Back Seat Producers

Tom Craven is a Boston police detective. His daughter, Emma, has returned home to take a little break from her job, seemingly. As Tom and Emma start to reconnect at their home, Emma begins to cough up blood. Tom is ready to rush her to the hospital and as they walk out the front door, a mysterious gunman yells the name “Craven!” and fires at them, killing Emma almost immediately. Boston PD is right on this and they believe it to be someone who has a grudge against Tom Craven, but Tom has his own thoughts on the matter and starts his own investigation leading to a secret life he didn’t know his daughter had and her job, with it’s own equally huge ramifications.

Edge of Darkness is the newest film from veteran director Martin Campbell and star Mel Gibson and it’s of special note for Gibson because it’s his first lead-starring role in eight years. It’s also a pretty darn good little movie.

Previously, Edge of Darkness was a television mini-series (that Campbell also directed), which unfortunately, I haven’t seen so I can’t compare it to that. What’s here though is pretty tight, though Campbell is willing to relax his pace and let it unfold fairly naturally. It’s a pretty dialogue heavy piece, but it also features it’s fair share of action and when that action is used, it’s pretty effective, in particular with a scene where Craven meets with a friend of his daughter’s out on a country road.

It’s a pretty familiar idea for a movie, there’s really nothing here that you haven’t seen before, but that can be said for the vast majority of movies that come out now. That’s fine, I know that it’s a rare thing to find something that’s totally original out there, and it really doesn’t matter to me as well as the parts are all put together in an interesting and compelling way, and I think Edge of Darkness does that.

I’ve been a big fan of Gibson’s ever since The Road Warrior (I didn’t see Mad Max until later), and for me, he doesn’t disappoint. He manages to play a man with nothing to lose quite well, but all along there’s still a mind at work in the part. I hope its not another eight years before we see him again on screen. He’s got some impressive support here, with Ray Winstone playing a government “fixer” named Jedburgh, who even though finds himself at some odds with Craven, also has empathy for what he’s doing. Danny Huston is one of the better actors who excels at playing villains these days and he does just as well as the head of Northmoor, the company for which Emma Craven works for. Bojana Novakovic plays Emma Craven and though she’s here real briefly, she and Gibson do a solid job in establishing a father-daughter relationship.

Edge of Darkness doesn’t really do anything new, but it doesn’t do anything wrong either and presents a relaxed paced thriller and a welcome return to the big-screen for lead actor Mel Gibson, who shows that he’s still as engaging a leading man as he’s ever been, though a few years older. It’s certainly worth seeing, if not in a theatre then at least eventually in it’s home video release.

It’s December 23rd in an unspecified year (though the setting is obviously contemporary), and we discover that God has had it with the way humans are running the planet and decides that it’s now time for a cleansing and time to start all over. He sends an army of angels led by Gabriel to enact his wish, but one angel, Michael rebels against God and is willing to help humanity make it’s last stand, in particular setting his sights on the people that work and own a remote diner/garage, especially and seemingly a waitress who’s about to give birth to a special child…

That’s the premise to the new movie Legion from a relatively unknown director, Scott Stewart, which he also co-writes with a relatively unknown collaborator, Peter Schink. This follows right on the trail of the release of the Hughes Brothers extremely well done The Book of Eli and has at least in a couple of places inspired some to write articles that these two seem to mark a trend of Hollywood looking to the good book for a message of hope to it’s audiences, to which I think it’s just a matter of coincidence, but that’s just me. Yes, there is a message of faith in both films, but the difference is that The Book of Eli is a really good movie, and Legion is a really bad one…

Watching this, I was put in the mind that Stewart and Schink probably read a lot of Garth Ennis’ comic Preacher and were big fans of movies like Constantine, The Prophecy and Kevin Smith’s Dogma and thought “Wow, we could make something really cool along those lines as well.” But that’s all it has, the idea that they could fill this thing with scenes and visuals that they thought would look really cool, but doesn’t have any sort of real thought put into it. For something like this to work, it needs some rules to go by, and those seem to be made up here on the fly, simply because they think it would look cool on screen. Yeah, we have angels coming to wipe the Earth clean, but they use humans to do it, either seeming like zombies or demon-posessed, but why? If we have a child here who is supposedly being seen as the salvation for humanity, why would God then want to wipe the planet clean? And the whole meaning of the child is something that’s never given a proper explanation, basically being unresolved by the time this ends.

Like I said, it looks to me like this is being done because they think it looks really cool and they really don’t have any conviction behind their ideas whatsoever. It even filters over to all of the atrocious dialogue which all seems written in mind for what would sound cool in a trailer more than anything else. On top of that, all of the characters are simplistically written cliches that behave in mostly a one or two dimensional manner, with little or no smarts amongst any of them, only asking questions when it’s convenient to the script.

On a technical level though, this is pretty well shot and the effects are serviceable, helping them get their “cool” moments, but it’s story reads like it’s written by someone who’s read a lot of DC’s Vertigo line of comics without any real life experience to bring to the whole thing.

And that’s a real shame considering the impressive cast this thing has- Paul Bettany as the angel Michael, backed up by guys like Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, Tyrese Gibson, and Charles S. Dutton should be a combination for something pretty good. And to their credit, Lucas Black plays Quaid’s son, and that’s something I could actually buy here, it’s just a shame that they’re all of one note (though I also have to give credit to Dutton as well, who in his brief scenes really does try to inject something genuine here even without the base material to do so. Most laughable though is Quaid, and I really do like Dennis Quaid, but he doesn’t do himself any favors here, playing his character with pretty much the same tone all the way through and with a forced expression on his face that’s a cross between the cartoonish and the constipated.

The trailer was pretty good for this, and it certainly sold the movie to me before seeing it. I paid my own money to see it, so naturally, I wanted to like it- but, oh… when this is filled with this many inconsistencies and simplistic characters, it’s real easy to hate it, though I have to admit to some fun making some MST3K comments along the way. Just as I’ll remember The Book of Eli at the end of 2010 when putting together a list of the best movies that I saw, I’ll remember Legion as one of the worst…

You know, it’s sort of odd at the beginning of a new year for me when I see movies. Often in January, I’m seeing holdovers from the previous year that are now making their way into St. Louis, so really I might not start seeing actual movies intended for the new year’s release until late in January or more often early in February, and as such, I’m often seeing some of the best movies that I’ll see during the last year at the start of a new year. This past year has been a little bit different, with the changes in the economy, home video and the rise of 3D, studios are more getting those prestige films out now all around in the same calendar year, so right now, the only holdover from 2009 that I’m still waiting to show up in St. Louis that would qualify for 2009 is Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and I get to concentrate on new releases for the current calendar year.

Now I would’ve seen The Book of Eli regardless because this is a movie that I’ve really been looking forward to, but it’s just really rare that I see a movie released during the start of a calendar year, that might already qualify to be one of the best movies that I’ll see during that calendar year, and that’s the case with The Book of Eli– already I have seen something this year that will be up there with the most special movies of 2010.

Set in a post-apocalyptic future, The Book of Eli tells the story of a lone man, Eli, who’s had a calling and must follow that calling. Because of the great war that caused this apocalypse, nearly all of the Bibles have been destroyed as a result of that (as well as a good deal of other books). One bible remains and it’s in Eli’s possession, and his calling is to go West and from there decide what to do with the book. But Eli runs across others during his travels, and along the way he comes across a town that’s controlled by a man named Carnegie, and Carnegie is desperate to get a hold of a Bible because he knows what power the Bible has and what it can inspire amongst people who have no more hope.

This is the fifth movie from The Hughes Brothers and like James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow before them, their first major release in a long period of time (their last film being their adaptation of Alan Moore’s and Eddie Campbell’s graphic novel, From Hell). And like Cameron and Bigelow, the time away certainly hasn’t hurt their chops at all and in fact, they’ve just gotten better if The Book of Eli is any indication, and for me anyway it is, as I think it’s their best movie yet.

First, it’s just a beautiful movie to watch. Yes, it is set against an all too bleak backdrop, but the composition of every shot is almost a work of art in itself. There’s heavy duty action elements in the film, and the Hughes Brothers buck the trend that a lot of others shooting action go for now, which is a lot of in-close stuff with quick cuts, and instead, they’ll pull their camera back and let you take in what they’re doing, which just makes the scenes even more impressive. One action scene in particular is just really fun to watch and it simulates a single camera shot that travels all around the action. Like Kathryn Bigelow with The Hurt Locker, they’re also not afraid to let a scene play out longer than what another movie might do, and thus add even more weight to what you’ve just seen.

In particular though, this movie deals with faith and they’re not afraid to take it as far as they do. There’s a particular point in the movie that really illustrates this (and I expect for some, this will be the turning point in the movie where they’ll either love it or hate it, depending on whether you want to go with them on it- I went with them on it). This same point is also like ones seen before in The Sixth Sense or Fight Club, the type of scene that makes you want to go back and re-watch the film to see where their “tells” are.

All of this wouldn’t mean anything though if you didn’t have a cast with the same conviction to carry it out, and fortunately, the Hughes Brothers have that with Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman as their leads. With Denzel Washington, you always get an actor who just gives the right amount of credibility to every part he plays, and Eli is no exception- his conviction is there, and I just wanted to follow him all the way through this. Oldman is the same way, once he’s been cast in a part, you know you’re in good hands, and while his Carnegie is the villain of this piece, it’s not just played single-mindedly and you do get the feeling that this is man who knows he’s done some pretty foul things to keep his life and his town going, even if it is starting to go further than what he might’ve planned. They’re backed up with some real nice turns from Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, Tom Waits, Michael Gambon and Jennifer Beals amongst others (really nice to see Beals doing something like this) and the entire cast makes sure that the Hughes Brothers vision follows through.

It’s a pretty profound story of faith told against a spaghetti western post-apocalyptic backdrop that’s masterfully made and certainly, at least to me, worth more than one viewing. It’s terrific to see the Hughes Brothers back in action and now I just hope it’s not another nine years before their next movie. Without a doubt in my mind, very much recommended, and already something that I’ll certainly be thinking about for the best that I’ve seen in 2010.