Public Enemies

Michael Mann is a wonderfully consistent filmmaker. Not only are his films very good, but he also revisits the same themes and tropes in nearly every one of them. This sounds like a recipe for boredom, as if the same thing happens over and over again, but that is not the case. Instead, it makes for captivating viewing once the audience knows what to look for.

For example, professionalism is a Mann staple. Every one of Mann's lead characters is extremely dedicated to their line of work, be it Crockett and Tubbs' dedication to their undercover aliases in 2006's Miami Vice, or Neil McCauley and Vincent Hannah's stubborn affiliation to their respective professions in 1995's Heat--McCauley the career criminal and Hannah the stop-at-nothing cop. This will not be so much a straight up review as an analysis of how Public Enemies fits into the Mann mold (specifically in relation to Miami Vice and Heat), and in the occasional way that it doesn't. So to get it out of the way up front, Public Enemies is an excellent film and more importantly a welcome addition to the Mann filmography.

The aforementioned professionalism angle is there from the first scene, in which Dillinger breaks his gang out of an Indiana prison. Dillinger doesn't waste time with the banter that has come to characterize crime movies of late, the few lines he does have work to establish his character rather than give the audience a cheap laugh. His charisma and confidence is front and center, but never overbearing.

Not only does this scene establish Dillinger as a professional, it also sees the introduction of other Mann tropes. One is the revered mentor, something that also shows up in Heat in reference to McCauley's "30 second rule." In this film, however, the "mentor" is actually shown to the audience, if only for a few minutes. While Dillinger is freeing his gang, the audience gets the sense that he is paying special attention to Walter Dietrich, the man who taught him the ins-and-outs of bank robbery. A mistake made by an jumpy criminal alerts the guards, and as Dillinger's men make their way to the getaway car, Dietrich is shot and killed.

Dietrich's mentor's death is not a common Mann-ism, but the way Dillinger deals with the man responsible for it is. Mann's professionals do not deal with thrill seekers, thugs, or anyone who makes a mistake to endanger their various criminal activities. As such, the man is thrown out of the car and left by the side of the road. However, as much as the professional characters like Dillinger hate these loose cannons, they are a very common feature of Mann's work. Heat had the psychotic Waingro, and Miami Vice had the jealous and ruthless Jose Yero, both of whom figured into the plot in important ways. What's more interesting is the way that the professionals actually gravitate toward these people. Crockett and Tubbs are burned by Yero, McCauley is burned by Waingro, Dillinger is eventually burned by another loose cannon, Baby Face Nelson.

But at this point, Dillinger has everything at his disposal. At a safe house, he has new cars brought to him, the sheriff promptly paid off to keep his haven safe. Soon, the gang is back to robbing banks, as demonstrated by a particularly effective hold up sequence. Of particular note is the way that Mann forgoes showing the audience the meticulous planning that presumably went into the robbery. Instead of a long lead up, showing the gang casing the bank, figuring out the best way to take down the score, these confident professionals are shown in their element, in action.

Watching them work, the audience's understanding of them as high order operators, as causal agents, as predators, grows. When the bank manager is unable to find the correct key to open up the vault--stalling for time--Dillinger simply pistol whips him and tells him that he can "be a dead hero or a live coward." Dillinger is all business, but still somewhat polite--he only turns to violence when something threatens the success of the heist. It is similar to McCauley explaining that people with heart problems can lean against the wall instead of getting on the ground during Heat's heist scene. These men are not inhuman, but they are on a clock.

Dillinger's antics put him on J. Edgar Hoover's radar, and a team of FBI agents is dispatched to Chicago to catch the criminal. Their Agent in Charge is Melvin Purvis bringing another one of Mann's tropes into the film, the cop/criminal dichotomy. This differs from the way it is presented in Mann's other films, specifically Heat, where the cop and criminal, though on opposite "sides" are very much the same person. Here, Dillinger is all confidence and charisma, while Purvis is commanding but considerably more understated than Dillinger. He is all about the job, subservient to the head of the FBI, while Dillinger answers to no one but himself.

This difference between the Dillinger and Purvis is also evident in the casting of the two characters. Dillinger is played by Johnny Depp, an actor who is already a larger than life personality, much as Dillinger was in his day. Purvis is played by Christian Bale, an actor who even though has starred in a slew of recent movies, has a much more closely guarded off-screen personality. The audience doesn't know all that much about him, barring an on-set tirade. Both of them are great in their parts, immensely watchable.

Another trope that will be discussed is the power of women in Mann's films. Generally speaking, the main characters are involved in relationships with women outside of the criminal world. Heat sees cop Vincent Hannah's marriage failing because of the demands of the job, while McCauley's romance with an unsuspecting graphic designer blooms to the point where he offers to take her with him when he leaves the country as a wanted man. Public Enemies sees Dillinger courting a non-criminal named Billie Frechette. In typical Dillinger fashion, the whole thing happens very quickly. Unlike Heat, however, Billie does not have the same sort of redemptive power that McCauley's woman does, nor does she have the penetrating ability to critique Dillinger's actions that Hannah's soon to be ex-wife does. At a racetrack, Billie expresses her disdain for Dillinger's criminal life, but toward the end of the film she is ready to leave the country with him. Billie has some of both, but to no end.

The final trope that will be discussed is the eventual undoing of Mann's criminal characters. These men are so dedicated to their respective ideologies that often they become prisoners of it, which leads to their downfall. For example, McCauley lives by a rule which dictates that he should not be involved in anything that he can't walk away from in less than thirty seconds. However, his obsessive need to get even with those who have betrayed him comes into conflict with the "thirty second rule" and traps McCauley. Instead of escaping as he should, he tries to off Waingro, who is being watched by police. By then it is too late for him to escape.

Like McCauley, Dillinger falls victim to his "live in the moment" ideology. His gang lost, he has no choice but to work with loose cannons that he should by all means avoid. The resulting botched bank robbery leaves Dillinger wounded, and one of the men nabbed at the scene of the crime is coerced into giving up Dillinger's Little Bohemia hideout to Purvis' FBI agents. He barely escapes Little Bohemia, then sets up plans to flee the country, much like McCauley does in Heat. But by the time he begins to look more than a day ahead, he is just as trapped as McCauley.

One could argue that the real star of the show is Mann's use of high definition digital photography. The picture is amazingly detailed, and Mann's generally incredible visual sensibility really gets the most from the technology. The climactic Biograph Theater sequence is absolutely stunning. The digital photography brings out the electric color of night time in the city, as opposed to the matte blacks that the audience is used to. Mann has been experimenting with digital photography since Collateral, perfecting its use in Miami Vice, and effectively employing it in Public Enemies.

Last summer, The Dark Knight seemingly redefined filmmaking by harnessing the IMAX format for crucial parts of the film. Mann's work here is revolutionary because he has introduced super-high definition without forcing moviegoers to pay a premium to see it in a special (albeit incredibly amazing) theater. Here, as long as the theater utilizes digital projection, the amazing picture is accessible to the moviegoer.

Moreover, his use of intense close ups gives the film an incredibly intimate feel, even though Dillinger and the story have always seemed larger than life. It often feels as though the viewer is no more than a foot away from the character or characters on screen, giving the action sequences incredible punch. Long shots are used sparingly, but are noticeable when employed because they are often extreme long shots. Especially memorable is the one used after Dillinger is shot down in front of the Biograph. It creates a very strange sensation in the viewer's mind because suddenly the characters that they have been so close to are suddenly very far away.

Finally, there is the question of the film's music. Since the television iteration of Miami Vice, Mann has always been incredible at finding the perfect song to fit the picture. Usually he culls from contemporary pop ('80s Vice is packed to the rafters with the decade's most popular music), but Public Enemies is a period piece, so any sort of contemporary music is out of the question. Instead, he digs deep and combines Eliot Goldenthal's beautiful orchestral score with a few songs of the '20s and '30s. It is yet another aspect that brings a feeling of realism to the film.

Public Enemies can be epitomized with a single line of dialogue. Fittingly, it comes from Dillinger himself. Discussing a potentially huge score with fellow gangster Alvin Karpis, he smirks and says, "We're having too much fun today. We ain't thinkin' about tomorrow." This ideology hangs over the entire movie in an increasingly terrifying way. At the outset, the Dillinger gang is on top of the world--they aren't making plans but the cash allows them to do as they please, and the authorities (lacking interstate jurisdiction) are powerless. In the end, however, Dillinger's day-to-day attitude proves to be his undoing. Dillinger is just as tragic as any of Mann's other criminal characters. By the time he begins to think about "tomorrow," it is too late for him to escape.

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Here's something I found online that I think is really interesting. It's a (soon to be) five part video essay, called "Zen Pulp," about the work of Michael Mann. Here is a link to part one, entitled "Vice Precedent."

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

It should be said immediately that there is no more than twenty minutes of plot floating around in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The film is 150 minutes long. It feels as though a decade has passed by the time the credits finally roll.

Yet Michael Bay, the director, has for some reason had a long career in film, despite the fact that he only seems to understand how to make the most of special effects and blow things up for the camera. His work is repetitive and more importantly derivative. People do this better than he does, more quietly, and in a more entertaining fashion. But this is not a personal attack on Michael Bay, though it certainly will seem like that in parts. He did bring this mess to the screen, after all.

The film sees Shia LaBeouf's Sam sent off to college, leaving the Autobots behind to lead a so called "normal" life. Eventually, he is pulled back into the war between the Autobots and the evil Decepticons. This all takes about an hour. It is, in a word, excruciating. The hour is padded with "humor," spouted from the mouths of underdeveloped, juvenile, but nonetheless loudmouthed characters.

Part of the reason the characters feel so underdeveloped is that there are just so many of them, a problem that plagued the first Transformers film. There is no need for the military characters, nor any of the upper brass that interacts with them. At least not at such length. John Tutturo's secret agent character resurfaces, much to the viewer's chagrin. He is an awful, pointless character. He adds nothing to the film and is actually more annoying than he is in the first film. The same can be said of Sam's parents. They are loud, poorly portrayed, and ultimately one-dimensional characters. The father's cheap nature is beaten into the ground, as is the mother's inappropriate sexual conversation.

What's more, it feels as though the movie is constantly jumping off on tangents. One scene barely leads into the next, and some of the time jumps are completely inexplicable. For example, it spends too long explaining Sam's roommate's Internet feud, rather then thrusting the characters into the plot. Then the movie is on to some party scene no more than a second later. It is as if reading a novel in which none of the sentences are complete, just half-clauses that are followed by something vaguely related but in no way well transitioned. When the feud subplot is eventually followed up, it isn't even in a way that feels rewarding to the viewer, and certainly not in an entertaining manner. It just leads into more awful humor and fluff. It is unbelievable the amount of pointless wheel spinning the movie goes through to get from action scene to action scene--most of which actually fail to deliver.

Conceptually, the action is amazing. Giant robots fighting with all sorts of insane ordnance. Several smaller robots combining into a superbot. Metal on metal slugfests. It all sounds epic, and if the viewer remembers the animated show, hokey as it was, they understand that this can work. However, the film's action sequences are nothing but confusing. Part of this is that the robots are incredibly over designed, and their movement is incredibly hard to track because all of the moving parts blend together. Yes, Michael, they look cool. But all that gray and silver runs together and makes actually watching all of this "cool action" impossible. It really speaks to the futility of the entire film--just as the audience thinks something meaningful or entertaining will happen, it is beaten down with a tired action movie trope and everything runs together in an indecipherable mess. The film is impossible to follow in the most basic sense. All of this is further obscured by the disgusting product placement, which even extends to a full poster for Bad Boys II in Sam's dorm room. It puts a fine point on how unimaginative and arrogant a director Michael Bay is.

Further hampering the film are the cliches that are written into it. Sam and Megan Fox's Mikaela have a falling out based on presumed infidelity. This of course happens in a melodramatic and uninspired walk in sequence. This is not helped at all by Fox's clunky performance. This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are the goofy parents, the stereotypical military drama with an overzealous suit breaking up the operation (incredibly similar to Jeffery Tambor's character in Hellboy, though not as enjoyable), the list is nearly endless, and completely maddening.

In fact, there is nothing original in the film. What is not stolen from other action movies is lifted from the toys, better action movies, or even the eighties animated film. The excellent (if dated) eighties film. The death of Optimus Prime (the climax of the animated film) doesn't hit nearly as hard as Bay intends it to because Prime does not feel at all developed as a character and the audience, while in awe of him, does not care about him.

The same is true of the other 'bots, which further frustrates the viewer. A couple of them, Mudflap and Skids, are even boiled down into incredibly racist stereotypes. Not just the way they are written, but even in their very design. Humor is intended, but there's nothing there worth laughing at. Most of the robots' lines feel like they were added in post-production, they barely relate to what is happening on screen sometimes. This makes them further feel like afterthoughts.

As in the first film, Bumblebee is the only mechanized character that elicits some sort of emotional response from the viewer. There's really no reason for this, he's just as poorly rendered as the others. What's worse is that those fleeting emotions feel as though they are stolen from the viewer. Bay, in creating the movie, has done nothing to earn them from the viewer.

There is literally nothing in this movie to recommend. The plot is non-existent, the performances are wooden and overplayed, the characters are completely flat, and though it yells and screams for well over two hours--it doesn't grab the viewer's attention in any memorable way.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a waste of theater marquee space. It is a pandering, unoriginal waste of your time. It would not be a surprise if even the most die-hard Transformers fans are turned off by this infuriating epic. The fact that this movie exists is offensive.

OVERALL: 1/2 of ****

What's To Come.

Been a while. Let's call it a much needed sabbatical.

What's worth seeing? Star Trek. Up. The Hangover.

What's coming? Reviews of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Public Enemies, to be sure.

Stay tuned.

Watchmen

(There are massive spoilers in this review, for both the film and the graphic novel. If you don't want to know important plot points, stop reading now. It's a two star review. I appreciated the visit. If you don't care or have seen the movie, read on.)

Watchmen is perhaps the greatest graphic novel ever written, but assuming that its brilliance will translate to the big screen is wishful thinking. Even withholding a fraction of that brilliance would be great, despite the three hour running time. The film in some ways delivers this, but it only does so in an incredibly fractured and ultimately unsatisfying manner.

The film opens with the murder of aging hero The Comedian (Jeffery Dean Morgan). Immediately following this is a montage sequence set to Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" which fleshes out the back story of the film and re-imagines historical touchstones, specifically iconic photographs and film clips. Sadly, this is the film's only truly excellent sequence. The music works well as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek statement--set in an alternate history, time is literally being changed. It also speaks to the transition from the golden age of comics to a grittier, more realistic one.

After the police exit The Comedian's apartment, masked vigilante Rorschach begins an investigation of his own. The sequence is narrated by passages from Rorschach's journal, immediately establishing his character as something akin to Travis Bickle on steroids. Rorschach, fearing a so-called "mask killer" informs other former superheros of The Comedian's death.

Here the audience meets the rest of the principle characters. Dan Dreiberg has given up the superhero life and let himself go (something that isn't as readily apparent to the viewer as it should be), but has his gear prominently displayed in his workshop. Adrian Veidt, the smartest man in the world, has become a billionaire captain of industry. Laurie Jupiter, after having spent years in the shadow of her superhero mother, is living in an army research base with her blue boyfriend, Doctor Manhattan.

The characters are well cast in that they look like their respective comic book counterparts, but not all of them work on screen. As Laurie, Malin Akerman is wooden, and even though she's well represented content wise and is easy on the eyes, the performance is lacking. The audience feels like they're getting the same information about her over and over again.

Similarly, Adrian Veidt, better known as Ozymandias, has been collapsed from a cerebral character into a pompous one. This is one of the film's key flaws. His arrogance makes his actions at the end of the movie obvious to the viewer. To boot, actor Matthew Goode doesn't offer anything to the performance that transcends the stilted writing. At one point, he screams, "I am not a comic book villain!" No, it's worse than that--he's a stereotypical condescending "talking bad guy."

Dreiberg doesn't feel fleshed out, either. The most important part of his story, his battle with impotence and uselessness, seem glossed over. They play for laughs, making his Nite-Owl persona too comical at the wrong moment. Dreiberg is really only saved by Patrick Wilson's performance, but even then it is only a shade of what it should be.

The only characters that really seem to work are Manhattan, Rorschach and to a smaller extent The Comedian, whose screen time consists of flashbacks. All of these characters work because the actors playing them do a very good job. Jeffery Dean Morgan personifies The Comedian to a uncanny extent and the character's dark humor and sadism really comes through in some of the movie's more effective scenes, such as the one set in the Vietnam bar.

Doctor Manhattan, as inherently fascinating as the character is--a naked blue superman who reassembled himself after an accident with high science--it's made even better by Billy Crudup's soft, almost uncaring line readings. There is just enough feeling in his voice for the audience to understand how he feels. Even better are the special effects that bring him to life. The fact that he is all digital and still believable is completely astonishing.

Best of all is Rorschach. Jakie Earle Haley brings a tangibility to the role, and affects the tragedy of his origin. Like Manhattan, Rorschach is a character that spends most of the film behind a mask (Manhattan's being a computer generated one) and still hits all of the most important character points. Rorschach has the added bonus of his journal entries, but even without the peeks into his consciousness, he would still be a captivating character.

The biggest flaws in Watchmen are problems with the non-performance aspects of the film. Admittedly, director Zack Snyder did a great job adapting Frank Miller's 300 a couple of years ago. He did this by staying laboriously faithful to the source material, and it worked well because Miller's "big" art is very motion oriented, making jump gracefully to the screen. Dave Gibbons' Watchmen work does not.

Also, while Miller writes along broad, semi-epic lines, Alan Moore's writing is incredibly subtle. Every panel in Watchmen is painstakingly designed, every line of dialogue is important to some extent. While Snyder has retained the incredible mise-en-scene from the comic, it feels too structured, too obviously designed. It's a glossy, fake world. There's even an opportunity for a juxtaposition of "fake" and "real" lives that is missed completely. The slavish adherence to the book doesn't bring that much to the film, it's just simple fan service, even though some of it is very cleverly done.

The story itself is also too massive for the movie. An attempt is made to include every facet of each of the twelve issues into the plot of the film, but in the end it proves to be too much, even in a movie that borders on three hours long.

Most of this time is wasted with pointless action. The Comedian's battle at the beginning of the film goes one for maybe half a minute too long before he's finally thrown out the window. When Nite-Owl and Laurie spring Rorschach from prison they fight a bunch of convicts in a cell block in what is easily the most pointless fight scene in the entire film. Similarly the showdown at the end of the film consists of Ozymandias fighting Rorschach and Nite-Owl while pontificating about how great he is. It's overkill.

What's more is that all these scenes are filled to the brim with pointless slow motion photography. The film would have lost as solid ten minutes if Snyder had played it cool with the slow-mo. The slow-mo removes the emphasis of important actions, when throwing an empty cup at an attacker has the same slow-mo aesthetic as Ozymandias snagging a bullet, something is wrong. As is the case with many of the aspects of Watchmen, there's just too much of it.

More troubling is the music used in the film. The songs Snyder uses are all great in their own right, but they often don't fit the scene that they play over. For example, during The Comedian's funeral Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" plays as the characters arrive at the cemetery. As great as the song is, its intimate connection with The Graduate robs some of the dramatic weight from the scene. "Ride of the Valkyries" plays during a Vietnam scene, and it makes the viewer think of Apocalypse Now, and how great that film is in comparison. Moreover, it's a very obvious, borderline lazy song choice. Hendrix' cover of "All Along the Watchtower" scores Rorschach and Nite-Owl flight to Ozymandias' Antarctic base, and while Dylan's lyric is present in the comic, the song has no real reason to be in the movie other than that it's slightly related and fills up the dead air. A painfully bad cover of Dylan's "Desolation Row" closes the film, and sums it up nicely: all of the original parts, none of the original spirit.

The most obvious point of contention is the altered ending. In changing the ending, Snyder has made the film itself almost paradoxical--he spends two and half hours impeccably adapting Moore's comic, and then he alters the ending on the grounds that it is too unrealistic. This alienates the audience. The people who have checked out because of all the previous insanity--a cloth mask with moving ink blots, the revisionist history (Vietnam lasted two months!) and a naked blue man--aren't going to be won over, and the hardcore fans will be upset with the needless tampering. Who is the film supposed to appeal to?

There's also a problem with the logic of the story. In the comic, Ozymandias teleports an alien creature into New York, where it explodes. The result is the end of the Cold War hostilities. In the film Ozymandias uses Doctor Manhattan's energy to level cities around the world, framing him as a vengeful god-figure. In the film, peace is almost instantaneous. The problem lies in the framing of Manhattan. In the film the threat of his wrath keeps the peace, exiling him from Earth, while in the book the exile is self imposed. Even though Manhattan goes along with the charade willingly, it feels more forced than having the blue man actually decide that Earth is not for him, pulling important dramatic resonance from the story.

There's also a promblem with Ozymandias, who is supposed to be the smartest man in the world, comes off as nothing more than a trickster. He's leveled himself from Lex Luthor to the D-list Flash villain Trickster. The silence that Ozymandias' attack buys from the rest of The Watchmen is a cheap one, whereas in the book it is a fearful, understanding one. This ending also more or less eliminates the concept that by destroying New York, Ozymandias is the true hero and has saved the world even though his method was horrendous. The film strives to connect the dots, give closure to a film that doesn't necessarily call for interconnection, or a Hollywood ending in which everything comes together nicely.

It's no secret that Watchmen is a comic book about comic books. It takes apart all the cliches of the superhero industry, and sports deeply flawed heroes. There are aspects about it that simply can't be brought to the screen, like the symmetrical page layoutsand panel designs in the fifth issue, or the fact that everything is in front of you at once, as if the reader is experiencing Doctor Manhattan's perception of time. Film is a present medium, in that usually thing are presented once, and can only be reviewed in another viewing, after the film has restarted. What the film needs is what fanboys would most fear--an almost complete re-imagining for a different medium. Maybe staying with Rorschach, the most grounded of all the characters to the viewer, for a longer amount of time would have made the film more streamlined. Instead, it feels bloated.

It's clear that a lot of time was spent creating Watchmen, but all that time seems to have been wasted in carbon copying the unfilmable source material. Snyder doesn't feel creative at all, he feels like a simple transposer. "They are shaping me into something gaudy," Dr. Manhattan says when he becomes political propaganda. This is what Snyder has done with Moore's material. He's turned it into empty, overlong spectacle.

OVERALL: ** of ****

The Oscars

I'm not looking to get too in depth into this, but I figure there are some important bits that are worth addressing.

Hugh Jackman worked for the most part as a host. His opening musical number gets a pass, but mostly because of Anne Hathaway's turn as Nixon in Jackman's re-imagining of Frost/Nixon.

The "Return of the Musical" number didn't do anything for me, mostly because it was conceptually flawed. The musical is not back, at least not on the level that they made it out to be. Might as well have saluted the Western, because there was one of those this year, too.

That said, I miss the comedians. Sure, Jon Stewart was a terrible fit because he made fun of everyone...but for the home viewer it was gold. Next year, how about a Stewart-Colbert tag team?

I also loved the pre-recorded bits, especially the Seth Rogen/James Franco Pineapple Express short. It was a sly way to integrate comedy into the often serious award ceremony. Well done.

However, I have to say the nominee presentation wasn't nearly engaging enough. Interesting as it is to see some of the past award winners together on stage, the little speeches of kudos went on too long, and didn't really give the audience at home a taste of the nominated preformances. Watching people talk at each other, no matter how famous they are, didn't work for me at all.

They futzed with the format unnecessarily. The reason ratings are slipping is because the nominations are going to films that not everyone has access to. Barring a few exceptions, the list of films nominated in pretty much any category was pretty obscure.

The awards themselves generally went to deserved recipients. As always, it would have been awesome to see a little more Dark Knight love. It was up for a handful of technical awards and as disappointing as it was to see it lose most of them, you can't really argue with the films that won them. Button absolutely deserved the special effects and make-up statues because the film pulled them off brilliantly, but not in a distracting manner. And Slumdog...is Slumdog.

Penelope Cruz's award was well deserved, though it was a pretty bleak year in the supporting actress department.

As far as Best Actress goes--anyone who didn't see Kate Winslet winning that award must really love the underdog. It's deserved--as she was pretty much the only that stood out in The Reader.

The same thing goes for the Best Supporting actor. Ledger that award in the pocket of his purple suit the second the first frame of The Dark Knight hit the screen. I loved that Downey Jr was thrown in there, because that performance could have easily been passed over.

Best Actor admittedly surprised me. I was a vehement Rourke supporter, mostly because he really carried The Wrestler, and admittedly evoked a lot more emotion in the viewer than Penn did as Harvey Milk. Of course Penn was by no means unworthy, but he just had a much different role than Rourke did. I put a little too much stock in the comeback and the other award show winds. Penn is great in Milk, though, and his acceptance speech was worth the upset. Rourke would have just talked about his dog and probably goaded Aronofsky into flipping him off again. The category itself was probably the most interesting of all of them. You had the suprise nomination of Richard Jenkins (deserved, of course), as well as the great Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon nipping at Penn and Rourkes feet for the win. Pitt's nomination as Benjamin Button wasn't problematic, though it was an incredible long shot.

Best Picture and Best Director were locks, especially after the nominations were announced. I still have the Bat-blinders on, so I think The Dark Knight and especially Christopher Nolan got rooked. The Reader was pretty blatant Oscar-bait, and Frost/Nixon, good as Frank Langella and the rest of the cast was, felt like it was missing something. It didn't have the Best Picture spark. So barring Dark Knight and the hyper-long shot of Wall.E, Slumdog Millionaire was really the only choice that made sense. So, as is usually the case, the director of the best picure winner, Danny Boyle, walked away with the Best Director Oscar. It's not a fool proof rule, but it held true here.

In closing, if you haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire, go see it. It had a pretty wide release by the time it was announced as a Best Picture contender, and it may still be playing somewhere close to you. If not, I believe it comes out on DVD at the end of the month.

Taken

In the hands of an different director, Taken could be something special. That's not to say that it's a bad film by any means. At it's worst, it's a standard genre film, a Bourne knockoff with a paternal slant; at it's best, it's an enjoyable, briskly paced action film. However, it does feel a little too slick at times. There's a more original, more interesting story lurking under the spent shell casing and retired secret agent tropes, a story that simply isn't told.

Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a self described "preventer" and all around bad ass. At the beginning of the film he attends his daughter Kim's birthday party, a scene that defines his relationship with his daughter and his ex-wife, Lenore. Soon after that, he grudgingly grants Kim permission to go on a trip to Paris, where she is promptly kidnapped. Bryan then takes it upon himself to get his daughter back.

In the hands of an incredible director, Taken would have been accordingly incredible--look at what Tony Scott did with Man on Fire, another film with a typical (and similar) plot. Though the kidnap/man-on-a-mission concept is cliche, Denzel Washington's performance coupled with Scott's visual sensibility give the film a very original appeal.

Taken has a similar saving grace--Liam Neeson. His performance isn't particularly great, especially in comparison to some of his other work, but he adds a believability to the film that many other actors couldn't have managed. They would look at the script and most likely phone-in their performances. Nor would they seem as incredibly driven as Neeson is. He offsets the worn premise and some pretty dicey dialouge with his work.

Also, to the demographic that this film is being marketed to (it's rated PG-13) Neeson is a fairly unknown face. How many high-schoolers know of, let alone have seen Schindler's List? They may recognize him from Batman Begins or possibly The Phantom Menace, but it seems fair to say that to most of the intended audience, he's an unknown. That adds another layer of believability to him. Who knows? Maybe this will lead some of the more avid film goers to explore some of his other, superior films.

The rest of the cast is forgettable, simply because they just don't have a lot of screen time. No one character spends more than ten mintues on screen opposite Neeson, let alone on screen without him, with the possible exception of Maggie Grace, who plays Kim. Famke Jassen plays Lenore, but never does anything but give Bryan a hard time because of his protective nature or lament the loss of her daughter. She isn't bad in the part, but she has nothing to do.

Even though Neeson spends almost the entire movie on screen, the time feels like it goes by too quickly--The film is only nintey-three minutes long. There's always something going on, some sort of plot fueling action. The audience is never given a contemplative Bryan, he's always an agent of action. If the Neeson had spent time exploring his feelings while tearing through Paris, the audience would have picked up how familiar his character is and lost interest.

In the end, there's a trade off. The audience is not given a meaningful deconstruction of a complex an compelling character over two hours of introspective, symbolic film making. But along those same lines, the film does not waste time trying to do so with characters who don't bear examination.

The intent of the film is laid out in one of the first few scenes by Neeson himself, on the phone with the kidnappers: "If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you." And of course this is what happens. To expect anything other than that is foolish. Taken is a fine example of escapist, action filled entertainment.

The action itself is well directed in so much as it's always clear who Bryan is beating up, shooting, or generally getting the better of. However, it's a no-frills action with no defining stylistic feature. For better or worse, Taken doesn't have anything like the hand held, almost documentary feel of the latter Bourne films, or even the bombastic, melodramatic, explosion-filled pointlessness of a Michael Bay film. The action scenes in Taken don't re-invent the wheel. Instead, they get the point across with brutal simplicity.

There isn't anything particularly incredible about Taken, no narrative boundaries are pushed and none of the performances (save Neeson's) or action sequences are particularly astounding. Sometimes this sort of by-the-numbers filmmaking works, though. Taken is clearly one of those films. To take a chance at some sort of original convention in such a familiar story would have probably failed given the material the film has to work with. However, the lack of challenge does allow the viewer to sit back and watch Liam Neeson upend Paris in search of his daughter. The film, for all it's violence and the dark premise, is fun.

OVERALL *** of ****

The Wrestler

At the center of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler is Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a grappler who is well out of his heyday. He’s a burnout on a massive scale—he spends his time in strip clubs, lives in a trailer park, and works at a supermarket.

On the weekends he wrestles, reliving his former glory on a much smaller scale. The film is an earnest deconstruction of a performer just out of the spotlight, coming to grips with the mess he has made of his life.

Aronofsky is clever in the way that he depicts The Ram’s obsolescence. He drives around with his own action figure on his dashboard like a Saint Christopher figurine. The figure is an impossible plastic snapshot, with exaggerated musculature, permanently dyed hair and a perpetual tan. The real Ram, however, tans using a machine, has someone dye hair and hits the weight room to fight the flab.

Even better is the wrestling video game that Randy plays with one of his neighbor’s children. It’s an eight bit eighties one—simple, pixilated. The Ram naturally plays as himself and beats the kid, who all the while is talking about Call of Duty 4 for the much more powerful X-Box 360.

The Ram is constantly fighting to retain this image of perfection, to remain relevant even though it’s impossible. That’s the question the film poses: Is glory in the ring more fulfilling than a “normal” life?


The answer is illustrated with brutality, incredible writing, and great editing in the ring as well as outside of it. Ram’s bouts, though staged by both of the fighters in a pre-match pow-wow, are cringe-inducing. One sequence begins with the end of the fight, and proceeds to reconstruct the rest of the match, injury by injury, as the two combatants are in the locker room being patched up by medical technicians. The scene is brilliantly cut together, and instead opting for a tense match does a great job of showing the audience how much punishment that these men put themselves through for glory.

Arguably more unsettling are the segments about Robinson’s personal life, because they don’t go for the gut like the wrestling scenes do. Instead, they go for the heart and effectively break it. While the Ram is a king in the ring, he works the meat counter at the supermarket, and has a terrible relationship with his daughter. When his life inside the ring begins to deteriorate, the viewer can’t help feel as devastated as he does, knowing that there’s nothing for Robinson to turn to.

The Ram is played brilliantly by Mickey Rourke. He’s been off the radar for so long that the impact of his performance is really incredible. His performance as Marv in Sin City was hinting at this kind of skill but that character played intentionally into film-noir tropes, so it doesn’t feel as fully realized as The Ram does. Here he’s naturalistic, believable, broken down in an incredibly captivating way.

Robinson’s estranged daughter Stephanie is only in the film for a few scenes, but has a powerful impact on the whole. She is played by Evan Rachel, who capitalizes on the little bit of screen time she’s given with a touching but ultimately saddening performance.

Marisa Tomei co-stars as Cassidy, an aging stripper who has a lot in common with Randy. Both are in youth-oriented businesses, and both pay the bills using their bodies. Tomei is good, and she and Rourke work well together. The film’s few upbeat scenes, like the one where Cassidy and Randy declare their mutual hatred for the nineties, are directly tied to her.

Darren Aronofsky’s latest film is undeniably great, but it’s also hard to watch at times. The Wrestler is a small film, both in budget and in concept. It’s strange, though, because “smaller” films can often have greater emotional impact than something with a giant budget and A-list actors in it. Sometimes all it takes is one spectacular performance.

OVERALL **** of ****