The Adjustment Bureau

"I Guess The Lord Must Be in New York City"
or
"Dicking Around with People's Lives..."

The stories of Philip K. Dick have provided all sorts of story-fodder for the movies for both good or ill: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, Next, and Impostor.

 

They feature the sort of high-concept story-spine that easily translates into genre-bending sci-fi/fantasy films that are the easiest thing to translate to the screen short of a superhero property. Just put a slight spin on a story concept—a police force that stops crimes before they happen, spies and detectives who are mentally undercover, a guy who can see into the future, but just eight minutes out—all odd concepts that illuminate the character dilemma in a way that a straight story might not highlight. You don't have to be a genius to "get" what the movie says. And the inevitable SFX look great on trailers.

So, here's The Adjustment Bureau, a paranoid conspiracist's validation of all things manipulated. Young senatorial candidate David Norris (Matt Damon) is about to lose an election big-time, due to some ill-considered party-decisions earlier in his life. In the men's room of the Waldorf, he practices his contrite, yet defiant acceptance speech, only to find that he is being overheard by Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt), who is evading hotel security after crashing a wedding upstairs.  It's a "meet-cute" as the two banter about Norris' loser-status and Elise becomes intrigued enough to plant a lip-lock on him. His campaign manager (the always welcome Michael Kelly) walks in just in time to catch this and bust it up to get Norris to the ballroom to admit defeat. I'd've fired him on the spot.

It's some time later and Norris is working for an investment capital firm with his manager. He's running a little late, so he doesn't notice a team of angular men in business suits and fedoras are shadowing him. One in particular—Harry (Anthony Mackie)—has an assignment: Norris must spill coffee on his shirt by 9:05 am, not any later. It's his job, says Agent Richardson (John Slattery), so don't screw it up. 

But, if he didn't, there wouldn't be a movie.

There's no use crying over un-spilled coffee, but as a result, the rest of the movie is the Team attempting to solve the mess the non-mess creates: Norris is able to catch his bus on-time, where he once again encounters Elise, and gets to work just in time to see the Pre-Destinators (my term) sweeping the office, the personnel frozen, and key players receiving a "mind-wipe." Norris catches on quickly, and tries to evade the invaders, only to find them around every office corner, calmly telling him that, really, he should take it easy and cooperate and "this" will all go a lot easier.

He wakes up in an empty warehouse, with his pursuers deigning to tell him the truth about things: "You've just seen behind the curtain you never knew existed."  They're a team of agents who manipulate events among humankind—a kind of Uber-illuminati ('"sometimes it's chance, sometimes it's us")—at the behest of "The Chairman." They lay down the law: He can't have a relationship with Elise, which David objects to ("Your entire world just changed and you're thinking about a woman?") as it's not in "the plan," and if he tells anybody about what he's seen, they'll make everyone think he's crazy, and "reset" him, leaving him basically lobotomized.* 

Norris is too much a free-thinker to obey the "button-down men of Fate" and the rest of the movie entails him "changing the curtains," as it were. It's very clever and director George Nolfi, (who wrote the screenplay for the similarly time-trippy Timeline, had fun adapting his screenplay "Honor Among Thieves" into what would become Ocean's Twelve, and was one of the team who wrote—and re-wrote—The Bourne Ultimatum) ingeniously keeps things moving at a good clip, while also staying one jump ahead of the story-complications inherent in the plot...while also doing enough cinematic sleight-of-hand to keep the Doubting Thomases in the audience from falling into plot-holes. He gets good performances out of everyone—allowing enough ad-libbing in the scenario to make it seem real and fresh, sort of a real-life version of the film's conceit of re-writing History in pencil before the Cosmic Ink dries. It's fast, fun, and fresh and avoids pretentiousness or taking itself too damn seriously. It is only after a little Time has passed that it feels a bit slight, but who could have anticipated that?

One thing is for sure: I gotta get me one of them hats!

* At that point I flashed on former CBS news-anchor Dan Rather walking down a New York Street and being attacked by men and all they said was "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"  Everybody acted like Rather had had "a spell," but I wonder if his attackers were wearing hats.

Last Night in Soho

Killing Two Birds with One Stone

or

Who Are you Wearing?

 

Edgar Wright's new film, Last Night in Soho, is his first horror/thriller film where the purpose isn't to make fun of them, where the emphasis is on the disorientation and not the whimsy (but don't worry, there are a lot of cheeky touches to it).

 

In it, a mousy fashion-design student, Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie—from Jojo Rabbit) moves to the big city of London to attend classes and achieve her goals of becoming au courant. But, as her grandmother (Rita Tushingham !!) warns her "London can be a lot." 

 

That it can be. Even in one time-line. Eloise has a rough first day, what with meeting her room-mate and a coven of snarky "mean girls" who occupy her dorm. It's tough on Eloise, who misses her Mum (she'd committed suicide when Eloise was a girl, but kept seeing images of her in the mirror back home). Finally, she decides to rent a room in Soho from Mrs. Collins (Diana Rigg !!) who's been there forever and wouldn't think of selling the place—"Too many memories".  That should have been put in the advert.

Eloise loves the place, seeing as she's obsessed with the 1960's. She's constantly spinning the old EP's—traveling, she takes an over-loaded suitcase and a record-player—and her fashion-sense runs to the eye-popping 60's. It's the place she'd most like to go-go. But be careful what you're wishin' and hopin' for. She goes to sleep with the neon buzz of the "Soho" sign right outside her window, and with the R.E.M blink of an eye, she finds herself back there, to find a world still fruging and twisting and swinging.

There's one little hitch, though. When she looks in the mirror—or any reflective surface—she sees somebody else's reflection, a woman who turns out to be named Alexandra (Anya Taylor-Joy)—"Call me Sandy"—an aspiring singer-dancer who wants to be the "next Cilla Black." Eloise and Sandy are tied to each other as they roam around the "Cafe de Paris" separated only by a silvered plate of glass, as Eloise watches her make her way through the club, fending off would-be suitors until finally latching on to Jack (Matt Smith), the loungiest of lounge-lizards, who promises to get her into "the business."

But, as Eloise witnesses whenever she goes to sleep, the path of success is littered with slimy, handsy men making promises and repeated pick-up lines that end up in disappointment and being used. As the old saying goes "nostalgia isn't what it used to be" and Eloise finds these visions only adding to her "outsider" stress and fears about life in the big city. Could Alexandra's cautionary tale be something that Eloise is inextricably tied to? And when that tale leads to murder is there anything she can do from being drawn into that fate?

Wright's ability to use effects and imagery are magical here—at times, in a moment's flash, Alexandra becomes Eloise and vice versa—so, one has to keep on one's toes, and the soundtrack is filled with a British Invasion of hits commenting slyly on the action going on-screen. The relationship between the two women is the strongest of the ones on-screen and Wright's tricks to achieve the doppel-ganging leave you utterly convinced, as things get darker and darker and darker.

One wishes the ingenuity required to pull it off extended to the screenplay. Oh, there are clever touches in the details throughout, and one sits on the edge of one's seat, anticipating the next twist. But, the longer the film goes, the more one realizes that time is slipping away, and Last Night in Soho feels longer than it's less than 2 hour running time would suggest—lately I've been seeing things with much longer lengths that seemed to zip by far more quickly. Perhaps there are one or two too many red herrings crowding the narrative—at one point, I was losing any sympathy for Eloise when a "what is she concentrating on them for" question crept in and lodged in my skull. Ultimately, it's merely a diversion, although it's rather short-lived (but then what do you expect in a thriller/horror film?).

But, it put enough doubt in my mind to make me question exactly what Wright was trying to say in this movie. Horror films, have—at their slimy core—some caution, some elemental lesson, that they're preaching in the most ghastly way. Is Last Night in Soho a plea to live in the moment? That seeking revenge against one's oppressors is a fool-hardy act? That victims can be just as dangerous as the ones who attack? Lord, I hope not. I just wish the intellect that kept the threads of who's who had been used to clearly say what's what. I was disappointed and somewhat appalled.

Get Smart

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

"Would you believe..." written a MONTH after the film's release...

"86'd"

The latest film to make the unsteady transition from television to big-screen started out as a series collaboration between comedy power-houses Buck Henry and Mel Brooks, and is fondly remembered as a sharply-written schtick-filled send-up of the guns and gadgets formula of the James Bond series, starring Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 of CONTROL (the enemy agency was named KAOS). I have fond memories of the sure-fire laugh from my father at the finely-timed closing of a security door on Max's nose at the tail-end of each episode.

When it was announced that "Get Smart!" (the series had an exclamation mark, which seems to have gotten lost somewhere) would be made into a new film, * and that Steve Carell would be playing Smart, it seemed either a very shrewd move or a very bad one. Carell would be hard-pressed to match Adams' energy or his high nasal whine of a voice, and it's hard to imagine Smart without either of those.

Don Adams' crack timing was also something that would be hard-pressed to duplicate--it was Adams alone that made the constantly re-used "Cone of Silence" gag work, with just a razor's edge of silence before his "Eh?!" and that was done in two-shot with the unflappable set-up of Ed Platt as CONTROL's Chief. Plus, "Get Smart!" was sharply written--a "MAD" magazine pastiche of parody, comedy schtick, slapstick and pop-culture references (along with enough sure-fire repeatable gags from Henry and Brooks to fill out the half-hour). Even at its worst, "Get Smart!" was sure to entertain.

So, one approached the movie with hopeful skepticism. Carell has failed as often as he's succeeded, and the ghost of Don Adams would be tough to emulate or shake off. Fortunately, there's not a problem; Get Smart is hilarious (occasionally), in many of the same ways as the series, but also with its own unique breezy rhythm that ekes out belly-laughs from sharp writing and performances. Only the casting of Terence Stamp (never a good clown) as KAOS operative Siegfried disappoints (series Siegfried Bernie Kopell makes a too-brief appearance). Anne Hathaway manages to be funny, vulnerable and commanding as Agent 99 (at one point donning a Barbara Feldon page-boy wig) who's a bit more Emma Peel than the original. Alan Arkin is a fine Chief, dry as dust, and "The Rock" a pleasant comedian. Bill Murray makes a cameo as the CONTROL agent, played by David Ketchum, that always hid in lockers, mail-boxes, garbage-bins.

But it's Carell's movie. The only gags he can't make work are, strangely enough, the old reliable ones from the show, and they're trucked out as if they were some sort of duty that had to be performed, reluctantly. But he does re-create the Smart persona in his own style--arrogant, foolish, running on fumes rather than juice, and all-too-willing to ignore his failings. But played sedately, and with an odd sort of rabbit-y vulnerability. He makes Max work, and that's a bit of a miracle, given Adams' identification with the character.

It's a good lark, trotting out bits from Bond and other spy-movies to make fun of (like a complicated fight in free-fall, a "Jaws"-type comic villain, and the gadgets), but in its final half-hour loses its good will with an extended chase involving planes, trains and automobiles that could have easily been sacrificed to get to the finale borrowed from The Man Who Knew Too Much. If, "Get Smart" had stayed smart...and funny...without depending on the too-familiar formula of vehicular mayhem, it would have been one of the more refreshing comedies to have come to theaters in a long time.

Missed it by that much.

* There already has been a "Get Smart!" movie, starring original Max, Don Adams, called The Nude Bomb, which tempting fate with that title, proved to be a bomb at the box-office.

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (Richard Donner, Richard Lester, Michael Thau, 2006) Perhaps one should call it "The Richard Donner Cut" in name only. This is because Superman's original director, Richard Donner, had very little to do with this restoration, re-assemblage and re-edit,* other than give it his tacit approval—and express amazement that anyone cared so much to find all of the lost footage that he had shot (while simultaneously directing both Superman: the Movie and Superman II as was the plan) and assemble it to make some semblance of the film that he and the film's final script-writer Tom Mankiewicz (after the initial draft by Mario Puzo, the revised script by Robert Benton, and David and Leslie Newman) had in mind from the beginning. Donner has always been appreciative of how his efforts on the film have been appreciated, but moved on after he was fired.

But a lot of fan-boys did care, noting a slight change of tone in the three years between I and II. A lot had happened: the firing of Richard Donner over "creative differences" (those being he spent too much money, he cared too much about the movie to worry about the budget, and he wasn't a toadie to the producers), and the replacement with Richard Lester, no slouch as a director, but who didn't give a rat's ass about superhero movies. Web-sites had for years been acruing sightings of bits and pieces of "Donner" grail from International versions and "Expanded" television showings, and Michael Thau who assembled this thing, created new effects (a bit crude), re-edited John Williams' original score and Ken Thorne's work on II,, and grabbed whatever footage he could (including for one crucial scene only available from Margot Kidder's and Christopher Reeve's auditions) to create this dog's breakfast of a "movie."** It is incomplete with big holes in the narrative, and with only crucial Lester-directed scenes grudgingly included—Donner and Mankiewicz grouse and complain about the changes made to "their" movie in the commentary track but do give Lester (never named) and the re-writers some credit once. It makes a one-on-one comparison dodgy and a bit unfair, in both movies' favors.

The first thing one misses (after goggling over alternate takes and a wealth of new Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman footage--all shot by Donner, he only had them for a limited amount of time) is the cracker-jack/spin-on-a-dime editing of Stuart Baird, who cut the first Chris Reeve "Superman" film. The relative pace of this film, by comparison, is slack, alarmingly so. Donner and Baird in the first were far more brutal in their cutting and it made for a dynamic experience.
But I have to give the nod to the Donner cut, first, because they remained faithful to the source, and, second, because they made a far-more interesting two-movie arc than combining the first with Lester's Version. Let me explain.

Whatever money the Salkinds made, they blew it artistically, because "Superman"/"Superman II" as Donner/Mankiewicz intended, was one of those rare things--a "religious film without Jesus." Yes, there are those direct parallels that Bryan Singer picked up on (and made too much out of in his "Superman Returns") of the Father who bequeaths his Only Son for Mankind. But it goes further. It also makes a direct, dramatic use of that ambiguous phrase Jor-El line "The Son becomes the Father, and The Father, the Son." It brings closure to Superman's ties to his home-planet and abandons him completely to Earth. It also shows why Kal-el deserves the name of "Superman." And it showed a much better performance by Christopher Reeve, than was ever displayed again in the series. The actor in Reeve played Part One, so he could sink his acting chops into Part Two. Not using the Donner segments robbed people of seeing a pretty incredible Reeve performance.

Jor-El, Superman's father--played by Marlon Brando, plays a critical role in Part II. When Lois Lane's movie-length attempt to unmask Clark Kent as Superman comes to fruition, they whisk away to his Fortress of Solitude for some alone-time, and Dad does not approve, chastising Kal-el for hubris and selfishness, telling him his reward is the happiness his good works provides. But Kal wants Lois ("this human," Jor-El dismisses her), and to do that, he must live as one of them, and have his powers removed permanently by a "red-sun generator,"*** which will make him an ordinary man. Kal-El steps into the chamber and as the process strips him of his powers, Jor-El casts a disapproving look at Lois Lane.
The human couple, Clark and Lois, leave the Fortress, the diner scene happens where Clark gets beat up, and learns about the Kryptonian villains taking over the U.S. government. Realizing what he's done, and there's no one but him who could stop them. he treks back to the empty Fortress, the crystal controls he used to communicate with Jor-El obliterated. Kal-El breaks down, acknowledges his weakness and mistake and hears nothing in reply. Finally, he cries out "Father!"Donner (and Thau) cuts to a far-shot as the cry echoes in the crossed beams of the Fortress. And one recalls the words of Christ on the Cross: "My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?"

But there is a shred of hope. Or a shard. Amidst the rubble, the original green, glowing crystal that Kal found in his Exodus-ship is still glowing, and with it, he is able to contact Jor-El one last time.

Jor-El admonishes Kal for his transgression, and tells him that there is only one way to get his powers back, and that is to transfer the final energies that allows them contact; for Superman to regain his powers will destroy the last vestiges of energy that is the Jor-El "program." Kal-El is reluctant, but Jor-El begins the process, appearing to him corporeally to touch as they say goodbye and to transfer his power to his son, destroying himself: The Son becomes the Father, and the Father becomes the Son.
Kal is knocked unconscious, the other crystal conduits are destroyed. There's the battle with the Kryptonian villains (but without the expanding sticky "S"-shields and simulacrum tricks, per Newman and Lester--what? Superman's powers aren't enough?), Luthor is carted away, and then the coda: Superman flies Lois out of the Fortress, turns, gives it one last look, opens his eyes...wide, and destroys the Empty Fortress with his heat-vision. Here are frames from that sequence, without any further explanation--but one more Bible quote:
"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things."
1 Corinthians 13:11

Yeah, I wouldn't call it "The Richard Donner Cut." I'd call it "The Last Temptation of Superman."

For all its patchwork quality, for its holes and inconsistent effects, I'd still have to say I prefer "The Donner Cut," as it maintains the consistent vision of the first movie and brings the story proper to a conclusion. The Lester Version let go of the internal logic for thirty pieces of silver, and undermined the biblical implications to replace it with slapstick and inconsistencies from out of left-field. One is left unsatisfied with both, and pining for what would have been the greatest super-hero film ever made.

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* Donner was much more involved with "The Extended Cut" that Warner Brothers commissioned after Christopher Reeve's death, where Donner was able to go in and add some sequences that the producers and Warner Brothers wanted removed to cut down the length of the film—and in that way squeeze in a couple more showings per night at your local theater.

** Okay, some history: Between the first and second films, Donner was "let go" (probably because he was carefully doing his directing chores and running over budget —to the point where filming of the second film was cut short) and Lester (a "fast" director who usually "printed" his first take) was hired. For financial reasons (the producers didn't want to pay him his full salary), all of Marlon Brando's scenes for the second film were scrapped and Susannah York brought back in to play Lara, Kal-el's mother (who never appeared post-Krypton explosion in the first film) from beyond the grave. Gene Hackman's footage was used, but cut way down. Why? In order for Lester to receive the director credit, he must have directed at least 50% of the movie, and so a lot of Donner footage was edited out to bring about that mathematical percentage, thus, Hackman's role of Lex Luthor was greatly reduced. A pity as Hackman is terrific in the movie (in Lester's scenes, Lex Luthor is usually facing AWAY from the camera so as not to see that a stand-in was used).

*** Okay, non-comic-book nerds bear with me: See, Krypton, Superman's home planet, had a red sun, so bathing him in "red solar energy" takes away all the powers that Earth's "yellow sun" gives him, and at this point everything breaks down because once Kal-el goes outside, he should get his powers back, but let's just GO with it, because by the movie's internal logic, he should still have a "dense molecular structure" that makes him invulnerable, and he could still put up a fight with that. But why bring all this up, really? It's all dogma, which, I guess, is appropriate. Comic books, like a religion, require the faith of a child, willing to believe.

Toby Dammit or: Never Bet the Devil Your Head

Toby Dammit: Or Never Bet the Devil Your Head (Federico Fellini, 1968) Fellini's adaptation of the obscure Edgar Allen Poe story of a rake whose egotism gets the better of him has been making the rounds this year at the film festival circuit and receiving the attention and the acclaim it is due.

Made as part of a European Poe omnibus (and released in the U.S. by AIP, who'd been producing their own Poe adaptations), under the title Spirits of the Dead aka Histoires Extraordinaires or Tre Passi Nel Delirio, it is Fellini's 30 minute masterwork that the film is best remembered for. The other adaptations were Roger Vadim's heavy-breathing "Metzengerstein" starring Jane and Peter Fonda as incestuous cousines, and Louis Malle's dull S & M piece "William Wilson," despite starring both Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon.

But, the best of them—by a head—was Federico Fellini's contemporary take on Poe's story of a rake who makes one wager too many.

As the Fellini piece was the Grand Finale, I wouldn't be surprised if folks walked out of it before his segment. If they did, they missed a chilling masterpiece. 
Fellini transposes the premise to a Hellish 1960's Italy where international film-star Toby Dammit (Terence Stamp), in a perpetual state of drunkenness, is whisked off a plane to a television interview, and then feted at a party filled with high-rollers and press to celebrate the start of production of a religious-themed Western.*

Fellini spends much of the time satirizing the fawning excesses of the film industry and the predatory/co-dependent nature of the Press, and proves he certainly knows how to throw a party. Dammit keeps drinking and sinking into a deeper funk when he's seduced by an Italian "hostess" (to the accompaniment of Ray Charles' cover of "Ruby") and turns philosophical when a reporter asks him if there is a devil, which Fellini turns into a simple, unsettling Vision.** 

The evening ends when Dammit's handlers take him off-leash, giving him the disposal of a sports-car. There follows a nightmarish "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" through the narrow Rome streets (which clearly influenced the "Durango '95" sequence of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange).

The high-octane combinations cannot end well. But Fellini steers it back to Poe for an appropriate, ambiguously grisly finish. Clocking in at 37 minutes, Toby Dammit is a compact mini-movie, but is filled with imagination and good ideas. Were it not for Nights of Cabiria, this Fellini vision of Rome as Hell would be my fave Fellini.

* Peter O'Toole was supposed to star, and dropped out. Earlier in the decade he'd played all of the Angels in John Huston's "The Bible," produced by Dino DeLaurentiis. Perhaps it was a little too "on the nose."

** You watch things, you learn things.  Fellini's version of the Devil might have been inspired by fellow Italian Mario Bava, who in 1966, had featured a devilish little blond girl in Kill, Baby, Kill. Fellini's image is more powerful, but...

Valkyrie (2008)

Written at the time of the film's release.

"Tom Cruise Takes on Adolph Hitler, Single-Handed"
or 
What do You Do About a 800 Lb Gorilla?

Man, they (the critics) have been rough on this movie and particularly Tom Cruise. It's been "Nacht der Langen Messer" for a lot of gossip columnists who fancy themselves critics (but had second-hand facts from their "sources").

Among the rumors that were cackled about was Cruise's lack of a German accent (there aren't any in the film and Singer makes a big show of having Cruise narrate the beginning of the film in German--a rather stilted, halting German--before transitioning to English), that he rather grossly takes out a glass eye in the film (he does—with his back turned to the camera), that he does a weird Nazi salute (his character—the very real-to-history Count Von Stauffenberg—gets away with forgoing the usual "nicety" throughout the film until, in one of the film's best scenes, the War Minister (Tom Wilkinson) calls him on it—"I would hear you say it, Colonel"—and Stauffenberg, irritated that 1) he can't get away without it and 2) he's being forced to give allegiance to a man he's conspiring to kill, pointedly turns and yells the "Heil" while giving the standard right-handed salute—only he doesn't have a right hand, having lost it in the war, the stump of his arm protruding from his jacket, making a point. Good scene, that.

Look, I don't like Tom Cruise, either. His performances have dragged down many a movie, especially the vain-glorious ones. The man seems incapable of portraying more than one emotion at a time, and whenever his character must choose options Cruise falls back on an open-mouthed blank look.* Listening to him in interviews I get the impression that his acting process runs something like: "I have to do this, then I have to do this, then I have to do this, and then I have to do this."

But, though he's the King of Hollywood and the "Jesus Christ of Scientology," one could cut him some slack; none—none—of those rumors are true in the final analysis, and no one making those rumors is held accountable for them, shoddy and unprofessional as they are. But that's "Entertainment Reporting" for ya.**

Enough about the 800 pound top-gorilla. How's the movie? Good, actually. It is a true story (with a couple lies in it) and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie and Director Bryan Singer (the team behind, and still trying to top, The Usual Suspects) lay everything out in a clear time-line, do their best to cast faces that have a 1940's German feel and maintain the illusion that it's that time and place. They keep the tension taut and make the most of the story's quirks and coincidences—the kind that make you say "if it weren't true, you couldn't write this." The fascination of the story is that the German bureaucracy that was running the war (badly, in the minds of the conspirators) was just as responsible for the conspiracy coming apart, and Stauffenberg was the only one with the Hoden who would push if there was any chance of success, both to his credit and the conspiracy's detriment. It's a real-life version of the "Mission: Impossible" scenario, something that Cruise is all-too familiar with.

What's nice is that the film-makers turn the process of pushing through policy-changes into tense set-pieces that have just as much verve as a pistol shoot-out. In fact, there is a small fire-fight later in the film and getting Hitler to sign a policy-change (the "Valkyrie" operation of the title) is far more exciting. And the central gambit—there's a satchel with a bomb in it that's set to go off in a room full of men—is the classic Hitchcock example of tension versus surprise. The film is top-heavy with fine British actors: Wilkinson, Terence Stamp (another fine portrait of an ineffectual pol), Bill Nighy, Eddie Izzard (!!), Ian McNeice, Bernard Hill, Tom Hollander, and Kenneth Branagh. That's a lot of impressive talent for a movie not written by Richard Curtis. And they're all spot-on. Branagh is particularly good as an initial conspirator who is whisked away to the front before the bombing of the Führerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze.

If there's a problem with the movie, it is Singer's sometimes too-elaborate direction—the most egregious example being a circular camera move that catches up to a record (and it's a 78!) so that it can stabilize on the label to read the word "Walkure" while the rest of the world keeps on spinning—an awful lot of effect for not much return. As such it parallels the story of the movie.*** The film of that story—of conscience over the brutal status quo—is much more successful.

* As opposed to Brad Pitt, another Hollywood pretty-boy, but who's managed to pick interesting roles (on occasion) and has grown as an actor of depth and subtlety. Something Cruise used to do. Cruise once was attached to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

** My favorite bit of bone-head journalism from Hollywood came from the "reporter" who asserted that Russell Crowe had gone off the deep-end because he said something about "Bob being his uncle." Shhyeah! Been out of Hollywood much? Then, there was MTV "reporter" Kennedy who asked Martin Landau what the heck HE was doing at the premiere of Tom Cruise's first Mission: Impossible movie, and he said "I was in the show!" to her stupefication. "You should READ about it" was his irritated reply.