Shoot 'Em Up/The Brave One (2007)

Oh, a two-fer for "Take Out the Trash" Day, both written at the time of these mis-fires' discharges.

"Guns Don't Kill People....But It Sure Does Help!"

"The Angriest Man in the World," Mr. Smith, is sitting on a street bench in a squalid part of town. He's introduced with a Leone-style close-up of only his eyes. Then, cut to his face. It's Clive Owen in full wide-eyed coma look. He brings a carrot up to his face and loudly crunches into it.

What's Up, Doc? 

Well, it's certainly not anybody's IQ.

Next, a very pregnant woman runs past him (shot none too elegantly), followed by a speeding car that noisily and gratuitously slams into another car, trapping the driver. He gets out the passenger door, spewing paper and fast-food bags and garbage out of his car onto the street.

There...right there...maybe two minutes into the film is the only amusing idea in the whole movie. And it was only amusing to me because it reminded me of my car. 

But that's it--the only thing I enjoyed in the entire film, no help from director Michael Davis. In the sums-it-up Shoot 'Em Up, Clive Owen's "Mr. Smith" finds himself charged with protecting a baby, just like Children of Men, but without all that boring social commentary and stuff. With the help of a lactating prostitute (Monica Belluci, shot through a vaseline-greased lens, and utilizing the time-honored 60's-style "Bad Italian Actress" technique), Smith and child evade Mr. Hertz (a bug-eyed Paul Giamatti, reminding me that it was only a few years ago that he starred in stuff like Big, Fat Liar) who has an infinite number of disposable goons, with an infinite number of bullets that seem predisposed to not hit anything, while Smith's gun hits something (usually lethally) every time.

Shoot 'Em Up tries to align itself with the Warner Bros. cartoons of Bugs and Elmer but has not the wit, the style or the precise timing (Giamatti starts the movie with a Merrie Melodies lisp, but inexplicably drops it a few minutes in). I was really hoping that at some point Owen would hit him in the face with a frying pan, so we'd see Mr. Hertz's face flatten out, but no such luck.

And, of course, after every set-piece or innovative killing technique (Smith kills with a carrot--twice) there are the inevitable one-liners that haven't been so eye-rollingly bad since Roger Moore was James Bond, with all the sophistication of the chat-room droolings of pre-teens. After a simultaneous shoot-out and screw where both participants reach their ...climax, Owen turns to the camera and in his best Terminator-in-Chief drone says, "That's what I call shooting your wad." But then there's "Eat Your Vegetables.." (after a carrot-killing), "That's what I call a hand-job," and the immortal "Fuck you, you fuckin' fuckers!" That kind of lummoxy aside reached its satiric punch-line with the antics of "McBain" on "The Simpsons," but it gives me hope that someday I can get just such a writing job. At the end, Belluci looks at Owen and says "What took you so long?" I half expected the lame-ass line that ended Robert Altman's The Player: "Traffic was a bitch."

According to this flick, there's nothing worse than "a pussy with a gun." I dunno, how about "a pussy with a movie camera but without an original idea in his head, a lick of talent, or the smarts God gave a radish?" Yeah. That's worse. A lot worse.

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Oof. Talk about your awkward segues.

"The Angriest Woman in the World" Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) by the end of The Brave One is in the same mode: "Who's the Bitch now?" she screams as she mows down one of the men who beat her into a coma, killed her fiancee...and stole her dog. Not only does she get her revenge, but she gets her dog back (oh...spoiler alert!), so everything's all right, right?*

Never mind that for the preceding two hours--that feel like four--she's bided her time by capping the asses of whatever scum of the earth crossed her path. At least she's an equal opportunity vigilante: one group's Latino, another is black, and three separate white guys--bonus points for the rich one.

Were I John Hinckley, I'd stay in prison.

The critical rags are calling this "Dirty Harriet,"* but that's all wrong. Its the daughter of Death Wish, the Charles Bronson viscerally charged revenge-actioner with the same formula and practically the same resolution--except with a gun rather than the earlier film's non-cinematic plea-bargaining.

Erica is a radio-journalist--well, an audio-documentarian, whose love affair (and experience) with New York extends as far as her ear-buds, spinning chatty little stories about the "myth" of old New York, and what gentrification is taking away. Tellingly, one of the first things we see her doing is recording her own foot-steps as she walks the city streets. From there, she goes to her little iso-booths and spins her valentines to "the safest big city in the world" (except it's missing a couple of prominent buildings downtown, and not to gentrification).

After the attack, she's even more isolating, and butches up her wardrobe, symbolically shedding her skin to become a new person that she doesn't know or understand. Oh, and there's that shooting-people-in-subways thing. "Inside you is a stranger," she narrates to herself. "Why don't my hands shake? Why doesn't anyone stop me?" Pretty soon she's doing it not because she's threatened, but because she can, and in a perverse cat-and-mouse game strikes up a friendship with detective Terrence Howard, who is feeling increasingly powerless to stop the newly-empowered vigilante messing up his mean streets. I came away thinking "never give Terry Gross a gun."

Of all people, Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview with a Vampire) directs this,** and his way of showing fear and Erica's world out of whack is with slowly tilting shots with a steadicam (with its gyroscope knocked out), which made me think we were heading for the Penguin's dastardly bird-themed lair. It's a little tough to take this stuff seriously when it reminds you of the old "Batman" show. About the only pleasure in the film is the beyond-cynical banter of Howard and his partner investigating the crime scenes (My favorites: "Guy had a rap sheet longer than my dick" "No priors?" and "Any idea what killed him?" "Could be the fall--could be the crowbar stuck in his head--I'm thinkin' 70/30, maybe 50/50"). And a tiny scene with a police desk-clerk who routinely mantras "I know how difficult it can be, but if you will be patient and have a seat an officer will be down shortly to help you." It makes the same point about institutional disinterest in 20 seconds that it takes the whole of In the Valley of Elah to make.

And the acting. Even with this type of material, Foster takes it right down to her marrow, until she no longer looks like the same person. There is a terrific scene of her and Howard in a diner not talking about what they're talking about while "You Don't Know Me" echoes over the PA that's very well done.

Wish it were in another movie.

* 2023 Update: "The dog bit." I thought it was a lame pull-for-the-heart-strings back when this was released, and even more so when John Wick stole it as a semi-serious/semi-jole motivation in that increasingly-escalating-with-diminishing-returns series.

 

** "Dirty Harry," the police-as-vigilante movie was co-written by Rita Fink.

*** Yes, but Joel Silver produces. That might be the answer.

Duplicity

Written at the time of the film's release...

"All's Fair in Love and War"

After screenwriter Tony Gilroy's powerful directing debut with Michael Clayton, one looked forward to what the talented triple-threat would come up with next, considering that film's street-smarts, sharp characterizations and deft direction. What we got is Duplicity and it's a wisp of a movie, a comedy without laughs, and a drama without weight; a shell-game; much ado about nothing; more in keeping with Gilroy's in-name-only association with the "Ocean's Eleven" series than his better efforts.

As with Michael Clayton, the playing field is the backrooms of corporate America, where warring CEO's protect their fiefdoms from interlopers and pitch pre-emptive strikes to keep them at bay. Their knights: a string of white-ops intelligence teams who spy on the competition, using the techniques once used in political battle-fields. That back-drop is nothing new: John le Carré's been using the "corporate espionage is every bit as sordid as political espionage" gambit in his works since the fall of Russia. le Carré even went so far as to suppose spy agencies ginning up threats to justify their budgets and existence, just as they do in the business world. Need a purchase order? Create a threat, and the money rolls right in.

Gilroy sets the tone early by beginning his film with a lo-mo credit crawl where Corporate heads Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti grapple at each other like pawing animals in a zoo. The silliness of these two going at each other in artfully composed tableau should be funnier than it is, but the whole thing feels like such a surreal con that you don't buy it for a second. Hence, the stakes in the story seem minor, even the McGuffin* is tame, as the two adversaries are pharmaceutical companies. In the middle of it are two ex-spies Ray Koval (Clive Owen, nattily rumpled) and Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts), who know each other only too well, she having stolen some Air Force secrets from him during a one-night stand at a Dubai fete years ago.** 

The encounter stings Koval, and now, years later, he's realizing that Stenwick is the Player on the Other Side in their current Corporate Wars. It's an interesting study of two people so locked in strategic thought that they might drown standing in quick-sand, so pre-occupied are they with motivation and nuance and who might try to move first. Interesting, but not always entertaining. At times, the mind-games approach "Get Smart!" absurdities, as both sides play the "I'm thinking they're thinking I'm thinking that they're thinking" game. A little of that goes a long way, especially if the protagonists don't have a smile on their faces when they're saying it. And the humor is only of the clever variety in Duplicity, not particularly the amusing kind.

Still, it's one of those movies that travels well: to Rome, New York, London and the Bahamas, the costumes are fine, but the whole thing has all the zing of champagne left open overnight (composer James Newton Howard tries to add some zip by tossing in some Spanish dance music). It all seems too familiar and a bit too flat.

It's also one of "those" movies that demonstrates that Julia Roberts' most valuable asset may be her ability to smile under duress. 

* After Hitchcock's name for "the secret" that parties try to retrieve in a suspense film, usually it doesn't matter what it is—after the story of the man who inquired to another man what was in his suitcase: "It's a McGuffin, for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." "But there aren't any lions in the Scottish Highlands!" "Then, that's no McGuffin!"

** This also seems overly familiar with Prizzi's Honor, Undercover Blues, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith as previous warring spy-couple films.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007) Like its 1998 predecessor, Elizabeth, The Golden Age is sumptuously produced, ornate in both costuming and production design, but also in filming and conceptual work. It is one of the most beautiful films I've seen in a longish time—excepting the sequences of torture and carnage—but the material feels a bit shallow (if not altogether juggled, shuffled and finagled*), like one of those bio-pic's that attempt to tell a tumultuous life in 90 minutes; no one likes to have their life, especially a Queenly one, summed up in Cliffs Notes.

"When last we left" Elizabeth I, she had ascended the throne, unmarried and without heir, but unbowed as "The Virgin Queen." Catholics to the right of her, Mary, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton) to the left of her, and a seemingly endless line of suitors brought before her. No one has her back except her adviser Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush returning to the role) and lady in waiting Bess Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish).

But there's one angle overlooked, although director Kapur has it covered with a dizzying number of overhead shots. Since the issue in The Golden Age boils down to whose side is God on—between the Protestant England and the Catholic Spain—a lot of time is spent from His point of view.**
Kapur, who started his career in Bollywood, uses color more imaginatively than most current directors (rather than embracing the current trend of leeching the color from films, he adheres to using it as another communicative tool). At the end of Elizabeth the audience was confronted with Elizabeth "the Virgin Queen" symbolized in all her alabaster glory. We see that same white Queen often in The Golden Age but are also confronted with different aspects of Elizabeth. Here, with the issue of finding a proper husband and the potential of an heir, she is frequently seen behind closed doors in far rosier tones than the alabaster appearance—"the divine here on Earth," in the words of Walsingham—that she uses for regal functions. She tells the Archduke Charles, a negligible suitor: "I have a secret, my dear. I pretend there's a pane of glass between me and them. They can see me, but they cannot touch me."

In times of regal impartiality, that "pane of glass" informs itself as the color blue in Kapur's direction. It sets Elizabeth apart and keeps her coolly disengaged and formal, as in the scene below, her she visits her former suitor, Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), and wife, her former lady-in-waiting to bestow her blessing on their first-born. The rest of the room, in slightly gloomy but warm colors, are off-set by her glowing in a frosty light.
And here, leaving the death-bed of a trusted adviser, she shows no emotion as Queen, allowing the man to know that he can die in peace, his work preserving her Monarchy—and her—is done.
The shot is also centered and composed like a Baroque painting, with many tableau layered in three-dimensions within it, each with their own lighting scheme. Kapur and his production designers fill the movie with such images (when the camera isn't flitting from one side of the room to the other), especially in the climactic sea-battle where some of the battle sequences look like they could have been copied from the cover of a Patrick O'Brian novel.
Ultimately, the cold blues and alabasters give way to "the golden age," and Elizabeth is bathed in a warm glowing sunlight, holding the child of Raleigh and Bess—her position of Queen finally legitimized in reality and defended in battle—and the child that might have been hers, a subject—part of her charge, with no man her master and all of England under her protection.

* The Wikipedia entry on "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" has a nice run-down of the shuffling of events in the Queen's reign. One wonders if they'll be more accurate in the inevitable sequel—after all, we haven't seen Essex yet.

** Before I get e-mails from the indignant, we'll use the paternalistic designation...because the participants of the film did.

Children of Men

Written at the time of the film's release.

"Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men."

Psalm 90 (89): 3

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

                                         T.S. Eliot "The Waste Land"*

You can do a lot of things with science-fiction...or speculative fiction, if you'd rather. You can take a common problem, take it out of your world or your dimension and force people to look at it with a new eye, empty of pre-concieved visions or prejudices.

And you can do this in the movies, too. Couch a radical concept in a chase movie...say, The Road Warrior, and you immediately wake millions of people up to the concept of non-renewable resources. Al Gore knew what he was doing making An Inconvenient Truth.

So does Alfonso Cuarón.

Cuarón started his career with the charming A Little Princess and a not-too successful modernization of Great Expectations. He broke out a few years ago with a very entertaining film out of Mexico called Y tu Mama Tambien about a pair of immature teen boys (read: your target audience), hooked them up on a road-trip with a worldly-wise older woman and, amazingly, created an art-house hit that went mainstream in this country. The fact that it was entertaining, engaging and highly sexual was the several spoonfuls of sugar that would occasionally make Cuarón's political detours go down when he would stop the film (cold) to make them. His next film was the third film in the "Harry Potter" series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which managed to shake the non-magical dust off the series, streamlined the story and seamlessly integrated the elaborate effects more fluidly into the mix. It felt more like a film than the stodgy musical adaptations the previous films seemed like. The reward for showing less respect to the sacred Potter text was the opinion of high-priestess J.K. Rowling that it was the best of the films. 

Fans of P.D.James'**1992 novel "The Children of Men," should have the same respect for Cuarón's distillation for he's made it both more complicated and slimmed it into a hellish chase film that keeps one on the edge of their seat and keeps one guessing every step of the way, while at the same time turning James' version of man's last gasp into something more relevant in a post-9-11/post-Iraq invasion world. James' basic concept and characters are for the most part there, but Cuarón and his army of scriptwriters fashion a future on the eve of destruction: Babies are no longer being born and mankind is facing its last generation...ever. A global flu pandemic may have been the cause, but whatever happened there is no new generation for a world on the brink. When the Earth has no future, what happens? Global destruction, and as billboards around London proclaim "The World Has Collapsed! Only Britain Soldiers On." Literally. The cities are police states. Illegal immigrants are caged and thrown into gulags run by Homeland Security, and the world mourns as the last child born..."Baby Diego," now 18, is gunned down for not giving someone an autograph.

It would be more horrific if it wasn't so familiar. It would be funny if you hadn't already seen it happen.

On November 16th 2027, Theo Fallon (Clive Owen) sees the "Baby Diego" story on the 24-hour news station at the coffee shop, and as he exits, it explodes. He's left with a constant ringing in his ears ("It's your cell's last swan song," his ex-wife, now an revolutionary, tells him. "Enjoy it while it lasts."), and for his pains is given a mission to obtain "letters of transit" for a cargo wanted by the revolutionaries and probably anyone else wanting an edge: a very pregnant woman named Kee, who in this world is looked on...as a miracle. Fallon has been put-upon to to see to the safety of madonna and child. Echoes and echoes of stories we've heard before run through this movie as we follow Fallon and his miracle try to reach a group called "The Human Project" via a ship called "Tomorrow."

It sounds precious. But in Cuarón's telling its horrific. And any lapse into sentimentality is seen as relief. Much has been made of the (apparently) continuous takes of "action sequences"...one takes place inside a car traveling in reverse...and they are jaw-droppingly marvelous things (and all the more effective because there's no editing to be seen, and events happen in seamless "real" time). There's also a sequence that has to be the slowest chase scene ever filmed, but is just as nerve-wracking because of it.

Still...it's not so overwhelming that questions don't come up. Much is made of Fallon's being irresistible to animals...but that would mean the animals are still being born eighteen years after the last human child was born. Maybe it's that flu thing not crossing species, but that the question comes up means you have the time to think about it. I also wondered why no hell-bent revolutionaries would think of shooting out car-tires. Friend FarmerScott wondered if British cars in the future had dome-lights...or for that matter, key alarms. Little chinks in an otherwise armored-up film adaptation that has extraordinary cinematography, production design (as much work went into this vision of the future as in Blade Runner but seems much more real) and stunt coordination. And terrific acting by Michael Caine, Julianne Moore (less neurotic that usual), Chiwetel Ejiofor (who's in every third film I see these days) and Clive Owen as the man who has big shoes to fill.

It's an amazing, hard-hitting, relentless, passionate, smart film. But I can't say I enjoyed myself.