Movie Review: "3:10 To Yuma"

Damn, that Christian Bale is a really really good actor. He is one of those cats who reviewers say "disappear" into roles. He is every bit as convincing as a 19th century Arizona rancher as he is as the privileged scion of Gotham City’s wealthy Waynes or as a deranged killer yuppie. And in 3:10 To Yuma he is on screen for almost the entire film, working with another great actor as his foil. Yes, Russell Crowe is a really really good actor too. It’s easy to forget this when he makes such a habit of getting in fights because he’s insecure. Few actors working today can do bad-ass like Russell Crowe. Or more to the point, likeable bad-ass. Crowe’s character Ben Wade (that’s a great Western name), may be the leader of a trigger-happy, bloodthirsty gang of deadly outlaws, but you’re not really supposed to dislike him. (His bad-assness is established at the end of the film’s first action piece when he calmly dispatches one of his own men as punishment for screwing up a stage robbery.) The real villain of the piece is Charley Prince, Wade’s sycophantic, psychopathic lieutenant. Speaking of good actors, Ben Foster plays Charley Prince and many people wouldn’t even realize it’s the same dude who played Russell, Claire Fisher’s whiny loser boyfriend on Six Feet Under. The two roles are polar opposites.

Christian Bale plays Dan Evans, a down-trodden rancher who gets no respect from anyone. Predictably, someone wants his land to sell to the railroad and is trying to drive him off. Dan Evans is so desperate for ducats that for $200 he agrees to escort the recently-captured Ben Wade to the town of Contention, and put him on the train of the title. And that’s when things get interesting. With Wade’s deadly gang in hot pursuit, his captors go down one by one in a series of excellent fights and action sequences.

Meanwhile, the outlaw and the rancher engage in some good old-fashioned male bonding. In most stories, there is one relationship that is the most important to the narrative. In this film, obviously, it’s between Ben Wade and Dan Evans. One of the main themes of the story is redemption, and both men use the other as the instrument of their redemption. The rancher, tired of feeling like a coward and a failure, insists to the bitter end on doing the honorable thing and finishing the job. Wade, a stone killer who describes himself as "rotten as hell," decides to do the decent thing and help out a decent man. It’s almost like the relationship you’d see between the cop and the mobster in a John Woo movie.

The film is more than capably helmed by James Mangold, who appears to be what you could call an "actors’ director." Looking at his resume, he clearly likes to mix it up genre-wise, but he elicits great performances from actors whether it’s in a biopic (Walk The Line), a time-bending rom-com (Kate & Leopold), a gimmicky thriller (Identity), or a heavy-on-the-emotion drama (Heavy). In CopLand, he reminded a lot of people that Sylvester Stallone can hold his own around heavyweights with names like Keitel and DeNiro. Crowe and Bale have a good chemistry in 3:10 To Yuma, and of course the film wouldn’t work as well as it does if they didn’t. Crowe, as the likeable bad-ass, gets most of the best lines, but Christian Bale gets several juicy scenes where he really gets to show off his skills. He is extremely compelling in these scenes. They are the emotional high points of the film. I don’t often have the experience of watching an actor who is so good that I can’t look away. Especially memorable and affecting is an interlude right before the climax when he talks to his son and insists the kid take off before the shit hits the fan.

There are some people who might complain that there isn’t really anything terribly original in this film. That is actually pretty accurate, but it’s also largely irrelevant. Most of this stuff you’ve already seen in another Western. (In fact, you might have seen it in the original 3:10 To Yuma, a 1957 film with Glenn Ford as Ben Wade and Van Heflin as Dan Evans.) There are Western stock shots, like swinging saloon doors, peppered throughout. Many of the characters are from Western central casting: there’s an amoral local magnate trying to run the protagonist’s family off their land, an overdressed, prissy railroad agent, a bespectacled doctor, and a grizzled old lawman. But so what? It’s a genre picture, and it’s a really good genre picture. (The Western is perhaps the most American of film genres, so it’s a little weird that the leads are played by an Australian and an Englishman.) It’s got great action sequences, great acting, and plenty of genuine emotion. So what if it’s not terribly original? It works!

Why I Hate Will Smith

Several times in the past few weeks, I’ve encountered metrobuses emblazoned with the phrase “Will Smith is going. Are you?” I don’t know what sort of event or activity these advertisements are advertising, and I don’t much care. In fact, Will Smith’s attendance or inclusion to just about anything would make me avoid it. I can’t stand Will Smith. I don’t care if he’s a huge box office draw (despite his limited range), the “most powerful actor on the planet,” or good-looking in a non-threatening way, or whatever. I can’t stand him.

I have no objections to the whole clean-cut and wholesome thing. There is nothing wrong with being either clean-cut or wholesome. I appear rather clean-cut myself. And I feel that modern American culture could probably use a little more wholesomeness. What causes me to detest Will Smith is his smugness about being clean-cut and wholesome. It’s great that his grandma told him not to cuss and to respect women. But dude, don’t brag about the fact that you don’t cuss in raps, as if that makes you better than other MCs. That’s obnoxious. In the words of the bard of Detroit, Mr. Marshall Mathers: “Will Smith don’t gotta cuss to sell raps, well I do, so f**k him, and f**k you too.”

The other thing I dislike about him is his constant pursuit of the lowest common denominator, whether musically or on film. His desire to be as well-liked as possible by as many people as possible causes him to shy away from anything remotely controversial, and thus, artistically challenging. Musically, this trend became most apparent when he parted ways with DJ Jazzy Jeff, who really was keeping him real (with the exception of the unfortunate “Boom! Shake The Room!”). This is also about the same time he contributed to the unfortunate trend of rappers using their real name, rather than creating a witty sobriquet. (I only approve of rappers using their real names if they are going to repeatedly use a screwed & chopped sample of themselves saying their name throughout their songs. Mike Jones!) And speaking of the lowest common denominator, what sort of rapper puts out a love song to his son? How sentimental and maudlin can you possibly get? Gag me with a shovel. He insists upon using samples from well-known songs by Stevie Wonder, Chic or The Clash, rather than actually working with producers who will come up with something interesting and new.

The main reason this is such a shame is that the erstwhile Fresh Prince is actually a really good rapper. The dude can flow. “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and “Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble” are deservedly ensconced in the pantheon of hip-hop classics. And “Summertime,” perhaps the duo’s greatest concoction, is one of the great jams of all time.

He has his defenders who will insist that he is a good actor. But that pursuit of the lowest common denominator is equally apparent when you examine his choice of movies. Let’s not forget that he has appeared in some truly God-awful films. He may have made Ali and Six Degrees of Separation, but he also made two Bad Boys movies. The first one was just piss-poor, but the second was so ludicrous and nonsensical that it actually crossed the line into camp. The only thing that saved these films was the comedic brilliance of the underrated Martin Lawrence. (Oh, and Gabrielle Union in the sequel. She’s got it going on.) Will Smith also appeared in Wild Wild West, which found two really talented actors (Kevin Kline & Kenneth Brannagh) slumming for a paycheck. He also was one of the leads in one of the worst blockbusters of all-time, Independence Day. In Enemy of the State his silly presence (combined with a bad script) created a mess that even Gene Hackman and Hollywood’s most underrated director couldn’t salvage. And the less said about “A Shark’s Tale” the better.

So, to sum up: I hate Will Smith.

Movie Review: "Transformers"

My expectations for this film were low, and they were met. Actually, Transformers exceeded my expectations, such as they were. The action sequences were bad-ass. I expected that. There were lots of really cool explosions. The CGI was awesome, so the robots looked really good, as the film did generally. I was expecting that. I also expected some silly imagery in the visual scheme of the film. Stuff like pilots running in slow-motion towards waiting jets with a hazy sky and a setting sun in the background, followed by close-ups shot from below of the jets swooping in between two office buildings. This is usually interspersed with a besieged authority figure (in this case, an underwhelming Jon Voigt as the secretary of defense) declaiming inspirationally. Mitchell Amundsen, the director of photography, worked on The Island, MI:III, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon and Bad Boys II, so he knows exactly what this sort of movie is supposed to look like.

Another thing I was expecting was a really weak script, one that was derivative, devoid of inspiration or innovation, and shot through with bad dialogue and cliches. Check. This was established with an implausible conversation among some soldiers right at the start of the movie. Some of the stuff in here is really absurd: "the NSA’s recruiting right out of high school now," someone remarks before we first meet a "signals analyst" who happens to not only be blonde and hot but also has a thick Tasmanian accent for some reason. What? (Observant D.C. residents will notice that after she leaves the Pentagon she then hails a cab at M Street & Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, which takes her to a house that is clearly in Southern California.) The Men in Black are here rendered as "Sector 7," a super-secret government organization (sure) founded by Herbert Hoover (uh-huh) that guards ancient alien technology (why not?) hidden far beneath the bowels of the Hoover Dam (yeah, right) using it to reverse-engineer the microchip and airplanes (as if). Of course, rather than having all of this revealed a little bit at a time, it spews forth in a blast of exposition two-thirds of the way into the film. It takes a while to get going. And it's too long.

Seriously, I do not understand how screenplays this poor get made into movies! It is not that hard to write an action movie with soul, one that combines believable characters with white-knuckled excitement. It is not so difficult to craft an adrenaline-pumping thrill ride that has sincere, affecting emotion, rather than pseudo-macho posturing and love stories as shallow as a kiddie pool. We need not sacrifice all substance for style.

That said, they did get some pretty good actors for this film. Josh Duhamel acquits himself capably as an army captain, and Megan Fox is not only a serious vixen, she makes the love interest three-dimensional and likeable. Anthony Anderson is underused, and makes the most of the poor lines that stereotype his character as a nerd, a coward and a glutton. That character is also a Redskins fan, which is pretty cool. He wears a Portis jersey throughout the film, so at least they got that right.

It’s kind of weird, when you first think about it, that Shia LaBeouf (best know for the Disney tween sitcom Even Stevens) is cast as the lead in a movie that cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars. But someone asked me yesterday if it was appopriate for children, and I replied, "well, it was made for adolescent boys." When you consider it from that aspect it totally makes sense to have an 11th grade protagonist. And Shia "Ou est" LaBeouf is pretty much perfect for the role. He’s not one of the cool kids, but neither is he a complete dork. He’s endearing and confident. The teenage boys who come to see this film will find it very easy to identify with and cheer for him. And, admittedly, he does get some pretty choice lines. To be fair, the script does have some funny parts to it. But perhaps not quite as many as there are parts that are unintentionally funny.

Transformers reminded me, more than anything else, of Team America. This is not surprising, considering the homies from South Park were parodying the whole ouevre of Messrs. Bay and Bruckheimer (who was not involved with this movie, although apparently Steven Spielberg was - if so, he didn’t exert nearly enough artistic guidance). This is especially true in a scene where fancy fighter planes blow the living crap out of a villlage located in "Qatar - The Middle East" with little regard for the locals or the American soldiers hanging about. Aside from the robots, anything you see in Transformers you probably saw in Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, The Rock, or Bad Boys. Perhaps I’m judging this film and those who made it too harshly. Movies like this are like twinkies, they’re filling but there’s no nutritional value, and that’s sort of the point. They’re called "popcorn movies" for a reason. Sometimes all you want is some slick photography, some hot babes, and some ass-kicking action sequences. I’m sorry if I sound like a crank. But this is the kind of action movie that gives action movies a bad name. There are filmmakers out there (James Cameron and Tony Scott come to mind) who prove it’s possible to make awesome action movies that have a heart. So I don’t really see the point in making one like this when you could make one like that.

The Rectification of the Vuldronaii

I have an annoying habit of repeating lines from movies. One of my favorite lines from Ghostbusters is spoken by Louis Tully as possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster as portrayed by Rick Moranis. This is not one I repeat often as it's long and difficult to remember. But it is kind of awesome:

"During the rectification of the Vuldronaii, the Traveler came as a large, moving torb. Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants they chose a new form for him - that of a giant sloar. Many shubs and zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the sloar that day, I can tell you!"

I found this on wikipedia, of course. It blows my mind that there is someone out there who has so much free time, and is so dorktastic, that he can actually sit there watching the DVD and pausing it so he can write down this ridiculous quote and place on the web. Bravo, dork. Bravo.

Book Review - "Death & The Maiden" by Ariel Dorfman

Reading plays is awesome, as is writing them. Telling a story without anything but dialogue is quite the challenge. And when one reads a play, you don’t have the actors one would normally rely upon to provide nuance. Ariel Dorfman intentionally refrains from naming the country where “Death & the Maiden” takes place, although it’s obviously Chile. This is an obvious attempt to reinforce the universality of the tale, and it succeeds. Leaving aside the deeply creepy feeling of being confronted by mankind at his worst, committing the most heinous crimes imaginable, the narrative and pacing are very strong in this play.

At this point I’ll provide a brief synopsis of the story: Gerardo Escobar and his wife Paulina are staying at their remote beach house. The unidentified country in which they live has recently reverted to democracy after an extended period of military dictatorship. Gerardo, a lawyer, has been appointed to head a truth and reconciliation committee. Years ago, shortly after the military seized power, Paulina was abducted and tortured. It is implied that the army was using her to get to Gerardo, a leftist student leader at the time. Paulina never gave him up during the torture, so Gerardo was never captured, and this unspoken fact continues to color their marriage. At the beginning of the play, Gerardo gets a flat tire and a Good Samaritan, Dr. Roberto Miranda, gives him a ride home. Paulina, who was blindfolded the entire time she was held prisoner, hears Dr. Miranda’s voice and recognizes it instantly. She is convinced that he was one of her torturers. That’s when things get crazy.

The character development is especially strong in “Death & the Maiden.” I have a theory that in most stories there is one relationship that is more important dramatically than any others. In this case, it’s the relationship between Gerardo and Paulina. Dr. Miranda is meant to be more of a puzzle, a monkey wrench thrown into the machinery of the Escobars’ marriage that forces a cathartic conversation that is long overdue. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the character development is the constant shifting of power among the three characters. Power, and its ability to brutalize the wielder, is one of the main themes.

I understand that the American premiere of the play had Glenn Close and Richard Dreyfus as the Escobars and Gene Hackman as Dr. Miranda. Great casting. I would highly recommend the movie version as well (here’s the IMDB entry: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109579/). Directed by noted ephebophile Roman Polanski, it stars Ben Kingsley as Dr. Miranda and Sigourney Weaver as Paulina. Gerardo is portrayed by the totally underrated English character actor Stuart Wilson. You may remember him from such films The Rock, Lethal Weapon 3, & The Mask of Zorro.