Black Widow (2021)

Giving the Widow Her Due

or

Lord Help the Min'ster Who Comes Between Me and My Sister.

The Marvel character, Black Widow (played eight previous times by Scarlett Johansson) has appeared in almost as many Marvel movies as Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man (and Samuel L. Jackson's Nicky Fury)...but, without a feature of her own. Sure, Marvel can crow about being progressive on roles for women after Captain Marvel, but, look at the facts: BW has appeared in an Iron Man movie, two Captain America films, an unbilled cameo in Captain Marvel, all four Avengers movies...and was the sacrificial lamb in the last one. Er, except that more attention was paid to the death of Tony Stark, and the Big Funeral at the end—with "everybody" in it—was for Stark. Just Stark.

At the end of Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow's sacrifice was merely an after-thought...maybe something was said at the reception (oh, except everybody was more concerned with who'd be the next Captain America...). Bowed heads was all she got. And then "Phase 3" ended.

Almost as an afterthought, Marvel Studios has given the character her own movie...now that she's safely dead and all—they'd been talking about it since 2004—and, like most initial Marvel films in a franchise, it's a good one (Marvel's second movies tend to be inferior bloats—the exceptions being the Captain America franchise—where all three films were good, and "Thor" where there wasn't a good film until the wildly irreverent third one).

Black Widow in Iron Man 2

But, Black Widow is on a par with the good introductory Marvel films, seeming fresh and giving much more back-story than had been given Natasha Romanoff in her previous appearances. In the MARVEL series, Nat was the glue that held people and missions together—if Nat was on your side, you were alright. Yet, her abilities, which were not super-powered, managed to put in her in the fray of most of the fights with the "Big Guns." Plus, she knew how to manipulate—calming down The Hulk, tricking Loki—she does something similar here ("Thanks for your cooperation" she says again here)—siding with Captain America while ostensibly trying to arrest him. She was a team-player while being her own person. And there was no questioning it that, after "The Blip," she would be the acting leader (as if they had one before...) of What Was Left Of The Avengers. Nat was the good soldier who didn't whine about things—she'd sit at conference tables with furrowed brow listening and thinking, while "The Boys" mansplained and postured. Not Nat, though. Just got 'er done, dude.

So, her self-titled movie is a good run—Johansson even got to Executive Produce *ka-ching!*—and it's a fast moving kind of "James Bond movie"—with several of the tropes on display, one former Bond "girl" in the cast and the plot of one of them taken whole-cloth (and combined with elements of the Mission Impossible franchise and In Like Flint)—but amped up to 11...It's a Bond movie for those who think a typical Bond movie is You Only Live Twice or Moonraker...with the stunts and situations moving beyond the outlandish to the preposterous. I was chortling in the theater watching Russian soldiers firing automatic weapons in free-fall. Tough to get volunteers with that kind of work.

Which is rather the point of the movie.

But, I digress. The movie, however, regresses.

We start out in Ohio, where two undercover Russian agents, Melina and Alexei (Rachel Weisz and David Harbour) live as "tyeepical" Americans (as long as the don't use the words "moose and squirrel") with their daughters Natasha and Yelena, when one night they make their escape to Cuba from agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and report back to their contact Dreykov (Ray Winstone). Melina has been wounded in the escape and Alexei, part of the USSR's "super-soldier" program as "the Red Guardian" reassures the kids that "Uncle" Dreykov will take care of them, but he doesn't tell them it's by imprisoning them in the "Red Door" facility and training them to become killers in the Black Widow program.

Cut to a Main Title sequence which fast-forwards through their training and some history—set inexplicably to "Smells Like Teen Spirit!"—to the film's proper timeline, nestling between Captain America: Civil War—because Hawkeye, Falcon and Ant-Man are in prison and William Hurt's "Thunderbolt" Ross is on the hunt for Nat—and Avengers: Infinity War where things get hairy. Nat has gone to ground, and her mail has piled up while in hiding—one of the packages contains glowing red vials and puts her in the cross-hairs of a villain called "Taskmaster" who can duplicate an opponent's moves merely by watching them.

Hey! Taskmaster's watching that first gif on this page!

It turns out the mail came from step-sister Yelena Bovel (Florence Pugh, who is spot-on perfect—and she better be because the movie is her audition for any sequels), who, while working as one Russia's widows got a snoot-full of one of those vials, which released her from Dreykov's psychotropic grip, breaking his mental hold over her to do whatever evil deed he has put into both their minds. Yelena is as dedicated as a QVC host to get these vials into people's hands, so she sends them to Natasha because 1) she's not hiding from Dreykov in Budapest like she is, she's hiding from S.H.I.E.L.D, who is looking for Nat all around the whole frickin' world and 2) she's an "Avenger" so her scientific friends can make more of the glowing red stuff in the vials. So, what does Nat do?—she goes to Budapest to find her sister. Because..."movie"

Together, they plan their revenge on Dreykov, starting by springing Alexei from the gulag hell-hole where he's imprisoned and finding Melina at her compound/lab—as she knows where the secret "Red Door" facility is and planning their attack. Sounds simple—there's barely enough plot for a full movie—but they have to do this while being pursued by Dreykov's army of widows and Taskmaster, so there are lots of action set-pieces, lots of bone-crunching (with seemingly little effect) and bickering—so much bickering—between the reunited family. It's funny, fast-paced, and barely believable...but when has believability stopped a superhero movie?

It all leads to an action set-piece in one of those "yeah, I'm not buying it" supervillain lairs that beggars the imagination that it could ever maintain itself without a lot of expenditure and a lot of luck, making one believe that it's powered by "suspension of disbelief," which may be the most powerful force in the Marvel Universe. As I said, I was repressing giggles, even as people are running up the sides of blown apart architecture that is hurtling to the Earth. I'd heard some pre-publicity talk about the action being "gritty" and "down to Earth" but it isn't in any way shape or form, heavily dependent on CGI wizardry (all the big names and quite a number of small digital companies are in the credits) and "down to Earth" is only applicable on letting you know where everything lands...in conveniently sparse locations. 

We also get some check-boxes ticked off—if anybody had been keeping score—about Natasha's past activities, one of which comes back to haunt her. It's one of those convenient stories that drive continuity-conscious comics fans nuts, but what can you do? They're different worlds and the movie doesn't have the run-time to accommodate any lengthy back-story, or do justice to "Taskmaster" fans.

Director Cate Shortland does wonderful work with the performances and the actors keeping the dialog breezy, overlapping and understandable (and the picture-editing that complicates it is adroit and nimble). Everybody's good when they're talking and interacting. But, the action scenes? Not so much. They seem to be story-boarded and shot to accomplish one move and it may or may not be related to the next shot/action or the one before it, as opposed to a cohesive whole that can be followed and a sense of the challenges and the surroundings inherent in it. It builds suspense and makes the action even more thrilling. Here, it's just a shot of an actor doing the action, there's a cut-away reaction, or meld with the stunt-double, but that's about it, and the next shot may be a larger perspective, or an insert of some particular aspect of the resulting conflagration. But, there's no flow to it—you get a kick-shot and the next shot is the kicked guy hitting the opposite wall. You know the two should be linked, but it's a leap for the audience.

And so much of it is action that it's a major chore to make your way through them, and once the Big "Blow-Uppy" Final Round starts happening, you might be forgiven for giving up and just letting things happen, looking at things uncritically. It's then that things get very dubious with a lot of fights happening in mid-air and shots of Natasha plummet/flying around hurtling debris and even a sequence where Nat crawls up some facade in free fall approaching terminal velocity with apparently no wind resistance. And then, you remember that Black Widow ultimately will die (or has already died if you're looking at it in movie-sequence) from a long fall* and one that isn't even as long as this one.

Okay, that's all dubiously on the surface. What made me smile as I was leaving the theater was that Black Widow, with all its talk about, and taking steps to stop, Dreykov's sapping of so many women's free will to do his nefarious bidding (without any dissent) makes it (when you reduce it down) a pro-choice movie. Pro-choice in a way that might impress both liberals and conservatives (but, I doubt it, I don't trust ideologies to be logical or consistent). With women executives and a woman director, I find that a lovely little shot-across-the-bow of the patriarchy, and gives this after-thought of the Marvel Studios...worth.

 

*

From Avengers: Endgame

End of Watch

Written at the time of the film's release...long before the Derek Chauvin conviction, but long after the Rodney King footage. Police work is a tough job that I'd be quite incapable of. And it's made tougher by the fact that they've become the "catch-all" solution to all of Society's problems. There's got to be a better way...for them and for us. I stand by the police. But, I don't stand by, blindly, ignoring the fact that they've become a symptom of a system doing as little as possible...and leaving it for someone else to fix.

Cops, the Home Movie
or
"...More Capers in One Deployment Than Most Cops Will See Their Entire Career."

It's a war out there "once upon a time in South Central." And Officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the front-line reporter documenting the whole thing "for a project."  He's carrying a camera—not that he really needs it, the dashboard cam will pick up everything needed for an investigation. But that camera can only look forward—it's myopic. It can't see around you, it can't check the perimeter. And it can't look into your soul. It can look at your back, but it can't have it.

It starts with one of those dash-cam chases, so familiar to "reality" chase shows. No overlayed sound, save for Gyllenhall's narration, said in a monotone as if he was giving you your Miranda.  

I am the police and I am here to arrest you. You have broken the law. I did not write the law. I may even disagree with the law. But I will enforce it. No matter how you plead, cajole, beg or attempt to stir my sympathy, nothing you do will stop me from putting you in a steel cage with gray bars. If you run away, I will chase you. If you fight me, I will fight back. If you shoot at me, I will shoot back. By law I am unable to walk away. I am a consequence. I am the unpaid bill. I am fate with a badge and a gun. Behind my badge is a heart like yours. I bleed, I think, I love, and yes, I can be killed. And although I am but one man, I have thousands of brothers and sisters who would die for me and I for them. We stand watch together. The thin-blue-line, protecting the prey from the predators, the good from the bad. We are the police.*

And with that, the law of the film is laid down. The dash-cam goes away and the camera goes into cinema verité, the camera pointing from inside Taylor's locker as he goes through basic introductions—himself, his partner Mike Zavalla (Michael Peña, never better), his equipment (and a conversation from Rio Bravo pops into one's head: "That all you got?" "That's what I got."), and the beginning of the look inside—the harsh joshing, the tensions, the coolness and coldness and camaraderie of the corps. Joseph Wambaugh had an apt phrase for them in his book (and subsequent film), "The New Centurions." But Rome was never like this.

The turf in South Central is tough and hard-scrabble. Poverty is on display on every street corner, and behind the boarded-up windows of the houses in various states of disrepute are secrets for the outside world not to know, but will see the light of day once the front door is kicked in. The war is in the streets, but inside cook the warning signs that something is about to explode, the stakes rising, the limits of human degradation dropping, the calibers of the weapons increasing, the risks increasing and the only good side of it being that they're not increasing exponentially.

It's a tough film, directed and written by the guy who wrote Training Day and the original The Fast and the Furious, David Ayer, who has a knack for keeping things on the down-trodden path no matter who's behind the camera or what the subject matter is. It's not a film for continuity buffs, who will be driven crazy if they think "Okay, who's taking that shot?" with every change of perspective. Very quickly, the strictures of the snatch-and-grabbed shot are forgotten to gain perspective. The film would have been a pretentious (and claustrophobic) confusion if the conceit was maintained throughout, (I can see the review headline now: "The Blair Watch Project"), but as it is, breathes enough air into it while maintaining a feeling of impromptu recording—keeping the spirit of the law, rather than the letter of it. That, along with the ad-libbed spark of the dialogue gives it an edgy immediacy that, again, "seems" right, while never fully escaping the feeling of planned manipulation (not that it ever could). Game try, though. And manages to show the life—long stretches of tedium punctuated by moments of terror—that one imagines the life to be, even though blown up with steroids to fulfill the needs for melodrama and tension.

* But, what it doesn't say is "We are also responsible, culpable, and...accountable."

The Green Hornet

Superheroes come in all colors and stripes...and quality. We're all in the $2 billion glow of The Avengers: Endgame right now, but there have been some really lousy ones, too. Someone brought up Seth Rogen today, remembering him as "that funny guy." I brought up the name of Seth Rogen and when they said "yes" I mentioned snarkily that I got confused "when you mentioned that funny guy." Well, I remembered this movie. Wish I could forget...

"BUZZZZZZZZ.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"
or
"Girls Are a Drag, Kato.  Thank God We've Got Each Other." 

"The Green Hornet" was a popular radio series in the 40's, and became a brief second tier in ABC-TV's "superhero" programming after the success of the Adam West "Batman" television show. Unlike the campy "Batman," "The Green Hornet" played it somewhat straight, albeit with the gleaming technology, out-there set decoration...and another fabulous George Barris car design. It also featured Bruce Lee, as Kato, Britt Reid's formidable kung-fu kicking house-boy, a couple of years before forsaking Hollywood for Hong Kong super-stardom.

When it was announced that Seth Rogen would be portraying "The Hornet" (as bad an idea, really, as when Jack Black was supposed to star in Green Lantern), I thought this could not come to any good. "The Green Hornet" was a distant lineage of "The Lone Ranger," in the continuity, and Rogen, known for playing ape-neck every-slobs, didn't seem to fit the bill (I couldn't even imagine Rogen throwing a punch!). Compounding the pre-release jitters, the movie was planned to be presented, rather unnecessarily, in 3-D, was delayed until after the Christmas crunch, and in the last couple months, the car has increasingly seemed to be the focus of the promotion. The Green Hornet appeared to be a victim of bad buzz, but cheerily trumpeted its excellence ("dude") at the top of its lungs—par-tay! The previews looked semi-amusing, so one walked in with a certain cock-eyed optimism.

It is abysmal. Starting out with a deadly serious "origin" episode  (de rigueur for all superhero movies, apparently*) where Daddy Reid (Tom Wilkinson) publisher of the "The Daily Sentinel" rips the head off young son Britt's superhero doll, traumatizing him,** the movie goes off-kilter fast. Directed by Michel Gondry (!!), the film soon settles into a un-comic romp with guns, gadgets, and all the cool things that will make the frat-boys spit out their beer in gawping appreciation: rock-themed fights, CSI-orifice-cams, gratuitous babes, "Matrix" slo-mo's, while generally following the "key-ingredient" rules of movie-making from Sweet Liberty.*** Ho-hum. But, the main problem is the lead character.  I like Rogen. I think he's very talented and, on occasion, very funny. Not here.  As played (and written with pal Evan Goldberg) by Rogen, Britt Reid's Green Hornet is a whining ADD cretin, with the slimmest, and dumbest, of character motivations. Rogen's Reid can't keep his mouth shut,**** no matter how inane his attitude or stupid his comment—he is entitlement-dumb, in marked contrast to the parade of millionaire-geniuses who inexplicably become "mystery men" in the genre. Indeed, he is so dependent on Kato (Jay Chou) for...everything...that you wonder why the kid from Shanghai***** doesn't insist on up-ending the billing (Kato with Hornet, the boy-doofus) and keep Reid corralled with a nunchuck leash.

The yin and yang of stupidity/competence continues throughout. Questions begin arising. Why does their super-slick, weapons-festooned car, "The Black Beauty" have rotating license plates, when it has "hornet" emblems all over it—even the gas-cap—making it hopelessly identifiable? Why does The Green Hornet hand out business cards at the scene of his bust-ups...with his internet address and e-mail account? Why does Reid talk about arming The Black Beauty out loud, sitting in a pool of accessory-chicks?

Why doesn't Kato just kick the green-snot out of Reid and be done with him?******

As with the series, Kato is the coolest character. Bruce Lee (who is given a brief homage) was the best thing about "The Green Hornet" show and one anticipated his fight scenes that rose, with considerable hang-time, above the common whiffed fisticuffs of television stunt-men. This Kato builds cars, seemingly from scratch, is an acrobatic master, martial artist, engineer and draughtsman...and...can make the perfect cup of coffee. Hmmm. Chou doesn't have much emotional range, but is loose enough that he can carry off the comedy, and still look like he knows business. However, the relationship between Reid and Kato is so skewed in the millionaire's favor (for no apparent reason) that the character comes off a bit as his "bitch," (which he calls him at one point—Kato is belittled constantly, short of racial slurs). And Rogen and Goldberg throw in a lot of unsubtle "bro-mance" references in case we miss the point.

And, the whole thing is a waste. The final set-piece is an exercise in over-the-top property destruction that reminds one of an unfunny version of the mall-destruction chase in The Blues Brothers. Good actors are squandered—not just Wilkinson, but also Christoph Waltz, who can't seen to decide if he's playing comedy or drama, Cameron Diaz in a "girlfriend" role, who tries to ad-lib with the big boys, but about the second line in a string says something inane, and Edward James Olmos, who looks dyspeptic every time he's on camera (his character is supposed to be frustrated, but I couldn't help but think he might be thinking about strangling his agent: "Hey, don't worry, Eddie, you thought "Battlestar Galactica" was a bad idea, too!")

The final segment begins with The Hornet saying "Everything we've done to this moment is complete and utter crap." Truer words...

What is most upsetting is to see a director like Michael Gondry, whose past efforts have included Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—a favorite of mine—and Be Kind Rewind—which isn't—continue a Shamalamyan decline in quality of work. This thing is a mess, and one can only wonder how cross-eyed it would make one in 3-D. I might actually worry about some form of brain-damage resulting from viewing this film.

Van Williams and Bruce Lee: In Memory, Still Green

* There was a preview of Thor in the promo-clusters before the show, and it appears to be the same story, but in Asgard—daddy issues are everywhere.

** .....o-kaaaay.

*** Those are: 1.) Rebellion against authority; 2.) Violence; 3.) Nudity.  I confess, of the venerable cliches, I didn't hear a "Wilhelm" scream, see a vegetable cart being overturned in a car-chase, but, "The Brother" does "Get It First."

**** There's a lot of post-production voice-over inserts to wedge in one...more...laugh-line, usually inane.  But, they're clumsy...and it feels like it's an attempt to go for a laugh so the audience doesn't think for very long.

***** Kato has always been, traditionally, Japanese...except for that time when he became Filipino after December 7th, 1941.

****** At one point in the film, he does.  But Rogen gets in enough licks, that it reminded me of the nadir of the "Green Hornet" series...in the cross-over with the "Batman" show, when Bruce Lee (Kato) was fought to a stand-still with Burt Ward (Robin, the Boy Wonder).  As if...  Supposedly, Lee was a bit miffed at that scenario.  And, for some reason, Kato is given a weakness that's condescending, not unlike how Jet Li was treated in The Expendables.

Hellboy (2019)

"Aw, Crap!" (The Once and Future Hellboy)
or
"You Should Have Quit...When You Were a Head."

I guess you have to mention it because this one's a re-boot (even though one should give the devil his due), but Guillermo del Toro made two middling movies out of Mike Mignola's well-read and well-praised indie comic "Hellboy," a weird occultish comic character that combined the artist's bizarre design instincts with a dead-pan sense of humor, mixed with healthy doses of steam-punk and Lovecraftian monster-conspiracies.

And Nazi's. Lots and lots of Nazi's.

And as good as del Toro is and can be, his Hellboy movies were a little watered-down from Mignola's concept. For example, his Hellboy talked too much, and the director kept insisting on shoe-horning a love story into the Hellboy mix (which was complicated enough). Del Toro kept the origin story with Mignola's concept of a demon-spawn brought from the depths of Hell by by the Nazi's during the waning days of WWII—a plan thwarted by American G.I.'s under the command of paranormal investigators.

He also kept the idea that Hellboy is an indispensable paranormal investigator—often cited as the foremost and greatest—for the B.P.R.D. (The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense and no, it doesn't exist, but I'm pretty sure Trump would want one), whose operations explore spooky phenomenon of a negative nature throughout the world. 

So Hellboy has been re-booted with a new actor starring—the versatile and ubiquitous David Harbour*—and a new attitude, but not a new title (Let's call it Hellboy 2019, for clarity's sake). But, with twelve—count 'em—twelve producers, you have the very definition of two many cooks in the kitchen and one's expectations for an over-baked Royal Cluster run very high.

They did one thing right: this version hews very closely to Mignola's storylines from the books "The Wild Hunt" and "The Storm and the Fury." In them, Hellboy along with a clairevoyent he saved as a child, Alice Monaghan—the "g" is silent—(Sasha Lane) team up with a M11 operative named Major Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim) to battle the evil sorceress Nimue (Milla Jovovich), the so-called "Queen of Blood" who, in olden times, was killed by King Arthur with the sword Excalibur. At that time she was cut into six pieces and buried in various places around the island so that she could never threaten England again, but...the best laid-and-buried plans and all...

After a brief sojourn to Mexico to find a missing BPRD agent, Hellboy is invited to England by the ancient Order of the Osiris Group to dispose of three giants, but things go badly for him and he is rescued by Alice, when it is discovered that the plans of Nimue...and parts of Nimue...are coming together and that isn't good. The last piece of the Queen is, coincidentally, at the Osiris Club and when a raid is staged it is found that everyone there has been slaughtered. Blimey. Hell to the Queen.

The story is very streamlined—whole chunks of it have been sliced and diced to give the film-story more flow and make it less complicated**...and costly. What separates this adaptation, though, from its source or from the other two movies is its tone, which is arch and gigglingly nihilistic. It's odd, and probably a little early, to say that this re-boot adheres to the "Deadpool" school of film-making where you can't take anything very seriously, except that "school" may have already had its shark jumped—the first Deadpool movie was fine, but the second one kinda stunk up the place. It also reminds of those Rob Zombie movies where any action has to be backed by heavy-metal music..and be a bit incomprehensible in strategy and artistry. It's designed to merely by visceral.

And there's a lot of viscera on display.

This Hellboy, the re-booted, has a lot of gore to it—not something one associates with the comics—and if one is expecting something along the lines of the first two movies, they will likely be surprised and shocked by this "R"-version. More carnage, more "F"-bombs and general nastiness are on display. Gosh, Hellboy even says "shit" a few times when previously the worst you'd get out of him was "Aw, crap!!"...which I always found charming coming from a spawn of Satan. This approach is far less charming.

This one is more like the WWF produced Hellboy with a grungier representation of the character. Oh, he's still a good guy (in danger of being bad), just more of a slob, although it might actually be fun to see him sweat, if he could do so through all the make-up and yak-fur. And one can't the actor under all that goo; Harbour does a fine job, playing the role the way you'd think John Goodman would play it—a good choice, that. Hellboy shouldn't be cuddly, but he should be blunt and loud whenever he gets around to saying something, which he shouldn't do too much.

One also gets a whiff of producer-tinkering; some of the edited transitions are a little dicey. Marshall has done a few horror films and a lot of television work, but one suspects there is material left on the cutting room floor from his original intentions. There might have been some grace-notes deemed expendable from the producing squad. Too bad. Because this Hellboy could have used a bit more grace.

Nimue: You are a king. We belong together, you and I.

Hellboy: We do. But it's not going to work, you know, 

'cause I'm a Capricorn and you're fucking nuts!

(Actually, it should be pointed out that Hellboy's birthday is October 5th, making him a Libra)

The first appearance by "Hellboy" (above) and page samples (below)

* Here's the guy in Black Mass and Quantum of Solace. Yeah, you know him.

** Kudo's to whoever left the scenes with "Lobster" Johnson, Mignola's 1930's era "Mystery-Man" adventurer from the series. You have to "be there" to appreciate it. But, as portrayed by Thomas Haden Church, it was the most enjoyable part of the movie for me.