A Man Called Otto

A Man Called Otto (Marc Forster, 2023) "What now?" Otto Anderson (Tom Hanks) likes to know how things work. And maintenance is 90% of civilization. So, he makes his rounds around the condo complex where he lives. Grouses about the neighbors' pets. The tire-tracks on the lawns indicating someone's driven around the security gate. He growls and grumps at his neighbors, who are just stubborn (or incessantly cheery) enough that they don't cross the street when they lay eyes on him.

It's a different gear for Hanks, who has become, if you believe the headline writers, "America's favorite actor" and "America's Dad." But, it's not a path he prefers. Before doing Road to Perdition, he was famously quoted as saying "I'm sick of playing pussies!" and his characters took on a harder edge, and gained darker tones, weaker resolves, more shadowy nuances. But, he could only take it so far before audiences rebelled—a remake of The Ladykillers was a pronounced box-office dud (despite being written and directed by The Coen Brothers). The actor who habitually likes to photo-bomb weddings reached the zenith of "Mr. Nice Guy" when he played Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and his Otto is cold-shouldered polar-opposite from that. Where Rogers met people with the expectation of seeing the best in everyone, Otto assumes everyone's "an idiot" and treats them the same, expecting the worst.

Otto has "issues" and its Marc Forster's film's job to explain them and (if we're to predict the beats) have them softened and even come to some sort of apotheosis where he's not the meanest man of the block, the "Mrs. Kravitz" in a world full of witches, and everyone's last candidate for "Mr. Congeniality."

It doesn't take much detective work to see what's going on: Otto obsessively sleeps on one side of the bed; he keeps one single "lucky quarter" on the dresser, he dresses every day in the same business casual attire—we first see him on the day of his retirement. Got any plans? Yeah! He can't fight an impromptu retirement party so he flights it, goes to the hardware store, buys some rope, cuts off his electricity and phone—arguing all the way through these acts—and after visiting his wife's grave ("Nothin' works when you're not home."), goes home, sets some newspaper on the floor, installs a strong hook in the ceiling and puts a noose around his neck and hangs himself. In the last moments of consciousness, he has just enough time to spy some neighbors moving in, irritatingly, and then...the damn ceiling gives 'way. Damn hardware store and its cheap products. Better pick yourself up and see what the new damn neighbors are doing, trying to parallel park their moving van like jack-asses.

John Lennon wrote that "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." Guess the same goes for death, too.

The new neighbors, Marisol (Mariana Treviño) and Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) are young, Hispanic, two kids with one on the way and moving in, way over the heads. Otto parallel-parks the van—it's blocking the sidewalk!—and lends a tool-set, and it becomes clear that despite his worst intentions they're going to be "friendly" neighbors, imposing themselves, like life, when he's trying to "off" himself. Well, that hole in the ceiling needs to be fixed, if the house is going to be sold afterwards, so he does a fast-seal over it, and considers new options for killing himself. Carbon monoxide poisoning? Getting hit by a train?

What we're looking at, here, is Gran Torino-lite (as it is much the same story), but without the vindictive dismissal of religion, the guns, the gang-bangers, the reflexive racism. The reflexive racism that's pierced by food, though. That's here (Otto likes Marisol's cooking). And the cars. Cars are big in both films. But, Torino was rooted in the here and now, and Otto spends a substantial amount of its run-time in the past, getting to know Otto in his younger days (played by Tom's son, Truman Hanks) and his late wife, Sonya (Rachel Keller), all indicative of Otto not being able to let go of the past, despite its pain, and despite its loss.

It's a simple story, and Marc Forster, try as he might to try and complicate things and make it an "art" film, does manage to tell it simply, despite the fancy angles, the occasional "whispy" art shot that has nothing to do with the scenario or with reality—they're faint mind-echoes, maybe from Otto's head, but it doesn't seem likely—it's just enough to put you on your guard for pretension, which, thankfully, he manages to avoid.

One would call it light-weight, but it's impossible. There should be a warning with this movie, informing those who came for escapism, and a warm-fuzzy "Tom Hanks movie" that it is a movie about suicide. You get a few attempts, their unsuccessful resolution not engendering belly-laughs of relief. No, life gets in the way (as it is wont to do), inconvenient and messy—but not as messy as these suicide attempts would be (despite Otto's pains to minimize the splatter and clean-up). 

Triggering? Maybe, I would think, especially if your expectations are for froth. One should enter these worlds without expectations or preconceptions, despite the posters and trailers, and press (even if that seems nigh on impossible) setting you up, whetting your appetite, doing the "Big Con."

Just, as a word of warning, then, not a spoiler. I won't give away how it resolves, other than to quote Orson Welles, who said “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”

And, of course, the real-world experience that says that "life will go on, no matter how bad it gets." There's something reassuring in that, as annoying and frustrating as it can be. It beats the alternative.

 

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

Resumé by Dorothy Parker, 1926

The Craig's: Quantum of Solace

Cutting to the Chase
or
"Once More into the Cuisinart, Dear Friends"

When last we left James Bond, newly double-0'd agent On Her Majesty's Secret Service, he was nursing a broken heart and the betrayal by his lover, by the one way that he knew to ease the pain—shooting someone in the leg with an assault rifle.

After the success of Casino Royale, the last complete James Bond novel not to be given an "official" film version, and the revival of the franchise with the casting of Daniel Craig, one had to wonder what the producers would do for an encore.

Or a sequel. Quantum of Solace* takes place 30 minutes after the ending of Casino Royale, (in mid-car-chase) with Bond going "rogue" and seeking revenge.** It's the first "true" sequel in the Bond series--all of them previously being stand-alone stories, where for budgetary or scheduling reasons, the secondary characters (like CIA agent Felix Leiter) would be played by different people from movie to movie.

Here, things are consistent: Jeffrey Wright again plays Leiter, Giancarlo Giannini returns as Rene Mathis as does Judi Dench as "M." And the mysterious Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), behind so much of Bond's troubles last film is in the rather bumpy custody of MI6, where he drops the news that there's a world-wide criminal organization that the Brits aren't even aware of, presumably the one financing the bombing of the Skyway jet, the funding of "freedom fighters," and high stakes poker games from the last film. Apparently these activities are so "under the radar" that the world's network of spies—and in this film even Bolivia has a Secret Service—hasn't noticed. But that is just a wild goose chase to Bond achieving that quantum of solace about the events of Casino Royale.

One could go on and on with the trivial aspects of QOS, but in broad strokes, one can answer the entreaties of those who couldn't wait for the next installment last time. No, it isn't as good as the last one; Casino Royale was one of the best film in the series (this is No. 22 of the "official" Bond films), even after the perspective of a couple years.

Does Bond find out the answers to the questions he's seeking? Yeah, for all the good it does us. We spend 95% going down a blind alley--at 90 miles an hour, with a shaking camera pointed aimlessly and an average edit length of half a second. More on that in a moment.

Does Daniel Craig take off his shirt? Yes, all too briefly for some, I'm sure.

The dialog is crisp and also very, very brief. The acting is uniformly good, with particular mention of Craig, Dench, and Giannini. Even the "Bond girls," traditionally where the Bond films fall down in the presentation category, can act: former model Olga Kurylenko is quite good, using a cat-walk scowl as the basis of her performance; and Gemma Arterton is pert, spunky...and sadly disposable. Mathieu Amalric--so good in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly--makes the most of his reptilian looks, as a sort of bug-eyed Roman Polanski.***

All well and good. The film feels like a less goofy version of the Roger Moore Bonds where outlandishness is the order of the day, but without the obvious winking. There are some lighter moments (and Craig makes the most of them) but most of it is played with deadly earnest. One expects to get lost in some details along the way by the orange light of the explosions. Indeed, two of the major players in this film are brought up and never mentioned again.****

But there is a major problem with Quantum... which dims the viewing experience, that being the slap-dash way that director Marc Forster and his second unit director Dan Bradley (who stunt coordinated the "Bourne" and last couple "Spiderman" movies) have staged and assembled the action sequences--and there are a lot of them--on land, sea, air, and fire, by foot and all manner of motorized vehicles. These sequences are nearly incomprehensible, with a rapid pace that does not allow the distinguishing of any participant or the context in which they're being done. A good action director allows the time to register surroundings and environment, and provides the context of relationship--who's doing what to whom and where. It's that information that provides suspense. Without that information, it's just fleeting images that don't add up—in other words, a trailer. 

What Forster and Bradley may be trying to do is put the audience in the same dizzying, disoriented position as Bond, but even then, there are times when there isn't enough context to inspire alarm. At one point, in one of the hand to hand fights it becomes apparent that, suddenly, one of the combatants has acquired an axe. There was just enough time for me to register that perhaps the film would be better if it were edited with that. The shame is that a lot of work went into these sequences--QOS is the most expensive Bond film while simultaneously being the shortest--and a couple of marvelous shots that literally tumble along with Bond merely disorient, rather than thrill, as you're not allowed to see the original position from where these shots start. At the end of it all, you're left with a battered Bond but absolutely no idea how he got that way.

This is a major mis-step. These are suspense films, after all. But in pushing the envelope of how fast to take these action sequences, post-Bourne, the film-makers have reached the point where they are no longer telling a story, no longer communicating with the audience, at which point they've failed in their own mission.

I'm not even sure what is to be gained by seeing Quantum of Solace in a theater, even in the back row. The best way to get anything out of the action is to watch it at a slower speed on DVD.

Two of examples of the subliminal editing style of Quantum of Solace.

* The name is taken from a Fleming Bond short story in which Bond merely sits and listens to a tale of a marriage turned ruinous, and a "quantum of solace" is the smallest particle of comfort one can derive to keep it going. The only Bond titles left to be used are "Risico," "The Property of a Lady," "The Hildebrand Rarity," and "James Bond in New York," none of which is a "grabber" of a title, or would make a good song-title. But then, who thought you could do anything with Thunderball? Passing a reader-board for another theater en route to the Cinerama, it read simply "007."

** "What, he's gone 'rogue' again?" is what a friend said after seeing the trailer. Bond had already done something similar in the Timothy Dalton-starring Licence To Kill, which combined equal parts "Miami Vice," Yojimbo, and elements of the Fleming novel, "Live and Let Die."'

*** Director Marc Forster used directors Guillermo del Toro and Robert Rodriguez as voice-actors on this film, and the "director" connection applies to a henchman called "Elvis" who reminds one a bit of Quentin Tarantino. What with the "colorful" names of the villains, ala Reservoir Dogs and the producers' history with Tarantino—he famously announced to whatever ubiquitous press agency he uses that he wanted to make "Casino Royale" with Pierce Brosnan and griped about not getting the chance—it wouldn't be too far afield to think the Broccoli kids were getting annoyed with his whining enough to tweak him a bit.


**** I've since been told by one of the "Opening Night Regulars" I see the Bond's with, that a sequence resolving their stories (all one minute of it) was left on the cutting room floor, giving the producers a chance to start afresh next film, rather than continue with yet another sequel.

A still from the "lost" Quantum of Solace sequence.