Hot Tub Time Machine

Written at the time of the film's release. Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day....

"What...Again?!"

These things go in cycles, but every so often someone has to do the "If I Knew Then What I Know Now..." movie. Let's tick off a few, shall we? Big, Freaky Friday, Vice Versa, Like Father Like Son, Peggy Sue Got Married, 18 Again! (with Charlie Schlatter), 17 Again (with Zac Efron), they (and I'm sure I've left one or a dozen out) tell the story of a bitter adult who yearns to go back to the time when they were happy...before all "THAT" happened, and they learn...what, that life wasn't as good as they thought, or they'd probably do the same thing all over again...whatever, their eyes are opened to some basic truths about themselves or their times and that "there's no time like the present." It's the future, get used to it.

After so many variations (or are they parallel universes) on the theme, we should be used to it by now. Sadly, Hot Tub Time Machine is a roll-back to those films without significantly supplanting that feeling of Déjà vu while seeing it. It actually feels like a been there/done that version of Back to the Future (very much so*) in the process, with only an an upsurge in smut to recommend it. Even the era the quartet goes to (Reagan's 80's) is a recall of the period where these "do-over" films occurred with alarming frequency...again and again.

The basic plot is: after their friend Lou (Rob Corddry) attempts suicide, buddies Adam (John Cusack), a recently dumped insurance salesman, and Nick Webber-Agnew (Craig Robinson) decide to take their friend (as well as Adam's nephew, played by Clark Duke) on a sentimental journey for the weekend to their favorite party location—Kodiak Valley Ski Resort, which has fallen on hard times.

At least the room still has a hot-tub. But a drunken slob-party knocks vodka and an illegal Russian energy drink, Chernoblé, into the hot tub's controls sending the four back to 1986 and that one eventful week-end they'd celebrated before. After that, everything went down-hill for them, so it's conveeeeenient that the HTTM takes them to that one point in time. From then on, it's Big Hair, poofy parkas and leg-warmers, some minor time-goofs, and 80's references around every corner.

Corddry's character comes out strongest,** an anarchic spirit dispirited, a man so debauched that anything and everything can and should be tried if only to feel something, anything from the torpor he suffers from. For him, life is a gateway drug. He learns the valuable lesson: events in time are not fixed, they can be changed. He discovers this, first, to his pain, and then, to his delight, and its his very go-for-broke spirit that "makes things happen," to everybody's advantage. And for a movie guided by John Cusack and directed by Steve Pink (who co-produced the superior Grosse Pointe Blank starring Cusack), the movie adheres to a fairly conservative conclusion, where the entrepreneurial spirit (and a bit of insider-trading prescience) can conquer your inner slacker. W. would be proud.

I wonder if that's what they intended.

From a technical stand-point, the movie's sort of a mess. Oh, it keeps its concurrent time-lines properly creased, but it has the look and feel of an 80's B-movie, not unlike Better Off Dead (also starring Cusack), which felt like it was hurried through (despite a good first half) and then it became a matter of knuckling down and finishing the thing within time and budget...but not inspiration. It has the feel of a low-end TV-movie that could never be shown on TV due to its raunchiness.

It's okay to waste a couple hours on, but, really, don't you have better things to do with YOUR time? You just might want to experiment with your own hot tub to get those hours back.

* Okay, instead of a Delorean Time Machine, this one is another 80's icon, a hot tub. The boys—it is SUCH a boy's movie—must recreate the disastrous weekend they'd experienced: Cusack's character suffers a nasty break-up, while being stabbed with a fork, Cusack's nephew keeps zapping away—rather than fading—if his conception doesn't happen, Richardson's character introduces a song that hasn't happened yet—"but you'll love it" he says—Corddry's character must suffer the same fight-humiliation he originally did, and uses his knowledge of the future to alter events. Crispin Glover's in both films, and Chevy Chase's character could be Doc Bown in disguise. Sure, it could be an "homage," but it plays like a set-piece by set-piece remake—and that was done in Back to the Future, Part II. In fact, the more I think about it, Zemeckis and Gale have a potentially lucrative law-suit brewing. But then it's released through United Artists, so maybe "lucrative" doesn't apply).

** Who comes off the worst is Chevy Chase in an ill-conceived half-idea of an Alternate Reality Hot Tub Maintenance Man. Maybe they thought Chase would add something to the proceedings with some choice ad-libs, but if he did, the part was a real dud to begin with. I kept hoping that he'd be revealed to be Clark Griswold thrown out of the time-space continuum by a Christmas lighting disaster.

The 355

It's a Man's World—God Help Us (If She's Listening)

or

"We're Spies, Asshole!"

 

The reviews have not been kind to The 355, and the critics have teamed up around it like a circular firing squad. "Generic" says The Guardian. The L.A. Times says it "feels familiar and is a bit tired." The (London) Times calls it "lazy" and "box-ticking." Christy Lemire of Ebert.com criticized it for the clothes.*

 

Because it stars nice looking women and they should have been dressed more fashionably.

 

The Wikipedia article on it says Rotten Tomatoes reports it has an aggregate score of 4.4/10 (so it's the squishy green emoji). Cinemascore says audiences give it a B+ (which is better than average). I use that to illustrate the summary judgment despite the fact I hate aggregate web-sites, believing that metrics is the down-fall of Society, and that such sites do not promote critical thinking, and individuality. I think they work against people seeing movies, rather than promoting it. I give aggregate sites an "F" and don't visit them so their ads will get one less "little tingle." And one less reason for being.**

 

Add to that, I live on the west coast of the United States, but not in Los Angeles and certainly not in New York (it being on the east coast), so I don't entirely subscribe to the trope that "January is where movies go to die," seeing as I see a lot of good movies released outside of the Academy nominating window here. And I've seen my share of spy movies, action movies, and thrillers. The tendency for them to go over the the top now has only increased with the superhero genre—my eyes still hurt from the rolling they did watching Black Widow running up some scaffolding falling in space. It's tough to find a tough spy thriller anyone, or a smart one, or even a believable one, so many have come before spoiling the barrel.

 

But, the spy genre does teach one lesson: trust no one. The 355 extends that to movie critics.

Not that the film is without flaws. When an important member of a operative team is reported killed and the guy in charge says "I identified the body myself," I muttered "Well, I haven't seen the body..." and the exact nature of the computer drive—the McGuffin of the story—isn't made sufficiently clear other than it can hack into anything and "start World War III" and "set the world on fire" and people ooh and ahh over its elegance and sophistication. Until you drop it in the sink, that is. And just when I was thinking of calling this piece Everything Bond Does But in Heels" someone has to use 007's name in vain: "James Bond always ends up alone." (No, he doesn't—more times than not, he ends up in a boat!).

But, what sets this one apart is an attitude of viciousness, physical and psychological. Most spy-action movies are exercises for (what Gustav Hasford in "The Short-Timers" called) "the phony tough and the crazy brave"—fan-boys who've never had their noses broken. It looks good with all the kick-boxing moves and quick editing, but it's all ballet, essentially, designed that the feints look close, but couldn't knock a cigar out of a mouth. This one has plenty of that, although the fights are kept to a lesser amount. The women of The 355 just shoot people. And then shoot them again.

The story involves five women from different countries' intelligence services: American CIA agent "Mace" Brown (Jessica Chastain), German GND agent Marie Schmitt (Diane Kruger), Briton Khadijah Adiyeme (Lupita Nyong'o) former MI6 agent, Colombian DNI psychologist Graciela Rivera (Penélope Cruz), and (eventually) Chinese MSS agent Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan). They're all after this super-drive that is being ponied about by a former drug cartel, now re-branding to concentrate on raw, naked power. Brown and Schmitt are the lone wolves, driven agents with prominent chips—the non-computer kind—on their shoulder holsters. Adiyeme got out of the game and is a tech security consultant with a stable home-life, and Rivera is the civilian, a PTSD specialist—brought in to bring in an operative from the field (physician, heal thyself)—who has a normal family life with a husband and two kids. It's her job to ask "What are you talking about?" when the strategizing starts to get technical.

These five women are operating in a world of men—both bad guys and purported good guys. It was The King's Man—a not-great movie with some "moments"—that pointed out that the best undercover agents are staff, usually made up of women and minorities, so these five are negotiating through the "man's world" by virtue of being overlooked...or being dismissed by allies and enemies alike ("Are you under control?" one of them asks. "No." is the reply. "Are you?" "No!" Of course, they're not) They all have "issues" which might seem less important if they were traits exhibited in "the boys," but these five are all trying to prove something. The result is they have little patience for negotiating, and they're brutal.

Take, for instance, when Brown and Schmitt—who have been seeking the same target from different sides—draw down on each other. Stalemate. Then, Schmitt gives the command to drop the weapon and starts a countdown. "5!" She starts. Then Brown takes it over before that second is up—"4!" Schmitt is even quicker in response with "3!" and you just know something bad is going to happen. Or when they've got a courier tied up and want information and give him the old cliche "You can do this the easy way or the hard way" and he refuses. One of them just shoots him in the leg, tells him she's deliberately hit his femoral artery and he's only got two minutes before he bleeds out. There's a tourniquet waiting if he agrees.

That's matched when the bad guys have the five at gun-point and, when they get stone-walled, bring up screens of the people closest to them, and then summarily shoot one after the other in the effort to get one of them—any of them—to crack. The film is tougher, more mean-spirited, and less contrived in setting up complications than just about any spy or action film that I've seen in a long time. You know the complaint about most spy movies—why don't they just shoot 'em—this is one that does that. But none of the participants in the critical "kill-box" for this film have mentioned it or given it any credit for it.

No. It's all about "the fashion."

* In the comments section of Lemire's review, nobody pointed this out. They were too concerned that women couldn't take out men in a fight because they weigh less. They hadn't seen the movie. Most of the fights dispense with "the manly art" because the women just shoot people in the head. Twice. For good measure. Jessica Chastain's character does have a fight...with one man...and it goes on and on and she's very bruised and bleeding after it. Bingbing Fan has a fight with four guys using the broken base of a free-standing lamp—she dispatches one while putting it through his neck.

 

** Please notice my lack of links for those sites. You can find them on your own without my help.

I, Tonya

The Bull in the China Shop
or
Tonya Harding Accepts Your Damn Apology

"I hear they're making a sequel to I ,Tonya called I, Nancy: it's about a nice lady who gets her knee bashed in by some trailer-park assassin and then 25 years later has to see a great award-winning movie about how she's NOT the victim..."

John Mullaney

I, Tonya (like The Post) was on the 2016 Annual "Black List" of interesting un-produced film scripts. But, it's the description—also used in the film's introduction—that grabs you: "Based on the irony free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews with Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly." 

And thereby hangs the tale. The way the movie sets itself up is as a series of filmed interviews—with Harding (Margot Robbie), Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), Harding's mother Levon Golden (Allison Janney), Harding's "bodyguard" and Gillooly friend Shawn Eckhardt (Paul Walter Hauser), and an anonymous producer from "Hard Copy" the tabloid news syndicated show ("that everybody else has become," the guy snarks) that gives "the bigger picture" on the story—soon settles into a wide-screen narrative of Harding's ascent as an athletic tom-boy in the pristine princess world of figure skating. It quickly establishes that Tonya, growing up (played by Maizie Smith at 3 1/2 and the amazing McKenna Grace at 8) in Portland, Oregon, is a "daddy's girl" who wants nothing more than to ice-skate and do the things she sees the girls on TV do. Her mother strong-arms a skating coach (Julianne Nicholson) to take on the kid—but she has to take on the mother (now divorced again), too, who will not back down from any instinct to correct.

That relationship is abusive, too. But, Tonya ends up, at 9, winning skating competitions over older and more practiced skaters. This is explained by Tonya's tenaciousness (and the occasional bribe by Mom to a heckler—who, in the "totally true interviews," admitted that?). By age 16, Tonya is dating Gillooly (whom she meets—with Eckhardt at his side—at the rink), then after a particularly sticky argument with her mother, she's moving in with him, but after a certain period of adjustment, that relationship turns abusive, too...abusive enough that they get married.  

In the mean time, Tonya wins competition after competition. She is just so doggedly determined that she easily blows everybody off the ice. But, when it comes to national competitions, she can be as good as she can get, but the scores will not reflect it...because Tonya is an athlete rather than a performer, a fighter not a dancer, and compromise does not come easily to her. She plays the game, but harbors a deep suspicion that she will lose to any pixie with no muscles and a cute costume. This might be paranoid if it weren't absolutely true.

But, she still has the talent that pushes her beyond complacency and she begins to push through the prejudices with more and more ambitious programs, culminating in her doing a triple axle in competition (only six women in the world have done it and it's such a tough move that no one even attempted it for the movie—it's accomplished by special effects and some judicial editing). Once Harding is on the map, the pressures of fame and her antic private life combine to lead to what everybody in the movie calls "The Incident."

"The Incident" ("the part you really want to know") is well known on a surface level, but the devil of these things is always in the details and that's where the repetition of half-truths and a tsunami of comedy wash-back has conspired to make it seem as if Tonya took a bat and beat up Nancy Kerrigan herself, instead of the confederacy of dunces that pulled off the attack (clumsily but effectively). All of a sudden, that isolating field of ice started to get very crowded with the weight of coverage, overshadowing any competition being conducted, and turning it into a carnival atmosphere—how could it be anything else with an unprovoked attack making news. Instead of increasing security at these events, it became a circus that the media controlled.

At this point, it's more blood-sport than sport, as anything "sporting" becomes suffused with tabloid trash. It's an industry now, even football games are given a "fairy story" for the viewing public to consume along with their beer and nacho's but it has as much to do with the game as it does with popularity contests at High School. But, the industry will tell you, it "pegs the ol' meter." Blame ABC Sports Producer Roone Arledge's "Up Close and Personal" approach to sports coverage, so that now we can't have a singing contest on TV without the little "personal" film filled with the longings and desires and epiphanies of every single contestant on the show, whether it's pertinent or not. You gotta build the fairy tale...and in competitive figure-skating that applies to every tinker-bell gliding across the frosted ice arena and the starry-eyed judges who don't see it as a competition, but an art...a show, complete with music, costumes, and choreography—thank God, sprinters don't have to be concerned with such nonsense; their only judge is the clock not the prejudiced eye of the beholder. Or the audience.

As entertaining as I, Tonya—in its "irony-free" cloaking—may be, it is not unjudgmental. In fact, it seems to wallow in a cruelty to the subjects that reminded me of the nasty tinge with which Midnight Cowboy presented its characters (and bear in mind, these are human beings who are, for the most part, still alive). The movie likes to point fingers and accuse us, the audience, of continuing the cycle of abuse that Tonya Harding grew up in, and stepped in, her entire life. But, the movie is complicit, too, escalating the carnage and being clever in its choice of music to underscore scenes for the sake of "entertainment" and, yes, irony. It is its own "hit-piece" with the cooperation of of the very people it is undermining. There is something very sick and twisted going on there.

But, it didn't actually make me mad until the end-narration where the movie Tonya Harding sums it all up:

I was the second most known person behind Bill Clinton in the world. That meant something. People still wanted to see me. So I became a lady boxer. I mean, why not? Violence was always what I knew anyway.

America, you know. They want someone to love but they want someone to hate. And they want it easy.

But what’s easy? The haters always say, Tonya just tell the truth. But there’s no such thing as truth. It’s bullshit.

Everyone has their own truth. And life just does whatever the fuck it wants.

No. People who don't face facts say that "everyone has their own truth." Because, there is truth; anything else is just perception. And that's not truth, it's opinion. Now, opinion is always easier than truth because truth is complicated with details and timing and motivation, and so it's not something covered in 5 minute segments in a 24/7 news cycle. Truth comes with perspective and objectivity. And it doesn't come easy, so it's often overlooked by the Wisdom of the Tribe, which is easier and comfortable and often 180 degrees wrong in the details. And, whatever, everybody's too busy to really care about the truth...and, whenever a contradiction to their opinion of truth comes along, they'll just forget it. Or deny it. Or discount it. And stick with their own truth.

Which isn't truth. It's opinion. 

So I, Tonya—my opinion (or "my truth" by the twisted parameters of the movie). It's well-done. It's entertaining. I didn't like it, but I am willing to concede that it is the perfect movie for what America stands for right now.

God help us.

Pure Tonya Harding, without controversy, without irony...just talent

Logan Lucky

Red State Blue Collar Crime
or
"Wahl, Tha's the Problem! Ah Put Too Many Twists in the Bag!"

When you're sitting through Logan Lucky, the latest return from retirement of director Steve Soderbergh,* you're thinking "This isn't very good." It's not as funny as it could be while you're sitting through it. There's just something a little ugly veering through it. It's like a heist version of "Dukes of Hazzard," where everybody's just a little "slow" or addled. You're not sure who's side it's on—is it making fun of its blue-collar protagonists or just "being satirical." You begin to feel for the conspirators that not only are they going up against "the system," but also have the film-makers making them look like fools.

Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) is a divorced father—divorced from Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes), father of Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie)—working on his truck and explaining to her the story behind his favorite song, John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" ("Almost heaven, West Virginia"...the original lyrics were "Almost heaven, Massachusetts") about his home-state. She's looking for a song to sing in the talent portion of her adolescent beauty pageant. Thanks, but she'll sing Rihanna's "Umbrella," instead. Well, okay, so he drives her back to the ex's—she's married a car salesman, Moody (David Denman) who has two kids, and goes to work where he's working construction for the tunnels running underneath the Charlotte Motor Speedway. But, at the end of his shift, he's laid off—the insurance company for the construction company has noticed his limp—an old football injury that ended his promising career as a football quarterback.

He goes to the Duck Tape bar, run by his brother Clyde (Adam Driver), who has lost an arm in Iraq and now has a fairly useless prosthetic—it doesn't stop him from creating a meticulous drink one-handed for a British entrepreneur (Seth McFarlane), who's a bit of a dick, picking a fight with Jimmy and delaying the idea that's formulating in his head that he wants to tell Clyde—he wants to go back to their days when they were kids and rob something. But, something big.

Clyde knows there's no way to talk Jimmy out of his idea—they're both down on their luck, so he throws in, especially after taunting Clyde with his "dare" code-word: "Cauliflower." The two decide that they will need help from the best safe-cracker they know—only he's still in prison. That would be Joe Bang (some guy named Daniel Craig) who, although he's glad to see the Logan Brothers thought enough of him to visit, still think they are crazy if they think they're going to recruit him for a job. He is, after all, "in-car-cer-rate-ted," and won't released for five months and Jimmy's timetable has the robbery happening in...what, five weeks?

People must be right: those Logan boys are crazy. ("Who says that?")

But, they're undeterred. They need Joe Bang, so they decide they'll expand the project: they'll figure out what they need to do to get the cash, then spring Joe Bang from prison, carry out the robbery, then put Joe Bang back into prison without anybody suspecting that he left in the first place. Some plan. But Joe is skeptical. 

But not skeptical enough not to suggest that when the Logan's are doing their reconnaissance that they get some aid from his brothers, Fish (Jack Quaid, son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan) and Sam (Brian Gleeson, son of Brendan and brother of Domhnall) to do some leg-work. Although professing to have turned over new leafs and turned away from criminal activities, the brothers decide they will help the Logans this one time. With the driving aid of Logan sister Mellie (Riley Keogh, granddaughter of Elvis, the Elvis), they cement their plans and wait for the inevitable occurrence that makes all their planning go awry so that they have to punt in order to carry it off.

This is, after all, a "heist" film, something Soderbergh is familiar with, having previously directed Ocean's 11, 12, and 13. It's a format and genre with which he's comfortable and it offers a director a great deal of flexibility, especially if the target is a real location (and they can go into "documentary mode" which is attractive to Soderbergh). The elaborate "job" is the constant with all of its intricacies intact; everything else is up for grabs, interpretation, ad-libing and improvisation. As long as the skeleton of the caper is in place, everybody can flesh it out as they see fit.

The difference here is location, location, location. Even though the "Ocean" movies belong to the same genre, the same "type" of film, they couldn't be less similar. The differences are literally night and day—Logan Lucky is not a bunch of cynical smart-asses trying to trump each other in the twilight of the morally arid desert of Las Vegas, where the only thing natural is the celery in a Bloody Mary. The setting here is rural in the daylight, without the hint of glitz but only the aspiration of bling, and although the root of all enterprise is the money gained from the vice of gambling, it is not bathed in neon but motor-oil, the greed tempered with the sense of accomplishment, the inspiration centered around family values, which are seen as surpassing any monetary equivalent.**

"WE are DEALING with SCIENCE here"

 

 

 

 

   

Unlike the Ocean's, the plot doesn't involve anything like hacking ("I know all the twitters" says the one computer "expert" of the group), or any real technology of any intricacy (and the only "bugs" used in the plot are cockroaches—real cockroaches). This is a low-dig' crime  depending on being able to tap into the technology of the track's own "money highway"—the Logan gang just provide an extra off-ramp for their convenience and enrichment.

The other thing different is that the circumstances reach an epiphany of sorts— something the other heist movies of Soderbergh's never achieve—that changes motivation and resolution, eventually creating a situation where it almost becomes a victimless crime for all the principles, ending in acts of charity that only enhance its theme of family. At the heart of it is not greed or revenge—leave that to the 1 percenters—but a conviction that if it's going to count, make it count for something.

* How many times is this—the second or third? I've lost count, but it doesn't really matter. Soderbergh will never really retire, as he has film running through his blood like red corpuscles. He's a natural film-maker. But, being a good film-maker is only part of the job if you're doing things through Hollywood. Soderbergh has always had the indie spirit, writing films, shooting films, editing films, even if they're not his own. But, in Hollywood, making movies is two jobs—the making and the financing. Soderbergh hates the capricious winds of Hollywood and seeing the next two years' work evaporate because a studio-head is having a bad day. So, he's always been looking for the new business model: self-financing, releasing through theaters and the internet simultaneously, his own production company—first with George Clooney and then by himself, television sales, and Logan Lucky's model—self-financed with a skeleton crew and with the financial help of states' funding and one big beneficiary-NASCAR, utilizing a new releasing company, Fingerprint Releasing, founded by Soderbergh. The end-titles say "Nobody was robbed during the making of this film. Except you."

Daniel Craig and...that's Dwight Yoakam, ladies and gentlemen

** I would suggest that "family values" was at the root of some of the casting, too, from the casting from so many branches of sow-buisness families, but Soderbergh did that in the Ocean films with lesser-names of the big name families of Caan and Affleck.

Captain America: Civil War

"Avengers, Dis-assemble!"
or
Marvel Presents this Captain America Movie, (Interrupted by this Avengers Movie), Interrupted by this Spider-Man Preview

Captain America: Civil War is interesting. It's very enjoyable—in fact I'd be willing to say that this completes the best superhero trilogy ever, surpassing Chris Nolan's "Dark Knight" Batman movies. But, man, some things really bug me. 

Uppermost, is the feeling I wasn't watching a movie at all, with a lot of stirring-up going on with few consequences, some conceits that seem VERY convenient for story-telling purposes, and the feeling that this was more of a demonstration film than an actual building block in the continuing story of...anybody. It is one more Marvel Universe sequel that feels like it shouldn't have been made, as, ultimately, nothing of real import happens...except for deal-making in the background—the movie-makers needed product, they front-loaded it with a lot of stars and went to a lot of trouble, but nothing in the story gets resolved. Watching a Marvel movie is beginning to feel like watching "The X-files," with the empty promise of "Yeah, but wait'll NEXT time..." 

Thanks, but where's my $10.00? ($14.00 for 3-D).

The movie does not follow the Marvel series of stories except in title and barest of essentials. After a short set-up marked "1991" (in huge numbers that crowd out anything else) set in a frozen waste that serves as Hydra Headquarters—it's either Hydra or 'SPECTRE' considering the octopus logo—in which "Bucky" Barnes' brainwashed Winter Soldier is sent on a fore-shadow mission, we find members of the Avengers (Captain America, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch and Falcon) in civvies, investigating an "Institute for Infectious Diseases" in LAGOS (in huge letters that crowd everything out), that soon comes under terrorist attack. They go into action—the first of the scheduled three action brawls that have become the norm in the Marvel Universe—and due to the actions of "Crossbones" (formerly a particularly loathsome member of SHIELD under Robert Redford's oversight), a titanic explosion occurs that causes much damage and kills quite a few civilians.

Oopsy.

"Never mind what I did, what about you guys?"

Given the fall-out of that mission, the Avengers are called to meet with the Secretary of State, the former General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (William Hurt), not seen since the last "Hulk" movie (when Hulk was Edward Norton and not Mark Ruffalo), who castigates the group for the collateral damage caused in NEW YORK (The Avengers), WASHINGTON D.C. (Captain America: Winter Soldier) SOKOVIA (The Avengers: Age of Ultron)—but quite forgetting the damage that HE caused at Culver University and in Harlem during The Incredible Hulk (politicians LOVE to cherry-pick), and telling the team they are in desperate need of government oversight (given how well that all worked out under SHIELD—Have they rebuilt the Watergate yet?). 

The alternative to signing the United Nations' so-called Sokovia Accord is retirement (which would have been MY pick with a snide "YOU work out all the disasters from terrorists, your OWN organizations, and other dimensions, and, by the way, say "Hello" to Thanos for me, Jarhead! See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!"). 

At the table, Rhodey, Natasha, Rogers, Wilson, Vision, and Scarlet Witch
with Stark hanging back (in case any readers are lost)

The group is divided: Steve "Captain America" Rogers is suspicious: "(The U.N.) is run by people with agendas. And agendas change" and Falcon, Scarlet Witch, and a retired Hawkeye refuse to sign. Nobody likes it, really, but, Tony Stark makes a case for it...lest The Avengers get shut down (wait a minute, wasn't HE the one trying to replace The Avengers in Age of Ultron? Can anyone keep track of Tony Stark's mood-swings? Like, maybe, the writers?). Cap won't sign despite Natasha (Black Widow), Rhodey (War Machine), Vision (the former Jarvis, Tony Stark's version of "Siri") regretfully siding with Stark. Cap walks out of the meeting, abstaining.

While Cap is attending the funeral of old girlfriend (from World War II) Peggy Carter, who has passed away, things come to a head in VIENNA (in huge letters that crowd out anything else) at the UN signing of the Sokovia Accord, when the building is attacked by a car-bomb, and evidence points to The Winter Soldier—Cap's brainwashed pal "Bucky" Barnes—as being the culprit. Why "Bucky," with his skills-set, would employ a car-bomb to do the job no one wonders, but Cap (being Cap) goes to BUCHAREST (you already know...) looking for his buddy, suspecting that he was set up. Of course, he finds him quickly, and the two hash out that the whole thing stinks, right before German counter-terrorist forces (in Bucharest?) bust in, Bucky escapes and Cap and Falcon give chase. Mixed in with the chase is another hero "The Black Panther," who is actually T'Challa (played by Chadwick Boseman, and he's terrific, as he was in 42 and Get On Up), the son of the slain King of Wakanda, killed in the VIENNA explosion.

Falcon (Sam Wilson), Cap (Steve Rogers) and the Black Panther (King T'Challa)
under arrest—are you keeping up?

Cap, Bucky, Falcon, and the Panther all get arrested when things come to a draw, with the Winter Soldier being trussed up in an unbreakable restraint—because those always work SO well in these movies—and shipped to BERLIN. Cap has his shield taken away and The Falcon's wings are clipped. "They are, after all, government property," says Natasha. "That's cold!" says Falcon. "Warmer than a jail-cell," shoots back Tony. Stark tries one last time to persuade Rogers to sign the Accord, rendered somewhat moot by the attack in VIENNA, but Cap isn't having any of it, especially when he finds out that Tony has the Scarlet Witch being held a virtual (heh) prisoner by The Vision back at Avengers HQ. "Sometimes I just want to punch you in those perfect teeth," persuades Tony. Somebody explain to me why HE's in charge of The Avengers?

This trick never works...

While Bucky is being interviewed by a Dr. Zemo (Daniel Brühl), the facility (which appears to be run by Martin Freeman because he's in EVERYTHING) is attacked by a pulse weapon that knocks out the power to the facility. And because the place is super-high tech to hold super-powered villains and things, there's no back-up generator that can kick in, or anti-pulse shield that can protect it. Zemo is the guy behind it all, apparently, and he has an amazing facility for finding out the secrets to the Avengers, Hydra, and every other organization's defenses (which is never explained), while our own spy agencies can't figure anything out...like putting up back-up generators in the budget.

Natasha thinks: "We have ENOUGH super-heroes. What is Sharon "Agent 13"
Carter doing here?" I wonder that myself.

While the lights are out and the security cameras down, Zemo gives Bucky the secret Russian code-words* to turn him into an unthinking killing machine, and he breaks out of his restraining cell (told ya!), Zemo makes his escape, but a freed Bucky starts smashing his way out of the place, taking out one Avenger after the other until Rogers and Wilson take him down, and find their own way of restraining him that seems to work a little better. Bucky reveals that Zemo is on his way to SIBERIA to the secret Hydra base that produced him to resurrect five other winter soldiers—just like him, but meaner. Cap determines that they need to come up with a team to get to SIBERIA, but first they have to get out of the country. That country being GERMANY.

Back in the U.S., the Scarlet Witch escapes from her attentive little android Vision with the intervention of Hawkeye (recruited by Cap), but it's the Witch that manages to overcome Vision by dropping him through several miles of the Earth's crust. She is clearly the most powerful member of The Avengers, so what is she doing as an after-thought in a Captain America movie. Along with the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye brings along Ant-Man, reformed thief Scott Lang, at the suggestion of Wilson. Lang is eager to please and clearly has a case of Captain America hero-worship.

More incongruously, Tony shows up at the QUEENS home of Aunt May Parker (who, all of a sudden, is Marisa Tomei, who in no way shape or form, resembles the frail elderly Aunt May of the comics.) Tony's there to talk to May's nephew Peter (now Tom Holland) about a grant from his Stark Foundation (but, in reality, he has somehow heard about the "Spider-kid" flitting around New York and being Stark, tracks him down and verbally jousts with him, and offers him an "upgrade" (which considering he's Spider-man 3.0 makes things very complicated. Now, Tony can track down this "kid" but he can't track down Team Cap driving around in old Volkswagens in BERLIN. Really? With their emission problems?

Okay, enough grousing. Let's get to the good part. This sequence makes no sense unless you're a "fanboy" who "geeks" out on stuff like this. Falcon, Ant-man, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Winter Soldier and Captain America are walking across a tarmac—way out in the open—to get to an Avengers jet to fly to SIBERIA to take care of Zemo and those five winter-soldiers. No flight plan. No official documents. All done undercover. 

Except they're walking out in broad daylight in the middle of a very open space—in full costume—and then, they are confronted by Iron Man, Iron Warrior, Black Widow, Vision, and the Black Panther—in full costume. This is going into Susan Sontag "camp" territory, along the lines of Adam West's Batman walking into a discotheque and telling the waiter that he doesn't want to attract attention, while he's wearing a mask and a blue satin cape. 1) Tony chooses NOW to confront them, instead of before if he's so good at tracking people, and maybe when they might be caught unawares? 2) He's doing this without the German anti-terrorist folks (who stopped them before) anywhere in the vicinity—even as a back-up? 3) He holds his ace card—Spider-man—in hiding until he can bring him in with a dramatic entrance (as "cool" as it is, it's also stupid, strategically).

Okay. Kvetching over. There then occurs, for about fifteen minutes the best part of the movie, where the two teams run at each other ("They're not stopping!" bleats Spider-man) and start fighting, and for a comics geek, this is really fun, especially with the addition of the hyper-active Spider-man, and the nearly ecstatic Ant-Man ("Everybody's got a gimmick now," grumbles Hawkeye), who both employ some surprises about dealing with the opposite combatants in moves that have not been seen before, both sides trying to stop the other, but not necessarily kill them—sort of like a WWE exhibition.

"You've got a metal arm? That's AWESOME, dude!"
(He actually says that)

For awhile, it looks like Cap's group is going to get to go to SIBERIA, with Ant-Man doing enough damage inwardly and outwardly to folks' equipment—to the point where they give Iron Man one of the best lines of the movie: "Okay, anybody on our side hiding any shocking and amazing possibilities, now's the time!"

Concern about collateral damage—which is what they're fighting about—goes out the window, as the conflict gets out of hand at the airport. But Cap and Bucky manage to get to a plane to take off, with a malfunctioning Iron Man and War Machine in hot pursuit, the Falcon running interference, and The Vision managing to fire off some blast that Falcon evades and ends up hitting War Machine, sending him plummeting to the Earth, leaving Stark pissed and determined for revenge.

"By Hrothmar's hammer, you shall be revenged..."

And yet...things come to light, too conveniently, and with the same lack of story-logic that plagues The Dark Knight and Skyfall—the villain goes to elaborate plans to create situations that he has NO idea will actually occur in the manner that he supposedly supposes. The rest of the film follows Cap and Bucky's trip to Siberia, and Iron Man's pursuit of the truth of it all, which, if he just didn't pursue it, would completely screw up the villain's plans. And it contains, a mood-change moment that is SO convenient that it desrves to be called (after the opposite, defusing attitude changer in Batman v Superman) a "Martha Moment."

And this is where Captain America: Civil War ultimately fails. There is some sharp writing going on in the microcosm, the film is full of great lines without resorting to puns and cultural humor (well, not too much, anyway). But, the picture—what the story is about, the grand arc of the movie—has no real point. One gets the sense, after all, that, for all the build-up and anticipation, the film's a bit of a let-down. It's hollow in the center like an empty Iron Man suit. Ultimately, it's about nothing, and the film ends without much changed...only intensified. Oh, Spider-man gets introduced and that's fun. But, the Avengers? Same as they ever was. The conflicts stay the same, and there's not much there to hold them together. Until another crisis comes along, which will occur, Sokovia Accords or no Sokovia Accords. Nothing, ultimately, is at stake.

"Civil War's" "Martha" Moment

The film does have Robert Downey's best acting in the entire Marvel series, and not just his penchant for ad-libbing a better line than scripted. Here he sells the many conflicting moods of Tony Stark to the point where you think the character is probably more than a little unstable, and he is, as written. The Russo's do a fine job of directing and keeping things moving...and (more importantly) keeping things clear in a very convoluted, and potentially confusing, story. The action scenes are fast, funny, and followable, with the occassional "W'oh!" moments (the opening fight, though, has that zippering stuttering quality that's starting to look like the speeded-up "undercranking" in 1940's films.

And one more fight that didn't need to happen, except the script formula demanded it

What sets Captain America: Civil War apart, though, is it's ability to have its cake and eat it, too, with that most over-used concept in this genre—the revenge story. Everything here is set up over revenge. Most of the bad guys' motives are because of revenge. "You did this to me and I'm going to make you suffer for it." Yawn. We've seen a lot of carnage in the super-hero movies, and as budgets get bigger and CGI gets better, the depictions have gotten to the point of being troubling—compare Superman II's Superman-Zod battle to the one in Man of Steel.  Age of Ultron tried to top it, while also acknowledging some bits of damage control. Both Batman v Superman and Civil War address the issue—the consequences of the previous movies influence the next ones: Bruce Wayne targets Superman over the deaths of employees at Wayne Financial in Metropolis; Zemo's actions are a direct result of the incidence in SOKOVIA.

Revenge is at the core. But CA:CW differentiates between the heroes and the villains with the issue of revenge. The bad guys want revenge. The good guys should not. And yet Stark is susceptible to it—he's merely a millionaire with weapons at his disposal, while most of the others (save Scarlet Witch, Spidey, Vision) are soldiers, they have seen the consequences of war. They know things happen. They have suffered losses (Cap's main motivation lies in the loss of Bucky Barnes during WWII). Everybody may be pointing fingers, but the blame goes to those with the wrong motivations, despite the amount of time spent trying to pin accountability. In their own fumbling way, the writers may have hit on something—the emphasis should maybe be placed more on heroics than action, on sacrifice and restraint, rather than gymnastics. Personal integrity rather than firepower. 

It may make the movies less adrenaline-pumping, but it might make them less dreary, less wearying and more inspiring. 

One should hope.

Missing in action—the two punching bags.

* Those words are:  Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight Car. Use then at your own risk and not around anyone with a metal arm.