The Tourist: Grade C

C

The Tourist (2010)

Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, Rufus Sewell; Writer-Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Good acting by Johnny Depp and Paul Bettany save this movie from total disaster, but it is pretty bad. Jolie is “statuesque” and well-costumed, but her face is painful to look at. I guess she is considered beautiful, but I see her distorted face as frighteningly grotesque. Depp plays a straight, for-real character in the first half, a real treat, before he goes into his trademark ironic shtick near the end.

Jolie is some kind of undercover agent (it’s not clear what kind) in Venice and she is pursued by bad guys, from her point of view, although they later turn out to be cops, including Bettany. Why? Because they want her elusive husband for tax evasion. She attaches herself to a simple math teacher from Wisconsin, a tourist on a train (Depp), so the baddies will think that’s her husband. Convincing? Not for an instant. From then on there are interminable and unconvincing boat chases through the canals of Venice. There are some crude CGI shots of Venice, which makes me doubt the film was even made there. There are a few funny lines (far too few) and some of the sets are done up in sensuous detail.

Gunshots are fired, but they all magically miss so nobody is hurt. In the end, there is a hidden safe, and missing money, and I can’t even remember what all. Basically, nothing was ever at stake in this movie. It was just Keystone Cops. And unforgivably, the ridiculous ending, which anybody could see coming a mile away, undercut and contradicted everything you have seen so far, making the viewer a sucker for watching it.

The Next Three Days: Grade B

B
The Next Three Days (2010)

Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks. Writer-director Paul Haggis.

Banks is riveting as an ordinary office worker who is unexpectedly accused of murdering her boss. The evidence is pretty shaky but good enough for the movies. Her fingerprints are on the blunt object, although an omniscient cutaway shows us that she just moved it out of her way in the parking garage. And oh, yeah, it had some victim’s blood on it which she managed to pick up as well. That's a life sentence in Hollywood.

She goes to prison, all appeals are lost. Her husband, Crowe, is an ordinary college professor who doesn’t have the money for high priced lawyers but believes in his wife’s innocence. He is frustrated and helpless. Being a bookish kind of guy, he researches the heck out of how to accomplish a prison break. Then he carefully executes his very detailed and tricky plan, and that is the fun part of the movie.

What makes this extremely implausible story worth watching is the fine acting from the two principals. Crowe is capable of a lot more than swishing a sword around. He really can act and this is among his best performances, well worth the price of admission. He does not step out of his seething, mumbling, slit-eyed, laconic persona – he is still Russell Crowe, (nor does he go very long without the aviator sunglasses), but still, he is a compelling screen presence. Against Banks, the acting makes this thriller for ordinary people seem more reasonable than it is.

The Other Guys: Grade B

B
The Other Guys (2010)

Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Keaton, Eva Mendes, Steve Coogan; Co-writer & director Adam McKay.

I am not a big fan of Will Ferrell’s loud and obvious comic style, but this movie was LOL funny for me. I’ve never seen Wahlberg in a comic role before but he has good timing and made the part a success.

The two cops are ridiculed NYPD officers assigned to desk jobs. Ferrell’s character likes doing paperwork because it is quiet and happy work and nobody shoots at you. Wahlberg craves action, but has been confined to the desk ever since he accidentally shot Derek Jeter in the leg. Jeter has a cameo for that scene. Throughout the movie Wahlberg is introduced as “the cop who shot Jeter.” A typical response is “You should have shot A-Rod!”

The jokes are often wordgames and cultural allusions, which I enjoy. And there are some just plain loopy scenes, like Ferrell's story of a band of tunas attacking a pack of lions. The writers have a worthy successor to the Leslie Nielsen brand of screwball humor. The visual and situational gags are usually silly, sometimes satirical. I especially enjoyed the Prius-related jokes and gags. The exasperated police captain (Keaton) has a second job at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

The two deskbound cops finally get out on some assignments which leads to “buddy cop” jokes reminiscent of the Lethal Weapon franchise, with a dash of Inspector Clouseau bumbling to success. I think what makes it really work, besides good writing, is Ferrell’s deadpan delivery, great face acting, and impeccable timing, traits that Wahlberg copies admirably, if not to the same degree of perfection. Coogan also shows excellent comic form in his role as a crooked financial wizard.

Music is quite good, and there are plenty of loud, colorful explosions for the kids. Samuel Jackson and Dwayne Johnson appear in a brief opening segment that is not necessary and not funny, but burnishes the film’s action credentials. You must appreciate goofy humor to like this movie, which is above average for its genre.

Police, Adjective: Grade A

A

Police, Adjective (2009)
Dragos Bucur; Writer & Director Corneliu Porumboiu. (Romanian, subtitled)

A police detective (Bucur) in a small town in Romania tracks a teenager who occasionally smokes pot, hoping to find his supplier. Actually, he does not hope that because he thinks the whole investigation is stupid, but he has been assigned to the case by the police chief. He reminds the chief that nobody in Europe gets busted for smoking a joint but the chief tells him that it is the law, and asks him, “Are you above the law?” The theme of the movie is really not about drugs, but about morality, the nature of authoritarian power, the tedium of everyday life, and Romanian politics. (Consider examples of how the word "police" is used as an adjective, to appreciate the subtlety of the political commentary). In illuminating these values, it succeeds completely.

It also succeeds as a masterpiece of cinematography. Every shot is visually perfect, even though it is obvious in many scenes that a building has been painted a certain way for the shot or a post has been whitewashed to bring brightness to the drab, wet, autumnal scene. The camera often lingers, unmoving for long minutes, so we can absorb the stillness of time in that town, in that country, in that character’s life. Several interior shots are through doorways and having the shot framed by the door jamb gives a startling sense of intimacy.

Caution, however: This not an American style film. It is extremely slow, even by European standards, and absolutely nothing happens. There are no guns, no car chases, no naked women, no drug deals, no violence of any kind. There is nothing going on but a detective walking the grubby streets, smoking, talking in the office. The beauty and the mastery of the picture is entirely “inner.” If you are not an inner person, there is nothing here for you. But if you liked Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006), you’ll understand what this one is about.

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.

Crossing Over: Grade C

C
Crossing Over (2009)
Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta, Jim Sturgess, Alice Shepard; Writer-Director Wayne Kramer.

Good plotting saves this familiar story of illegal immigrants trying to make a life in southern California. We’ve seen it all before: the immigrants are hard-working family people, but the nasty ICE keeps snooping around, deporting people, separating mothers from children, breaking up families, ruining lives, etc., etc. This edition of the story has a few variations that make it better than a mere rehash. Liotta is a crooked immigration bureaucrat who exchanges sex with a cute Aussie illegal (Shepard) for a green card; Ford is a way-past-retirement street officer who takes the trouble to return the child of a deported mom to the grandparents in Tijuana, and he also manages to solve a murder case involving an illegal muslim family. The film tries to represent the immigration authorities sympathetically. They are not uncaring bigots but sensitive officials and ordinary human beings just doing their jobs. It also tries to air brush the fact that the vast majority of immigrants to the US are Mexican. It does this by presenting a (non-random) “sample” of immigration stories including an Israeli, an Aussie, a Kenyan, a Korean family, and several Iranians, along with one Mexican family. However, Mexican immigrants constitute about 25% of all immigrants, while the next closest ethnic group is Chinese, at 5%. Why the film would attempt to distort these facts is unknown. Perhaps it was simply to introduce variety for entertainment value, but the political agenda of the movie suggests otherwise. Overall then, the film is mildly interesting with a bland but confused political message, some familiar actors but only mediocre acting and directing, and stereotypical characters. However clever mini-plots keep you just connected enough for its two-hour anthology of cases to be shown.

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.

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.

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.