United 93

United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006) "The War on Terror" turned the tide before it was even declared. The efforts of the crew and passengers of United flight 93 insured that, as they assessed the situation quickly, made decisive plans and executed them unselfishly, in the process saving an unimaginable number of lives. Who knows, besides the dishonored dead, what the target was? We don't know. We can't know. But, after that, every airline passenger became more vigilant, and everybody who didn't put their seats in an upright position (or try to light their shoes) was seen with suspicion. Anyone who attempted anything—short of hogging the overhead compartments, blocking the aisles in conversation, stealing somebody else's honey-nuts, or (god forbid) talking incessantly about themselves THE ENTIRE FLIGHT—against the common good, would be taken down and taken down hard, if not by security officers, then by the passengers themselves (and you had better luck with the security officers). Flight 93 was when the terrorists started losing 55 minutes after the battles had begun.

Greengrass' ingenious attempt to recreate the events on 9-11 leading up to and during that horrific flight (in real time, one might add) crackles and pops with a cinema verité energy that makes the most mundane of the circumstances take on an ironic heft. We all know how the story went—only if merely how it ends—and it makes all the participants victims and their every action and utterance weighted with irony, their moments, being finite, that much more important. The dawning realization that their rudimentary transport had become part of an organized plot to turn their flight into a weapon of targeted destruction is both horrific and inspiring, moving fast through the stages of grief, they decide to make the best of the situation in which they suspected they would not survive, and acted unselfishly to at least stop any further loss of life wherever they were heading, and, maybe, doubtfully, save their own. In an unfolding world of uncertainty, they acted for the greater good.  

It's an amazing story—civilians becoming warriors, victims not settling for that role. And Greengrass' version is done without stars, no grand-standing, just the director's insistence on verisimilitude and energy, not amping the story with false heroics, but only the genuine ones, and enhanced by its own choice not to editorialize.

News of the World

When the Reckoning Comes

or

"To move forward...you must first remember"

It is 1870, five years after the Surrender at Appomattox Court House, and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), late of the 3rd Texas Infantry, is making his way between Indian Territory and Texas with ultimate goal of reaching—maybe—San Antonio. His peculiar job is to read the news as he travels from town to town, charging the attendees a Liberty dime for the privilege of hearing news that might not otherwise reach them by post or by messenger. He's careful about what he reads, as the bitterness of the Civil War still festers in the souls of the Southerners, only enhanced by the presence of "Blue Coats" maintaining military order in the restless, discontented villages. What Kidd finds in his listeners is a belligerence, born of Union occupation without any promised Federal help, if anything, Federal interference. When protests break out, all he can do is assuage and sympathize and encourage. "Times are hard. We all need to do our part. All of us. We're all hurtin'. These are difficult times."

He might as well be speaking to us.

Outside of Wichita Falls, he comes across a wagon overturned by some violent, unnatural means. He dismounts, warily taking his rifle, and moves down the road, ears sharpened and eyes peeled for signs of life...or malice. What he finds is a black man hanging from a tree, with a notice that Texas is a White Man's Territory. He has barely enough time to register this atrocity when a rustle in the scrub alerts him to someone else watching him. It is a young girl (Helena Zengel), blond, dressed in buckskin, and resistant to being captured, although capture her he does. The wagon's contents contain papers from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, giving the responsibility of returning this girl—named Johanna Leonburger—recently survived of a raid on Kiowa land to her nearest kin, allegedly living in Castroville, Texas.

A passing Union patrol provides no help, and just instructs Kidd to take her to the nearest Bureau office and drop her off, even as he protests that he can't be bothered with transporting a child—a child twice orphaned as it happens. The patrol has other concerns and his aren't theirs. At a checkpoint, Kidd talks to the closest Union official and is informed that the Bureau rep is on the reservation and won't be back for three weeks, so Kidd can either stay or deal with it himself. He chooses the latter, grousingly, and gets outfitted with a wagon, supplies, and a contraband gun—Kidd only has bird-shot in his rifle—by a former Infantryman of his, who warns him that the kid is wild, and then is proven right, when "Johanna" disappears while Kidd is off reading the news. Kidd finds her that night in the pouring rain on a riverbank pleading with a passing Kiowa caravan to take her back, that neither hears her, nor seems to care.

That burden, that pilgrimage, takes up the bulk of News of the World, maybe the most leisurely film director Paul Greengrass has ever made (but then he hasn't made a Western before...). Adapted—rather freely—from the best-seller by Paulette Jiles, it follows Kidd and Johanna (her Kiowa name is "Cicada") on the long trip to Castroville, episodically beset by obstructions natural and man-made that impede their journey, usually in the vicinity of some hard-scrabble settlement that will one day turn into a strip-mall suburb in modern Texas.

Greengrass' game-plan is simple: begin with a slow drone-driven shot of the landscape (most of the film was shot in New Mexico), then locate Kidd and kid in it, and take it from there. The hardships include a gang of ruffians who seem hell-bent on buying (if it comes to that) Johanna for their own purposes, an abattoir of a settlement slaughtering buffalo and ruled by an autocratic kingpin, a wagon disaster, a Kiowa band that keeps an eye on them, and a sandstorm that seems to come out of nowhere...all that besides the usual hazards of running out of provisions—especially water—and the usual feeding schedules of horses.

Only in the wagon-wreck is there any semblance of the Greengrass shaky-cam, cuisinart-editing that we've come to associate with his Bourne films or past work. The camera is still a might' restless, but, generally, the film provides good screen-capture material without the customary blurring that usually comes with Greengrass. It's not leisurely, by any means, and the editing still cuts away just before you expect it to, which provides a fair amount of subliminal tension, even if you're wondering just how long this trip is going to be without a bathroom break.

But—as in a lot of Westerns—it's the journey that's important. There's more to Kidd's traveling than news-gathering. He's avoiding something, going back to San Antonio, where he left his wife to go off to war. He hasn't been back since, and the extended travel gives us time to slowly come to terms with Kidd and to Johanna and their shared slice of life and journey. They're both untethered souls—Kidd with his memories and Johanna, twice-orphaned and belonging nowhere, form a bond of necessity and circumstance.

As they travel, Kidd tries to teach her English, and to that end—and because it makes her responses easier—he learns Kiowa, and is stunned to learn that she also can speak a little German, remembered back from before her first family was killed in a Kiowa raid, and, once adapted into a Kiowa family, seeing them killed in a Cavalry ambush. Though they're traveling the same path, Johanna's retraces the past, while Kidd's journey is one trying to forget it. Same route, different destinations.

Hanks' character in the book is supposed to be 71, and that's a far stretch for the actor. The screenwriters make him younger, without the long history of soldiering; Hanks' Kidd has had enough of it with his participation in the most recent one. Hanks does lend a weary, lived-in feel to his Kidd, but is so internalized that he's a bit of a mystery. Hanks is best when he has someone to play off of, and his work and the movie come alive when he comes across his stray charge, who's short of talk. Zengel has a performance both studied and spontaneous, where it seems like she's making it up as she goes—despite having to speak in three languages, English, Kiowa, and German—it is a naked and guileless performance. I don't care how good Hanks is, the movie lives and dies by her work in this film, and the movie seems to heave aloft whenever she's on the screen. 

News of the World doesn't jolt along as most Greengrass films do. It meanders, but doesn't poke. And has that tense element of film-storytelling that entices: with a big frontier out there, wild and loose, what will happen next, what lies around the next bend? With the nation cleaved in two, suspicions of the next stranger you run into, the corrupt grasping for power, and a sizable distance of time and space between rumor and truth, anything can happen, and one's hopes and future can seem, at best, tremulous. 

What strikes one as one watches News of the World unfold is that nothing has changed much...except the guns have gotten better.

The Bourne Ultimatum

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

Bourne ...Again?

I read "The Bourne Identity" decades ago, back when there was still a "Carlos, the Jackal" wandering the Earth, discriminately causing focused havoc and then disappearing. No one had seen him. He had never been photographed, and his reputation as an international terrorist (back in the day, when it had an odd, ghoulish glamour to it) was known world-wide. I bought the book for the "Carlos" angle, and dove into it eagerly.

I hated it. One of the dullest "thrillers" I've ever read, it seemed like it would never end. I wanted to have amnesia just to forget it after finally making it to the last page. It was made into a Richard Chamberlain mini-series which I never saw, and then into a film back in 2002. At the time of its premiere, there was no feeling that it would amount to anything, after all, it starred Matt Damon as Bourne, and his last couple of movies tanked quickly. There'd been a ton of re-shoots and the opening delayed for six months. All bad signs.

So, when I finally caught up with it, I was surprised to find it a good, credible thriller. How? Tony Gilroy's screenplay threw out the book, and kept the "amnesiac assassin" part. Doug Liman's direction kept the thing moving, the fights were spectacular, and even the tired concepts like a car chase through Paris were done with a great deal of panache. It also had a great supporting cast with Famka Potente, Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Julia Stiles and Clive Owen. Paul Greengrass followed up with an equally spectacular version of The Bourne Supremacy and he's the man in charge of "Ultimatum."

As an exercise in montage, it's absolutely amazing. I rarely saw a shot held for more than five seconds. Greengrass has such a command of what he's shooting and is such a whiz supervising the cut, that you get just enough information to propel you forward--no more, no less--but you never lose a sense of where things are, and the danger the protagonists appear to be in (as opposed to, say, Michael Bay who cuts just as much but never with the discipline of story-telling that Greengrass does). Case in point: there's a long, protracted fight (of course, one of several) in a Tangier apartment. At one point, it heads into the kitchen most of it done in an overhead shot, presumably to hide the stunt-doubles. Now I was watching pretty closely, but, as is inevitable in the kitchen, a knife becomes involved, but I never saw it. I only HEARD it.

Just enough information to advance the plot. It is fascinating to watch.

But despite that, one has to confess that The Bourne Ultimatum has little to differentiate it from The Bourne Supremacy, or The Bourne Identity, other than there are key plot-points, like "The Story Begins" or "A friend is killed." This one picks up immediately where Supremacy ends. Some personal details are cleared up, but it's basically "run to Moscow/London/Tangier/New York and avoid detection/fight/chase." All cleverly done, mind you...but it's barely different from what we've seen before. There is a resolution of sorts, which distinguishes this entry, but that's about it. And, amusingly, the whole thing wraps up with a circular story-telling logic that puts us right back to square one.

"It's over when we've won!" bromides David Strathairn's anti-terrorism "deep cover" head*

With all the room for a sequel that this movie provides, I guess we haven't won yet.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, to be perfectly silly, here is the chance that the Producers had to have a hit song by changing the title to "Bourne 3." My lyrics for the Main Title song are as follows (to the tune of "Born Free")

Bourne "3"
As "3" as a trio
With fights of such brio,
Bourne "3," just like "1" and "2"

Bourne "3"
The Bourne Ul-ti-ma-tum
Not hard to cre-ate 'em
Just change the cars and locales

Bourne "3"
'cuz trilogies make dough!
The box-sets are in the store
in time for number "4!"

Bourne "3"
The last one that I'll see
It just don't intrigue me
Un-less it's freeeee!

* It's another great cast with Joan Allen and Julia Stiles returning--Greengrass makes maximum use of Stiles' lack of expressiveness--Scott Glenn, and Albert Finney, and a seemingly endless supply of stunt actors who look convincing carrying a gun.

Five Came Back

Five Came Back (Laurent Bouzereau, 2017) If you've ever cared to delve into the "Special Extra's" of some of your favorite DVD's, you might have seen the name of Laurent Bouzereau, a French director who has done a lot of producing/helming chores on many "Making of" features as well as a few soundtrack reconstructions. One word comes to mind when considering Bouzereau's work and that is "definitive"—once he's done a documentary on a film by Spielberg, or Hitchcock, or Scorsese, or DePalma, or Lucas, or Lean, or Bertolucci, you can pretty much say "Okay, that's been done, I don't need to see anything more about it" because Bouzereau's research is fastidious, his story-telling skills make the most esoteric points obvious to the untrained, and his attitude incessantly celebratory.

He has expanded his reach and, under Spielberg's "Amblin" shingle directed a 3 hour distillation of Mark Harris' extraordinarily well-researched book "Five Came Back," detailing the war-time careers of five Hollywood filmmakers who volunteered into the Army Signal Corps for the purposes of documenting the war, creating propaganda films for the public and educational films for the troops, with all the professionalism and artistry that they had to bear. The purpose was to "sell" the war and counter the propaganda efforts of the Axis powers, who were creating a new form with the use of film.

Guillermo del Toro takes on Frank Capra

It's a complex story of the life- and career-transforming effects on five very different directors—Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, George Stevens, and John Huston. The backgrounds and career-stages of the five couldn't be more diverse. Capra and Ford started their careers in the silent era, while Huston had just started directing films after a tenure as a screen-writer. William Wyler was an immigrant from the very theater where the war in Europe was taking place. George Stevens was known for making stylish comedies.

Francis Ford Coppola talks about John Huston

Bouzereau tells their stories, with archive footage—some of which has never been seen due to its graphic nature—the work of the film-makers, archived interviews with the five, and a chorus of contemporary film-makers who bridge the gaps in the narration (done by Meryl Streep) with anecdotes and analysis. The "new kids" take on a director apiece: Guillermo del Toro focuses on Capra, Steven Spielberg on Wyler, Lawrence Kasdan on Stevens, Francis Ford Coppola on Huston, and Paul Greengrass on Ford. 

Paul Greengrass' subject is John Ford.

The footage taken by Ford and Stevens is gruesome and unnerving, so much so that Ford walked to a French chateau for officers and went on a drinking binge that put him in a stupor for three days, ending his military service. Stevens continued on through The Battle of the Bulge and the opening of the Nazi concentration camps where he realized his job had changed from documenting to gathering evidence—he also had the temerity to re-stage the surrender of Germany outside when the setting proved to be too dark to photograph. Wyler spent so much time filming the crew of the "Memphis Belle" that he lost most of his hearing, and remained close to the crew for the rest of his life. Huston became adept at "faking" footage of war-time action, and his last film on "Battle Fatigue" was banned from being seen until the 1980's. Capra's film of "Know Your Enemy: Japan" was found to be so racist that even Gen. Douglas MacArthur refused to allow it to be seen by troops. 

Lawrence Kasdan goes over the service of George Stevens.

What the film really sells is the way the war changed the directors, as was apparent immediately after they came back from the war. Ford's first film was the decidedly downbeat They were Expendable, Capra made the despairing It's a Wonderful Life, Wyler directed The Best Years of Our Lives, about the struggles of returning veterans, while Huston made his long-planned exploration of the worst parts of human nature with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Stevens stopped making films for years, unable to shake what he'd experienced and made dramas instead starting with A Place in the Sun and, ultimately, The Diary of Anne Frank.

They emerged changed down to their souls and their outlook on life and their art.

Spielberg says he watches Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives every year.

Captain Philips

Written at the time of the film's release.

Shakin' the Cam/Rockin' the Boat
or
"Everything's Going to Be Okay"

Paul Greengrass, who has succeeded in bringing a visceral documentary feel to even his fiction films (The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum, The Green Zone) is back in "Based on a True Story" territory with Captain Phillips, which is about the 2009 cargo ship taken over by Somali pirates, which, in the course of events, resulted in its titular captain being taken hostage for ransom.

Currently, some of the crew of the hijacked cargo ship are in the midst of a multi-million dollar lawsuit with the Maersk line over the events and "in the press" are disparaging the movie's events and the character of Phillips ("anonymously" for legal reasons—as most heroes would do it) now that the movie is released.  Their peril was stopped hours after it began.  At that point, their safety was assured and the drama stopped. Phillips was stuck in a lifeboat with the pirates for a few days more, and faced an untenable situation that only seemed to worsen as the hours went on.*

Anyway, a lot of bad-mouthing about Phillips being portrayed as a hero in this situation. He's not (although the resulting PR feeding-frenzy-makers like to bandy the word "hero" about at the slightest positive act). He's a victim, more passive than aggressive, trying to survive the situation as much as possible. That much is clear. Earlier this week, we'd did a review about truth and fiction and the compromises film-makers make to save time, money and confusion. We're not willing to go over the same territory twice in one week.

So, how's the movie?

It's quite good, in that edge-of-your-seat uneasiness way. The drama—and melodrama—comes from the "unknown" factors and the "wild card" desperation of the pirates themselves (they're portrayed as excitable, drug-addled** child-men with no other options), simmering at the boiling-point that only intensifies when the scene shifts from the vast cargo ship to the tiny lifeboat that Phillips and the hijackers occupy for the next few days, while the ship's crewmen, the shipping company, and the Navy get their respective acts together. Those expecting a quick-cutting flying fist-fest ala "Bourne" are going to slunk away with pouty-mouths—there ain't that much action here, and when the film gets really good, there's no room for any. No, most of the movie is a waiting game, everybody waiting for an opportunity to make a killing, one way or another. And if something doesn't go anybody's way, there's an escalation of a few seconds until things calm down, then there's a lag where we're waiting for something to go wrong again, and it does...so that the film is an emotional roller-coaster ride for the audience (other than the evidence that Capt. Rich Phillips has his picture all over the place seeming very much alive).

Barkhad Abdi as the de facto leader of the pirates.
Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor, I'd like to see more of this guy.

So much of the film depends on the presence of Hanks in the starring role; we spend the most time with him and the actors portraying the Somali's, who have the same sense of menace throughout (although some pains are made to make sure that Barkhad Abdi's ring-leader, Muse, is set apart from the others—the others come down to "the driver," "the injured kid," and "the wild-eyed crazy one").  

It recalls a story about the marketing of Apollo 13, which originally had a poster of the perilous situation—the spacecraft leaking oxygen going around the dark side of the Moon—but fearing for their investment, the producers opted for one that had Tom Hanks front and center in a claustrophobic layout. The reason for this being that audiences might not care for the situation depicted in the earlier poster, but if there's a poster where Tom Hanks is worried that he's in trouble, that might bring a sympathetic audience in, hoping that the popular actor would attract a crowd. And so the actor-specific poster (despite an all-star cast) was substituted. One wonders if it might be the same reason that Executive Producer Kevin Spacey is not portraying Phillips; maybe folks wouldn't worry about Spacey so much, but Hanks' every-man persona might make a monetary difference at the box office. 

In any case, Hanks does a fairly good job at maintaining a veneer of calm while an undercurrent of panic roils through him. But where he really shines—to the point where it's amazing to see—is the way he projects the character's shock at the end of the film, and one has to applaud Hanks for displaying a total break-down without once making us recall his crying for a volleyball.*** Despite his reputation as a male version of America's sweetheart, he is a good enough actor to still surprise and move, over one's objections.

* My first question to those union sailors would be "If Phillips died, would you still be pursuing the lawsuit?" They're damned if they would, and damned if they wouldn't.

** In the film, they're constantly chewing khat.

*** That would be his loony-toons turn in Cast Away.  If I had a nickel...