The Ides of March: Grade C

C

The Ides of March (2011)

Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Evan Rachel Wood, Marissa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright. Co-writer and Director George Clooney.

This movie is a huge disappointment, because I am a sucker for political movies. I should have been prepared when I saw that long list of stars, never a good sign. The biggest failure is the poor writing, and after that, the surprisingly poor acting (with a couple of small exceptions).

First the writing. This is supposed to be a story of ideas, political ideas. We are exposed to the inner workings of a presidential campaign. Governor Morris (Clooney) is the Democratic candidate and his two top campaign administrators are Stephen (Gosling) and Paul (Hoffman). Stephen is actually the main character. He is portrayed as a brilliant, successful campaign organizer, totally loyal, who nevertheless has an affair with one of the campaign interns (Wood).

But the real trouble starts when the campaign chief from the rival camp (Giamatti) invites him to come over to the other side. Stephen agrees to a meeting, rejects the offer, and tells Paul, the campaign strategist about it. Paul fires Stephen on the spot for disoloyalty. Stephen is desperate to maintain his political life and finds a dirty, nasty way back into the inner circle, at cost to his innocence and integrity.

The trouble is, none of those moves is convincing. The Stephen character would never have taken that meeting and would not do any of what he does afterward. The intern Wood would never do what she does, or say what she says, given her circumstances. In the dramatic showdown scene, despite a big display of reasoning, the governor fails to reason correctly and miscalculates. And on and on. If the characters don’t make sense, and the story line doesn’t make sense, then what do you have in a movie of ideas? Not much. I get the strong feeling this story was written by a committee. There is no insight to be had and nothing to be learned from it.

Then there is the acting, uniformly deadly. How is that possible from such great stars? It can only be chalked up to poor directing. There are a few sparkles, as when Giamatti gives a heated speech to Gosling in a smoke-filled back room. But that’s his only moment. Tomei is consistently strong, and even though she has a small role, she acts her heart out. Clooney is unbelievably wooden. Rachel Evan Wood? Ow!

About the only positive thing I could say about the movie is that it presents two meta-stories (not in the movie itself). One is disappointment about American politics. It seems to say, all politics is dirty politics, and even if you have a seemingly “ideal” candidate (like Obama), you learn the reality is the same cynical B.S. as always. The second implicit theme is that the news media control the democratic process, because, ultimately, the voters are stupid. Politicians must direct their every thought and action toward media coverage for that reason.

They should have made either of those movies.

Fair Game: Grade A

A

Fair Game (2010)

Sean Penn, Naomi Watts. Director Doug Liman.

I give this movie high marks because I am a sucker for political thrillers, and this one is not bad, although somewhat disappointing. Penn is Joe Wilson, the ex-ambassador to African countries who investigated the White House claim that Saddam Hussein was buying uranium from Niger. Wilson found that not to be true, but George W. Bush went ahead and gave it as a justification for invading Iraq, in his State of the Union of 2001.

Outraged by the lie, Wilson wrote an op-ed in the NY Times explaining what he had NOT found in Niger. In retaliation, the White House “outed” his wife, undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame (Watts), in clear violation of the law. Her career was ruined, their lives were ruined, and the marriage went on the rocks. Should they fight back? How can you fight the White house?

The film clings closely to documentary form, careful to show actual television broadcasts featuring Bush, Cheney, Rice, and “Scooter” Libby, all hewing to party line and basically lying through their teeth. A sub-drama is that when Plame is fired, her operation of rescuing informants in Baghdad is abandoned, leaving all her personal promises to those people broken and their lives in peril. Just another hardball day at the CIA.

Watts gives a scintillating performance; best I’ve ever seen her, and the movie is worth watching for that alone. Plus, she looks a lot like Valerie Plame, which adds realism. Penn has a few moments, but the brilliant actor we know he is, cannot be seen. I gather he was interested in putting his name and reputation behind this polemical movie, but not much interested in acting. He’s good: He’s Sean Penn, after all, but he is mostly a placeholder here. This is a Watts vehicle and she fills it.

The directing and overall storytelling are slightly disappointing. The movie sticks to the historical facts, but unless you are well informed on American political infighting, it will not come across as a suspenseful tale. There is little personal peril, and little drama, as there was in All The President’s Men, for example, or in the fictional Absolute Power. The story is strictly focused on political machinations. The relationship between Wilson and Plame is mildly interesting, but mundane, and clearly secondary to the political story. For me, the political story was gut-wrenching, and it was very unpleasant to re-live the nightmare of that time. But I think for most people, the story will seem flat, not a “thriller” at all.

Red: Grade A

A

RED (2010)

Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Karl Urban, Richard Dreyfus; Director Robert Schwentke.

This lightweight, action-comedy is an homage to genre and some well-loved movie stars, more than a well-told story. The story is that the VP of the U.S. is using a CIA hit squad (you know the type: black ski masks, machine guns) to eliminate the now-retired members of a CIA operation that in the 1980’s saw the VP massacre a village of civilians in Guatemala. Naturally, the retired folks don’t care for the current operation and set out to discover who is trying to kill them and to stop it. The story is too silly to count as a real political thriller, so it must be taken as a comedy, maybe Space Cowboys meets Ocean’s Eleven.

Willis still looks good and still has great comic timing. The stunt doubles do the hard fighting for him, but he retains his indestructible image. However, he doesn’t look that good, and Parker is far too young to be his romantic interest. The difference of thirty or forty years is off-putting and unnecessary. I’m sure there were dozens of age-appropriate women who would have agreed to work across Willis. Parker does a fine job acting her part, but the relationship is dead as a dishrag from the beginning.

The retired team effortlessly zips around the US to investigate and confront. Willis and Parker drive from Kansas City to New Orleans, then to New York, back to Florida and then to Washington, all in the blink of an eye. No time passes while they travel and they show no sign of fatigue from those trips. The emphasis is on the locations, not on the characters and their journeys. All the characters are caricatures anyway, so there is no point trying to explain who they are or what they feel. The movie works because of its witty script, good acting, and familiar faces. Who would not enjoy Helen Mirren in a white evening gown shooting a 50 caliber machine gun? Malkovich does his demented weird guy thing to hilarious effect. The actors obviously have a good time in this movie but they play it straight, not hammy (except for Dreyfus, who cannot help himself), so there are none of the sly cultural and cinematic self-references you would get in a tongue-in-cheek approach.

The movie is a lot of fun, with good directing, good cinematography, tight editing. And though it is silly Hollywood fluff, in the end it is emotionally satisfying as well.

The Ghost Writer: Grade A

A

The Ghost Writer

Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, Tom Wilkinson; Co-writer and Director Roman Polanski.

This is a well-made political thriller, as you would expect from a big name like Polanski, but it is the strong acting and cinematography that carry it. It is not an edge of your seat thriller and the dramatic tension is never very high.

McGregor does an amazing job portraying a ghost writer hired to re-write the memoir of a former British Prime Minister, who has a retreat on an island off Massachusetts. The ghost writer is the second to try, as the first was found dead in mysterious circumstances. McGregor plays the part of “the ghost” extremely well. His character has no family, no political ax to grind, no strong emotions, no strong motivation of any kind. Yet he has enough curiosity to dig in and uncover the truth about the ex-PM that explains why he acted like the U.S. president’s poodle during his tenure at Number 10.

The plot has more tension if you care about such recent politics. As written, it is hard to care about the story on its own merits. As it happens, I do care about politics so I found the story quite enjoyable, though not everyone would.

The acting is so good, though, and the sets and scenery are photographed so well, that my attention never flagged over the two hour film. Besides the lightweight plot, the only other serious flaw was the annoying music, unnecessary and twice as loud as the dialog, usually high pitched, repetitive violins designed to suggest high tension when there really wasn’t any. I would rather have listened to the rain pounding on the ground.

State of Play: Grade B

B
State of Play (2009)
Russell Crowe, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Ben Affleck, Robin Wright Penn; Director Kevin MacDonald.

Crowe and McAdams are investigative reporters at a Washington, D.C. newspaper sniffing around a congressional scandal. The story is loosely an update of All The President’s Men, although the stakes are somewhat banal in this case: scandalous behavior by a young congressman from Pennsylvania (Affleck). The story starts with grander ambition, considering the question of whether outsourcing of military security to private firms is ethical, constitutional, or even good policy. This issue is topical and has gravitas. But disappointingly, it fades away, leaving a garden variety sex scandal.

Crowe is investigating the suicide of the congressman’s assistant, and a back alley murder, when he unexpectedly finds a connection between them. There is a moment of realization every bit as good as when Robert Redford heard the Watergate burglars name a white house official in court. Times have changed since the 1970’s, especially the newspaper business, but this story pretends that newspapers and their reporters still shake the world. They don’t, so the tension feels contrived here, despite Crowe's anachronistic haircut and corduroy sports jackets.

It is a star vehicle for Crowe. He is in almost every scene, to the detriment of the other actors and characters. McAdams holds her own against him, but her cub reporter character is not as important. Mirren, the newspaper boss, is a master of exasperation, but she only has one good acting scene. Affleck’s performance is bland. Maybe that was what the character called for but it produced a placeholder not a narrative force. Wright-Penn is a pleasure to watch, although her part is small.

It is a low-key “talkie” thriller where the excitement stems from the information we (and Crowe) have and don’t have. There isn’t much action except in the opening scene. There are plenty of loose ends and internal contradictions, including a very unlikely final confession blurted out by the congressman when confronted with vague innuendos. Despite these faults, it is a relatively tight thriller with superior acting, directing, photography, editing, and music, and terrific sets.

The International: Grade B

B
The International (2009)
Clive Owen, Naomi Watts. Director Tom Tykwer.

In this thinking-person’s thriller, Owen is an Interpol agent trying to bring down an international bank he believes guilty of money laundering and weapons dealing. The bank is named after the real IBBC bank which collapsed in a cloud of corruption and criminal scandal in the 1980’s. Watts is a NYPD detective pursuing the bank’s New York office, working with Owen on the case. Unfortunately, Watts gives a terrible, flat, non-believable performance that kills any relationship theme between the two of them. This is a mystery in itself because Watts has proven herself a first rate actor in other contexts. She must have had bad direction.

Owen’s Interpol partner is killed as he interviews someone at the bank who will turn state’s evidence, and as Owen pursues clues, everybody ends up dead either just before or just after he talks to them. The point of view is omniscient so the audience knows more about what’s going on than he does, and that puts the burden on us to keep it straight, but after the movie is over, you realize there were a million loose ends. Who killed Calvino, and why? IBBC had no motivation. Why would Calvino’s sons believe Owen’s wild tale? At the time, you think such mysteries will eventually be resolved so you let them go, but in the end they are still hanging out there.

Owen’s performance is quite good, as are several supporting actors, and the overall story is marginally plausible. The film is visually excellent, shot in high contrast blacks, whites, and yellows, and featuring some very fine European architecture and some creative angles. The action highlight is a terrific gun battle inside New York’s Guggenheim. Music is unobtrusive and attractive. It is not a satisfying story, but an entertaining movie.

Frame of Mind: Grade D

D
Frame of mind (2009)
Carl T. Evans, Arija Bareikis. Co-writer and Director Carl T. Evans.

This indie looks good and is put together well. A Policeman in a small New Jersey town finds a tiny strip of film in an antique jewelry case that shows a gunman on the infamous grassy knoll at Dealy Plaza in Dallas on the day JFK was shot. For motives unknown, he tracks down the owner of the jewel box and discovers the significance of the film, that it would prove a conspiracy. As he researches theories of JFK’s shooting, it becomes apparent that unnamed government bad guys are after the film, in an attempted coverup, and they get it, and he is left with nothing, the end. It was a great premise for a story, and it could have gone in so many directions, but it loses its way by trying to be a half-baked remake of Oliver Stone’s JFK. Why? Granted, this is a low budget independent film, but they could at least have had a writing instructor look over the story. It’s a lost opportunity. There are moments of good acting, but also plenty of the opposite. And the pace is off. For a supposed thriller, too much time is wasted establishing that the cop and his wife are just plain folks, an angle that does not play into the story line. Sets and locations were good, but characterization was very weak. There is latent talent here. Maybe the movie will capture some TV eyeballs.

Eagle Eye: Grade D

D
Eagle Eye (2008)
Shia La Beouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Billy Bob Thornton. Director D.J. Caruso.

The strong cast attracted me to this techno-thriller, but that’s about all it offers, a strong cast. The writing is abysmal. It is supposed to be a commentary on the dangers of government spying on citizens through the Patriot Act, and that would be a fine theme for a movie, but this story is so far beyond reason that it cannot be taken seriously. A giant computer in the pentagon spies on, and even manipulates US citizens by having universal access to every telephone, security camera, cipher lock, subway train, GPS, traffic signal, advertising sign, ATM, television and toaster in America. You would have to be pretty naïve to go with that, so maybe the movie is for a much younger audience.

Like HAL 2000, the computer goes rogue and must be disabled in exactly the same way, albeit without Kubrick’s cinematic wit. In the meantime, ordinary citizens LaBoeuf and Monaghan are pursued as terrorists by the FBI (Thornton) and a wide assortment of government heavies in black SUVs. A mysterious cell phone caller gives these innocents precise instructions on how to escape capture multiple times, although they remain mystified and terrified. They are the only two people in America who don’t know that a cell phone is a GPS beacon so they are unable to escape the tyranny of “the voice,” as they stupidly keep answering the phone every time it rings. Music is of the loud, annoying “heart-pounding” type and the plentiful explosions approach the threshold of pain, but if you turn the volume down you can’t hear the dialog so you just have to be quick on the mute button. The acting is good, considering, and the faces are attractive, and the car chases have some novel elements. A few good pictures are framed well. The movie should make it to cable soon.

The White Lioness: Grade B

B
The White Lioness (1996)
Rolf Lassgard, Basil Appollis, Dipuo Huma. Director Per Berglund. (Swedish; mostly English, with subtitled Swedish, Norwegian and Afrikaans).

I picked this one from the stacks because I remembered having read the book years ago. I didn’t even know it was ever made into a movie, but the book was terrific. This movie is pretty good too; I give it only a B because I was disappointed by the movie’s extreme compression of the book’s rich and complex characters, but I guess that’s how movies are made.

The movie is set at the time when Mandela and De Klerk shared a Nobel peace prize for bringing an end to apartheid. A group of reactionary white Afrikaners are afraid of the coming cultural and governmental change and plot a high level assassination. They hire a young black killer to do the job. The assassin and his keeper train in a small town in Sweden, where they incidentally kill a snoopy woman. The small town police detective finds the body but is perplexed. Very slowly, tiny clues begin to emerge and he eventually follows the trail to Cape Town. The scenery is beautiful and it makes me realize how seldom we see South Africa in movies. Without giving too much away, the plot is thwarted in the nick of time. The story is so compressed that it is difficult to follow, but logically tight if you pay attention. Acting is superb and so is the directing. Locations are wonderful to see. Very worthwhile.

Recount: Grade A

A
Recount (2008)
Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, Denis Leary, Tom Wilkinson, Ed Begley Jr, John Hurt, Bob Balaban.
Director Jay Roach

This HBO docudrama tells the story of the 2000 US presidential election, in which the vote was so close that the country did not know who won for 35 days until finally the Supreme Court simply declared Bush the winner. Spacey is head of the Gore campaign and Leary, in a notable performance, is his foul-mouthed technician. On the Republican side, Tom Wilkinson absolutely channels James Baker. Laura Dern is fantastic as Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Bush and Gore are portrayed only in glimpses, but seen on contemporary television snippets. The film is remarkably tense, considering that we know the story by heart and there is no mystery about how it turned out. I would put it right up there with All The President’s Men as one of the great historical political thrillers.

Is it accurate and fair? DVD extras, which include interviews with some of the principals, suggest that the filmmakers took great care to assure that the facts were correct, and they seemed so by my memory. However characters come from the art of filmmaking, and though based on the facts, they definitely make the Democrats the good guys and victims. Spacey is the noble protagonist, Dern/Harris is a buffoon, and Wilkinson/Baker is an unprincipled Machiavelli. However, the vote count always was within the margin of error so the outcome of the race was, and always will be, genuinely indeterminate. I came away feeling that the Republicans did not really “steal” the election. Despite all the dirty tricks and hard feelings, the resolution had to be political, as there was no other possibility. In that sense, the film is laudably educational.