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American Hustle (2013)
With two movies, writer/director David O. Russell has vaulted to the top of Hollywood. Previously known for his own difficult behavior, Russell’s last two films, The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, were both critical and commercial hits (Silver Linings made over $230 million worldwide). Both brought a bushel of Oscar nominations as well, making Russell one of the hottest directors for actors and producers. But a new side seems to have emerged over these last two movies, one less of Russell the domineering director and one of Russell the open collaborator. It feels like he’s just hitting his stride too. American Hustle is Russell’s latest and it’s sharply written, engrossing, lively, surprisingly comic, and readily entertaining.
In the late 1970s, the FBI set up an undercover sting to nail political corruption, ultimately nabbing several U.S. congressmen and one standing U.S. Senator. Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) is an FBI agent who snags the perfect assistance. To catch a crook you have to think like a crook, and so Richie has strong-armed a pair of lucrative con artists into helping him. Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) is a professional down to his elaborate hairpiece. He’s used to fleecing desperate people and selling phony artwork to the gullible, but he’s been too shy about making too much noise. If you stay small, you go unnoticed. Irving’s partner in crime is Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), a kindred spirit who has reinvented her self. She and Irving are in love, and now they’re trapped by Richie to set up New Jersey mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). The one unpredictable element is Irving’s young wife, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), who could blow up the whole operation with her careless and self-involved tantrums.
Russell has once again given audiences one of the most entertaining films of the year, this time allowing them to participate vicariously in a con game, trying to anticipate the twists and turns and assessing everyone’s personal angle. This is a fictionalized rendition of the Abscam case (the opening text drolly says, “Some of this actually happened”) and it gives us a slew of meaty characters that have something going on. The central point elaborated in this pop crime caper is that we’re all cons, we’re all pretending, on some level, to be different people; Russell’s film just takes this notion to the extreme. Irving and Sydney are trying to escape lives of ordinary malaise, of being victims, of the more powerful dictating their options for them. With Sydney, she’s pretending to fall for Richie, but we don’t fully know which side she may choose to end up on. Richie is trying to also escape his dull life of desk jobs and lower middle-class dinners. His ambitions get hold of him, and with Irving’s aid, he catapults himself toward achieving those oversized dreams of his, never mind the ethical lapses in nabbing the bad guys. For Carmine, he’s so fiercely devoted to his community that you don’t doubt his loyalty for a second. He’s a man who sincerely wants to help others and is knowledgeable enough about how the world works, knowing he may have to grease some wheels to get the progress started. He is the most moral figure of the five main players and you may find yourself rooting for him to escape the snare closing in on him. Then there’s Rosalyn who has her hooks in Irving, looking for a sense of stability for her and her child. She’s a volatile cocktail of emotion but she knows what she needs to do to keep Irving anchored to her needs, though she’s also cognizant enough to latch onto a better provider if one materializes. Mixing and matching those characters, you have an eclectic mix of personalities clashing, many at odds with one another as far as goals, and the conflict stirred up is delicious.
Russell also attaches on his Martin Scorsese filter, delivering a freewheeling film about criminals from their wizened point of view, explaining the ins and outs of their hustle with flamboyance, style, and vigor. While the opening is a tad slow, including an opening minute watching Irving work his almost breathtaking comb over hairstyle, we plow right along into this world of hustlers and con men, learning tricks of their trade (hint: desperate people are desperate) and the tools to stay ahead of detection. We’re awash in multiple perspectives, each with voice over, a frenetic camera, and emboldened editing. It’s the Scorsese approach given studious application to the Abscam affair. It’s a great thing that Scorsese is the finest living filmmaker and devoting a two-hour-plus homage to the man’s most stylized crime pictures is a plus. Russell’s movie feels alive but also hungry, like many of his characters, restlessly searching for something. The scenes land but they don’t feel like they’re standing still; everything is propulsive in this movie. The small operation of Irving and Sydney is taken to the big leagues thanks to Richie’s ego, and the FBI’s desire for splashy headline busts, but wider exposure also exponentially multiplies the danger. Once the gambling scheme attracts the investment of the Mob, that’s when everyone has gone too far. I was clenching my fists in suspense toward the end, worried that our fictional cons may be too far in to survive.
Russell hasn’t lost his magic touch with actors. His last two films have netted seven acting Oscar nominations and three wins, and the cast of American Hustle meets that same level of excellence. Perhaps even more so than The Fighter, the characters are given a very broadly comic brush, easily and routinely stepping into a carnival row of over-the-top behavior. It provides plenty of entertainment of the mishap and absurd variety, but there are also lone piercing moments of great empathy with these messy people. Mostly, the various actors all seem to be in a great syncopation, each one contributing where the other left off, building a great and compelling picture. When this ensemble is firing, it’s hard to beat. Special mention to comedian Louis C.K. (TV’s Louie) making the most of every scene he’s in as an FBI party pooper. His running gag involving a personal ice-fishing story is one of the film’s best jokes.
Bale (Out of the Furnace) is our guiding voice in this world, a flimflam man of the first order who fools maybe even himself. He’s got his own code of ethics and a heart behind that pot belly (another physical transformative performance by Bale the chameleon). He’s briskly entertaining but my only complaint is that, by being so suave and slick, he seems a tad too low-key at points given the risk involved. I know it’s part of the act, but from an audience standpoint, it makes him seem a tad too modulated. His equal is Renner (The Bourne Legacy) who is so earnest that it practically breaks your heart when he oversteps into morally murky territory.
However, Bale’s performance is compensated by the sheer craziness of the Silver Linings co-stars, Cooper and Lawrence. Cooper (The Place Beyond the Pines) is a lawman but also the film’s biggest antagonist. He gets drunk with power and the credit he’s receiving at the FBI. He’s also a deeply insecure man who is trying to style himself like Irving and Sydney as a posh reinvention. Cooper gives him a manic energy and taps back into his reservoir of eager-to-please egotism. Lawrence (Catching Fire) is the most unpredictable character. She acts on impulse, flirts with sabotage, and soaks up the spotlight she’s so rarely afforded. Lawrence is having the time of her life playing a loud, shrewish, vampy housewife who has a noticeable habit of starting house fires.
Beforehand, I would have thought that Lawrence and Adams should have swapped roles (still an interesting experiment), but having now seen the film, each suits them well. Adams (Man of Steel) is the saddest character of them all to me because she’s the bruised dreamer anxious to be anyone but who she really was. She relishes the con, more so than Irving, and ties much of her self-identity to her shyster skills.
I’ve been dragging my feet writing my review and I’ve been trying to determine why, beyond, obviously, holiday-related sloth. American Hustle is readily a good movie that provides plenty of entertainment, meaty characters, and fun, but why do I keep feeling like it’s missing one undetermined ingredient? I can’t even articulate what at the moment but after having seen the film two times now, I feel like perhaps my emotional involvement was stunted. It’s a finely tuned script that delivers big performances for big-time actors, with a dandy ending that manages to dish out satisfying conclusions to its bevy of wheeler-dealers. But why didn’t I care more, why didn’t I feel more resonance by the time the end credits landed? The best theory I can surmise at this time is that we’re caught up in the con game, where everyone is pretending to be somebody else out of necessity or desire, that when it’s all over, we reflect on what a fun ride it’s been with fun characters but do we feel like we’ve gotten anywhere? I feel like I was more interested in the characters than attached to them. Again, American Hustle is still a sensationally entertaining movie and this paragraph is but a quibble, but it’s enough to thwart me from fully embracing and celebrating Russell’s film (confession: having already seen Scorsese’s brilliant Wolf of Wall Street, this could be coloring things for me with Russell’s Scorsese homage).
American Hustle is a fun ride with arresting performances, oodles of style, energy, and comedy. It’s a crime caper of the first order, easing you into this world and watching people play all sides. Even better, we’re given a volatile mix of personalities that clash, forming new and lasting conflicts, some of which could endanger the entire operation. These are interesting people to spend time with and so we can excuse the indulgences of a 140-minute movie that offers even more with this fantastic cast. Russell with a Scorsese filter is an even more improbably entertaining filmmaker. This is a crowd-pleasing sort of movie, much like Silver Linings, that doles out punchlines and payoffs with aplomb. It’s easy to go along for the ride, laugh uproariously, and then by the end sort of wonder whether it was all worth it. The emotional detachment to the characters may be a minor complaint for a film this largely satisfying, but since we’re spending so much time on our characters, I think I would have preferred something a tad more substantive by the end. It’s a great ride, with great characters and great humor, but there is a nagging concern that it may have been a better ride than a story. Regardless, American Hustle is an enjoyably alluring con that mines the absurdist fashions, personalities, and political overreach of the 1970s, painting a tale of criminals who may be the real heroes of the American dream.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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Out of the Furnace (2013)
The last time writer/director Scott Cooper looked at a rural, low-income, hand-to-mouth existence, he helped lead Jeff Bridges to Oscar gold with Crazy Heart. It would make sense then for Cooper’s follow-up, Out of the Furnace, to populate those same hills. It also makes sense why actors would flock to Cooper’s next project. It’s a film that strives to be a little of everything, a slow burn and artful revenge thriller, but ultimately will please few, the actors wasted here included.
In rural Pennsylvania, Russell Baze (Christian Bale) is a diligent steelworker who always has to be on the lookout for his younger brother, Rodney (Casey Affleck). Prone to impulsive decisions, Rodney routinely finds himself in debt to bad people. The situation magnifies when Russell is sent to prison for a few years due to a fatal car accident he was responsible for. When he leaves the penitentiary, life has only gotten worse. Russell’s ailing father passed away while he was locked up. His girlfriend, Lena (Zoe Saldana), has moved on with police chief Wesley Barnes (Forest Whitaker). Most distressing, Rodney has gone through four tours of Iraq and is deeply troubled. He’s fallen into old habits and gotten involved in an underground bare-knuckle fighting ring run by the ferocious Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson). Rodney runs afoul of Harlan and disappears, and Russell goes on the warpath for vengeance.
The problem is that Out of the Furnace doesn’t do enough to separate itself from the pack. We get little insight into the hard lives of these men. Both brothers are haunted by guilt and trauma, squeezed by few economic opportunities, and feeling like life itself is trapping them in corners. However, their path is already predetermined. Russell is destined to stay on the narrow path of responsibility, suffering slings and arrows, but striving to do the right thing. We see this time and again. And Rodney is destined to make poor decisions, desperately getting in over his head and reaching out to all the wrong people. We see this time and again. Each part is solidly locked in, and so we wait because we know their exact trajectory. We know something bad will happen to Rodney and we know Russell will be driven to seek justice his own way. Likewise, Harlan is a scary psycho without complexity. He’s just a drug-addled, violent, scary dude, but he’s so one-note. Lena, once she briefly reunites with Russell, is completely absent in the film, as if her unrequited position is all she serves for our purposes. Cooper displayed a terrific ear for lived-in characters with Crazy Heart, and the details of this world feel honest, it’s just that there aren’t enough of them. The storyline is engraved with little variation, and Cooper doesn’t take full advantage of his great cast, relying upon familiar scenes and elements to establish his loosely drawn characters. We’ve seen these burnouts and lowlifes and dignified blue-collar workers all before. This is a film that wants to be challenging but too often seems to take the easy road.
The very plot structure also seems amiss. As stated above, the journey seems set in stone, so then when something bad does happen to Rodney, it feels overdue. Rodney doesn’t meet his ultimate bind until halfway through Act II, and then when the plot shifts to vengeance, it becomes an uncomplicated straight line. And a streamlined plot with little variation or surprise, with characters that are customary, can get boring. Once Russell is on the warpath, there is little complications or obstacles, or even moments to contemplate the full extent of his actions. And then the movie is done. Because the final act plays out exactly as you anticipate, the movie leaves you feeling anticlimactic. The payoff is unsatisfying. Plot reorganization would have benefited the Russell vs. Harlan storyline. Rather than draw out Rodney’s ultimate screw-up, which everyone is just waiting for from minute one, why not have his screw-up be the Act I break, coming around the half-hour mark rather than more than an hour into the film? That sets the story forward and provides enough space for Russell to work upwards toward Harlan as well as examine what kind of man he is becoming. As it plays out, Harlan is crazy but also easy to access despite the threats of what the rural hill people will do to visitors. If a revenge story was the method that was going to test Russell’s character and redemption, then we needed to get to this crossroads sooner, especially since everyone is waiting for it to happen.
The power of the acting goes a decent way to compensate for the film’s unresolved investment. Bale (The Dark Knight Rises) internalizes most of his character’s emotions, always trying to hold back a swell of anger and guilt, to just keep going one day at a time. He delivers another strong performance as a man struggling to do the right thing. In this day and age, even a passable Bale performance is going to be above average. Affleck (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) is a go-to actor when you have a desperate character that is clearly outmatched. His volatile performance is laced with sadness, as you understand how cursed Rodney feels, how the universe hands him bad break after bad break. Affleck tinges his hopelessness with a resigned weariness, as if he’s just seeking a final release. Harrelson (Now You See Me) stews villainously, erupting with extreme violence. He’s a scary guide helped by Harrelson’s flicker of madness he imbues the character with. It’s too bad he doesn’t do anything memorable outside the opening minute. Whitaker (Lee Dainels’ The Butler) probably gets the worst of it, and I think he knows it, which is why the actor adopts a gravely speaking voice that sounds like he has a frog in his throat. Beyond the fact that he’s linked with Russell’s old flame, there isn’t anything important to mention about the character, nor is there anything for Whitaker to do other than make limp threats about letting the police focus on Harlan.
Out of the Furnace is one of those movies that gets details right but loses sense of the big picture. Its blue collar, working class characters are given the right clothes, posture, look, but they’re not given enough material to breathe as characters. The people in this movie end up becoming dispensable parts of the background, serving their strict plot purposes and then dissolving again, lacking complexity and personality. The characters aren’t strong enough for this to be character-driven; the plot isn’t given sufficient structure for this to be a searching moral exploration; the pacing and direction don’t provide enough thrills for the film to work as a revenge thriller. And so Out of the Furnace, while not being a bad film, falls short of truly working as a character study, as a moral examination, as a traditional pulpy revenge thriller. It’s got a great cast and some wonderful production values that convey the weight of low income America, but the movie just lacks an engaging story to justify the talent in use. A few more revisions would have helped, but Out of the Furnace ultimately comes up short because it lacks any sort of lasting heat.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Let’s be honest, The Dark Knight Rises movie was never going to meet fan expectations after the high-water mark between superhero movie and crafty crime thriller that was the pop-art masterpiece, The Dark Knight. Whatever director/co-writer Christopher Nolan put together was fated not to match the pulpy big blockbuster alchemy that he worked so well in 2008. Minus Heath Ledger’s instantly iconic performance, a role that set the film on fire whenever he was onscreen, there is going to be a certain void to this capper to the trilogy. Now having seen the movie twice, including once in sphincter-rattling IMAX, I feel that I can truthfully state the most obvious: The Dark Knight Rises is not as good as the previous movies. While a fine finale for an ambitious series, this is definitely the weakest movie of the trilogy.
It’s been eight years since Gotham City last saw the likes of Batman. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is an older man, hobbled by age, and living as a recluse in his mansion. His trusted friend and butler Alfred (Michael Caine) keeps encouraging Bruce to seek a life outside that of Batman. In those eight years, Gotham’s police have cracked down on organized crime thanks to the Dent Act, a law named after the late district attorney Harvey Dent (a fallen idol that only a handful know the real truth about). Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is growing sick with the secret of Harvey Dent and looks to retire from the force. Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) is a businesswoman eager to restart Wayne’s clean energy project, and a woman interesting in getting Bruce back on his feet. There’s also Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a.k.a. Catwoman, a master thief who gives Bruce a new challenge. But then along comes Bane (Tom Hardy), a master terrorist and figure of brute strength. His goal is to fulfill the League of Shadows’ plan and destroy Gotham City and expose its rampant corruption. He sidelines Batman and takes over the city, unleashing criminals and hordes of the downtrodden upon the wealthy. There is no escape from Bane’s plan, his wrath, but Bruce Wayne must rise to the occasion and be ready to sacrifice the last of himself for the people of Gotham.
Firstly, Bane is no Joker. The bad guy lacks the fiendish charisma of Ledger’s Joker and he’s not as well integrated thematically into the movie. The Joker was an anarchist that wanted to tear down the pretensions of society and watch people “eat each other.” And we watched a city come unglued. We explore the notion of escalation and what the blowback would be for a man fighting crime in a costume. With Dark Knight Rises, Bane wants to take up the mantle of Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and wipe Gotham off the map. He’s got moments of being a master planner but really he’s just a big heavy. He’s the big tough guy that beats up old man Bruce Wayne, and Bane is continuously diminished in the film as it goes. A late revelation with the character completely diminishes his role and turns him into the equivalent of a mean junkyard dog. His big plan is simply to rile up the masses and wait for the inevitable. Hardy (Bronson) is a great actor prone to mesmerizing performances. This isn’t one of them. He’s super beefy but the facial mask, looking like some sea urchin, obscures half his face. It’s all physicality and eyes for his performance, along with very amped-up dialogue that you can tell was rerecorded after filming. Every time Bane speaks it’s like he has a speaker system installed in his face. And then there’s the matter of his sticky accent, which to me sounds like German mad scientist but to my friends sounded like drunken Sean Connery.
Bane keeps espousing about the corruption of Gotham but you really never get a strong sense of what that corruption has lead to. Catwoman talks about the Gotham elites living large while the rest of the city struggles; but rarely do you get a sense of this. So when Bane flips the tables, and the elite and wealthy are stripped of their decadence and put on trial by mobs, it feels improperly set up. Just because you have characters talk about wealth disparity and the city’s corrupting influence doesn’t mean it’s been established. Nolan’s Batman movies are a reflection of our modern-day anxieties in a post-9/11 world, so I wasn’t surprised to see a society rotting away from the sociopathic greed and wanton excess of the 1%. But rather than serve up a wealth disparity parable of class conflict, the movie simply turns to mob rule, a far less nuanced and interesting dissection of current events and fears. It’s like the French revolution took a trip to Gotham City (Gordon even quotes from A Tale of Two Cities). It’s a society built upon a central lie, the idol of Harvey Dent, but the movie fails to make the corruption felt. In the end, this is all pretty weak social allegory. And would it have killed Bane to be a little more brutal to stock exchange short-sellers?
Then there’s the typical Nolan origami plot with the myriad of subplots intersecting. This is the first time in the series where the plots felt poorly developed. Rewatch Batman Begins or The Dark Knight, as I recently did, and you’ll see there is not an ounce of fat in those movies, not one wasted scene or one wasted line. Sure they got secret super ninjas and Katie Holmes, but those movies were well built blockbusters. I could have done without Bane entirely and certainly would have loved more of Catwoman. Hathaway (Alice in Wonderland) is terrific in the antihero role and brings a very interesting dynamic relationship with Batman. She may be the only person who understands him. I wanted more Catwoman, the movie needed more Catwoman, but alas she is just a plot device to connect Wayne to Bane. She has a larger role in the concluding melee but essentially becomes Batman’s reluctant wingman. The whole theme of the 99% vs. the 1% could have been generously explored with this character, and her spark and charisma would certainly be enough to get Bruce Wayne out of bed again. Then there’s the regular cop (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) doing the unheralded good deeds that so easily get overlooked. Here is an interesting character that, due to some leaps in logic, connects with Bruce Wayne on a unique level. He presents a counterbalance to all the souped-up superheroes, a recognizably regular human trying to do good. It’s then a shame that he gets entirely relegated during the third act so that the superheroes and their super toys can make some noise.
For a Batman movie there’s hardly any Batman in it. The caped crusader has been in retirement for eight years, so it takes some time before Bruce puts the suit back on. But then he’s also sidelined for a good third of the movie, stowed away in a far-off prison. The entire Indian prison sequence really could have been exorcised. It essentially becomes a Rocky training moment for Bruce Wayne to recover and a plot device to explain why there needs to be a time gap in the story. But this part of the movie just feels like it goes on forever, and we all know where it will go so we just keep waiting for the movie to get there. No one wants a Batman movie where Batman sits the middle out. The end feels relatively fitting but any fan of The Iron Giant will recognize some similar key elements.
And while I’m on the subject, let me do some estimates here. The timeline between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight is about a year, as the Joker notes to a congregation of mobsters. I’ll be generous and say that the events of The Dark Knight last two months. We learn that Batman never appeared again after the death of Harvey Dent, and now we flash to eight years later with The Dark Knight Rises. So you’re telling me that we only really got a solid year of Batman being Batman? That over the course of nine years he was Batman for only one of them? That’s very little Batman-ing for a Batman franchise.
But even with these flaws in tow, The Dark Knight Rises is still an exciting, stimulating, and mostly satisfying close to a trilogy of unprecedented ambition and scope for a modern blockbuster. The action sequences in this movie are huge and exhilarating. I loved Bane turning Batman’s armada of weapons against him. The Bat fighter plane is a nice addition that gets plenty of solid screen time. The sheer scope of what Nolan produces is epic; from a plane being hijacked in mid-flight and torn apart, to a city being leveled by explosives, to a face-off between a bevy of armored Batmobiles and the Bat plane through the streets of Gotham, the movie does not disappoint when it comes to explosive, large-scale action set pieces. This is also the first Batman movie where the climax is the best part of the film. The last half hour is solid action but also a fitting sendoff for a beloved character. Some will grumble with certain hat-tipping moments at the end, but I found it entirely satisfying. It all comes back to the central thesis of Nolan’s Batman films about becoming something more than just a man, becoming a symbol, and that symbol is meant to inspire others. By the end, you feel that the inspiration has been earned as so has our conclusion.
I want to single out Caine (Harry Brown) who has very few scenes but absolutely kills them. He’s the emotional core of the movie, perhaps even the series, and has always been hoping that his charge, Bruce Wayne, would never return to Gotham. He’s the voice of reason in the movie, the man that reminds Bruce about the costs of a life spent seeking vengeance and sacrificing his body. I wish Caine was in the movie longer but his scenes are pivotal to the plot, as is his absence.
The Dark Knight Rises doesn’t rise to the level of artistic excellence of its predecessors, but it’s certainly a strong summer blockbuster that works as an agreeable finale to the premier franchise of the era. It’s not quite the knockout we were expecting from Nolan but it still delivers where it counts. I wish it had give a fuller, richer portrait of a city corrupt from the inside out, a society rotting away and ready for revolution, and plus I also wish we had plenty more Catwoman and plenty more shots of Anne Hathaway in her Catwoman cat suit (Michelle Pfeiffer still has nothing to fear), but these are the things of dreams. Nolan’s aim has always been to place Batman in a world that is recognizably our own, and with that comes the responsibility of bringing a stolid sense of realism with all the blockbuster pyrotechnics. This artistic ethos has given us some extraordinary movies, though some Batman purists would object that Nolan’s hyper-realism is not the Batman they grew up with. It’s hard to really get a sense of the accomplishments that Nolan and his team has been able to pull off over the course of three bladder-unfriendly movies and seven years. He’s taken the superhero movie and redefined it, brought it unparalleled psychological depth and philosophical analysis, and given a human quality to what normally gets dismissed as escapism. The Dark Knight Rises isn’t as revelatory as its previous entry but it sticks the landing and puts to rest what is indisputably the greatest superhero trilogy of all time.
Now get ready for the reboot in three years.
Nate’s Grade: B
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The Fighter (2010)
Somewhere along the line, the boxing film became the perfect metaphor for the underdog story. Two men at battle with only their fists and iron wills. Somehow this match up has come to symbolize man’s eternal struggle against himself and society. From Body and Soul to Rocky and Raging Bull, it’s hard to imagine the filmic landscape without the tropes of boxing. It’s also a pretty staid and tired genre, where filmmakers often rely on those tropes to fill in the gaps for lazy storytelling. The Fighter is a true story that star Mark Wahlberg has been nursing for years trying to get it off the ground. It’s the knockout acting and attention to character that separates The Fighter from the competition. Rarely has such a sedate formula felt so freshly presented.
In the mid 1990s, Mickey Ward (Wahlberg) is a man trying to come to grips with his life. His welterweight boxing career has stalled thanks primarily to his trainer, his unreliable half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). Big brother used to be the pride of Lowell, Massachusetts, once fighting Sugar Ray Leonard and boasting about knocking the giant down (this claim is in dispute as replays show that Leonard may have simply tripped). Dicky’s boxing career went away about the same time that Dicky became addicted to crack cocaine, spending long hours inside Lowell’s many crack houses. An HBO documentary crew is following around Dicky, which he mistakenly believes is a ticket to his comeback. Mickey’s mother, Alice (Melissa Leo), also serves as manager to both her boys. Dicky is clearly the apple of her eye and Alice enables his destructive behavior. Mickey is pushed into fights to feed his extended family (eight siblings), and the thrill is gone. Then one day he’s approached by a promoter who will give Mickey one more chance. The only catch is that Mickey has to cut his family loose.
Truth be told, The Fighter isn’t really much of a boxing movie. Sure that’s the selling point and it allows for a rousing, crowd-pleasing finish, but Mickey could just as easily be striving to open a deli or striving to go back to school. The real story is the family. The boxing is only a backdrop, and if it weren’t for the true-story basis I would say it serves as little more than a metaphor for the punishment Mickey has taken in life. The Fighter is about a man working up the courage not to step into the boxing ring but to break away from his self-destructive family weighing him down in misery. This is a dysfunctional family drama disguised as a Rocky-style boxing redemption picture. The boxing aspects are small, mostly contained to the final act as Mickey’s career finally begins to gain some traction. For some, this will be disappointing news. But for me, I loved the family drama stuff. This is a fractured family with deep lines of division, nursing grudges, resentment waiting to boil over, all the marks of meaty drama. The focus is on Mickey trying to break away from the pull of his harmful older half-brother and his boorish mother. His mother enables Dicky, her favorite child, to the detriment of the rest of her brood. Her relationship with Dicky is fascinating and complicated, like a mother sacrificing the rest of her clan to help her most damaged child. You can catch some of the invisible ripples from these decisions, like the seven sisters all forming one unified hive-mind to survive. They’re like a block of cheerleaders for mother, only able to get attention and some form of affection by doing so. The extensive family unit revolves around Leo’s matriarch, fiercely protective and fiercely myopic. She refuses to remove herself from Mickey’s management team, and thus Mickey and his career suffer. It’s downright Oedipal. If only he can escape the clutches of his family, perhaps Mickey can taste success that has eluded him so long. The family drama makes up a good majority of The Fighter, and that’s just fine with me when I get characters this damaged and complicated.
And all of this is blissfully entertaining. Director David O. Russell is miles away from his other films like Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees. This is different kind of redemption story where the main guy winning a title is nice, and we can all celebrate, but it’s really his separation from a harsh family dragging him down. The film also produces an engaging romance for Mickey, which gives him a renewed sense of purpose to finally break free of his family. Amy Adams (Enchanted, Doubt) is a bartender at a local hangout with some college under her belt, a point that irritates Mickey’s family. The Eklund sisters lash out at Mickey’s squeeze in childish ways. Adams, playing Charlene, shies away from the daffy or genteel roles of her past. She gets to spit profanities with glee. Her relationship with Mickey serves as a foil to his family, showing what strength a positive, healthy relationship can achieve. But while the family is presented in an antagonistic sense, they are not blithely demonized. Russell and his team of writers and actors use humor to find surprising pockets of warmth amidst all the darkness and shattered dreams. This isn’t an addiction story that plumbs the depths of human weakness. The production feels bathed in authenticity and the city of Lowell, Massachusetts and its lived-in, blue-collar culture feels like another vital character. When the HBO documentary finally airs, you feel the cloud of hurt that covers the entire town in shame. Nobody wants to be known as a town famous for crack addiction (you can watch the 1995 doc online for free).
The acting is also some of the best you’ll see all year. Wahlberg is a sturdy center, used to the abuse and underplaying his character’s transformation from punching bag to assertive human being. This is Wahlberg’s home turf, and he’s been shopping the story for years in Hollywood, so it’s no surprise that everything comes so natural for the Beantown kid. But his understated work is going to get obscured with the flamboyant performances from both Bale and Leo. Bale (The Dark Knight, Rescue Dawn) has long been considered one of the finest actors of his generation, his Method devotion and versatility a godsend. In The Fighter, he’s a live wire, a bundle of energy in a haunting skeletal frame. He’s a figure of lost promise, of tragedy and bruised ego, trying to live vicariously through his younger brother. He’s deluded himself into thinking that this HBO documentary will launch a comeback at 40. Bale excels with the bombastic bits, practically bouncing off the walls, but then he nails the quieter, smaller moments of his character, where Dicky realizes that he’s wasted his gifts. Leo (Frozen River) could easily fall into an outsized monster of large hair and nicotine-stained fingers, but the Oscar-nominated actress finds exciting ways to tap into her character’s humanity. She fully knows that her beloved child is a crack addict, but watching her rationalize and justify her actions is exciting.
The Fighter is a meaty family drama, stirring tale of redemption, and a showcase of superior acting. In an awards season where it feels like many films are missing some secret ingredient, The Fighter has it all together. It’s an underdog story of a different flavor that manages to be authentic, entertaining, charitable, and engrossing even while staying within the boundaries of a predictable framework. We all know that Mickey will triumph in the ring; otherwise his tale would never have caught the notice of Hollywood producers. This is a fresh take on old material. The focus is on the fractured family dynamic and the many characters, not on a simplistic rising through the rankings of sport. It’s because of the tremendous acting and character work that the first half of the film easily outshines the second. Once the family is sidelined, and Mickey’s boxing career takes off, The Fighter turns into a more conventional genre picture, though still engaging. The movie ends on a satisfying note of uplift that feels fully earned without a twinge of naiveté. This Oscar season, expect audiences and voters alike to find something to cheer about in this return to the ring.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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Terminator Salvation (2009)
The fourth Terminator movie ultimately comes across as a lifeless enterprise. It’s set during the war between man and machine, which means John Conner (Christian Bale) is leading the human resistance, as was prophesied. He must stop those crafty machines from finding and killing Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), who is destined to be sent back in time and become Conner’s father. The storyline focuses a lot more attention on the mysterious man Marcus (Sam Worthington), who isn’t so mysterious because they give away in minutes that he’s a machine. But he’s a thinking machine that reclaims his humanity, or whatever. The point of this movie is to make some cool action sequences and not step on the toes of the previous movies. Director McG (Charlie’s Angels) has a few nifty visual tricks up his sleeve, but this is one soulless machine just going through the Action Blockbuster subroutine. The character development is nil, the story is muddled, the machines are dumb, and Bale forgoes any normal kind of speaking voice in favor of growls and hissing. The throwbacks to the other movies can be fun (a 1984-aged Arnold!) or agonizingly lame (shoehorning in famous quotes like, “I’ll be back”). The movie is competent and has one or two exciting chase sequences, but that is simply not good enough coming from this storied action franchise. Terminator Salvation plays out more like Transformers, where the robots are big and bad and loud and sort of dumb. I guess that sums up the movie pretty well.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Public Enemies (2009)
Considering the talent in front of and behind the camera, it’s hard not to describe Public Enemies as anything but a letdown. This Depression-era gangster film is heavy on period details and very tight-fisted when it comes to characterization. You’d think given 140 minutes and the natural charisma of Johnny Depp that an audience would come to some kind of understanding with notorious bank robber John Dillinger. Nope. The characters remain perfunctory the entire time, pushed into conflicts by a brisk pace that manages to squeeze in three bank robberies, two prison breaks, and many police shootouts. Because the movie barely takes time to breathe, the love story between Dillinger and Billie Frechette (Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard, a dead ringer for pop singer Katy Perry) is never credible, the tension never feels palpable, and director Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral) seems overly smitten with his distracting high def digital photography. You never really feel any sense of danger or interest. The characters on screen feel like strangers even after 140 minutes. Depp makes the movie more tolerable than it would be without his presence. Mann, one of three credited screenwriters, seems to assume the audience is well versed in Dillinger history and so he skips over plenty of fertile territory. Public Enemies certainly hums with plenty of polish but it comes across as mostly mundane due to such flimsy character work. It’s a collection of good scenes that fail to make up a satisfying whole.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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The Dark Knight (2008)
In 2005, Christopher Nolan’s reboot of the Batman series was a critical and commercial success. Gone were the campy and opulent sequences of old and the nipples on the Batsuit felt simply like a bad dream. Nolan served as director and screenwriter and brought serious psychological depth to his story and characters. As a life-long Batman fan, I loved it and wanted a sequel immediately with the exact same people responsible. The Dark Knight has been overshadowed by the passing of actor Heath Ledger, a gifted young actor nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for 2005’s Brokeback Mountain. He’s gone from gay cowboy to the criminally insane, and it’s all anyone can talk about. The buzz on Ledger and The Dark Knight is deafening and I am about to join that joyous chorus. This is a movie for grown-ups and makes lesser super hero adventures look downright stupid.
Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is dealing with the repercussions of his choice to assume the masked identity of Batman. He’s cracked down on Gotham City’s mobsters, and in their desperation they have turned to a crazed anarchist that likes to wear strange makeup. The Joker (Ledger) promises to return Gotham back to its old ways but even he knows this isn’t possible. “You’ve changed things,” he tells Batman. “There’s no going back.” The Joker wants to break the will of Batman and Gotham City and sets up elaborate and disturbing moral dilemmas that push many to the edge. His purpose is chaos, which isn’t exactly what the Mob had in mind when they subcontracted his services. Bruce must rely on his trusted butler Alfred (Michael Caine) and company tech guru Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) to help him combat a man that “just wants to watch the world burn.” Gotham also has a new district attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who is willing to put his name on the line to clean up the city. He’s butting heads with Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) because of Gordon’s secrecy and his reliance on Batman to do the things the law won’t allow. Dent wants to prosecute mobsters and is willing to put himself in jeopardy. He believes Batman is waiting for men like him to take the baton. Bruce’s old squeeze Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal replacing Katie Holmes — upgrade) has fallen for Dent. He’s an emotionally available man who wants to do good. Naturally, Dent and Rachel will becomes targets of the Joker.
First off, believe the hype because everything you’ve read and heard about Ledger’s performance is the gospel truth. The actor vanishes completely underneath the gnarly latex scars, stringy hair, and smeared makeup. He transforms into this menacing figure and he makes Jack Nicholson look like a circus clown in comparison. He’s creepy and funny in a totally demented and spooky way, but he almost comes across like a feral creature that enjoys toying with his prey. Ledger fully inhabits his character and brings a snarling ferocity to the role. The Joker is given no back-story and he takes a macabre delight in crafting differing versions of his sordid past depending upon the audience. Ledger’s Joker is like a mixture of sadist and intellectual, of Alex from A Clockwork Orange and Hannibal Lector; he finds a way to get inside your mind and unleashes torment. There’s a great scene where he’s left alone in a holding cell with a police officer. The Joker taunts the man, getting little reaction from the trained lawman, but then he hits a nerve. The Joker asks how many of his friends, his fellow officers has he murdered. He then rhapsodizes the finer points of using knives instead of guns because guns are too quick. With knives he can see who people truly are in the final moments of existence. “So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did,” he tells the officer. “Would you like to know which of them are cowards?” This triggers the officer to break his protocol and play into the Joker’s scheme. I’m not ready to say Ledger’s performance overtakes Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men) as the most menacing villain of late, but Ledger certainly will make your skin do more than crawl.
Ledger gives a performance worthy of posthumous Oscar consideration. Toward the end of the film I found myself lingering on sadness that, well, this was it. This is all we are ever going to get of the Joker, such a fabulous character, but even more, this was the last full performance we are ever going to get from Ledger. His unnerving performance will stand the test of time when it comes to haunting screen villains, and I’m sure the actor had many more incredibly performances left in him before he passed away.
The Dark Knight has less in common with other superhero series and should be considered a modern crime drama. It has more in common with Heat than with Spider-Man. Even compared to Nolan’s excellent Batman Begins, this is the first Batman film that feels like it occurs in a real city in our own reality. In Batman Begins, we had the CGI ghetto that happened to be conveniently where all the city’s scum lived, an ancient league of ninjas that wanted to wipe an entire modern city off the map, and then a super microwave that zapped water molecules in the air. Even though it was the most realistic Batman yet, it still had some fantastic elements that kept it from feeling fully believable. This newest Batman adventure feels more like a real city and a city that is being torn apart. You get to see a lot of Gotham City’s moving parts and different social circles and then see the Joker tear them apart. The knotty screenplay by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathon is dense and packed with subtext and ambiguity not seen in the likes of other spandex-clad super hero movies. This isn’t a super hero movie so much as an enthralling crime thriller with better gadgets.
Whereas Batman Begins focused on the psychology of a man that dresses up in a costume and fights crime, now the attention turns into examining the impact of Batman. There has been escalation, just as Gordon hinted at the close of the last film. Batman has stepped up law enforcement and now Gotham’s criminal element has placed their trust in a psychopath that promises results. This is a movie about symbols and ideals and about the tenets of civilization. The movie presents an arsenal of mature questions and rarely gives absolute answers. Batman I supposed to be a hero but does he play by the law? Can he make decisions that no one else can? Batman believes in the goodness of others and serves as a symbol for the city to stand up against corruption, but can Batman be corruptible? Does he have a breaking point? Is implanting hidden surveillance and spying on 30 million people in the name of security overstepping? Is it acceptable to cross a line if your enemy crossed it first? The Joker lives at the other ideological end and believes that human beings are selfish and will eat each other when the chips are down. He devises disturbing social experiments that test the limits of ordinary citizens and how far they are willing to go out of self-interest. The Joker is an anarchic force that seeks to tear down civilization itself, and that is a far more interesting and devastating plot than vaporizing water molecules with ninjas. When the movie covers the tired “we’re one in the same” territory that most super hero flicks hit (the Joker responds to Batman with, “I don’t want to kill you. What would I do without you? You complete me.”), it even makes sense given the psychological and philosophical complexity at root.
And oh boy, is The Dark Knight dark. This flick racks up a body count that could compete with movies usually involving some cataclysmic act of nature. The Joker’s unpredictable nature, and the dark twists the film plumbs, creates an atmosphere where you dread anything happening at any time, and mostly bad things happen. Batman must come face to face with his limitations and the realization that his actions, no matter how altruistic, will have negative consequences. This is not a movie for young children. If any parent buys their child a Joker doll and takes them to see this movie then expect years of therapy bills down the line. Much of the violence is implied but the overall effect is still chilling. It’s difficult to call The Dark Knight a “fun” movie. Batman Begins was fun as we followed Bruce Wayne tinker and become his crime-fighting avenger. This movie watches much of what he built get taken away. The movie makes gutsy decisions and for a super hero movie, let alone a summer blockbuster, and this is one decidedly dour flick where no character ends in a particularly pleasant place, especially poor Harvey Dent.
Speaking of Mr. Dent, while Ledger is deservedly getting all the buzz and plaudits, Eckhart’s excellent performance is going unnoticed. Dent gets just as much screen time as Batman and is the white knight of Gotham, the man unwilling to break the boundaries of the law to merit out justice. Like Batman, he serves as a symbol for Gotham City and its resurrection from the stranglehold of crime. Batman fights in the shadows and serves as an anonymous vigilante but Dent is the face that can inspire the city. That’s what makes his transformation into Two-Face all the more tragic. You really do care about the characters in this movie, so when Dent turns on his principles and seeks out vengeance you feel a weighted sense of sorrow for the demise of a truly decent man. Eckhart and his lantern jaw easily sell Dent’s idealism and courage. After his horrific transformation, Eckhart burrows deep enough to show the intense hatred and mistrust he has even in fate. He gives a terrific performance that plays a variety of emotions and does justice to them all.
The rest of the cast, just to be mentioned, is excellent yet again.
Nolan has also stepped up his directing skills and delivered some high-intensity action. His first foray with Batman had some dicey action sequences that suffered from choppy editing, but he pulls back his camera lens and lets the audience see the action in The Dark Knight. The explosive high point is a long car chase where the Joker tries to attack an armored police car via an 18-wheeler truck. The police look for safe detours to escape the Joker’s line of fire, and when Batman surfaces with the sleek Batpod motorcycle thing get even cooler. What makes the sequence even better is that all of the peripheral characters behave in semi-logical ways, meaning that your secondary cop characters are respectable decision makers. Nolan also shot several sections of the film in IMAX, which boasts the highest resolution possible for film stock. The panoramic views of Batman atop buildings are breathtaking and may strike vertigo in some moviegoers. The movie looks great and it delivers the action goods but it’s really more of a tense thriller with more tiny moments of unease than an out-and-out action flick with gargantuan explosions and blanket gunfire.
Despite the undeniable brilliance of The Dark Knight, the movie is rather exhausting. After a decent 45 minutes of establishing the characters and setting up the stakes, the movie is essentially two hours of climax after climax, and you will be perched on the edge of your seat and tense until the end credits crash onto the screen. It’s exciting and overwhelming but you will feel wiped out by the end of the movie. There are a lot of characters and a lot of subplots and while I’m thrilled the movie has so much intricacy it also makes it hard for the film to come to a stop. The climax with Two-Face and Gordon’s family also feels misplaced. At a tremendous 2 hours and 30 minute running time, The Dark Knight will test your endurance skills in the best way.
I honestly have no idea where Nolan and crew can take the story now. The Dark Knight seems unlikely to be topped. This is an intense, epic crime thriller with a labyrinthine plot that is packed with emotion, subtext, philosophy, penetrating open-ended questions, and genuine nerve-racking tension. It’s hard for me even to think of this movie as a super hero flick despite that fact that it’s about a billionaire in a rubber suit. This is an engrossing modern crime drama that just so happens to have people in weird costumes. Nolan and his brother have crafted a stirring addition to, not just the Batman canon, but to cinema as a whole. Ledger’s character is the driving force behind the film, the man that makes everyone else react, and his incredibly daring and haunting performance will stand as a last reminder of what talent was lost to the world when he passed away. I for one will be amongst the throng crying out for Oscar recognition but not just for Ledger, for The Dark Knight in general. And I may not be alone. The Dark Knight is currently breaking every box-office record imaginable and seems destined to finish as the number two highest grossing movie of all time, steadily behind James Cameron’s Titanic. If the Academy is looking for a way to shore in better ratings for the Oscars, it might seriously consider nominating The Dark Knight in some key races. It certainly deserves recognition.
Nate’s Grade: A
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3:10 to Yuma (2007)
The Western used to dominate the pop culture landscape. In the 1950s, you had John Ford and Gary Cooper in a different dustup practically every week at the cinema, and the TV lineup was wall-to-wall cowboys, Indians, horses, and damsel retrieval. The Western has become rather inactive since its cultural heyday and now resides on the outskirts of movie land, idly chatting with Screwball Comedy and Busby Berkley Musicals about how good they had it back then (yes, I have just personified genres). With that said, director James Mangold (Walk the Line) has remade the 1957 John Ford film 3:10 to Yuma for a modern movie-going audience. The film has to work extra hard just to overcome the prejudices of a dormant genre, but fortunately 3:10 to Yuma is a rousing drama that could have knocked ’em dead way back when.
Dan (Christian Bale) is a wounded Civil War veteran trying to eek out a living in Arizona. He cannot grow any crops because of drought conditions, is behind on his payments, and his teen son has no respect for dear old one-footed dad. To keep his family financially afloat, Dan agrees to help transport notorious outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to his date with justice.. It’s three days to ride across Arizona and get Wade onto the 3:10 train to Yuma prison, and along the way the posse is beset by unexpected setbacks and Wade’s gang hot on their heels to save their imprisoned leader.
This is no deconstructionist Western or a modern revisionist Western, no this is an old-fashioned Western and Mangold embraces the genre staples instead of steering away from them (runaway stagecoaches, high-noon showdowns, ineffective lawmen, saloon girls). There’s a reverence for the genre and Mangold makes sure the audience soaks up the dusty details of frontier life with lots of revealing close-ups. You can practically taste the earth these men are caked in. The script is filled with plenty of surprises along the way as Ben keeps regaining the upper hand even as he’s outnumbered and in shackles. The story benefits greatly from really opening up and exploring in depth whom Dan and Ben are and what makes them this way. 3:10 to Yuma does not paint in broad strokes and dwells in a lot of grey, which presents opportunities for the actors to work their magic.
At the heart of the film is the moral battle between Ben and Dan, and both actors rise to the occasion. Crowe’s name is all but a guarantee for a quality performance and he shows an array of seemingly contradictory elements to Ben Wade. He has roguish charm and swagger, but then in an instant you can feel the intense glare of hatred in his eyes, and the scary calm in his voice, and you realize that this man is a caged tiger always stalking his prey. He can erupt in sudden and vicious violence and then fall back into a conscienceless laugh. He has moments that seem like empathy and kindness, but then you realize every seemingly kind gesture has a hidden meaning that links back to Ben’s own benefit. Crowe is magnificent and plays around with audience expectations to keep us jumping back and forth between liking the sly brute and fearing him.
Bale is equally as good as a martyr for his moral principles. He sticks to his ethical convictions no matter the hardships and temptations to take an easy way out. The painful lengths Dan goes to protect his family produce several touching exchanges and add substantial meat to a character that very easily could have been drawn as a simplistic do-gooder. Bale sells every moment with commendable authenticity.
The rest of the supporting cast -Gretchen Mol, Alan Tudyk, a near unrecognizable Peter Fonda- add strong contributions to the movie, but none more memorable than Ben Foster. As Ben Wade’s sadistic right hand man, Foster displays a sick brand of hero worship and homicidal insanity. He’s an unpredictable and menacing figure and Foster magnifies these qualities to frightening realization. These excellent actors make 3:10 to Yuma more than throwback; it reminds you how great Westerns can be with the right actors and devotion to characters.
The only marks against 3:10 to Yuma occur during its climax. Things escalate immensely into a wild shoot-out that racks up a massive body count. While exciting, the sequence feels at odds with the intimate moral struggle between these two men. I’m also unsure about whatever prompted some eleventh hour motivational change for one key character. The ending is unnecessarily dark and will surely leave most audiences with a bad taste in their mouth to exit upon. Maybe it’s just the recent bout of films that I’ve been watching, but I’m starting to get tired of movies that are convinced that a pointlessly tragic ending somehow makes their story more meaningful (The Painted Veil, my wife is still upset with you, novel adaptation or not). A happy ending has long been perceived as a trite Hollywood cliché, but now I wonder of the pendulum has swung too far the other way so that conventional thinking says an audience has to be left wanting more or dissatisfied for a movie to attain higher artistic credibility. This is, of course, utter nonsense. A movie ending need only be appropriate for the scope of its story, but then again it doesn’t have to strive for forced wisdom delivered by unnecessary tragedy.
3:10 to Yuma is a hard-charging, stoic, classic American Western of the old guard with a bit more blood and profanity mixed in for a modern public. Despite a small handful of missteps toward the end, this is an engaging and often gripping morality tale catapulted by two strong performances from foreign-born actors showing Americans how the West was done right. Let 3:10 to Yuma stand as proof that any genre, no matter how outdated, can succeed as long as the filmmakers place care with character and treat the audience with a modicum of respect.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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The Prestige (2006)
Christopher Nolan can do no wrong in my book. The director of Memento, Insomnia, and Batman Begins has bewitched me with his clever non-linear storylines and artistic vision. The Prestige is 2006’s second period set magician movie, and in my opinion it’s the better of the two. Nolan’s film lacks the magic of The Illusionist, instead focusing more on the bitter realities of obsession, self-destruction, and the lengths that men will travel for vengeance. The script centers on a pair of dueling magicians (Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman) that are each trying to discover the other’s trick and top them. The storyline is as twisty as a pretzel and told in Nolan’s familiar non-linear fashion, building to a very dark reveal. Whereas The Illusionist sweeps viewers up with the wonder of magic, The Prestige is all about how tricks are orchestrated both on and offstage. The results are a tad cold; you don’t really feel for either magician. The movie is itself a trick but one grandly told with excellent slight of hand. The final act takes a step outside of the film’s tone but it works for me, and it’s been weeks since I last saw the haunting final images and I still cannot get them out of my mind. The Prestige is another notch on my Nolan love meter.
Nate’s Grade: A
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The New World (2005)
I’m not a Terrence Malick fan. There, I’ve said it. I think he’s got a great eye for visuals, however, I’ve never been impressed by any of his films. I hated 1998’s The Thin Red Line and its exhausting supply of narrators so much that I wanted to walk out of the theater. The only other movie I felt the same impulse, at the time, was Lost in Space. As you can see, not good company. It’s been a long time since that nightmare so I figured it would only be kind to give Malick another chance. His new film, The New World, looks to deconstruct the mythic relationship between settler John Smith and Native American princess, Pocahontas (perhaps best known for painting with the colors of the wind, or so Disney would have me believe). To my non-surprise, The New World is everything I thought it would be, namely ponderous, pretentious, and quite bad.
It’s 1606, and the world is about to change forever. A cadre of ships bound from England ground ashore on the Virginia coast in search of a settlement and, hopefully, a vibrant colony. The Captain (Christopher Plummer) warns that his men must treat the “naturals” with care; after all, this is their homeland. The Native American inhabitants treat the new settlers with curiosity, poking them, smelling them, and then tolerating their existence … for now. John Smith (Colin Farrell) comes to America in chains, the result of an ill-fated mutiny, but the Captain gives him new life. He commissions Smith to send an envoy deep into the Native American village to seek trading partners. Along the way he is captured and about to be executed when he’s saved by a young girl (Q’Orianka Kilcher), a.k.a. Pocahontas though the name is never spoken once. Smith is allowed to stay with the tribe and he deeply grows fond of Pocahontas. The two are blocked by culture and language, but their feelings persist. Smith is ordered to go back to his people. If they do not leave the land there will be war. The two civilizations are set to butt heads, and the love between Smith and Pocahontas is precariously trapped between.
Oh yeah, and after Smith leaves to go on an exploratory mission for the king, John Rolfe (Christian Bale) comes to the Jamestown settlement to woo Pocahontas himself.
Let’s get this bit of semantics out of the way. Terrence Malick doesn’t make movies, he makes nature documentaries. He doesn’t so much involve a plot as he does a large open space for his characters to pontificate about the world around them, mostly through whispery voice over. Malick fans will take in his artistic capture of sight and sound, but the rest of us out there will be scratching our heads, that is, when we’re not falling asleep. Seriously, how do you edit something like this? How does Malick know that THIS shot of a tree blowing in the wind needs to be slotted here, while this OTHER shot of a tree blowing in the wind needs to definitely come later? Malick is a stubborn mystery. He’s less interested in crafting a good movie than he is breaking the rules of what film can be. That’s all well and dandy when you put out an entertaining product. The only way I think The New World could be entertaining is if: 1) you adore long, poetic scenes of nature, or 2) you hate yourself.
It seems needless to talk about the acting. Farrell (Daredevil, Minority Report) seems like a good choice for a hardluck man overwhelmed by his new environment. Kilcher could be a fine actress, she certainly is rather beautiful, but the jury’s still out on her emoting. Plummer is so good that you’ll miss him dearly when he’s gone. Most of the acting revolves around silence and reactions, which is not the most captivating material.
The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (Sleepy Hollow, Lemony Snicket) is obviously beautiful, taking great pains to showcase Virginia in a near mythic quality. But a film built around pretty pictures and idling characters can only go so far. Your attention span is so strained you may start doing your checkbook in your head. Oh ye God is The New World’s score terrible. It’s like James Horner collapsed on his keyboard, they recorded it, looped it, and just made it get louder and louder.
It seems like Malick wrote his story on the back of his hand. So very little happens. I’m not as distraught about the immense lack of dialogue, because venturing into a foreign land with foreign people likely doesn’t produce a lot of conversation when no one can understand you. However, the only things we have to push the story forward are some repetitive, junior high-esque poetry disguised as introspective voice over. Pocahontas keeps waving her arms about like she’s directing airplanes, and then she ponders, “Mother, are you there? Are you in the wind?” She even hugs a tree at one point, perhaps thinking it’s her mother. What do you want; she’s the baby of like 100 kids. Malick is so frustrating and pretentious that he will bludgeon to death an audience rather than invite them into his artistic world. He definitely doesn’t make it easy or rewarding.
As far as romance is concerned, the relationship between John Smith and Pocahontas is curiously platonic. Both fall hard for the other but nothing ever dares to rock the PG-13 rating. The furthest these crazy kids get in expressing their love is hugging. I realize that Kilcher was only 14 years old when this was shot, but that doesn’t stop Malick from turning her into pseudo-artistic jailbait. When he’s not filming nature he spends an awful long time on Kilcher prancing around; the camera is practically fawning over her. I get it; we’re supposed to feel the spirit of this girl and her connection with the world around her. That’s why John Smith falls for her. But then nothing seems to happen in their puppy love courtship. It’s all too chaste to be epic or even slightly memorable. Then at the start of the third act Farrell leaves and in pops Bale, and the audience is going, “Oh, c’mon, we have to go through all that again?!” Sure enough, The New World starts all over and another man goes through the same courtship steps with Pocahontas. They touch the grass. They share looks. They talk to the wind. They murder my patience. The New World is a love story suffocated by hesitation and Malick’s own disinterest.
The New World is emblematic of why I’ll never be a Terrence Malick fan: it’s long, drifting, unfocused, ponderous over entertaining, and just plain friggin’ boring! If you’re a scenery buff you’ll garner some enjoyment from Malick’s images, but people looking for story, character, and any sort of movement will be lost with this 135-minute rumination on man, nature, and man touching nature …. very…. slowly. If this is all you are going to do then stop making movies and just make nature specials, Malick. The New World is pretentious, dull, and stubborn down to its very last second. It once took Malick 20 years in between movies. I wouldn’t mind if he took another 20-year hiatus.
Nate’s Grade: C
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