Back Seat Producers

Three different officers in Brooklyn’s 65th precinct are dealing with their own desperation. We’re first introduced to Sal Procida, a detective who’s desperation to provide a good life to his family has led to his own corruption, committing murder and willing to steal drug money from various busts. We meet Clarence Butler, known on the street as Tango. He’s a deep cover operative who’s infiltration of street gang life is permeating his own. He’s desperate to get his own life back even though it may come at the cost of the betrayal of a lifelong friend. And we meet Eddie Dugan, a beat cop who’s ready to retire after 22 years on the force. He’s disillusioned from his long experience on the force, with younger officers not giving him any respect and calling him a burnout. In his final days, he’s desperate for some form of respect and finding himself again.

That’s the premise to director Antoine Fuqua’s latest movie, Brooklyn’s Finest. Fuqua is best known for his previous movie of police corruption, Training Day, a terrific film that I think actually gets a little edged out by Brooklyn’s Finest.

Fuqua is real adept at weaving together these three stories. He gives you enough on each character and then knows when to move on to his next. You never really feel like he’s getting lost in these three stories. For the first part of the film, there’s a more leisured pace to seeing their stories unfold, but then at some key points of action, he’ll pick up the pace with quicker cuts to each of the three stories. The flow feels very nice.

It’s for a mature audience to be sure, and not just because of it’s dealings with sex and violence in the film. These characters are really well-drawn, and while their surface stories might give off singular motivations, there’s more to each of these men than just that and it’s there on the screen thanks to some really nice performances.

Ethan Hawke plays Sal, Don Cheadle plays Tango and Richard Gere plays Eddie and all three deliver some exceptional work here. I particularly found myself drawn to Gere and Eddie Dugan’s story the most. Gere’s performance really does feel lived-in and like that of a man who’s withdrawn himself because of things that he’s experienced over time. That doesn’t slight what either Hawke or Cheadle does here. I like how Hawke plays his corruption here which is apart from how it might be conventionally portrayed, he’s riddled with guilt over what he’s done and has an obvious hard time dealing with it. Cheadle’s a powder keg waiting to explode, especially when dealing with his superiors and when it does happen, it’s actually pretty harrowing in it’s own right.

There’s a lot of good support here as well. It’s very nice to see Wesley Snipes in something like this. Snipes plays Cas, Tango’s friend who’s been away to jail and is just now released and getting back into the life. though he doesn’t have as much time on the screen as the three leads, Snipes still does really well here and even with this part, it still feels multi-faceted. Will Patton and Ellen Barkin play Tango’s superiors. Patton is solid, this is the sort of character thing that we’re used to from him. Barkin is a big surprise though and it’s one of the more vicious performances that I’ve seen her do. I can’t tell you how long that it’s been that I’ve seen Lili Taylor in a movie, but it was certainly nice to see her here as Sal’s wife, and while it’s not a flashy performance you can see by her work who’s the rock in this relationship. Brían F. O’Byrne plays one of Sal’s team, who’s basically Sal’s clarity even though Sal doesn’t know it. Shannon Kane plays Chantal, a hooker that Eddie Dugan sees. Dugan thinks she could be one way of him finding something for himself in the world, and she’s certainly adept at giving him that further illusion.

Brooklyn’s Finest is really a terrific movie. The three stories are all handled very well, really making you involved with their characters and the way they come together in the end feels logical, though there is some coincidence to it, it still feels right. For me, this one is one of those that already I’ll have to look back on at the end of the year as one of the best films of 2010. Highly recommended.

In the town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, strange things are happening. Citizens of the town are turning emotionally strange and violent. The town’s sheriff, David Dutton, and his wife, Dr. Judy Dutton, are doing their best to look into the mystery. Sheriff Dutton starts to make headway with the discovery of a downed plane in a nearby creek. He believes that it’s something there that’s infesting the town’s water supply and soon he finds out he’s right. Almost as soon as he makes the connection, the entire area is put into containment by the military, and then hijinks ensue.

That’s the premise to The Crazies, a re-make of an early 70s film from director George Romero. This new version is helmed by director Breck Eisner, and while it’s well-made, there’s still something that’s a little lacking for me. I’ve never seen the original film, so I can’t really draw any comparisons to that. I see that a lot of people are calling it a “zombie” movie, but it’s not technically. It’s an infestation/virus film, though I doubt that will make much of a difference to the naysayers of horror movies out there.

There’s solid tension here right from the start. It does a nice job at showing this more through the eyes of an everyman and the chaos that would result from that. Where it falters are in areas after the military moves in and a lack of consistency as to just what their presence is. One moment, they’re all over the place and the next they’re mysteriously gone, which seems more for the convenience of moving our main characters forward in the story more than anything really logical. Now I don’t necessarily need there to be a strict adherence to logic throughout a movie like this, and if it’s made with enough of a brisk pace, then normally I wouldn’t even bring it up. Here, though, there are moments when things relax enough that I did question that.

For the most part though, it’s pretty well made. No problem with any of the performances though. Timothy Olyphant plays Sheriff Dutton and Radha Mitchell plays his wife Judy and they’re both rock-solid, as is the work of the supporting cast.

There’s nothing really offensive here though, just a few moments where that paced is relaxed enough to question a few things and some added “hero” moments at the end of the film which are more padding than anything else. Not a bad little diversion, and if you like these sort of films (and I do), then you might have a good time with it. I don’t think this is one though that you have to run right out to see in a theatre and it actually might play better later on for home viewing.

It’s shortly after World War II, and United States Federal Marshal, Edward “Teddy” Daniels and his new partner Chuck find themselves traveling to an island in the Boston Bay called Shutter Island that’s the home to a mental institution that houses the most extreme cases. One of the considered more dangerous patients has escaped their care, and now these two U.S. Marshals have been sent in to investigate, only there way more to Shutter Island than they realize.

Yeah, that description of the initial premise of Shutter Island is really cryptic. I don’t like to spoil movies at all, and hopefully here I still won’t though I’m afraid this review isn’t going to be favorable to Martin Scorsese’s newest movie. But still I don’t want to spoil it, for those that want to see it for themselves.

Now, Scorsese is certainly one of my favorite directors working today, and certainly considered one of the greatest overall working in films, but even the greatest have their failures, and unfortunately, Shutter Island doesn’t really hold up as well as most of Scorsese’s past movies.

The movie certainly looks great, and featuring some pretty exquisite production design by Dante Ferretti, certainly a veteran of making movies look terrific and authentic. That’s readily on display.

And there’s no faulting the terrific cast that’s been put together for this movie. This is Leonardo DiCaprio’s fourth outing with Martin Scorsese, and it’s easy to see why these two have developed a very good working relationship with each other- Scorsese’s movies always have much more going on beneath their surface and DiCaprio has certainly shown that he’s an actor who’s capable of showing much more than surface detail in his performances. DiCaprio is the star here, but he’s backed up with an A-list of talent, including Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams and Emily Mortimer. This also features Patricia Clarkson, Ted Levine, Elias Koteas and Jackie Earle Haley in some smaller but key roles into putting together what’s really going on here. And everyone here is good, no doubt about that, I expect they’re delivering exactly what Scorsese wants.

The fault here is in the script and in the very languid pace of the movie. Now I know this an adaptation of a novel (I’ve never read it), and as a novel, it’s unfolding probably works, but as it plays out here, and further because of the movie’s slow pace, it’s pretty easy to see what’s coming and that includes the “secret” of Shutter Island, and as such, it’s revelations don’t have too much impact, or at least they didn’t for me. Now this is being sold as a bit of suspense and a bit of horror, and certainly the trappings are there, but Scorsese has never really been known for fully delving into those realms and his movies more play out as some intense character studies, and that’s certainly the case with Shutter Island. And as a character study, this one is pretty loaded with detail, but because of being able to see where the “twist” was to this in the film’s first half, it’s left with no impact whatsoever.

Your own mileage may vary of course, and as far as I know, this might improve much more for me on a second viewing, but while I found this really well made from a production standpoint, and really well-performed it didn’t quite come together for me in such a way by it’s end where I really cared one way or the other, even though I still admire the detail that went into it.

Actor Lawrence Talbot is summoned to his family home after the grisly death of his brother. And though Talbot is reluctant to return, he finds he must come to face his estranged father, John and search for the answer to his brother’s death, even though he is troubled by his own traumatic past. The answer does await Talbot, as does his terrifying family legacy.

That’s a real nutshell premise to The Wolfman starring Benecio Del Toro and directed by Joe Johnston. I mean with a title like The Wolfman there really isn’t any doubt as to what Talbot will become, is there? No, there isn’t, but the ride along the way is pretty fun to take.

The biggest thing that I like about The Wolfman is that it doesn’t try to make the werewolf genre as “precious” as what the vampire genre does these days (though I do give films like Twilight and others like it their props at least in the fact that their fan base is so willing to come in and embrace it, unlike other genre films which more often than not get savagely attacked their fans even before their release- anyway that’s the way I see it, but I digress…) and instead, it really embraces the whole Universal Horror Film aspect. That’s a real breath of fresh air, and when the film is as artfully made as what Joe Johnston has done here, it’s even better.

While I don’t think this has the impact of more contemporary set pieces as An American Werewolf in London or The Howling (this is a period piece), it still has good moments and good set pieces, and to Johnston’s credit, he moves it all along at a pretty brisk pace.

The visual effects are pretty nice, especially the transformation scenes, which are, at least to me more handled as live in camera and sweetened with some CGI more than anything else. And while the transformation is good here, it lacks some of the impact that you’ve seen in the above-mentioned films, that’s not a knock at the movie by any means, it’s just more a commentary on how far things have come and how so many fantastic scenes are now much more commonplace.

Another thing that I really liked was retaining the name of Lawrence Talbot for our main character. Larry Talbot was the name of the character played by Lon Chaney Jr. all those years ago, and I had no idea that they were going to use the same name here. the thing that really struck me odd though is that, upon hearing this, I started to see some resemblance between both Benecio Del Toro and Lon Chaney Jr., not just physically but also in their cadence. Del Toro’s solid here, though his Talbot is really underplayed, but considering his childhood emotional trauma, that can certainly help explain some of that. He really seems to eat it up, so to speak, when he’s playing the Wolfman though, and for that, I do appreciate it.

He’s backed up with Anthony Hopkins playing his father, Emily Blunt playing his childhood friend and Hugo Weaving as a Scotland Yard inspector who’s come to investigate the savage murders. Now I didn’t know much about this movie in advance, but I did know that Hopkins was playing Del Toro’s father, and sort’ve rolled my eyes at that from the start, considering Hopkins is definitely British and Del Toro is definitely Latin in origin, and figuring this was just going to be some sort’ve cocked-up explanation just to get someone of Hopkins’ caliber in the film. But their relation is actually handled quite credibly in some flashback scenes, and so that became a moot point. Hopkins is solid, as is Blunt, nothing to complain about and nothing that really stands out. To me though, Weaving is solid gold and of all the characters actually seems to have the most fire and passion about him.

In the end, I found The Wolfman to be solidly entertaining and a nice throwback to the heyday of Universal horror films. It doesn’t carry the same impact as some more contemporary set pieces, but it’s still nicely crafted and delivers a nice diversion.

Well, February looks like it’s seeing the resurgence of the buddy action movie with both the releases From Paris With Love and Cop Out. When I saw the trailer for From Paris With Love I just thought that it looked like it could be a fun little diversion, but nothing real special (I wish I could say the same thing about Cop Out, in which every time I see the trailer for that, I cringe just a little more and feel just a little bad that Kevin Smith is making an “Ow! My Balls!” type of comedy by choice- it may be a good movie, but based on it’s trailer, the only way you could get me in the theatre to see it is to tie me to the chair with my eyes pried open like McDowell in Clockwork, but I digress…). In fact, the weather had the potential to be really bad here in St. Louis this weekend, and it looked like there was a chance that it was going to interfere with seeing From Paris With Love and I was pretty much prepared to write it off if that was the case…

Fortunately, the weather turned out to be not bad at all and I did get to see From Paris With Love and man, I’m glad I did.

From Paris With Love is the latest movie from producer Luc Besson and director Pierre Morel who last year gave us Taken (which I haven’t seen yet, though that will change later tonight) and it’s one very entertaining ride.

James Reece is an American in Paris working as the assistant to the United States’ ambassador in France. He performs all of the mundane tasks for the ambassador and makes sure he’s ready to carry out his duties for the day. But Reece is much more, he’s also a lower level espionage operative who performs preparatory tasks for other operatives and he does them really well. He has ambitions to move up in that aspect of his job. He’s also a young man in love and has just become engaged to his girlfriend in Paris, and as he’s ready to celebrate with her, he gets a call that’s going to give him his opportunity to move up, by assisting one of the best operatives the U.S. has in one unorthodox agent named Charlie Wax…

That’s all I’m going to say about the story here, and while there’s nothing really new that’s done here, what is done is done really well and it’s pretty obvious (or at least it was to me) that all concerned were having a hell of a time making this movie. The action is top notch, the character’s are engaging, and while there are aspects to the story a that are a little over-the-top, it’s not in a way that I didn’t want to go on the ride with the film. One of the things that helps with that is the movie’s brisk pace, which certainly puts our heroes in some rough situations that makes them bond pretty quickly and certainly made me watching this give a damn about them.

the other thing that helps is the fact that you have two actors as capable as John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in the lead roles and their chemistry is really nice. Rhys-Meyers plays James Reece, and he’s pretty stoic in the part, but also pretty engaging. He’s our doorway into this story, and he does a nice job with it. John Travolta… well, I have to say, when I first saw the trailer for this, I did a double take when I realized this was John Travolta as he certainly looks quite a bit different than he has in most of his movies, with his clean-shaven head, and by the trailer, you get the feeling that his Charlie Wax is going to be a wild character, and one that could’ve worked negatively for me. The thing is, when we’re introduced to Wax, he does seem like he’s going to be an unlikeable guy, but by about a half hour in, I was fully taken with him and it’s real evident in Travolta’s performance. You can sort’ve tell when an actor is really having a good time with a part and it’s all over Travolta’s performance here, whether it’s in his line delivery or his genuine joy in the action scenes, it’s there and it’s infectious.

It really is a fun ride, far more entertaining than I thought it was going to be and by it’s end, I was ready to see Wax and Reece together again in another adventure and thinking back to other buddy action movies that I’ve seen, I hadn’t really felt like that since being introduced to Riggs and Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon. and that’s a pretty high compliment to pay to From Paris With Love. This one really took me by surprise and I enjoyed every minute of it. Now I can’t wait to see Taken later tonight…