I Love You, Phillip Morris

"The Many Lives and One Life-Term of Steven Russell"
or  

"Hold me, Kiss me, Make me Write Bad Checks..."

 

I can see why Jim Carrey wanted to do this, although the box-office returns might not be up to the block-busting weekend standards his films are used to. The writing team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (who also directed) had previously written one of the most ribald Christmas movies ever made—Bad Santa (they also wrote the first Cats & Dogs, but let's not stray there). For anyone who doesn't like Christmas movies, Bad Santa was a tonic, a mean-spirited slash & burn of every sentiment and cliche associated with the Holiday. It's so black-hearted that, to this day, it is tough for me to watch a Christmas movie now with any sort of innocence, so caustic and toxic is that movie. That it ended up with a jaded heart of gold somewhere amidst the bloody gristle was an astonishing accomplishment, and made me anticipate what they might foist on the innocent audience next.

Their latest, I Love You, Phillip Morris, has the proverbial "something to offend everybody." And it is relentless in its attempt to shock. That the story is, essentially, true (and chronicled in the book "I Love you, Phillip Morris: A True Story of Life, Love and Prison Breaks" by Steve McVicker, about the mis-adventures of Steven Jay Russell) only proves the adage that truth is stranger than fiction. Especially when the truth involves a lot of fiction. The writer-director team only have to find punch-lines in the various scenes in order to push it into the comedy realm. Absurdism rules. Love will do that to you.

The film begins with Steve Russell (Carrey) flat-lining in a hospital bed, his life passing before his eyes, and thus, too, through the projector aperture. His normal life turned upside-down when he learns that he's adopted, he starts living his life as a non-person, as one who doesn't exist. But, existing with a 163 I.Q. means you have a lot of time on your hands to think things up to do. It's a bit like the wondrous aspect of Groundhog Day—what would you do with the time you have if every day had a "Reset" button at the end? Steve Russell has his own "Reset" button, and just one life to live, so he spends it as a completely self-absorbed unit, grabbing at the possibilities of life by any means necessary, including lying, cheating and stealing. A complete sociopath, the only thing limiting him is what he hasn't learned to get away with yet. He starts as an ordinary family man, becoming a policeman, a church organist and living a lie. Then a near-fatal car-crash at a crossroads snaps him into an epiphany: he's going to live the life he's always wanted out in the open, as long as how he does so stays in the background. He openly leads a gay lifestyle, leaving his wife and child, bankrolling everything through frauds of one type or another, until it all lands him in prison.   

Then, the real fun begins.

For the secret of Steven Russell is to find the weak links in society's infrastructure and take advantage of them. In prison, he meets and falls in love with Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), who might uncharitably be called a 'weak link"—as he "sees the good in everybody," and for Russell, that's finding his soul-mate, easy to admire and easy to be false to. 

 
So much lying, deception, robbing, stealing, impersonation and chicanery goes on in this film that, finally, it is a bit numbing. By the time Russell pulls off his biggest deception (and it's a doozy, not only in the difficulty of pulling it off, but in the harm that it can inflict), nothing surprises...or shocks. So much time has been spent in the red-line of your sensibilities, that your meter emerges pretty much pegged. It's going to take a lot of time looking at puppies in order to Brillo the sourness out of your skull. 

Except...I Love You, Phillip Morris is kind of sweet. Despite being a lying sack, Steven Russell is a pretty devoted guy, going to extremes for those he loves, and...yes...even dying for them. It's horrifying. But, its heart is in the right place.  Ficarra/Requa can be counted on to find the silver linings in the dark clouds, as well as peeing in the punch-bowl. Every scene has a 90° swerve on what its about—sweet to sour, darkness to light. One of my favorite scenes has Phillip bribing a cell-neighbor to play "Chances Are" (Johnny Mathis, natch')—because the thug has the only cassette player—so that he and Steven can dance and snuggle in the cell they share. We watch as they dance slowly in silhouette, the song warbling through the cell-block until the guards yell "lights out" and start screaming at the thug to turn off the music, which he refuses to do. Pretty soon, there's a small riot outside the cell as the guards run in en masse, beating and tasering the yelling music-provider, merely heard in the background, as we focus on Steven and Phillip lost in their dance and each other—the world has gone away.

Nice. Creepy and violently funny, but nice. And smart. And tells you all you need to know about Steven and Phillip's devotion. The film-makers got their act down, but the yin and yang of extremes don't help Carrey and MacGregor, who struggle to maintain a consistent tone in their characters scene-to-scene. At times, Carrey is so arch you wonder how anyone could be conned by this cartoon character, and MacGregor veers from teeth-jarringly sweet to pathetically whiny. But, when the comedy turns to drama, the two seem to snap into place to make it work...as a real scene, which tends to nullify the comedy that has gone before. It's a tightrope-walk to be sure, but there's an awful lot of nervous-making swaying going on.

I don't say this very often, but this is one of those movies you worry about recommending because there is so much material that could give frail audiences "the vapors," but if you steel yourself—maybe get a speeding ticket on the way to the theater, pay your taxes that day—you might have a darkly good time.

The Real Steven Russell (I think)



Crazy Stupid Love

Written at the time of the film's release...which is why there is absolutely no mention of La La Land.

"Love Sucks (A Cautionary Tale)"
or
"It Takes a Village (To Make a Divorce)"

The sad thing about romantic-comedies, circa the 21st Century, is their dependence on formula: Boy Meets Girl/Boy Loses Girl/Complications Ensue/Boy Wises Up/Happy Ending; or Girl Meets Boy/Girl Loses Boy/Girl's Self-Worth Depends on Boy/Romantic Rival Meets Terrible Demise/Happy Ending (of a sorts). The last few I've seen of the genre have depended on hitting these plot-points, no matter what city, what occupation, or what sex the film centers around. Even Bridesmaids, for all its wit and wildness, still ended with the assumption that everything will be alright if "the girl" gets "a man." The "by-the numbers" dance steps that most rom-coms boogie to have the ability to regress me back to the five-year old boy I was who hated "kissing scenes;" the final rosy fade-out inevitably spoils the most romantic of comedies for me, failing to warm the cockles of my heart or make me feel all-gooey-fuzzy. Instead, I walk away cheerlessly cynical. Been there. Done that. A fish needs a bicycle.


So, it's a nice surprise, bordering on the revolutionary, when a romantic-comedy turns the formula on its ear enough that I enjoy it. Don't get me wrong, Crazy, Stupid, Love* has a "happy ending," but there is also a nice glowing lack of resolution. This is a movie that dares to say that Love is hard work, and, yeah, it sucks, but it could be worth it, because, like Life, it beats the alternative.

This is not where it starts, but where it starts to get interesting: Chick-magnet Jacob (Ryan Gosling,** he has a nicely subtle double-take for comedy) is in a bar in mid-closer with his latest fling when he takes the time to call over a half-stewed Cal Weaver (Steve Carell, showing exactly why he deserves to be out of TV and in films, something that doesn't happen nearly enough). The reason?  Cal's moaning is throwing off Jacob's technique. Cal's been doing that a lot lately (at the office he's told: "Amy heard you crying in the bathroom - we all thought it was cancer.") No, it's not cancer. After 25 years of marriage, Cal's wife (Julianne Moore—she's great) has revealed she wants a divorce AND she's slept with another man (Kevin Bacon, he's also great). This offends Jacob's self-absorbed sensibilities: "Seriously, I don't know whether to help you or euthanize you."

So, Jacob helps Cal to "man up"—a younger "Obi-Wan" to the elder's bowl-cut Luke with credit cards as lightsabers—and this, if not turning Cal's life around, at least makes it busier. And complicated.

Running parallel to the story is Hannah's (Emma Stone, big-eyed waif) relationship problems ("You're life is so PG-13!" says her token-Asian friend, Liz). That's because she wants to be engaged to office co-worker Richard (Josh Groban—rather risky of him to look so bad in this movie) and is focused on that, so much so that she plays ignorant to Jacob's innuendos when he approaches her while trolling in a bar.

And, at this point, to say anything more would be saying too much, spoiling the fun and sending the whole Jenga-construction of the film crashing to the rec-room floor (In fact, I've probably said too much already). Just when you think everything is going as smooth as satin sheets, the film-makers throw you an extra wrinkle, and it's been a long, long while since a rom-com has done that.  The dialogue is fresh though the situations seem familiar—everyone's conceptions of Love and Romance seem to be based on The Movies and directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa *** and writer Dan Fogelman **** are only too happy to skewer them, while paying some respect—the complications teetering on the sit-comish, then resolving with the most graceless of dismounts. Applaud anyway because if they're not the best of executions (the performances help here), there are extra points for "artistic" and "difficulty."

Adding to the fray are the effects all this confusion have on "the kids" (Jonah Bobo, Joey King) and the friends (John Carroll Lynch—he's becoming one of my favorite character actors—and Analeigh Tipton). It, after all, takes a village to make a divorce...very uncomfortable. And special mention should be made to the movies' best utility player, Marisa Tomei, who surprises with just about every performance these days (Okay, okay, Marisa, you DESERVED that Oscar, okay?).

Highly enjoyable.  Bravo.

* Yes, it has the superfluous comma, you English Majors, but if you see the title as a list rather than "adverb, adjective, subject," it makes a bit of sense, and the film actually earns the charity for considering the possibility. 

** Gosling is an odd bird.  It's taken awhile for me to warm to him (I'm one of the few people to have seen his awful work in Fracture, but he has a nice laid-back dead-pan style of comedy—as displayed in Lars and the Real Girl—that hews closely to his dramatic work.  Just a nudge, either way determines comedy or tragedy.  He's dangerously good.

*** Okay, this is scary, but hear me out: Ficarra and Requa have written such films as the remake of Bad News Bears, Cats & Dogs, Bad Santa (a bit raw, but actually rather sweet) and...wrote and directed the little seen gay romance, I Love You Phillip Morris—as subversive and weirdly sweet a movie to be seen in a long time.  Forgive the early credits—these guys are good.

**** Okay, now REALLY hear me out: Fogelman wrote the screenplay for Cars and the screen-story for Cars 2, wrote Fred Claus...but did fine work on both Bolt and Tangled for Disney.  Seems he can write for real people, too, and not just 'toons.

Focus (2015)

The Little Blind Mouse ("When You Knew That It was Over, You Were Suddenly Aware...)
or
"...And Then the Girl Walked In" ("That the Autumn Leaves Were Turning to the Color of Her Hair")


Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon.
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple turning silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind.


Man, Focus is derivative. The whole Man/Woman/ Con Game story is rather done to death. Name your favorite: The Lady Eve? To Catch a Thief? Out of Sight? You could so far as the recent entry into The National Film Registry, Unmasked made back in 1917 and the conceit of a love story and "The War Between Men and Women" embedded in a con-artist plot. The one that film-makers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (who made Crazy, Stupid Love and I Love You, Phillip Morris and wrote Bad Santa, and are the reasons I wanted to see this one, despite some dismal reviews) seem to be mindful of is The Thomas Crown Affair (the Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway original, not the Pierce Brosnan-Rene Russo re-tread) as they use "The Windmills of Your Mind" in the End Credits.

But, it's one of those movies that you have to pay really close attention to—focused, if you will, for the movie sleight-of-hand, the hidden signals, the "tell's," of what's going on under the surface, or else you could be conned as easily as one of the movie's marks. At the end, you still feel a bit conned, if only because one (actually, two) of the characters who should be better at all this, isn't...or as much as you'd like them to be.

Nicky Spurgeon (Will Smith in fine form) is a well-established grifter, the third generation leader in a well-organized network of stingers, who don't go in for the long con, as much as going for volume—they find a public event with a lot of people in unfamiliar territory—a convention, say, or the Super-Bowl, and take the high-rollers and do some rolling of their own. Nicky is about to do some real-estate investing for a future base of operations when he has a chance encounter with Jess (Margot Robbie, in fine form also)—it's a "meet-cute" in a con-artist kind of way where he rescues her from a lothario by following her lead and posing as her date to lose the guy.  

One thing leads to another, one drink leads to another, but to reveal the outcome of the "meet-cute" would be telling. Let's just say that Jess is a con woman in training and lousy at it ("You SUCK!" is how Nicky puts it) and wants to learn. Nicky makes a good teacher, but a lousy mentor, warning about how "the work" requires no heart, citing as an example "The Toledo Panic Button" (totally fictitious) where if the con is "blown," you shoot your partner (please see The Sting) in order to prove your loyalty to your mark to preserve the con.  

"This is a game of focus," he explains. "Dabblers get killed."  

And distraction is the name of the game. "Your look is the spotlight," he says when demonstrating a "lift" "and we dance in the dark."

Those who can't do, teach (those who can't teach, teach gym). Jess is recruited ("Congratulations" says his right-hand man Horst—Brennan Brown, who's terrific—"you're a criminal..."). On a street in the French Quarter in N'Orleans, she's put through her paces, playing the distraction, doing snatch-and-grabs and fast hand-offs while Nicky observes admiringly from a balcony. 

"Congratulations, you're a criminal..."

Jess is a fast study—much better at pick-pocketing than being simply the distraction. She picks it up so fast and with such skill—going from "0" to "60" in one fast-edited sequence—that I kept expecting the writer-film-makers to do something with that (a hidden past, an unnatural deftness, a secret save, some-thing) making it a key element in a change-up that would throw the audience off the course of what looked to be a pretty standard romance with a little larceny and lying mixed in with it. No such luck. Ficarra and Requa are clever guys, but they do Robbie (or the audience) no favors here. Things proceed along with not much growth in her character, relegating it to "girl-friend" status. 

Smith's Nicky, has the big character arc, but not much of one. After the "Training of Jess" section, the movie goes to the next section, set three years later where Nicky is negotiating a scam with race-car driver/billionaire pretty-boy Rafael Garriga (Rodrigo Santoro) to bilk a competitor (Robert Taylor) into buying a software system to improve his cars' performance—Nicky's going to pose as a "disgruntled employee" of Garriga's who wants revenge on his fictionally former employer by selling the "secret" of his race-cars to his competitor for a huge sum and then remotely disabling it once he's blown the scene. To set up the scam, Nicky and Rafael will get in a heated fight in a public setting—a big swanky affair Garriga is throwing for all the racing teams of an upcoming race.  Things are going very well...

"And then the girl walked in..."

"And then the girl walked in..." as Nicky's co-conspirator Farhad (Adrian Martinez, who is also terrific) grouses at him. Yup, coincidence of coincidences, Jess is at the party, making her entrance from Garriga's upstairs and attaching herself to his arm. This so unnerves Nicky that he carries the act a bit too far, and oversells the antagonism to be displayed between the two men. Jess explains that she's with Garriga now, giving up her pick-pocketing ways and wanting to have nothing to do with Nicky after how everything ended in New Orleans (I can't give too much away here).

The two then start a subtle dance of "He Said/She Said/He Feels/She Feels" in which you're not exactly sure who's conning whom, but for awhile it looks like Nicky might be getting some kind of comeuppance from his former protege, with the added threat that he's being watched like a grizzled Hawk by Garriga's security man Owens (Gerald McRaney, who is also damned terrific*), who suspects that Nicky, their con-man, might actually be a con-man and betray them. Pretty soon, Nicky is forgetting his own lessons, upping the stakes for not only the gain, but the girl, too.

Jess observes Nicky observing.

The way the movie (and the con) play out, it's clear that Smith is the guy in charge, both in front of and behind the camera, as his character, whatever his motivations, knows everything that's going on, and the rest of the characters (and the audience) are left dancing in the dark (although it's more like a lead-footed shuffle than a dance). One wishes that there was enough trust in the material and the cast playing it that there was more for one of the major characters (and the audience) to do than merely play "the blind little mouse" (as it's called in the film)—left in the dark until you're not. There could have been another dimension, a character complication, maybe a lingering and practical doubt or edge, even some growth of other characters that could have thrown a little more sand in the film, making it a bit more rich than being just a vanity project for Will Smith (and the movie does play to his strengths and considerable charm). But, ultimately, that's what the movie amounts to, and that is disappointing, if not exactly a con-job.

What we are left with is that, at least, the movie is relatively free of inconsistency** and plays by its own self-imposed rules even while it's cheating. One goes back through the movie looking for holes with the new-found knowledge of how it's been resolved—and there are instances, that can be explained away by character, as opposed to function. Except for a little movie-subterfuge here and there, the logic presented is solid, as the images unwind like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.

* McRaney is so good that this lower-waged character actor manages to draw attention even from his highly-paid co-star (in much the same way that Darren McGavin completely overshadowed Robert Redford in their scenes together in The Natural).

** Okay, one thing: how does Garriga's driver find Nicky—out of the streets of Buenos Aries, how does he find the one Nicky is using to escape to stop him. Is Nicky's car "bugged?"  Is someone else?