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Safe House (2012)
Safe House is an an action movie that has some nice above-average action sequences strung together by a very sub-average plot. Tobin (Denzel Washington) is a rogue CIA agent being hunted down by shadowy forces. Or is he? A young agent (Ryan Reynolds) was responsible for the safe house in Cape Town that was breached and now takes it upon himself to bring Tobin in for the agency. Or does he? If you’ve seen any spy thriller in the last few years then you’ll recognize the glut of clichés and be able to ably predict the traitorous higher-ups using the economy of characters. Here’s a clue to the villains of the picture: don’t keep all your villainous deeds together on one computer file (and don’t label it “All Our Evil Deeds,” try instead, “Vacation Photos.”). Washington and Reynolds are appealing actors even in ho-hum parts. Washington never seems as devilish or as clever as his character is billed to be. While the plot is bland, director Daniel Espinosa (Easy Money) knows how to shoot some thrilling action sequences. The style is a bit of a Bourne rehash, what with the jangly camera angles, but the movie has a surprising level of verisimilitude; when two guys fight it really feels like a couple guys beating the crap out of each other. The chase sequences are well staged and find smart ways to make use of its South Africa location, like a chase through the levels of a soccer arena or a race atop the rooftops of shanty homes. It’s when the movie stops to catch its breath and the plot reemerges that Safe House becomes a snoozer.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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The Grey (2012)
I’ve always been fascinated with survival thriller/horror, where we think step-by-step with the characters through an unlikely scenario. I greatly enjoyed Frozen, a horror movie about three teens stranded on a ski lift, and Buried was in my top ten list for 2010. I enjoy the thought exercise and find the scenarios easily empathetic as long as people don’t make boneheaded decisions. Director Joe Carnahan has been paying his bills as of late with stylized, overdone, and generally overblown action movies like Smokin’ Aces and The A-Team. I would not have expected Carnahan to deliver anything that could be described as nuanced or meditative, but lo and behold The Grey is a survival thriller that’s as thoughtful and emotional as it is viscerally exhilarating. The Grey is the first great movie of 2012 and I’m astounded that it was released in January, the dumping ground for cinematic dreck.
We follow a group of grunts working on an oil pipeline way out in the northern Alaskan territory. They’re heading south for some R&R when their plane crashes due to electrical issues. Ottway (Liam Neeson) and seven other men are the lone survivors. While checking for supplies, they discover a pack of wolves feasting on some of the choicer corpses. Ottway is a wolf expert, hired by the oil company to patrol the grounds and hunt antagonistic wolves. He explains that wolves have a hunting radius of 300 miles and a kill radius of 30 within the den. It is uncertain where these men find themselves, so they bundle up and head south, hoping to escape the predators, find food and water, and discover a way to help.
The Grey is a harrowing, haunting, and intense thriller, masterfully played by Carnahan. The threat is real and brutal, enough that it convinces the men to leave the safety of the plane wreckage to possibly escape the wolf kill radius. We’re told that wolves are the only animal that will kill out of vengeance (look out Sarah Palin). The attacks are vicious and the violence is bloody and occasionally shocking, though it never seems gratuitous. The special effects and canine animatronics are seamlessly integrated. The sound design for this movie is exceptional, probably the best use of sound to fashion anxiety since 2007’s No Country for Old Men or even Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. The sounds of the wolf pack echo around the theater, completely keeping you off guard, disorienting the audience. Carnahan creates such a vivid picture of dread that we’re convinced that the wolves could sic at any moment. And when they do the editing becomes chaotic, mimicking the ferocity of the animals and depicting the frenzied fear of the attacked.
I was a terrible bundle of nerves throughout most of this movie. The plane crash is an exemplary sequence of terror, capturing the terrifying moments from Ottway’s limited point of view. The rest of the movie doesn’t get any less tense just because they’re on stable footing. There’s one scene where the wolves attack a guy who has fallen back from the group. Carnahan brilliantly captures the helpless reality by showing the men trying to race back in knee-high snow. They can only stomp so far while the man is ripped apart in the background. The action sequences, though to be fair they’re really more suspense pieces, are the most nerve-wracking I’ve endured since the brilliant Best Picture winner, The Hurt Locker. Of course these being life and death stakes, there is plenty of death, as the men are generally picked off one by one, though not all by the pack of wolves. The frigid elements are just as dangerous as the killer wolves. The men could just as easily freeze to death. The need for shelter and food is dire (the men even joke about the famous cannibalism from Alive). One of them is suffering just from his brain being unable to acclimate to the elevated attitude. That’s almost enviable considering the doom that constantly hangs over the other survivors.
Naturally there’s some friction between the survivors as far as the best course of action. Ottway has assumed Alpha dog status thanks to his expertise on wolves and the Arctic climate, but that does not mean that the rest of the men follow lockstep. Give the alarming situation, it will be in these men’s best interest to work together for survival. Some of the men chafe at being what to do but the movie doesn’t drags out this conflict, thankfully, because jockeying for power positions seems like an absurd waste of time. There are heavier issues at play. The impact of the movie would be blunted if the characters came across as one-dimensional; then we wouldn’t care about their fate. Carnahan and co-writer Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, based on Jeffers’ short story “Ghost Walker,” find creative ways to enrich and reveal the character of these lone men. They feel believable and their reactions to the implausible dangers seem plausible, keeping us invested. Ottway keeps flashing back to an image of his wife (Anne Openshaw) for strength, this angelic brunette telling him not to worry. It’s what he has to hold onto, though when we learn more about the context of this image it becomes even more meaningful. One character has had enough struggling and has no will power to continue. He argues that whatever life he may return to is no reward.
The thrills and scares are what are to be expected, but The Grey is also a much more thoughtful and intellectually stimulating picture than you may have hoped. Carnahan’s script covers a wide array of survival tactics without breaking from the reality of its premise. It’s just interesting to watch a group of men use their wits to make best use of their dwindling supplies and dire situation. It becomes a game that the audience plays, systematically judging every choice and assessing if we would follow suit. Beforehand, the men engage in a theological discussion regarding the existence of God, faith, the belief that there is a divine plan. The men are fighting for their survival but having an existential crisis all the same, trying to supply meaning to the horrific, find reasons to keep fighting. “We crashed going 400 miles per hour and we survived. That has to mean something,” one of them reasons. Or it all could just be very bad luck. Ottway at one point, an admitted non-believer in a higher power, bellows to the sky for something, anything. His desperation is effective and turns what could have been trite into a nice character moment. One of the men shares a memory of his daughter, who would wake him up by gently dangling her hair in his face. It’s a touching moment and when that same character meets an untimely end and is helped to the other side by a vision of that same daughter, it becomes profoundly moving (the quick snap to reality is a jarring point for grisly comparison). The Grey has plenty more on its mind than making an audience jump. It also wants to make the audience think and, in the end, feel genuine emotion.
The ending may rankle some who felt, especially with the advertising, that the film was going to be a two-hour Neeson ass-kicking vehicle, but for me it was fitting and the only way this story could have ended. Though let me advise all potential ticket-buyers to stay during the end credits for a small bit that offers a tad more resolution, though still leaves as much to be determined by the viewer. It’s not exactly ambiguous considering how things are left.
Neeson (Unknown, Clash of the Titans) has settled nicely into his newest incarnation as middle-aged ass-kicker, such an odd path for the man who famously portrayed Oskar Schindler. At some level, it’s below an actor of Neeson’s standards to be running through such genre frills, but it’s also a joy to see someone who can really, truly act give gravitas to his men of action. After he delivered his warning in Taken, I was completely on board and ready to watch this man bust some skulls. Beyond the physical challenges, the role really puts Neeson through an emotional wringer and the man gives a strong, stirring performance. You’d be glad to have this man in any predicament. The rest of the cast fill out their parts well, with Dermot Mulroney (The Family Stone) making the best use of his time onscreen to create a character.
The Grey is a startling movie; horrific, jolting, thrilling, moving, beautiful, philosophical, and extremely captivating. Carnahan has crafted an exciting movie that transcends genre. There were moments so tense that I was chewing on my knuckles. There were moments so intense I felt like I had to look away. And there were moments so poignant that tears welled up in my eyes. I look forward to watching this movie again and finding even more at work. No grey area here, this is one truly excellent movie.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Red Tails (2012)
You’d think a big name like George Lucas would not have a problem getting a movie made. Lucas has been trying to get a movie about the Tuskegee Airmen made since the 1980s, but he says no studio would bite, concerned that American audiences would not be interested in a movie with an all-black cast. So Lucas just paid for the movie himself, forking over $50 million of his own money a.k.a. July’s paycheck from Star Wars toys, a.k.a. what Lucas just had in his pockets at the time. Even though only credited as an executive producer, it’s hard not to feel the Lucas imprint all over Red Tails. The emphasis is on the high-flying aerial combat, ladled heavily with CGI special effects work, rather than on a credible story and characters that we care about. Simply out, the Tuskegee Airmen deserve a better movie than this.
In 1944, the Tuskegee Airmen have been kept on the ground for most of the war. However, the bomber pilots need more protection. It seems that white pilots meant to provide protection of the bombers will easily get distracted, chasing after German fighter planes for a taste of glory. Colonel Bullard (Terrence Howard) and Major Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr.) have been notified that their unit of black pilots will finally get their shot. Marty “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker) leads the squad, followed by Joe “Lightening” Little (David Oyelowo) and Ray “Junior” Gannon (Tristan Wilds). They are to escort the bombers and stick to the bombers; the mission is paramount. The unit paints the tails of their planes a bright crimson to stand out from the pack. The Tuskegee Airmen keep to their creed, ensuring the bombers carry out their missions, and proving themselves every bit as courageous as capable as white servicemen.
It’s like somebody transplanted a 1950s war film to present day but left every single hoary cliché imaginable. Just because African-American actors get to play the clichés doesn’t mean we’ve made progress. The Tuskegee Airmen are a historical account with enough real-life intrigue; Lucas and company didn’t need to create a fictional tale to illustrate their heroic deeds. The characters are all resoundingly one-note; the troubled leader with a drinking problem, the hotshot who doesn’t follow orders, the wisecracking pilot with a firm religious belief in “black Jesus,” the young guy trying to prove himself, and the guy who gets married and just wants to get back to his girl (guess what happens to him?). Let’s stop and analyze that plot point. Lightening first discovers his Italian beauty (NCIS: LA’s Daniela Ruah) waving while he’s zooming by in an airplane. Naturally he can find her home. After a series of strolls, Lightening asks her to be his wife, and eventually she accepts after some deliberation. Neither of them seems to find this interracial marriage concept a big deal, but in the 1940s, when the Army was still segregated and miscegenation was still illegal in certain states until 1967, you better believe it would be a big deal. Italy was no prejudice-free haven of tolerance, especially under Mussolini’s rule. And by the way, the portrayal of Italy in this movie looks like the war hasn’t even touched the land, physically and mentally. All those happy Italians just walking around smiling. And then there’s the white officers club where one of the black pilots visits and punches a guy after he calls him the N-word. In reality, this guy would have been beaten to an inch of his life. It’s even more bizarre then that, just after a month of flying missions, this say officer’s club greets the black pilots with open arms, fighting to by the guys rounds of drinks. Red Tails, at times, seems to exist in a different universe.
This has got to be the most boring part of a story you could tell about the Tuskegee Airmen. We watch the pilots escort the bombers and stick with the mission. While an interesting historical footnote, that’s about it. The story before the missions and after the missions is infinitely more interesting. I’d much rather see these brave heroes have to go back to a bitterly racist country, be declared honored men of valor by the government and then told they don’t deserve equal rights in the same breath. There’s so much more inherent drama in the conflict of going home to a segregationist country. Likewise, the Army was only integrated late into the war, meaning that African-American soldiers could not enter combat until 1944. Surely the journey these men took to enter the armed services is more compelling, and their experiences must have been even harder, battling the prejudices of their fellow brothers in arms. The early scenes in the film where Col. Bullard is fighting for respect and to get his men an actual mission, butting heads with brass who feel African-American soldiers are inferior, is far more gripping than anything that goes on in the air. The actual war part of this story is the least interesting part. If Lucas and company were so hell-bent on framing their story this way, they should have taken a cue from 1990’s Memphis Belle and stuck to a single mission being the majority of the plot. That would have kept the realism of the situation, ratcheted up suspense, and been a more natural way to get to know our characters.
While only thoroughly mediocre, Red Tails can have some pretty awful moments. The white bomber pilots provide, for lack of a better phrase, color commentary on the plot. Their dialogue is so on-the-nose and transparent, meant to lead an audience into some stilted realization that African-Americans are, gosh, not that different. The dialogue starts off with stuff like, “What? A colored man?! We’re done for,” then goes to, “Hey, these boys might actually be okay. I hope them Red Tails fly with us next time,” and then the movie might as well end on, “Wow, my altogether uninformed prejudices have been completely upended. I’m sorry I ever relied on such outdated notions of race that were completely ignorant. My paradigm has shifted and I’m going to look at people not as black or white anymore, but as people.” It’s so annoying and artificial. The dialogue is mostly cornball but the line that takes the cornball cake is after Lightening attacks a German munitions train, he shouts, “How you like that, Mr. Hitler?!” Really? “Mr. Hitler?” You’d think two African-American screenwriters (John Ridley and Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder) would have eschewed any phrases that could be racially loaded. Speaking of Germans, the movie has one German ace that keep reappearing again and again. Just so we understand that all those cockpit shots of ONE GERMAN are the same guy, the movie gives him a hideous scar along the side of his face. Being a scary scarred German fighter isn’t enough to convince us this man is a villain, so the movie also has him spout some pretty ludicrous racist dialogue, even for someone who may have believed wholeheartedly in the principles of an Aryan race. “Die you foolish, African,” he shouts at one point. Maybe he’s still steamed over that whole Jesse Owens thing.
But the dumbest moment in a movie that will tax a minimal amount of brain cells is what happens to Junior after his plane goes down. He’s caught behind enemy lines and is thrown into a prisoner of war camp. But what luck, because it just so happens that these prisoners are planning an escape that very night (“At least they won’t see you at night,” one of the guys tells Junior). They’ve dug a tunnel beneath their barracks and Junior agrees to go first to be the lookout. He climbs out of the exit hole right in front of a forest clearing. When the next one in line pops out, however, a German guard has spotted them and turned his weapon on the American. Junior hops from behind a tree, waves his arms wildly to distract, and then runs off into the woods. Inexplicably, this is where the storyline concludes. You’re telling me that a German soldier with a gun isn’t going to give chase into the woods? These guys have the upper hand, plenty of armed men and dogs to track escaped prisoners. The rest of the American prisoners make it out to alive miraculously and one of the guys gives Junior’s dog tags to his unit. How did these prisoners, all escaping after the jig was up, get past everyone? And yet Junior does indeed live too and shows up just in time, in literally the last thirty seconds of the movie, to cut short everyone feeling sad about fallen soldiers. It’s like an angel just dropped him out of the sky. Junior’s escape and perilous journey back to American forces seems like a pretty good story worth telling. It has to be fraught with danger and thrills, but to just hastily end his storyline and magically zap him back to base isn’t just criminally lazy, it’s insulting.
The saving grace of Red Tails is its coterie of talented actors, doing the best they can with the wobbly material. This is a movie designed for the most mainstream of audiences, not for anybody who knows a whiff of history. The characters are one-note, the story is driven by every cliché imaginable, and the reality of the time period feels oddly glossed over at too many points, settling for safe rah-rah movie heroics. The aerial combat sequences can be exciting but they come across as weightless, with all the emotional investment of watching a video game. Credit Lucas giving this movie a decent-sized budget to pull off the special effects and involved combat sequences, but that money would have been better spent on a good script, not one just dusted off from the World War II era and the race of the characters altered. I find this kind of pandering mush to be insulting, especially the fact that the audience is supposed to feel grateful that black soldiers are finally getting the spotlight no matter the quality of film. The choice of “pandering mush” or nothing is a false choice. If giving black characters the chance to run through all the tired, hoary war clichés that went out of style decades ago is progress, then I shed a tear for this country.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Contraband (2012)
January at the movies has long been a time for two kinds of releases: 1) award-worthy films expanding into wider release, and, 2) crap. That’s about it. I’ll let you figure out which category the action thriller Contraband belongs in.
Paul (Mark Wahlberg) was once the best smuggler in the business. He’s since gone legit, starting a family and his own private security business. His brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) gets into trouble with some bad men. He tosses a load of smuggled drugs to elude Customs ships, but now Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi) wants the value of the drugs or else. Paul knows he has no choice but to put together one last job to save Kate’s (Kate Beckinsale) brother. Paul leaves his family in the hands of Sebastian (Ben Foster), a trusted accomplish on many missions. John puts together a team and plans to board a ship headed for Panama City. While there, the team will load large sums of confederate money. The sale of the fake currency should square things between John and Briggs. However, little goes according to plan.
Contraband is a lousy heist picture that feels like it’s making it up as it goes. First off, the premise of John having to go back into his art of smuggling to settle a debt has been overdone, and the fact that John’s idiotic brother-in-law is as fault makes it hard to care that something might happen to the idiot. But why God do they bring this screw-up, the brother-in-law, along with them? He’s already proven to be a poor decision maker and a moron, and, surprise surprise, when in Panama the guy gets them into more danger. So irritating is this character, always foolishly making things worse for John, that you wish they had thrown this dolt overboard. This is a movie structured with a small beginning, a small end, and a great big fat middle, and it’s that middle that involves our destination to Panama. With heist movies, as well as most thrillers, we don’t want things to go according to plan. We want to see organic complications and watch our team of characters adjust. With Contraband, the complications don’t feel natural so much as like careening plot elements from other movies. John’s quick visit goes out of control, with the team losing their payment money for the confederate loot (guess who’s responsible for that? Guess?), and they have to go find a budding crime lord, Gonzalo (Milk’s Diego Luna), and then this crime lord just happens to be plotting a heist at THAT EXACT MOMENT and John and his team should come along and then the heist goes bad, as always, and the team ahs to get away, but Gonzalo demands to be taken to a hospital by gunpoint, and then the cargo ship is going to leave port, and, and, and, and, etc. There are so many breakneck plot turns thrown in that it feels like a broken blender spewing half-formed plot residue everywhere. It’s the film equivalent of the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie story (“If you give a smuggler a deadline, he’ll need a contact. If you give him a contact, he’ll need to do the contact a favor. If he does the contact a favor, he’ll have to do this one job for him. If he does this one job for him, he’ll need a crew. If he needs a crew, he’ll need… etc.).
Let’s take a moment to analyze the peculiar masks Gonzalo and his team choose to utilize. They literally wrap duct tape around their faces. That’s got to be the dumbest mask in the history of cinema, and there have been some stinkers. They couldn’t afford pantyhose? Anything? They had to use tape? First off, you can’t conceal key features, like your eyes and mouth, and lastly, isn’t it going to be something of a bitch to rip those things off? The only person who could properly wear a duct tape mask would be someone suffering from alopecia (condition that leaves a person hairless). Otherwise you’re sacrificing your eyebrows. Maybe this is just how things are done in Panama.
So much of this movie feels like it’s on autopilot, just drifting like that cargo ship. At this point, I don’t even think Wahlberg is trying to hide his indifference to the material. He’s a man with a shady past who went legit and has a family now, but in order to protect that family he is drawn back to his shady past. How many times has this plot device just been used in the last few years? The rest of the characters fill out the crime thriller cheat sheet: young screw-up who serves as plot catalyst, parent in prison to provide cautionary tale, best trusted pal that ultimately proves to be untrustworthy, and the harried, often victimized wife. Poor Beckinsale (Underworld) who gets beaten, threatened with a gun in her face, and victimized to a degree that it feels like exploitation. This woman can never catch a break. She gets few moments in the film where she is free from being terrorized with violence. I have no idea what would attract an actress like Beckinsale to this part other than the allure of a paycheck. Contraband stalls when it comes to thrills, and part of this is because the villains seem so lame. Briggs just comes across as an inept criminal, like somebody’s own screw-up brother-in-law that tagged along to play with the big boys. He’s routinely beaten and bossed around. It’s hard to take his threats seriously, so the movie cuts its losses and just has him threaten Kate some more. It becomes old quick. The only thing that keeps Contraband going is the great distance between Paula and his family, a divide that keeps Paul vulnerable. Too bad that the movie can’t think of anything thrilling to do with this scenario and settles, all too frequently, on scaring the wife. Wouldn’t the film have been more engrossing if Paul’s wife had been kidnapped this whole time? Would that not cause a better sense of urgency than the vague threat that a character we don’t care about might get offed for being stupid?
From an action standpoint, the thrills rarely materialize, relying on a contingent of blunders and coincidences to provide the thrills. There wasn’t a moment where I worried for a character on screen. This may be because I didn’t care for a person on screen, thanks to workmanlike characterization, but it’s also got to fall on the feet of Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur (who starred in Wahlberg’s role in the original Icleandic version of this flick) and his nascent camerawork. There will be moments where his camera does stutter-step zooms, mimicking the docu-drama camerawork that’s been en vogue with action cinema. And then he’ll never repeat it. There’s a shot of Gonzalo blowing the armored car up and it’s filmed in a high-speed, stylized shot to distill the strange beauty of the force, and then this never happens again. It’s like Kormakur is sampling all 31 flavors of action movie styles and can’t decide on a visual tone. The action is too dependent on arbitrary coincidences for it to be satisfying of thrilling; we’re just waiting for the next out-of-nowhere plot turn to move things along. The ending attempts to tie up things nicely but feels asinine and laughable in how John can take out three villains in one well-orchestrated, tidy swoop. Don’t even get me started on the impracticalities of John hearing a lone cell phone ringing to be able to trace his wife in an entire construction site. The resolution feels ludicrous and a stroke of dumb luck.
Contraband is a convoluted, knuckleheaded thriller that drags because of arbitrary maneuverings, poor characterization, a fat middle section plot-wise, and pedestrian action. The movie feels like it’s being made up on the spot. As a result of all this tiresome lateral plotting, Contraband feels like it’s going nowhere and spinning into oblivion. I found myself nodding off at various points, my brain bored by all the generic goings-on. The constant victimization of Paul’s wife is a rather ugly development for a movie that confuses salty language and furrowed brows for toughness. The movie is devoid of any sense of fun. It just becomes an empty enterprise of actors going through the motions to work of genre pap. Even by the dirt-low standards of January cinematic offerings, Contraband isn’t worth a cent of your hard-earned money.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
Never as good as a film should be given the talent involved, nor as bad as its detractors might have you believe, Cowboys & Aliens is an entertaining genre mash-up that’s about 60 percent Western, 30 percent alien thriller, and 10 percent naked Olivia Wilde, which is too small a percentage in my opinion. For a solid hour, the movie follows the rhythms of classic Westerns and Daniel Craig has a face vividly made for the Western canvas. The sci-fi elements feel well integrated in small doses, however, when the movie goes all-out intergalactic gun slinging is when the narrative gets swallowed whole by the crude blockbuster nature of this beast. The plot is pretty standard Man with a Dark Past stuff, and can we put a moratorium on people suffering amnesia and choosing to be better people? The characters never really feel real but they feel believably stock for their genre. For a PG-13 movie, the violence can get pretty gruesome, especially in its gooey disembodiment of the alien invaders. You almost feel sorry for these nefarious gold-hoarding (yes, you read that right, the aliens are after our gold – Glen Beck was right!) creatures. The action sequences are a notch above average, the emphasis on practical effects is appreciated, and the movie takes some darkly comic turns, which kept me amused even when the movie’s IQ was dropping at a precipitous rate for the last act. Cowboys & Aliens never pretends to be anything more, or smarter, than its blunt title.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
Delivering pretty much more of the same, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows isn’t exactly an improvement over the classic detective’s first foray into out-and-out Hollywood action cinema. The real treat of the budding franchise is the comic interplay between Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law). Their harried banter makes for the best moments. Once again the plot is overwrought, the side characters underdeveloped (poor original dragon tattooed girl, Noomi Rapace, given absolutely nothing to do but run in a gypsy skirt), mysteries that you give up and just wait for Holmes to explain, and a villain that proves to be lackluster. For Moriarty (Mad Men’s Jared Harris) to be the nemesis, the intellectual equal of Holmes I’m going to need to see much more than this. There is a fine sequence at the very end where Holmes mentally envisions the steps of his attack and then Moriarty joins in: “You think you’re the only one who can do that?” They hold an entire duel fought step-by-step in the imagination. I wanted more experiences like this, but director Guy Ritchie (Snatch) falls back on his signature stylized action sequences of fast whooshing and quick spinning. The action is a step up from the first Holmes, and that will be enough for most ticket-buyers. I’ll admit there is a certain meta-literary charm at watching Arthur Conan Doyle’s signature detective fighting his way through an armed body of baddies. Whatever your feelings were for the 2009 Sherlock Holmes, I’m fairly certain you’ll revisit them in their entirety with Game of Shadows. I know I did.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
In the span of three months, two Pixar vets will be making their live-action filmmaking debuts. Andrew Stanton (WALL-E, Finding Nemo) is directing Disney’s big-budget John Carter of Mars adaptation, which will be released this March. But first is the awkwardly punctuated, colon-hoarding Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (henceforth referred to as M:I 4), directed by Brad Bird. Any fan of The Incredibles (and who isn’t) knows that Bird is a terrific visual stylist who can compose remarkably exciting action without overlooking characterization. If anyone was ready for the leap into live-action, surely it was this man. Bird is the real star of the movie, and he aces his debut. I think he’s finally living up to the potential he showed with TV’s Family Dog (please note the tongue firmly planted in cheek here).
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF squad are on the run. They’ve been framed for an explosion that took out the Kremlin. The president has invoked “ghost protocol” meaning that the IMF no longer exists, and every member is cut loose. That means Ethan and his newest team, techno wizard Benji (Simon Pegg), feisty Jane (Paula Patton), and the mysterious Brandt (Jeremy Renner), have no backup. They are considered rogue agents and Russian’s own special police force is hunting them down as well. Hunt and his team must track down and stop an international terrorist, Hendricks (Micheal Nyqvist, the Swedish Girl with Dragon Tattoo series), who sees the global benefit of nuclear catastrophe (I suppose surviving would be the catch). Hendricks has gotten hold of Russian nuclear launch codes and now is looking to put the final pieces together to initiate a war between the United States and Russia, plunging the world into disaster. Hunt’s team travels around the globe to stop this bad man and his bad plan.
Bird delivers in a major way in his live-action film debut. The man behind two of the best animated films of all time and Ratatouille, has shown that his keen skills of directing animation have easily translated to real people and real-ish explosions. Bird is a mad genius when it comes to staging elaborate action sequences; he teases out his action with organic consequences and his camera makes adept use of space and geography, and best of all you can easily follow what’s going on in the frame. So when we have an action sequence that takes place in the tallest skyscraper in the world, you know Bird is going to make fine use of this fact to accentuate his action. And the man does so in spades. The Dubai sequence is probably the how-did-they-do-that? standout that people will be most talking about. Hunt has to climb the outside of the aforementioned tallest building in the world using nothing but some special sticky gloves that don’t always work right. He has to climb several stories up, and then there’s the matter of going back down without them. But M:I 4 doesn’t rest on its laurels, because immediately after this sequence we have a feast of thrills. We segue right into a meeting between two parties where Hunt’s team has to pose as each member of this sit-down, orchestrating two separate simultaneous false meetings with the real bad guys. The two meetings dovetail one another as far their needs, making for a blissful parallel of escalating suspense. And then even after this, we get a foot chase into a sandstorm, which then becomes a dangerous car chase into a sand storm. And there are even more great stunts and spectacular action to come, notably a fight in a futuristic car park where the cars tumble from level to level.
Bird has such a firm command of his action, exercising his inspired imagination and all the tools in the special effects paint box. The screenwriters deserve recognition as well, Josh Applebaum and Andre Nemec, both of whom honed their writing chops on J.J. Abram’s sublime spy show, Alias. Their opening sequence, an escape from a Russian prison, sets the stage with Bird’s smart execution; setting up a problem and then letting the situation play out in surprising yet logical and clever ways. It may not have the epic scope of a Michael Bay flick, but Bird’s action is cool without having to be exhausting or noxious. The frenetic pacing rarely lets room for breathing. One of the film’s quiet moments ended in such a jarring fashion that it startled me and I kicked the patron sitting in front of me. I must also credit Applebaum and Nemec for producing the only Mission: Impossible movie that did not involve a turncoat. I was starting to think that IMF’s Human Resources department was in needing of a good housecleaning. Bird, and the screenwriters, has delivered a Mission: Impossible movie so good, with such kinetic and rewarding action sequences, logically utilized gadgets, sexy cars, sexy gals, and exotic locales. They’ve basically made the best Bond movie not to bear 007’s likeness.
Like the previous Mission: Impossible flick, this one emphasizes the team aspect, which makes a more fulfilling and interesting set of missions. M:I 2 became the “Ethan Hunt kicks people in the face for two hours movie,” which Chuck Norris might approve but otherwise was lacking. When J.J. Abrams got on board in 2006, the brand finally got back to its roots. And a team working together with individual strengths makes for a much more satisfying mission that also allows for multiple points of action. Simply out, if you have three people that need to do stuff in synchronicity, it plays out much better than watching Cruise kick people in the face. Choreography is always better when you have more dancing partners. Anyway, with M:I 4 we get some terrific teamwork that can be just as thrilling as the action sequences. Besides the breathless Dubai sequence, there’s a great sequence where the team has to infiltrate a sleazy Indian businessman’s (Anil Kapoor, the TV host from Slumdog Millionaire) cocktail party to get some special satellite codes. Jane is tasked with seducing the sleazy guy, Benji is left to operate a mechanical rover with a powerful magnet that will levitate Brandt, in a metal suit, across the system’s super hot inner mainframe, and Hunt is trying to lose his Russian pursuers. It’s a great sequence where all the pieces come together for maximum effect.
Cruise has done plenty in the last five years to destroy audience good will, so it’ll be interesting to see if audiences warm back up to the man with the million-dollar smile. Cruise has always been an actor of ebullient energy and charisma, and this has always aided him in action settings and M:I 4 is no different. He’s still a credible action hero and a born movie star, whatever audiences think about his increasingly polarizing personal activities. Lessening Cruise’s load is a smart move, and Pegg (Paul) can provide needed comic relief while Patton (Precious) supplies the sizzle. My goodness can this woman fill out a dress in marvelous ways. Not to be completely sexist, she does a fair amount of ass-kicking too. Her fight with the French femme fatale agent (Lea Seydoux) was all kinds of awesome. Renner (The Town) seems groomed as a potential heir apparent for the franchise. His character is given a small amount of depth to work with, the guilt of a mission gone wrong that has a very personal connection to Hunt. At this point, Renner can do no wrong as an actor in my book. Although there’s only a nine year age difference between Cruise and Renner, so I don’t know how much more mileage that gives you as a franchise. Regardless, Renner is an actor of great conviction and intensity even when he’s silent.
In terms of the franchise, I’d say this fourth installment is just as good as Abrams’ M:I 3, though Abrams had a much better villain and the added emotional urgency of hunt’s wife in distress. Seriously, this is one really boring and completely interchangeable villain. For a movie about the world being on the brink of thermonuclear Armageddon, why do the stakes feel so low? It’s probably because the movie has deliciously orchestrated and eye-popping set pieces but very little urgency. World War III has never felt so ho-hum. Still, it’s hard to fault an action movie when it delivers such high amounts of adrenaline, perfectly packaged in well-developed action beats. This is a high-flying popcorn spectacle of the top order, a grandiose piece of Hollywood escapism. Mission: Impossible 4 is pretty much everything you’d want in a summer blockbuster, only shuttled to winter. I think Bird’s future is limitless, in animation and live-action, and I think the Broccoli family would do us all a favor by tapping Bird to direct a Bond movie. M:I 4 is a pretty good resume for the gig. That would be one mission to die for.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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Immortals (2011)
Director Tarsem Singh has only made two movies but is widely regarded as one of the finest visual artists working in the film medium. He’s made tons of commercials, which is apt because his first feature, 2000’s The Cell, felt like the world’s longest perfume ad. While amazing in its design, the movie was incredibly stupid. I haven’t seen his other feature, the more personal work The Fall, a movie that nobody wanted to make. It’s probably because they regrettably saw The Cell. Now the guy seems downright prolific, with a Greek mythology action movie in release and next year an update on the Snow White fairytale, the first shot in the Great Snow White Duel of 2012 (Kristen Stewart stars in the other, next summer’s Snow White and the Huntsman).
In 1200 B.C., King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) is marching an army across Greece, laying waste to city after city. He’s looking for the mythical Epirus Bow, believed to be the only weapon capable of unleashing the titans, who were imprisoned after a war with the Olympian gods. Mankind’s only hope is Theseus (Henry Cavil), a strapping young lad born into low class. His real father is Zeus (Luke Evans) who keeps tabs on his spry son by posing as a wise old man (John Hurt). Phaedra (Freida Pinto) is a virgin oracle, a priestess who has been granted prophetic visions. Theseus rescues her and other prisoners of Hyperion. Together, they must find the bow and convince their countrymen to fight against the overwhelming forces of Hyperion. In the meantime, Zeus has sworn death to any god who interferes in the affairs of man and helps Theseus on his important quest.
One word I feel accurately that sums up the experience of watching Immortals is… “viscera.” This movie is obsessed with filming the destruction of human bodies in the most gloriously beautiful ways possible. The violence and gore are given an intensely operatic boost. One moment involves a god zips around the slow-moving mortals, smashing one head after another with his humongous war hammer. The scene plays out at a slower speed, allowing the explosions of glistening blood and skull to fill the screen, each a mesmerizing fireworks display of human goo. The visuals are often a balletic, phantasmagorical, Grand Guignol display of human carnage. When you watch this at home, you may need a squeegee to clean your TV. It’s mesmerizing to watch, getting lost in the painstaking yet sumptuous visuals, even when it’s buckets of spaltterific gore. There’s one scene involving a sledgehammer that’s guaranteed to make every male in the theater uncomfortably cross his legs. The final image is also memorably striking – the sky filled with thousands of battling titans and Olympians, suspended high in the air and hacking and slashing away (Grecian weather report: 50 percent chance of blood showers. Bring an umbrella).
Tarsem never skimps out when it comes to the look of his movies. Immortals looks like a living Renaissance painting; the director of photography should be credited to Caravaggio. Unlike Tarsem’s earlier films, this movie does not take place within the realm of imagination, but that doesn’t hamper the movie’s aesthetics. Taking a cue from the golden-hued Greek/Roman epics of recent year, notably Zack Snyder’s 300, the film exists in a heightened reality. We’re dealing with mythology after all (more on the specifics of that later). The iconic imagery of Greek mythology is all there, stunningly realized in lavish CGI and a production design that is frequently jaw dropping. The action sequences are resolutely exciting, with special mention for the climactic gods vs. titans battle. The gods, decked out in spiffy gold armor and capes, bounce off the walls aided by Matrix-style moves and slice and dice their wicked immortal brethren in creatively gruesome ways. It’s a thrilling sequence that almost makes you forget the movie’s catalogue of sins.
The movie plays fairly fast and loose with the Greek lore. The Theseus of legend was mainly known for slaying the ferocious Minotaur, the guardian of a great labyrinth. His father was Poseidon, not Zeus. Some versions even have Phaedra falling in love with Theseus’ son from his first wife (Theseus was a busy boy, taking after his father). These details, and more, may seem inconsequential but if they’re going to be so loose in the adaptation, why even bother keeping the name Theseus? Immortals does have an interesting albeit brief bit where the Minotaur is seen as a human warrior wearing a bull mask made of barbed wire. Short of the gods and titans, there isn’t any depiction of the supernatural occurring on Earth. The monsters and mythic creatures are absent, leaving some Greeks to question the validity of the gods. The movie takes an unexpected twist early by declaring, in a self-serious tone, that immortals can… die. It seems that the gods just discovered one day that they could kill each other. I would have liked to be there for that discovery (“Yeah, go ahead and lick that electrical socket.”). The film lays out that the titans and the gods were one in the same, it’s just that the winners of the battle of the heaven called the losers “titans.” If they’re the same then why do the titans act like feral monkey creatures and look like ashen, Hindi gods (no disrespect, one billion Hindus)? Have they simply gone wild after being locked away in such a unique prison? When they fight, the titans move at the speed of mortals, not gods. I also believe the titans were supposed to be considerably larger.
But as enchanting as the visuals are, there are still the other senses that are criminally malnourished. The screenplay by brothers Charlie and Vlas Parlapanides is about as bare-bones as you can get. It’s your basic hero’s quest, trusting young stud Theseus with finding a magic item and stopping a bad man. If that sounds plainly generic then congratulations, you’ve seen more than one movie with men in togas (Animal House does not count). Mysterious parentage? Check. Close relative that dies early to spur vengeance motivation? Check. Noble sacrifices by members of his team? Check. Eventual intervention of the gods? Check. What I just described could also have been the plot for 2010’s joyless Clash of the Titans remake. What’s up with Zeus and these noncommittal gods? He refuses to get directly involved in the affairs of man, but if King Hyperion releases the titans (should have gone the long route and unleashed the Kraken) then the Olympians are jeopardized. It seems like they have an interest in giving Theseus a mighty assist. The magic item, a bow that creates unlimited arrows when plucked back, is pretty much a forgotten relic. It gets used, I kid you not, exactly three times in the entire movie. All of this fuss over a super weapon that the characters can’t be bothered to utilize. They’d rather fight it out with a traditional bronze sword. What exactly does it mean to be immortal when even the gods can die? King Hyperion says he’ll be immortal by essentially raping a nation of women, keeping his bloodline alive for centuries (the Genghis Kahn defense, your honor). But if having kids is being immortal, I think we’re setting the bar pretty low.
The Phaedra character is so underwritten that she almost comes across as a parody of the role of women in these guy-heavy action spectacles. As portrayed, Phaedra is the definition of convenience. She doles out a prophetic vision to save the day, provides some grade-A eye candy thanks to the splendor of Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), and even casually slips into Theseus’ bed for a deflowering (sorry guys, it’s clearly a body double). She will be haunted by visions of the future until the moment she loses her virginity. Let’s stop and think about this. Having one member of your team be able to SEE INTO THE FUTURE seems like a decisive tactical advantage. I understand the lure of a naked and willing Pinto, but Theseus needed to think beyond the needs of his little Greek. In an abrupt and off-putting turn, Phaedra is never really dealt with in any capacity after this seismic bout of lovemaking, nor do she or Theseus talk about what has transpired. She just provided some casual sex while the hero was recuperating and then checked out. Her major prophetic vision of Theseus and Hyperion joining sides is also just forgotten, turning out to be a letdown.
The actors were basically hired for their visual appeal, and to that end they succeed. Cavill (TV’s The Tudors), tapped to wear Superman’s cape in 2013 by Zack Snyder, is suitably buff and hunky. His performance is rather flat, no matter how many times he makes his eyes go big with anger. In contrast, Rourke (Iron Man 2) will chew whatever scenery he can find. His flamboyantly costumed villain at one point seems to wear a lobster claw on his head. He wants to punish the gods because they refused to intervene when Hyperion’s wife and child were slaughtered. When the gods do intervene to save Theseus, that’s when the character should go off the rails. Rourke just plays it in the same sleepy menace. Pinto gets to stare off into the distance regularly and pray. It’d be a stretch to say that the material challenges any of these actors.
Immortals is a testosterone-soaked action movie that feels like it minored in Art History. The production design, CGI, and practical special effects, all attuned to the extraordinary vision of Tarsem, makes for a brilliant looking movie with several sequences of memorable carnage. But we entered the age of “talkies” since 1927, and Immortals suffers when it concerns dialogue, story, characterization, and acting. The movie is a pretty loose adaptation of Greek mythology, falling back on a rote hero’s quest and leaving plenty of narrative dead spaces for the visuals to fill in the interest. Even a movie as visually resplendent as Immortals can only go as far as its story will allow. In this case, Immortals might just be the best-looking piece of borderline mediocrity you’ll ever see in your life.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Columbiana (2011)
Apparently, Columbians and several academic professors of Columbian descent have taken offense with the implications of the new action film from the stewardship of producer/co-writer Luc Besson (name a French action movie from the last 20 years and he’s likely had some hand in its development). The criticism being drawn is that Columbiana paints an unflattering picture of life in the South American country of the, almost, same name. I suppose that could be one charge against the film, but why be so limiting? Columbiana doesn’t make anybody look good, except for its star Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek), who could even stand to eat a few more sandwiches if you ask me.
10-year-old Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg, soon to breakout in a big way as Rue in next year’s Hunger Games) has the misfortune of watching her parents gunned down in front of her eyes. Her father ran afoul with the local drug lord, though we’re never told why. The drug lord’s main henchman, Marco (Jordi Molla), is looking for a microchip Cataleya’s father gave her. The girl stabs Marco in his hand and leaps out a window, darting through the streets of Bogotá with goons chasing after. She makes it into a U.S. embassy and offers up this microchip filled with significant data (what we’re never told) as her passport to America. She eventually finds her way to Chicago, where she lives with her Uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis, doing an accent on loan from Scarface). She wants to be a killer to avenge her parents, and her uncle agrees to help. Flash forward 15 years, and the adult Cataleya (Saldana) is working as a hired assassin. Her calling card is painting the cataleya orchid on the chests of her victims. Why? To attract attention from the right parties. She’s playing a dangerous game, as they always do, romancing an artist (Alias’ Michael Vartan), staying a step ahead of the authorities, and working her way up the Colombian goon food chain to get back at Marco and his boss.
This is one of the dullest action movies I’ve had the privilege of sitting through. I was actively counting down the minutes until it would be over about halfway in. It’s not because Columbiana is particularly bad, it’s just so staggeringly routine, a French-styled action thriller cobbled together from the leftover bits of previous French-styled action thrillers (take one part La Femme Nikita, some faux Professional gravitas, add some District B13 parkour, how about a few outlandish Transporter getaways, and bake for 30-40 minutes). There are a few decent action sequences but lots of time in between, time that lets the film’s momentum lag and allows space to start contemplating all the questionable aspects of the picture. There are so many lazy, recognizable pieces onscreen, from the idiot FBI agents, who are always late on the trail, to the underwritten romantic love interest who is only there for booty calls and to accidentally be endangered, to the oblique bad guys who are just bad, and sometimes rather bad at being bad. These guys couldn’t outrun a 10-year-old girl in Columbia, what makes me think they’ll get their act together and take out the adult version? And I absolutely hate it when movies, set in other lands, have the characters speak one line in their native tongue and then transition immediately into English spiced with the occasional foreign phrase. Columbiana has the notoriety of making me yearn for the days where a female assassin picking off men twice her size was a novel concept/image.
Turn after turn, beat for beat, the plot has characters behaving in contrived ways because the story would not work without these contrivances. Cataleya says she’s an expert killer, but much of her expertise involves an insane number of coincidences and variables that are impossible to account for. We’re talking about the bathroom habits of guards, the amount of coffee consumption, the placement of specific prison cells, the precise number of guards and their own attention spans, the fact that every single person would not notice security cameras being messed with, and even nitty-gritty stuff like the amount of water in a plastic cup and the exact size of a hole that would allow the right amount of liquid to drip and pool into a spoon. Not to mention the fact that this also works on the assumption that police finding a plastic cup and a spoon inside a security panel would not find any of this suspicious. What the hell? That’s not rigorous planning and flawless execution? That’s divine intervention and/or good luck. At least in other hitman films that would study their prey to make it look like an accident. Not our Cataleya. She’s been taking out goons and leaving her calling card in an effort to attract attention from a certain Columbian cartel leader. The problem is that it takes her 15 years and over 22 murders before her skills attract media attention. That’s a frustration that the Son of Sam might identify with. But how would murders in Chicago attract attention in Columbia?
The only thing noteworthy for an enterprise that is so inherently generic is the weird moments that catch your attention. First, Saldana’s emaciated, wiry, potentially malnourished frame certainly draws your attention. Has there ever been a skinnier assassin on screen? There’s a reason that this woman is able to constantly squeeze inside air ducts and other cramped spaces; she’s practically a contortionist with her body. Now the actress has always been petite but her diminished physicality makes everything she does seem so much less believable. When she’s slinking around with a humongous assault rifle, you’d think the rifle weighs more than Saldana. And then when she engages in hand-to-hand combat, you keep waiting for some bad guy to grab her by the scruff of her neck and just hold her at arm’s length, a safe distance from potential kicks. Despite all her steely glares, Saldana just does not come across as a believable hitman. To top that off, the way director Olivier Megaton’s (Transporter 3) cameras seem to worship her lithe, leggy body gives an unsettling support for Saldana’s teeny tiny body. Now people can be just as discriminatory toward thin people as they can be with the overweight, but with Columbiana, Saldana’s skinny body negatively impacts the reality of a story already riddled with logic gaps.
Then there’s Cataleya’s uncle who himself is something of a criminal under lord. She wants to grow up and be a killer and he just sort of shrugs and says, “Okay,” in the same tone of voice as if she had said she wanted to be a cowboy. But this is Movie World, a place where Cataleya’s father tells his driver, “We’ve got maybe an hour at most before he kills my whole family,” and then spends that fateful hour in such a lackadaisical fashion. He stops and walks around his car, sits down his little girl to have one last talk, waits for his wife to pack; there’s no sense of urgency here. People, you got one hour to supposedly live, you don’t pack a suitcase you just get in the car and run! But getting back to Uncle Emilio in Chicago. After he enrolls her in school, she’s sulky because she doesn’t think there’s anything she can gain from American education. She just wants to learn the ways of a killer. Her uncle, in a misguided feat to teach her a lesson, pulls out a gun and shoots randomly into a street, causing a car to crash and dozens of witnesses to huddle. “What can I teach you if you don’t learn?” he says, somehow giving the least inspiring case for public education. Then, preposterously enough, he and Cataleya scamper off at a mid-trot, casually eluding the police and all the dozens of witnesses who have clearly been able to see them this whole time.
Columbiana is one of those cookie-cutter action movies that just coasts on the apathetic expectations the audience has when they knowingly plop down money for a generic genre picture. And generic is certainly Columbiana. It’s a fairly standard revenge picture with some fairly standard action, devoid of any discernible kinetic style that might make for memorable sequences. Columbiana would not exist if it weren’t for a wealth of clichés and contrivances; the whole enterprise is bursting at the seams thanks to all its shortcuts in story and character. What does the title even mean? Is the film Columbia-esque? Is the depiction of skinny assassins and preposterous, illogical action supposed to be reminiscent of life in the country of Columbia? I think the film paints a worse picture of Chicago than Columbia, but at any rate this is an action thriller that can’t be bothered to thrill. Columbiana is generic to the point of desperation, where even the sight of Saldana in a skintight cat suit can become underwhelming in time, a tragedy of international proportions.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
I owe the makers behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes a huge apology. I have been vocally dismissive of a new Apes film from the first moments I heard about the project. I just thought rehashing this material was a stupid move. Then I heard James Franco (127 Hours) was going to be the lead, and I sighed. Then I saw the trailers and verbally impugned them in my theaters. Upon the conclusion of the trailer I yelled, “You can still shoot them!” and my criticism drew applause from those around me. The concept that we suddenly made apes smarter and they could now enter the Bronze Age, brandishing spears, didn’t overwhelm me. Just because the apes suddenly had tools didn’t seem like enough to topple mankind from the top of the evolutionary ladder. So in the months and weeks ahead I sneer, jeered, and overall dismissed Rise of the Planet of the Apes. And then the reviews came out and they weren’t just good, they were ecstatic. I went begrudgingly into the theater, waiting to hurl my own feces at the screen (figuratively, of course). Then I was completely taken aback by how much I unabashedly loved it.
Will Rodman (Franco) is a young scientists working hard at create a miracle cure for Alzheimer’s. His corporate company has been testing their drugs on chimps to mixed results. One day a promising ape, made smarter by a dose of ALZ 112, goes bananas and is put down by security. The lady ape left behind a baby ape that has taken on traits from the ALZ 112. Will takes the little chimp home to care for the “company property.” But then he ends up adopting the chimp, which his ailing father (John Lithgow) names Caesar. Due to the super drug, Caesar shows remarkable intelligence and looks to be getting even stronger. It looks like Will might have found his cure, and his boss (David Oyelowo) will make billions. But then complications ensue, as they always do, and Caesar is taken to an animal preserve facility run by a crooked father/son team (Brian Cox and Harry Potter’s Tom Felton). Caesar is mistreated and distraught to adjust to a life in pens. He makes plans to escape but then decides to rally his fellow imprisoned apes to a greater cause with the help of some of the ALZ 112.
Even through Franco is the headliner he’s really nothing more than a supporting character, a catalyst. The real star of the movie is undoubtedly Caesar the chimp. After about he 45-minute mark, Franco is reduced to making frowny faces while he scowls, trying to ascertain where his favorite monkey is. His dialogue is mostly reduced to different iterations of yelling Caesar’s name in different locations (the guy even manages to smirk in his sleep in one scene). But the major surprise is that Caesar is not only a compelling leading character but also a well-developed one at that. This is a living, breathing character brought to life thanks to top-notch computer wizardry and the talents of Andy Serkis, the leading authority for soulful motion-capture performances. Caesar may be the greatest single special effect of all time, not because of its life-like quality (it’s close, but again the creature’s features seem too waxy). But the reason Caesar is so impressive is because of the depth of emotion that can be read onscreen. This is a textured performance where you can read varying emotions through the looks of eyes, the twitching of facial muscles, the biting of lips. The emotions are genuinely recognizable; he flashes guilt, anger, frustration, heartache, disbelief, betrayal, fear, shame, just about everything in the book. From a DNA standpoint, chimps and humans share 96 percent of the same genes, so it’s understandable that we can relate to the plight of our distant relatives. Serkis is responsible for providing the groundwork for CGI creations like Gollum and King Kong, so he’s the world’s go-to guy when it comes to providing a framework for animators (Robert Zemeckis, why have you never called this guy?). It’s an amazing special effect accomplishment and works side-by-side with the storytelling to make Caesar a complicated, interesting, and deeply empathetic hero. He’s a terrific center for the movie and a figure that you root for, even with the tacit understanding that cheering on the apes’ escape is also tantamount to cheering the decline of the human race. But by God, during the apes-run-amok climactic sequences you are cheering for mankind’s downfall hardcore.
The Planet of the Apes saga (six films) is, let’s be honest here, rather abysmal. Everybody loves the first movie but the quality sharply drops from there, with four sequels in four years each managing to answer the depressing question, “Can this thing really get any worse?” The 2001 Tim Burton “re-imagining” was just embarrassing and filled with loopy logic (how can the apes take over Earth’s past when Marky Mark crashes on a DIFFERENT planet in the FUTURE?). Given that, the filmmakers behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes did not have to achieve much to separate themselves from the monkey-stank of the sci-fi franchise. The film serves as a prequel to the series but it’s easily the best film since the original. Easily. For one, the storytelling is not overwhelmed by the allegory of sci-fi packaging. The world is decidedly our own and the problems the characters grapple with are fairly relatable. Will may be responsible for the annihilation of the human race but his motivation is pure – he wants to save his ailing father. That’s a believable motivating force that would push the character to action over caution, testing his special serum without fully examining all the side effects. You know what they say about the road to Hell (my friend Eric Muller always suspected Franco would be linked to the end of civilization)? But in a Planet of the Apes movie there is a wealth of thoughtful human drama. Animal rights are one of the more obvious messages the movie deals with, but the film takes a character-driven approach following the animal himself. You care about these characters and when one CGI ape was cradling a dying CGI ape, I swear I was getting choked up over those computer pixels. That’s how emotionally involving this new Apes film can be. It’s refreshing to have a Hollywood action film that has more on its mind than blowing stuff up all good like.
But when the action shapes up, mostly during a stirring man vs. apes climax, the film easily delivers. The nimble screenplay by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (their first film since 1997’s Relic!) is a terrific example of economical big-budget pacing. Every scene moves the story forward and doesn’t waste a frame. The final running time is only 105 brisk minutes but it squeezes in so much entertainment and emotion. Director Rupert Wyatt keeps the thrills coming on a human-scale, never letting the enormity of the events getting too out of hand. Sure suddenly there are like 500 apes all of a sudden and all of them are super smart, but I can roll with that. The stakes are always clear and the action is easy to follow and easier to get swept up in. There are a few shout-outs to the original film’s iconic lines, which will either come across as fun or ham-handed. And thankfully a plausible scenario is put forth to explain why the humans would be overtaken by the apes. That’s not to say that everything is smartly woven into the narrative. Several of the side characters are but crude renderings. Frieda Pinto’s (Slumdog Millionaire) underdeveloped love interest could be completely taken out with minimal effect on the plot. Likewise the Evil Business Head seems to have nothing but speeches that remind you his sole interest is making lots of moolah.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a Hollywood movie with a soul. Finally late in the summer a major studio movie emerges that has the right balance of brains, brawn, and thrills. It’s an exciting action movie, a poignant drama from an animal’s point of view, a tour de force of special effects that manage to make the film more emotionally involving, and a sci-fi prequel that’s actually worthy of its name. Serkis’ gifts for physical performance are invaluable to the emotional core of the movie. By going back to its DNA, Rise of the Planet of the Apes has given new life to a franchise whose best days were 40 years ago. I don’t see where the series can go from here. A prequel to the prequel seems superfluous. A sequel would only really showcase the waning days of humanity and also seem superfluous. Then again, until the moment I was watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes I would have said this very movie was superfluous too. Instead this is the finest summer spectacle of the year and destined to make my top ten list for the year. If you can’t beat them, join them, damn dirty apes and all.
Nate’s Grade: A
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