies, but when he gets into those long spells of Disney things, one tends to forget what real talent he has. His acting in this story is fantastic, especially in the second half after the movie finds its feet.

Cage is a dirty N.O. cop with a spinal injury that leaves him constantly in pain, so he becomes addicted to painkillers, and to cocaine, although to my knowledge, coke does not help at all with pain, might even make it worse. Pharmacology aside, Cage does a convincing job of walking, standing, and moving like a man in pain.

That would be achievement enough. But he also manages to convey vividly the sense of a man constantly on the edge of flipping out; someone who is just barely under control in the social context. He delivers his lines in the same way, dripping with inner torment. It is an amazing performance, well worth seeing.

That aside, however, there is not much to recommend the movie. He is a typical bad cop, similar to every other gritty, urban bad cop movie you have ever seen. He steals dope from the property room, shakes down club-goers for their dope, bullies suspects, abuses his badge and authority to get sex, and all the rest. In the Keitel original, the character was more believable as a burned out, borderline psychopath who was in the end redeemed (partially), by showing a spark of conscience and sense of justice. It was a worthwhile human drama.

Cage’s cop is cartoony and does not hold together well. His gambling habit does not really fit with his character and is not well-integrated into the story. It seems to be there just because it was a there in the original. His romantic relationship with Mendez is flat. And the ending is just stupid, where suddenly in the last 5 minutes he wins enough to cancel all his gambling debts, the mobsters lay off, charges are dropped, he is promoted to captain, his back pain is apparently gone, he has a smile on his face, a happy family, and he and his girl and his father too, have all gone through rehab and celebrate by drinking San Pellegrino. Right. That is Hollywood showing its most cynical contempt for audiences, and it just ruins whatever story they had going. I’m surprised that a big name director like Herzog could not prevent such atrocity.

Unless it was supposed to be ironic, a drug-induced delusion of Cage’s character. There are a couple of surrealist scenes in the movie involving singing iguanas and a dancing dead man which are complete non-sequiturs and can only be interpreted as representing drug-induced hallucination even though that is not consistent with the character's state. That is a generous interpretation of the bizarre ending.

Val Kilmer doesn’t do anything in this movie, but he has lost weight, so that’s something. And the title suffix “Port of Call-New Orleans” is meaningless. The story is nominally set in New Orleans but you would never know it from the cinematography, and there is no nautical theme in the movie, and the location it is not important to the story anyway. However, in sum, you have to see both versions, the original with Keitel for his acting and for the tight story with meaningful character arc; and this remake just because of Cage’s amazing acting.

Old Boy: Grade B

B
Old Boy (2003)
Min-sik Choi, Hye-jeong Kang, Ji-tae Yu; Director Chan-wook Park. (Korean, subtitled)

A middle aged man (Choi) is imprisoned in a windowless hotel room and he does not know why. Food appears under the door, and each day the room is filled with gas that puts him to sleep while the staff cleans the room. Predictably, he goes nuts, but he recovers (more or less) upon release without explanation or context after fifteen years.

He meets a sympathetic waitress (Kang) and develops a relationship with her, but he is consumed by desire to know what happened and for revenge on his captor (Yu), who he discovers through careful research. There are many twists and turns and a surprising ending.

The film is beautifully photographed, well directed, and the music is outstanding. The picture is extremely stylish and good-looking. It is also drenched in blood. Tartan Films (Tarantino’s outfit) “presents” the movie, so you should know what to expect. I just fast forwarded past the most violent scenes.

Acting is outstanding by Choi and Kang and it is fun to get a glimpse into Korean culture. A sense of modern, urban, existential alienation comes through although the ultimate theme of the story is fairly pedestrian, not as shocking to an American audience as the actors’ reactions suggest. I recommend it on the basis of excellent filmmaking.

The Unknown Woman: Grade B

B
The Unknown Woman (2006)
Kseniya Rappoport, Clara Dossena; Co-writer and director Giuseppe Tornatore. (Italian, subtitled).

A young Ukranian woman (Rappoport) searches for work as a cleaning woman in northern Italy. Gradually we discover that it is not just any work she wants; she must work in a particular apartment building. Then by hook and crook, she wheedles her way into a position as a maid/nanny for a particular family. Why she is stalking this family, we do not know, but the tension is palpable. Through a series of brief but graphic flashbacks, we discover that she had been a sex slave in the Ukraine. She escaped by killing her boss in a gory, blood-soaked scene, and she took his stash of cash also. Inevitably, the Ukrainian bad guys are after her and the money. Slowly we learn why she is interested the Italian family, and at the same time is pursued by her old Ukranian boss, despite him being dead (she has to kill him again). It makes no sense at all. There are many other inexplicable non-sequiturs in the story and the ending is particularly unsatisfying. The brutal violence in the sex slavery scenes is hard to take, but it is integral to the story and not merely exploitative.

The pace is too slow, as European movies are for Americans. I could easily have edited 30 minutes out of the two hour run time. On the plus side, the movie is beautiful. It is very finely directed (Tornatore did Cinema Paradiso), and superbly acted. Sets and costumes are perfect. The story has just enough direction to carry us through the scenes, even if it does not add up in the end. You watch this movie for the exquisite acting, excellent directing, thoughtful photography, and lovely language. Overall, it is a worthwhile and memorable movie experience.

RocknRolla: Grade C

C
RocknRolla (2008)
Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton, Tom Wilkenson, Toby Kebbell, Karel Roden; Writer-Director Guy Ritchie.

Lenny (Wilkenson) is a real-estate gangster in contemporary London. He bribes cops, judges, and city council to get irregular building permits so he can work his deceptive schemes. In the opening scene, he defrauds two small-time crooks out of a warehouse, but they come back later to sting him. Lenny thinks he has hit the jackpot when a Russian billionaire (Roden) needs a permit for a sports arena. The Russian loans Lenny his prized “lucky” painting, whose content we never see. The deal is set but the Russian’s accountant (Newton) tips off the local crooks about the money transfer, which they intercept. Meanwhile, somebody steals the Russian’s painting from Lenny, the suspect being a drug-addled rock singer who turns out to be Lenny's estranged stepson.

The story continues in this fashion with dozens of characters and as many improbable plot twists. There are double and triple crosses, but since nobody is properly motivated, none of it matters, so don’t waste your time trying to track the intricate plot. Instead, just enjoy gangsters doing gangstery things, the gritty sets, smart dialog, and gratuitous violence perpetrated by psychopathic hotheads. There is some good wit and plenty of British-isms in the dialog for Americans to puzzle over. The accents are manageable. But characters are no more than video game avatars and there is not one convincing emotion in the whole picture. Editing and directing are the strongest aspects of the film. The overall look is attractive, but there is nothing significant.

Pride and Glory: Grade A

A
Pride and Glory (2008)
Colin Farrell, Edward Norton, John Voight, Noah Emmerich, John Ortiz; Co-writer and director Gavin O’Connor.

This is a traditional corrupt cops movie without anything new to say, but the acting is outstanding, making the drama extremely intense. Anything with Colin Farrell is going to be intense anyway, but opposite Edward Norton, the movie just sizzles. Kudos to the casting director on this one. Actually there are outstanding performances in many secondary roles as well, including Emmerich and Ortiz.

Norton is persuaded by his father (Voight), a retired NYPD chief, to transfer out of “missing persons” to find the guy who shot four cops in a drug bust gone bad. We quickly find out, but Norton doesn’t, that his brother in law, Farrell, heads a cabal of corrupt cops involved in extortion and drugs. They’re after the shooter because they want the drug money back. Several well-dramatized and well-acted scenes show the bad cops brutally forcing information out of street informants. Eventually Norton discovers there is a dirty cop inside the case. His father wants him to suppress the information, “for the good of the force,” and we learn that years ago, his father had persuaded him to lie to a grand jury, a decision he regrets.

As he cautiously pursues doing the right thing, Norton edges closer to the inevitable confrontation with Farrell. Unfortunately, right at the end, the movie goes south, and instead of busting Farrell in the normal way, both remove their weapons and have a juvenile fistfight that proves nothing. Not only is that stupid and out of character, but the whole tone of the photography and direction changes in the final act, so one suspects this was not the original ending. It is easy to visualize a very dark ending with Norton getting the shaft and the evildoers getting off. That would have made a terrifically noir morality tale, but apparently some producer decided that goodness must reign so we get this very weak ending. Disappointing as that is, the ending was not ruinous, merely diminishing what was almost a pitch-perfect movie.

Antibodies: Grade B

B
Antibodies (2005)
Wotan Wilke Möhring, André Hennicke, Hauke Diekamp. Writer-director Christian Alvart. (German, subtitled).

This update of Silence of the Lambs adds a religious ambiguity to the investigator but does not break new ground. Maybe we are just burned out on the serial killer theme, or maybe nobody can ever top Anthony Hopkins for emanating sheer pathological menace.

Möhring is the killer, captured by police in a riveting short scene before the titles, perhaps one of the best scenes in the movie. In prison, he won’t speak. A country policeman (Hennicke) interviews him in connection with a missing child in his town, and the killer suddenly starts speaking in cryptic riddles with the intention of messing with his mind, as Hopkins did with Foster. The policeman becomes obsessed with ascertaining whether this prisoner is the killer of the girl in his town. The killer claims she was dead when he got there, but he saw the real killer. He drops enough clues that the policeman begins to suspect his own son (Kiekamp). The thought drives the policeman nearly mad from religious guilt and a heavy-handed Biblical theme of Abraham and Isaac is played out. That could have been a good theme for recasting the whole story, but it is just thrown in at the end.

The directing and cinematography, though often bloody and violent, are outstanding and raise the film above average. Acting is only average though. The imprisoned killer is intelligent but also just batty, covering his cell walls with slogans and crude drawings of mutilation. Möhring does not have the stillness Hopkins used to convey menace. Policeman Hennicke is distractingly histrionic. The story sags badly while he discovers his shadow side amidst much breast-beating angst. There are a few late-breaking surprises that are just too clever, and the happy ending contradicts the film's noirish mood.

The Life Before Her Eyes: Grade D

D
The Life Before Her Eyes (2008)
Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Amurri. Director Vadim Perelman.

Wood is a high school student who, with her friend Amurri, narrowly survives one of those depressingly common school shootups by a nutcase student. The experience colors the rest of her life. Thurman is the anxiety-ridden adult who can’t get over the event, especially at the (unlikely) 15th anniversary memorial service for it in the small town where, unlikely though it seems, she still lives, near her high school friend, with her husband and daughter. She seems to have PTSD symptoms but mainly she suffers (and so do we) from incessant flashbacks to the traumatic event. Scenes from her youth are repeated multiple times with hardly any variation. I understand what flashbacks are without seeing identical film clips repeated every few minutes. Okay, so it was traumatic. How about a therapist? There is no forward movement to the story and no character development. Absolutely nothing happens. Thurman just has flashbacks and panic attacks for 90 minutes. We do not even get to see the resolution of the traumatic incident. Was the shooter captured? How did Wood and her friend manage to escape unharmed? Nothing is revealed. Perhaps the filmmaker wanted us to feel what it is like to suffer from ongoing PTSD, but if so, the effort was lost on me. Redeeming virtues are that Thurman and Wood are fine actors, always enjoyable to watch. The relatively unknown Amurri also does a very good job in drawing a character contrast to Wood.

Rambo: Grade F

F
Rambo. (aka Rambo, The Fight Continues) (2008)
Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Graham McTavish. Co-writer and Director Sylvester Stallone.

I enjoy one-man-against-the-army movies, including the first Rambo of 1982, the Die-Hard series, the Death Wish series, and many memorable westerns. It’s a vehicle for Nietzschean exaltation of individual physical and moral superiority in the face of overwhelming opposition when no one else has the strength or courage or wits to do the right thing. And you would think that Stallone of all people would understand that theme. Alas, this latest (and presumably last) Rambo does not “get” the Rambo archetype.

In the early Rambos, the character was on a revenge or rescue mission, motivated by personal righteousness, with a grim determination that pushed him to near superhuman feats of endurance, resourcefulness, and strength against huge odds. Here, Rambo is merely catatonic, perhaps clinically depressed, but certainly “emotionally unavailable” to put it kindly. No explanation is provided for his sluggish movement and expressionless monotone. He has been living in civil-war-torn Burma since the Vietnam war, for reasons unknown, catching snakes for 30 years apparently. A group of Christian missionaries including the mandatory young blonde (Benz) convinces him to take them upriver to distribute Bibles and medicine. He drops them off and guess what, they are quickly captured by evil soldiers. The church hires a group of mercenaries to rescue them and Rambo takes them upriver also. Guards have their throats cut and gunfights ensue. Most of the missionaries are rescued. The blonde falls in the mud and ruins her outfit, but she is okay. The combat emphasizes heads and body parts being blown off in enormous sprays of blood. The special effects are good, but not new. The mutilation goes on and on, to the point of boredom. That’s what tipped me off that this is probably designed as a video game for mindless youth, and indeed the video game came out right after the movie’s release. There is no point to this movie except to blow up as many bodies as possible.

Early on, Rambo kills a gang of bad guys with a high powered bow and a quiver of arrows, a neat trick, but the bow quickly vanishes, traded for a more blood-spewing machine gun. Rambo has no particular reason to care about the missionaries and since their fate was entirely predictable, had no reason to take them upriver in the first place. Cryptically, he accepted no pay for taking them, implying a sudden Christian conversion? It is impossible to salvage a story out of this nonsense. Stallone looks fit for his 60 years but that’s not enough to carry a movie. Individual scenes are well photographed if you can ignore the heavy green and blue filters that indicate night or rain. Night is green and rain is blue; rain trumps night. Acting and dialog are uniformly abominable, except for some glimmers from mercenary McTavish. Music is what you’d expect to accompany glorification of pointless, bloody violence.

Election: Grade B

B
Election (2005)
Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka Fei; Director Johnny To. (Cantonese; subtitled)

This Hong Kong gangster film is one of the best of the genre. There is already an “Election II” sequel out (not yet on DVD). In this movie, a 100 year old triad (gang) elects its new chairman (Yam), but the loser, "Big D" (Leung) does not accept defeat. He tries kidnapping, bribery, and intimidation to get his way, but the “honor” of the gang’s tradition does not yield. Big D declares he will form his own organization (with himself as boss) declaring war on the others. But the police round up all the leadership, and there are meetings in prison. The winner and the loser agree to work together, sort of, for a while, maybe. The story is easily strong enough to sustain the action. The violence is brutal and shocking (as is the custom in this genre), but also very personal because there are no guns in the whole movie! Enemies are beaten, stabbed, run over with cars, bashed with shovels and hit with whisky bottles. I kept imagining guns that were not there. Three black Mercedes screech to a stop and 12 thugs jump out. Cue the ouzi’s! But no, it is a fistfight with knives, machetes, boxes, and steel barrels. It’s amazing how much more effective the violence is without the depersonalization of the gun. There’s no martial arts either, making every scene feel realistic. The sharp dialog and good characterizations also help us engage with the humanity of the characters. There is a real sense that these guys are like any society of people, with history, tradition, and alliances, dealing with their particular culture of violence, individual talents, social hierarchy, and even mental illness. The scene with a community of monkeys watching a violent murder is especially telling. You come away appreciating the breadth and depth of Triad life in Hong Kong.

In Bruges: Grade B

B
In Bruges (2008)
Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clemence Poesy, Thekla Reuten, Jordan Prentice. Writer-Director Martin McDonagh.

This ultra-noir comedy is shot in Bruges, Belgium, a beautiful city. Two hitmen (Farrell and Gleeson) await instructions from their boss (Fiennes) about their next job. There is humorous back and forth as Farrell, exercising his Groucho Marx eyebrows, petulantly complains about being bored with “culture and all that crap” (“history is just a bunch of stuff that’s already happened”), while Gleeson drags him to medieval churches and takes him on cold, windy canal tours. We learn in a flashback the special rule that governs these hit men: if you kill an innocent boy, that’s wrong, and you must kill yourself. Makes sense, right? Whatever, that’s the rule that controls the whole story.

The story is utter nonsense, and any residual of realism is sacrificed when Gleeson falls from a tower, his head exploding like a watermelon on the sidewalk, but he isn’t dead! No, he still has time to give a few crucial words of advice to Farrell. When Farrell is shot five times through the abdomen with an automatic weapon loaded with dum-dums, he doesn’t die, either. There are some funny lines and some melodramatic moments too, but there is no realistic overall comedic or dramatic story so the character arcs are hard to take seriously. Farrell overacts; Gleeson does a good job, Prentice is fascinating, but Fiennes is super intense, even electrifying. His character should have been brought in much earlier. Cinematography is stylish and enjoyable, as is the music. A tighter story with more respect for realism would have made it an excellent film.

Hard Boiled: Grade B

B
Hard Boiled, 2-disk Reissue Edition (2007)
Chow Yun Fat, Tony Leung; Director John Woo (Chinese, Subtitled)

This 1992 Classic still looks good. It defined the hard boiled, trigger-happy, blood-soaked cop genre that has been copied so many times since (most recently in Shoot ’Em Up, with Clive Own and Paul Giamatti, which shamelessly steals even specific choreographic moves). All the Die-Hard movies are derived from this one, as are many others. The acting is good, the story is just strong enough to support its own weight, photography is excellent, music outstanding, and the gunfights are beautifully choreographed.

Alas, the endless gunplay becomes tedious because we have seen it all so many times before, and the story is really only a loosely knit set of scenes. There is some high drama when Leung, an undercover Hong Kong cop, must betray his adopted Triad gang to win the trust of the evil, gun-running gang he needs to penetrate. But that tense scene lasts only a few minutes when yet another gun battle breaks out. There are gunfights in restaurants, on boats, in hospitals, in the street, in warehouses, you name it. In this genre, there is no problem hitting your target with a handgun while leaping through the air. A car door will protect you from a 9 mm bullet. Actually, even a cigarette lighter will, in this movie. Bad guys with fully automatic weapons spraying like garden hoses cannot wound the hero from 3 feet away as he leaps and rolls to safety behind a section of sturdy wallboard. The movie wants to cling to realism, but just can’t, so ends up being slightly ridiculous, unlike its American imitators that go completely over the top into comic surrealism. That’s only to say that the genre has moved on since 1992, and our expectations are different now. But this original still stands on its own. The extended extras, interviews with John Woo, and so forth, don’t really add much value. It’s just a reissue of a good, classic action movie.

No Country For Old Men: Grade A

A
No Country For Old Men (2007)
Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson. Directors Ethan Coen and Joseph Coen.

Brolin is a poor cowboy in east Texas in the 1980s. While hunting in the desert he stumbles across a drug deal gone bad; bloated corpses, a truckload of heroin and two million dollars in a suitcase. Bad guys (apparently from the buyers’ side) see him there, shoot at him, and he narrowly escapes. However, now they know who he is and where the money is so the chase is on. It is unclear what happened to the dope but it is gone by the time sheriff Tommy Lee shows up to investigate. He despairs at the carnage and more generally at the violence wrought by the scale of the drug trade, something he didn’t experience or anticipate in his long career. The scrub country he loves has turned into an alien blood-soaked battleground; thus the title of the film.

Bardem plays a Terminator-like psychopath who stalks Brolin through Texas and into Mexico. Tommy Lee is always one step behind. There is excellent cat-and-mouse. Harrelson has a small but standout role as an assassin hired by the money guys to take out Bardem, for reasons unknown. After two hours, the movie just stops. I’m not even sure what happened to the money. It’s a shame the plot was not stronger, but the film is not really a story of what happened so much as a portrait of the crazy, mindless violence that drug culture brings. In that regard this movie succeeds.

The characters remain stereotypes throughout. There is no story through line either, so what do you have left? Directing, terrific directing. Even though it is a well-worn theme with stereotype characters, the tension is Hitchcockian. And that palpable tension comes with no music! A music director is credited, but it must be for FX sounds. Despite all the gunplay, this is a very quiet movie, like the desert itself. I think 95% of American movies would be improved without music telling us what we are supposed to feel. If the camera cannot tell us that, then maybe the movie is not good enough!

The cinematography is very good here, and sets are perfect, from the brilliant desert to dark, seedy motel rooms. The dialog is spare and sharp, with fine use of East Texan accents and idioms to underscore the taciturn characters. Tommy Lee is such a natural in his role he doesn’t seem like he is acting. Bardem is the central character, an unfeeling, unthinking humanoid who kills without hesitation or mercy, deriving no pleasure from methodically following his destiny, yet somehow distantly amused and perplexed. It is a complex performance. He represents perfectly the dehumanization that drug culture bestows on its participants. A stronger story line would have made this a timeless classic, but it is still far superior to standard fare.

Death Sentence: Grade D

D
Death Sentence (2007)
Kevin Bacon, Garrett Hedlund, Kelly Preston, Aisha Tylor, John Goodman. Director James Wan.

Bacon is an insurance executive whose son is murdered by a gang. He loses confidence in the legal system and goes out for vigilante justice. Murder and mayhem ensue. Charles Bronson played the same part better in Death Wish (1974), even though Bacon is a much better actor, and that’s because this movie is so badly written and directed. A great deal of screen time is devoted to assuring us that Bacon is an ordinary family guy who celebrates birthdays with his kids. But that’s boring: we assume it and the message could have been conveyed in 60 seconds. When he turns vigilante, he acts without planning, is unsure and even horrified at himself when he “accidentally” stabs a kid with a garden knife. What kind of vengeant resolve is that? There is none of Bronson’s grim determination or the besieged perseverance of Die-Hard’s John McLane or the revenant fury of Rambo. Bacon’s back is never up against the wall and he seems clueless throughout. As he waits (!) for the gang to come after his family he makes sure the windows are locked in his nice suburban home. There are many other stupidities that detract from the story. What kind of head wound justifies gauze bandages wrapped around the forehead to look like Ray Milland in The Invisible man? Why would you choose a two-shot shotgun to go after a gang of 25 killers? What kind of street thugs bounce up on their toes with each step? The movie tries to make the moral point that personal revenge is not worth it, but that platitude is lost on Bacon. What raises the movie above complete failure is the excellent cinematography, especially in the chase scenes.