American Gangster

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

"That's What's Wrong with America. You can't Find the Heart of Anything to Stick the Knife In"

American Gangster tells the story of Frank Lucas, who, for a time in the 60's and 70's, ran the most successful narcotics operation in Harlem. The film is based on a "New York" magazine article from an interview with the real-life Lucas, so it must be based on fact, right?*

Ridley Scott's played fast and loose with facts before (1492, Black Hawk Down), so one should take the credit "Based on a True Story" with a kilo of salt (or a pound of cocaine). 

 

But, that aside, how is the movie?

It tells the parallel stories of Lucas' rise in power on the Harlem streets by "cutting out the middle-man" smuggling in raw opium from Thailand, and manufacturing a concoction called "Blue Magic" that had twice the potency, but at half the cost, with the story of the cop who eventually busted him, a down on his luck detective named Richie Roberts who's too honest to be trusted by the New York Police. 

While Lucas starts to make his version of the American Dream, Roberts continually has his legs knocked out from under him--his wife leaves him, takes his kid, he struggles with classes to better himself (public speaking, law), his partner turns junkie, and implicates him in a murder. The movie drips with irony at every turn, constantly showing the easy path of Crime and the tough road of Law Enforcement, that recalls that epitome of the thesis—"The French Connection."**

In a montage of Thanksgiving, Lucas is shown with his entire family at a stereotypical Thanksgiving spread (and in one of the more heavy-handed of Scott's directorial choices frames it like Norman Rockwell's "Freedom from Want" painting, while Roberts, makes a cold sandwich of canned turkey-spread and potato chips over the kitchen sink. But then the director re-ups it by showing junkies shooting up between their toes in grimy bathrooms, and a mother passed out in bed, while her child is screaming in the room. Whatever glamour Lucas may enjoy, Scott is particular about showing the cost in human misery. No one gets off "Scott"-free.

Washington takes aim at a rival...

...and it's Idris Elba!
Sometimes the tables are turned. Lucas occasionally has troubles in the operation, and however much he may espouse core-values of honesty and integrity, the very nature of his business starts to rot his dreams for his family. And the more Roberts investigates, the closer he comes to his target, the more his team of "Untouchables" gel, and his investigation and life begin to come into focus.

Ridley Scott misses as much as he hits. For every good film (The Duellists, Alien, Black Hawk Down, Thelma and Louise), there is a terrible one (Legend, 1492, Someone To Watch Over Me, G.I. Jane, Hannibal, A Good Year), and some that have just enough quality in them (Blade Runner, Gladiator, Matchstick Men) that his directorial brio can compensate for weaknesses and messy scripts. But here, he has a cracker-jack script by Steve Zaillian, no worries about creating "a world" out of whole cloth, and a stunning cast that includes Clarence Williams III (uncredited), Joe Morton, Armand Assante, Josh Brolin, Cuba Gooding, Jr., the magnificent Ruby Dee, Ted Levine, Roger Bart, Carla Gugino, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and top-lined by Russell Crowe, but especially Denzel Washington. When these two heavy-weights get together, their scenes crackle with invention. Everybody does incredibly lived-in work.

And nobody less than the director. This is Ridley Scott's best film in ages. At times the details get a bit murky, but Scott does so to keep a multi-faceted story moving at a brisk pace. And he pulls off some amazing little camera tricks that stun, and some of the most unpretentious action-sequences put to film. Those action sequences are rough stuff--the film begins with the immolation and point-blank gun-down of a mob rival--and the junkie sequences are harrowing, so one should be warned. But missing it would be missing a great film.

* Merely a casual glance at the internet will disprove a lot of myth from fact. Lucas did not work for crime boss "Bumpy" Johnson for 15 years, but five (he's been in prison before), he was not with him when he died, did not marry "Miss Puerto Rico," or own "Small's" nightclub. And that's just the start for Lucas. The real Roberts is a bit miffed that to attract Crowe, they beefed up his part by making him more of a loser. Lucas admits that the film is "about 20% true."

 

** The names "Eddie Egan" and "Sonny Grosso" are invoked early on, and Crowe's Roberts employs a foot-chase under the "El" that figured so prominently in the movie.

Les Misérables (Musical; 2012)

The Song of Angry Men
or
"To the Barricades!"

I realize I am not the man to do a critical analysis of Les Misérables, the filmed version of the long-running staged presentation of the concept album produced by Claud Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil and Jean Marc Natel, (from the novel by Victor Hugo) for many reasons: 1) I'm not terribly fond of musicals, finding the form unnatural and artificial—the inclination to burst into song having the requirement of being necessitated by the surge of emotion, which, if you do it too much, is a bit unsufferable—but, if the words and music are clever, born out of character and need, my prejudices can be batted away in the sweep of sheer admiration; 2) I’ve never seen “Les Miz” on stage, so this is my first exposure to the material, which I found musically strong, with nice linking strains between songs, but the lyrics, for the majority of it, trite and of the “Moon-June” variety, and the propensity to insert (with a guillotine) moments of light-heartedness in the midst of the most dramatic moments; 3) I have never liked the direction of Tom Hooper (who directed the mini-series “John Adams” with a heavy emphasis on unnecessary dutch angles, tortured compositions, and camera movement “baggage” for its own sake, and then directed The King’s Speech with a somewhat less gaudy eye, but a penchant for “gilding the lily” of competent performances with camera and lens tricks.

So, Les Misérables is almost a “perfect storm” of things I don’t like in movies, making me feel a bit uncomfortable about even attempting to discuss it without the need to eviscerate it like an after-meal chicken. Oh, there are things I thought were marvelous—the grittiness of it, the general down-troddeness of the whole thing, the brio of the effort in dragging it, naturalistically, to the screen, when everything cries out to leave it on the stage where it seems the presentation would be at its optimum.

So, kids, let’s get started. I’ll leave out the show itself, which has more than silenced its original critical drubbing by becoming the wildly popular “people’s choice” at the box office, entirely appropriate given its liberté/fraternité themes. Vive “Les Miz” and all that.But the stage presentation was already an odd ying-yang of performers belting out their inner emotions to the cheap seats, confessing their shame at the top of their lungs. To then bring it back down to intimacy, forcing powerful song material to be played out with naturalistic emotions—crying, snuffling, doubt—then compounds the confusion by compromising the musical material from its original intentions.

Then, director Hooper further piles on the emotional dissonance by shooting everything in very tight close-up, so we have intimate emotions couched in thundering expressiveness delivered at a timid range right in our faces. Hooper did no service to his actors here, threatening to expose every mis-step of their performances (which, by the way, was sung and recorded on set in real time) so close that the audience can’t miss it.

How’d they do? Admirably well, considering. Anne Hathaway will surely win an Oscar for the “I Dreamed a Dream” sequence alone, finding the right balance of giving the song its due, while also expressing the grief, humiliation and moments of rage in her character.*

Towards the end of the film, Eddie Redmayne pulls off a similar gift with “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” and, surprisingly, Amanda Seyfried makes the most of her moments with a high, feathery voice that doesn’t betray fragility. Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe are other matters. Both great performers with musical pasts (the former on Broadway, the latter with his vanity band), both are very capable, but the material, production and presentation get the better of both of them, exposing Jackman’s reedy voice (somewhere between Anthony Newley and David Bowie) and Crowe’s pop sensibility to pitch to the note he’s seeking.

The unlikeliest successes are Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, as the unscrupulous Thénadier couple, because their song is a knockabout one with lots of stage business letting them loose from the trap of Hooper’s tight framing, and because Cohen is allowed to throw in a couple of ad-libs (in beat, mind you) between lyrics, allowing a little bit of fresh air into the proceedings.

For me, it was a train-wreck that seemed to go on forever, with only a couple of bright spots to give me hope. But, given the production’s history, I’m sure the people will rise above it all, despite the tyranny of the direction on display.

* One of the best lines at the Golden Globes was Amy Poehler’s about Hathaway’s performance: “I have not seen someone so totally alone and abandoned like that since you were on stage with James Franco at the Oscars."  And, yes, she did win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

  **  The creators of the stage version must have realized this, too, as they keep turning up and their capering has a tendency to undercut the heavy drama. Entertaining, yes, but at the expense of the rest of the play.

Thor: Love and Thunder

Another Classic Thor Adventure

or

Maybe It's 1 Out of 4  (Are You Not Underwhelmed?!)

Taika Waititi performed something of a miracle with Thor: Ragnarok, taking the moribund Marvel "Thor" series and injecting it with some of the humor that Joss Whedon injected into the character for the Avengers series. One wonders why it was taken so seriously in the first place as Thor was always the twee-est of the Marvel super-heroes, usually sticking out like a sore thumb in group adventures, but serving a purpose as that publisher's "Superman" with powers and abilities far above those of the mortal men (and women) in their "Avengers" line-up. Thor wasn't a king, wasn't a scientist, wasn't even rich...he was an other-dimensional God, who you wondered why he spent so much time hanging around in New York, when there were bigger cosmic fish to fry with the lightning of the Gods.

 

In Thor: Love and Thunder (again directed by Waititi), we find Thor (Chris Hemsworth), post-Infinity War, has gone through a lot of changes—and not just in his ability to quip. Asgard has been destroyed, he has lost both his Father and Mother and his adopted brother Loki. His people have been scattered, but localized to a sanctuary on Earth under the governorship of ally Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson, who comes into her own as a comic actress), and he's been hanging out with the Guardians of the Galaxy (Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan—she has one line and gets a laugh out of it—Pom Klementieff, Sean Gunn, and Groot and Rocket all make cameo appearances for a very short time, Zoe Saldana out busy Avatar-ing) and getting back in shape after his "Fat Thor" Endgame depression.

That should make Hemsworth-bod fans happy, but Thor is not. He's doing a lot of meditating, getting his hero-mojo back, but still not himself balance-wise. Oh, he's still bloviating ("What a classic Thor adventure! Hurrah!" he says after a battle) and acting like the Big Asgardian on Campus, but he's overcompensating, treating the Guardians as if they were Minions, and being a few coulombs short of a full lightning blast. Oh, he's great at knocking down enemies like ten-pins, but there's usually some collateral damage.

Thor's disturbing lack of faith is reflected in his latest enemy, Gorr (Christian Bale), who, after, the last remnants of his family dies on his barren planet—despite his pleas to his deity—finds said deity in an oasis, oblivious to his pain, and Gorr kills him with the Necrosword and vows to kill all gods. He targets New Asgard and the warrior Sif (Jaimie Alexander is back! Yay!) warns Thor of the attack and he and Korg (Taika Waititi) travel there with two screaming goats (don't ask) and the Bifrost-inducing Stormbreaker he's now carrying. They team up with Valkyrie to defeat Gorr and his shadow-creatures, but find they have a new ally. 

It's Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Thor's ex, who has assumed the role of Thor because...well, long story—and flashback—short...she has Mjolnir, Thor's old broken hammer, which is no longer broken (because Thor asked it to protect her—presumably when he wasn't using it) and it's power is keeping her alive despite her having Stage 4 cancer (we find all this out in a flashback that also involves Kat Dennings and Stellan Skarsgård, despite them not showing up in the IMDB cast list!). They are able to defeat Gorr, but his dementors (sorry, wrong franchise, but same idea!) steal all the kids from New Asgard, leaving nothing but Old Asgardians to fret about the children at school-board meetings.

The two Thor's, Val and Korg decide to go to the home of the Gods, Omnipotence City—this is said with a straight face—to warn the Gods and try to recruit them to battle Gorr, and petition Zeus (Russell Crowe, who is clearly having a great time and using a florid Greek accent) to help in the cause. But, as any philosophy student will tell you, Gods don't listen very good. Zeus knows all about the Necrosword and how powerful it is, but he totally dismisses any danger...he's Zeus, what's gonna happen to him?...but, does drop the plot-point that Gorr has to reach the special effect of Eternity before he can accomplish his goal. But, that'll never happen, so what's the big deal. Zeus clearly never read Chekhov.*

Because at the end, Gorr very easily does the impossible and finds his way to the special effect of Eternity where, seeing the sacrificial way that love can display itself, decides...to change his mind (in another example of so many times in this movie, where they should have thought of this first—but then, there wouldn't be a movie). There's not an awful lot of story here, just a lot of strategies and actions that don't work before a resolution is found...and found very conveniently.

It's hard to take it all seriously, when so much of it is spent being done with so much jocularity. It reminded me of (of all things) Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which spent so much time trying to recreate the "funny" of Star Trek IV that characters were no longer acting like themselves in order to get the most transient of laughs. Laughs come out of character, rather going out of character to make them. As a result, despite the call-backs and fan-service and getting "the old gang back together" everybody recognizable is no longer acting recognizably. Not that the grave way everybody was acting in the first two "Thor" movies is desirable—it certainly wasn't to me!—but to go as far as this movie does to prod a laugh out of every conceivable situation, is just reaching too far.

And as much as I love what Taika Waititi does with movies, he should be discouraged from making sequels. His movies should take stale material and make them fresh, rather than repeat them and just make them stale again.

* "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

The Nice Guys

How Awful About Amelia
or
"Kids these Days..." ("Don't Say 'and stuff.' Just say, Dad, there are whores here.")

Shane Black excels at "buddy" movies—he did, after all, create the Lethal Weapon series. That's a good thing and a bad thing: when he does something like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he comes up with a mystery, pushed off-kilter by the clashing personalities of his protagonists; when he does something like Iron Man 3 with a clearly dominant personality, the movie lurches out of control from its lack of counter-point. The Nice Guys has no such issues and actually improves on his formula.

I have to confess: any PI movie set in the 70's that starts out with the funk-shimmer of "Papa was a Rolling Stone" is already on my good side. When it establishes locale and detail by doing a rear-view fly-over of a decaying "Hollywood" sign to settle over a ranch-house in the valley at the base of that sign it shows someone is being careful with the atmosphere. Black follows the night-time perambulations of a child-denizen wandering the house who manages to score by finding a copy of dad's "Cavalier" magazine and then becomes distracted by a centerfold that he doesn't see a sports-car sailing off a cliff overhanging his backyard and bouncing through his house, you're seeing someone saying something about a world out of whack in the most surprising and arresting way possible.

And it keeps getting better.

Like most "buddy" movies, the two don't start as "buddies." Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is a lone wolf and is the muscle-arm of the detective business. People hire him to be tough and threaten. He's been at this long enough to have eliminated the tough stuff; the rules are simple: people are persuaded easier when they're hurting and it gives them to know that he is serious. Business rarely needs to be repeated. It is a bad side of the business, but he has a good side; he is recognized (when he is recognized, which is rarely) as "the diner guy" who disarmed a gun-man and beat him into unconsciousness with his own weapon. It made the news and it was good for business, if beating up people is your business. He does his work efficiently and with humor, even providing helpful medical advice to help with the future hospitalization. He's good at his job, but a bit of a troglodyte.

Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a widower with an 11 year old daughter in tow. He's the brains end of PI work, but that is being generalized and charitable. He specializes in the bizarre cases that most detectives would dismiss as a waste of time. Holland doesn't think it's a waste as long as money is being wasted his way. He has sharp instincts, but absolutely no physical skills and his mental facilities are being impaired by his habit of drinking himself into a stupor. The death of his wife has thrown him into an incapacitating depression, and it is only his caretaker-daughter Holly (Angourie Rice), 11 going on 35, that keeps him on his flat-feet and peeping.

Holland has been making the rounds, searching for Amelia (Margaret Qualley), a girl who has disappeared in the L.A. of 1977. It is not a good place, rife with crime, prostitution, porn and drugs—in other words, not unlike the Los Angeles of today, but with more water. Amelia is a typical missing-persons case, she's a headstrong runaway, privileged, entitled, mad at her mother (Kim Basinger) and determined to get back at her, how is anybody's guess. Holland does some interviewing at local clubs and bars, but Amelia is untraceable.

She should have asked Healy. Amelia has just hired him to beat Holland up and warn him off the case, breaking an arm that March has already bandaged from a breaking-and-entering gone wrong. He also gives a nice little back injury that, considering all the running around that goes on towards the end of the picture, seems to heal itself magically—either that, or he has wonderful muscle relaxants.

It is only when Healy is attacked in his office (above The Comedy Store, which is different) by a couple of toughs (Keith David, Beau Knapp) who are also looking for Amelia, that he begins to think that there may be more to this than just a simple thump-for-hire. Maybe March is working for the same guys who are threatening him or maybe not, but whatever the reason, Amelia seems to be a popular girl and Healy wants to find her so he can find out why he is also being threatened. Time to combine resources.

Back-track to March, who, understandably, is pained to have anything to do with Healy, but their mutual self-interest not to be shot persuades them to pool their resources Amelia-tracking and maybe find out who the people are who are targeting both of them. The two look for leads at a protest rally against L.A.'s smog conditions organized by Amelia and meet an acquaintance of hers named Chet (Jack Kilmer) a self-described "projectionalist," who takes them to the former residence of Amelia's boyfriend, "former" as it has recently been destroyed in a fire. The boyfriend's former employer was a porn producer who is hosting a party at his cliff-side mansion. 

It's an eventful party: March's daughter, Holly, stows away in the trunk of March's car, Healy runs into the toughs who roughed him up earlier, and March discovers the body of the porn producer, after drunkenly falling over a balcony railing and tumbling down the cliff. Oh, and they run into Amelia, who flees with Holly after being threatened by one of the thugs.

Things bump along, as the two detectives adjust to their working styles (or lack of them), just long enough to realize that they are out of their depth, the forces they're investigating being organized and a couple steps ahead of them, so that things get resolved but messily.

The movie is a bit shaggy-dog as far as clues-continuity—there are some leaps in logic and convenient encounters that only occur to you after the movie is over, as it entertains and Crowe and Gosling work overtime with a mis-matched relationship that, at times, recalls Abbott and Costello in their extremes (Gosling's March, when sober, has a funny coward's way of reacting to moments of stress)

Yes, that is a giant bee in March's back-seat, and, no, it's not a drug joke.

But, there's a nice through-line to the thing. The kids. While the adults are preoccupied with shuffling money around and their own narcissistic amoral short-term agendas, the kids are left to their own devices and having to make their way through, wondering if they have a future. The kids are alright, but they're judging, while the adults wander through the blighted glitz-scape accepting things for what they are, which is beyond their control. They've given up on the long-term, which, for the kids, hasn't even happened yet. 

And they're pissed. They're trying to understand the world they're growing into, to become adults, but they're getting the sense that their elders have given up on being adults themselves, so, if they're going to have any hopes and dreams besides having change in their pockets, they have no examples to look to. And feeling a definite disconnect with this L.A. world, like being little aliens in the landscape. No wonder they're insecure and going off the handle—no one wants to hold the handle! It's a latch-key world with deadbeat parents who not only do not care about doing the right thing, they've lost track of what that might be. In most of these "peeper" movies, it's the detective looking for answers who provides the moral center by his reactions to his discoveries. Not this movie. It's the kids, who are also looking for answers, who are the moral compass, pointing to true.

In most instances, the "kids are smarter than adults" trope comes off as precious or stupid, but The Nice Guys manages to make a great case for it, placing it in this genre, in this city, at this time. You tend to believe it. And wonder how they survived.

March demonstrates the "bad-breath tie" to Healy
(which sure looks improvised).