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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 Book of Eli (2010)
Where did the Hughes brothers go? Albert and Allen Hughes have four movies to their names, one of them a documentary about pimps, and their last flick was 2001’s From Hell. I know that Jack the Ripper thriller underperformed at the box office, starring a pre-Pirates Johnny Depp, but was it enough to throw these guys in movie jail for nine years? The Hughes brothers are talented filmmakers, first evidenced by their debut feature Menace II Society, which they wrote and directed when they were only twenty years old. I actually really liked From Hell. I get that it isn’t anywhere as complex as the source material from famous comics scribe Alan Moore, but the movie was slick, stylish, twisty and twisted and satisfying (although, Heather Graham has the worst accent in the history of movies). Where have these brothers been all this time? Nine years later, the Hughes brothers take a whack at the popular genre of the moment –Apocalyptic Cinema. The Book of Eli kind of comes across like a Hollywood version of The Road. It’s all about duplicating the look, without getting too bleak, and failing to replicate the sense of humanity in desperation. Why worry about that when you can have explosions?
It’s been 30 years since the sun scorched the Earth. Food is scarce. Gangs roam the highways. The law is a forgotten concept. Eli (Denzel Washington) is a loner heading westerly and trying to make out a meager existence. He takes the boots off a dead man, hunts emaciated cats for food, and looks for a safe shelter from the blistering sun. He struts into a dusty town looking for clean water. The town is under the rule of Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man in search of a very specific book for his own purposes. It just so happens that Eli is in possession of this book. Eli refuses to hand over his property, speaking about his mission to transport the book to where it belongs. Carnegie sends his thugs out to kill Eli and retrieve the book. Helping Eli is Solara (Mila Kunis), a teenage prostitute who feels Eli has answers that nobody else has.
What we have here is a post-apocalyptic Western. Denzel is the lone drifter that comes into a town besieged by lawlessness or a corrupt agency of power. He even has a fight in a saloon that doubles as a whorehouse. He takes on an unlikely younger apprentice and enforces his own moral code through a series of shootouts. It just so happens that in Eli, he also has a giant machete and knows kung-fu. This is pretty strict genre stuff, mixing in apocalyptic elements for some extra flavor. The Hughes brothers give everything an ashy grimy gloss, making the most of desolate locations they shot in New Mexico (“When you need some place that looks like the end of the world, film New Mexico!”). The sparse locations and desaturated cinematography do well in establishing an unforgiving reality of the landscape.
The Hughes brothers certainly have a sense of style when it comes to the camera lens, yet they don’t approach being too self-conscious with their visuals. There’s an extended fight sequence that plays entirely in silhouette. There isn’t an overabundance of special effects in the film to clutter up the bangs and booms. There is one shootout outside a home (with Michael Gambon no less) that mimics some of the unblinking camerawork of Children of Men, swinging from side to side throughout the escalating firefight. It’s a fun visual motif that thrusts the viewer in the middle of the action. Otherwise, the action is all fairly standard stuff. It?s entertaining to watch Denzel take out a bushel of bad guys time and again, but what does that add up to with such a worn out story and half-hearted characterization? The script by Gary Whitta is heavy on apocalyptic mood and light on details. Cue more ass kicking.
Washington is stoic, almost Eastwood-like in his grit. He’s an easy antihero to root for, the reluctant avenger that manages to slice and dice his way through trouble. I won?t say this movie forces Washington to stretch his reserve of acting muscles, but it is undeniably pleasing to watch him perform his own fighting stunts. Oldman hasn’t gotten an opportunity to play a scenery-chewing villain in quite a while. Let’s face it; Evil Oldman will always overrule Good Oldman. This man was created to play sociopaths that have no ability to control the volume of their voice. This man needs a chance to bellow once every movie. Kunis proved she was a capable actress in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but her role is fairly limited here to sidekick. She stares with her dark eyes and gets to hold a gun. That’s about it. The Hughes brothers have populated their post-apocalyptic world with familiar faces. Tom Waits is a merchant, Ray Stevenson (HBO’s Rome) as the Number One Henchman, Jennifer Beals as the blind mother to Solaris, and Gambon as a well-armed homeowner with an appetite for human flesh. That?s a good stable of actors to fill out a bunch of stock roles. It certainly makes The Book of Eli more entertaining.
The religious element doesn’t dominate the film but it does serve as food for thought. You see the book of Eli’s in high demand is actually he King James Bible. But you see, this isn’t any bible wrapped in leather with a metallic locked binding (all this for a Bible?); this is the LAST BIBLE ON EARTH. That is why Carnegie craves it. In the 30 years since the vague apocalyptic event, apparently mankind rounded up all the Bibles and burnt them, perhaps to express their displeasure with God. Eli operates on the premise that Denzel has the only Bible in the known world, which just seems downright silly. Did people search through every habitable dwelling, every library, and every hotel drawer? There have to be hidden Bibles out there. Even in this extreme setting, it seems to strain credibility to think that mankind is left with one copy of the most widely published book in the history of the world.
Ignoring this fact, the religious element remains nebulous even though the film chronicles the journey of the Christian text. God is referred briefly but mostly the talk steers around the ideas of “faith” and “fate” and “the right path.” Eli feels he has been chosen for a special mission, and so he trudges west with his eyes on the prize. Carnegie wants to use the Bible as a “weapon” to pervert people’s faith into giving him more power. He wants to abuse religion as a motivational force to expand the reach of his control. Here’s the thing though, Carnegie has control over a town already and rules by fear. This seems to be working fine for him. So he wants to rule by love instead, using the Bible to spread the Gospel of discipleship? It’s somewhat unclear what exactly Carnegie plans to use the text for especially considering that most of the remaining population is illiterate anyway. He could just as easily hold up any book (The Da Vinci Code is shown, why not that one? It even has “code” in the title) and proclaim it the Word of God. It’s not like these people, struggling just to eat and find water, are going to question the power structure.
Not content with being a competent genre film, The Book of Eli ends on one of those ghastly twist endings that forces you to rethink everything that came before it. It doesn’t ruin the movie, but this twist certainly leads a charge toward building a counterargument toward disproving it. I won?t get into particulars but it seems unlikely that Denzel would be as good a shot as he was if the twist holds up.
The Book of Eli has its share of thrills and some interesting visual style, but there isn’t anything here you haven?t seen in hundreds of other post-apocalyptic movies. The dusty landscapes, the biker gangs, the aviator goggles, the cryptic threats, the necessity for leather as a fashion statement. This isn’t a bad movie by any means; it’s just another entry in a cluttered genre that, with our renewed fascination of the end times, is only getting more cluttered. Washington and the assortment of actors put in fine work but it’s ultimately the story that lets them down. This is a by-the-books genre flick with a touch more style courtesy of the Hughes brothers and a touch more gravitas courtesy of Mr. Washington. My advice to the human race: stock up on Bibles. Apparently, in the post-apocalyptic future, they will be more valuable than gold. Invest now while you still can. I got 15 of them and will entertain all offers.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)
This needless remake is yet another nail in the coffin for the filmmaker that is (was?) Tony Scott. The director seems to have a love affair with irritating and superfluous visual artifice. Scenes will jump into slow-mo, or stutter-stop speed, or the visuals will all of a sudden turn into blurry shadows. Scott proves yet again that he’d rather fiddle around with film stocks and random jarring effects than aid his narrative. The story of Pelham is rather mediocre, as a tattooed gunman (John Travolta) and his crew take a subway car hostage. A train dispatcher (Denzel Washington) becomes the only one allowed to speak to the gunman. Travolta is wholly unconvincing as a profane criminal mastermind. The villains are gruff idiots, some of whom think at the end that maybe, just maybe, they can get the jump on 30 armed policemen surrounding them. They were not the top of their class at Henchmen School. The story is frustrating and the character motivations for Travolta remain vague and unclear. Sure, he gets financial gain, but what else? What about his shady past? Why this specific route to this mundane goal? It’s like Scott and the movie simply just didn’t care anymore because they knew it was time for the film to end in a big chase scene. Also, the movie seems to make a case that NYC cops are the worst drivers in the world. They crash more cars than Billy Joel (joke brought to you by the year 2003). This is one train to miss.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Inside Man (2006)
Spike Lee is one of the most recognizable names in film. Usually, the edgy, pointedly opinionated director sets his sights on racial strife, human relations, and satire. So what is Lee’s name doing attached to the Hollywood heist flick, Inside Man? For starters, it’s his most commercial film of his career, a sharp, engrossing thriller that doesn’t blunt his distinct voice.
Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) has set forth the perfect bank robbery. He and a handful of associates, dressed as painters with their faces obscured, have locked down a bank in downtown Manhattan. They’ve rounded up everyone inside, robbed them of their trusted cell phones, and ordered them to wear identical painter suits and masks. Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) is tasked with resolving this standoff, which the media is all too eager to cover in its escalation. What could the crooks be after? Well, bank owner Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer) is certainly nervous about a key document he has inside a safety deposit box, a document linking him to scratching the backs of Nazis. He pits Madeline White (Jodie Foster) to retrieve the document at any cost, and she has the tenacity to wedge herself between her political contacts and the police. All the characters keep their cards held close and try and outfox the other, while figuring out what exactly is going on inside that bank.
This movie is a born crowd pleaser. The heist and ensuing complications really grab an audience early on. There’s a certain thrill watching Dalton, so cool and clam, plot out his bank robbery like the script is still in hand. The crooks are always one step ahead of the police as well as the audience, and I mean that in the best terms. It’s great fun just wondering how Dalton’s team is going to get out of their many jams, and the results are rarely unsatisfying. Inside Man knows exactly when to tantalize with intrigue, inject humor (“Penalty of code 36DD?”), or tighten the tension. The filmmakers know exactly what button to press and at what time. For a two-hour plus film, Lee keeps the film at a swift pace and smoothly weaves his characters in and out. The draw of Inside Man is watching the tit-for-tat game between Frazier and Dalton, too stone-faced pros trying to outsmart each other. Lee smartly allows his characters and story to take center stage and refrains from goosing a strong genre flick with some annoying, superficial artistic artifice.
Inside Man is a heist that’s refreshingly grounded in reality. Nothing is altogether too out there or complicated to the point where you’d need a score sheet to follow along. Dalton is the movie’s star and Inside Man gives him the center stage to draw us in and keep us guessing. In fact, the flick is so grounded in the plausible that mainstream audiences might be put off by the fact that there isn’t any super twist saved for the end. I think the same audiences Inside Man is so fine-tuned to entertain will discover the lack of a last-second twist as underwhelming. I hope we’re not to the point, as an audience, where we’d rather have an illogical, forced twist ending than something that closes our story with satisfying maturity and finesse. The biggest plot hole you’ll have to swallow with Inside Man is that a businessman would keep a document that linked him to the Nazis. What’s that about? Sentimental value? I’m also still a bit hazy on the motivation of our crooks.
Even though this is a crowd-pleaser, the film is not without its missteps. Inside Man has one of the worst scores I have heard for a movie, ever. Allow me to explain why I feel so brutally, and I do. The score flashes inappropriate mood all throughout the film, robbing many sequences of drama and calling attention to itself. Take for instance a phone conversation between Frazier and Dalton; we cut back and forth between the two and each actor has a different music score. Frazier’s is a jaunty jazz riff, while Dalton’s is the more traditional brooding orchestral number. Because of the schizophrenic musical score this moment becomes funny. The best example of how this score is dreadful is during a scene late where SWAT storms inside the bank. The camera takes their point of view and creeps through the bank lobby, and then you hear a horn (trumpet?) reverberate. It gets louder and then quieter in beats, like a high school brass orchestra just whizzed by in a race car. Then it keeps going but in another direction. At first I was confused, and then I thought, “Did Dalton actually set up a horn section to distract the police?” No, it’s just the awful Inside Man score that totally takes you out of the movie. Scores should enhance the movie, not turn drama into comedy.
Lee also doesn’t help his story by including so many flash-forwards in time. They mostly rob Inside Man of key suspense points. Now we know the bank robbers get away, we know their identities are still unknown, and we know no one died. Luckily, the charisma of the leads and the clever storyline can survive Lee shooting the movie in the foot. The movie also has what feels like the longest denouement since 2003’s Return of the King 20-minute hug fest.
The quality cast definitely gives Inside Man a boost. Washington is on autopilot but is still charming as ever while being intense and intuitive. Foster is like a female version of Mr. Wolf (Pulp Fiction) but full of steely determination. It says something when really talented actors like Willem Defoe and Chiwetel Ejiofor take tiny roles. As it should be, Owen is the standout. He’s so menacing and composed that you not only want Dalton to get away with the bank holdup, you want him to humiliate and embarrass his opponents even more. I?m convinced that in the world of film there’s no cooler actor than Clive Owen at this point. He adds a touch of badass to every role, with the notable exception of Derailed. At this point, I would pay to hear him recite the phone book and walk away going, “Wow, I didn’t know Aaron A. Anderson of 1200 West Avenue sounded so kickass!” Clive Owen is that cool.
Inside Man is a sharp, intelligent, mostly satisfying heist flick with a terrific ensemble. Lee’s most mainstream picture ever is a born crowd-pleaser, despite some missteps here and there (flash forwards, a poor score). The acting all around is top-notch, and the flick works as a tight and mature genre piece, simultaneously covering all its genre bases and playing up the smarts. I hope audiences appreciate the sense of believability with the film and don’t walk away irked that there is no super last-second twist. Inside Man isn’t anything groundbreaking but it knows how to tease an audience and tell a good guessing game of a tale.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Man on Fire (2004)
By far, the most entertaining moment of Man on Fire occurs shortly after the movie ends. A message comes on screen more or less saying, Mexico City is a very special place and we thank them. Now, after having watched a lengthy 2 hour and 25 minute film that shows Mexico City as a chaotic equal to the Middle East, a city that experiences four kidnappings a day we are told, these ending sentiments feel like a mea culpa. To say a place is great after showing it to be a corrupt war-zone is hilarious. I doubt Mexico City will be using Man on Fire to lure tourism, just like I doubt Germany uses Hogan’s Heroes for its tourism.
The man on fire is Creasy (Denzel Washington), a former soldier with a drinking problem. Hes hired dirt cheap to be the bodyguard for Pita (Dakota Fanning), the daughter of a wealthy Mexican politician (Marc Anthony). Creasy is pragmatic about his job and shirks Pitas attempts at friendship. Eventually, the precocious tyke gets the better of him and Creasy forgoes his self-loathing for coaching Pita on how to swim better. Creasy has found his recovery in the form of Pita’s love, but his world is ripped apart when Pita is kidnapped and Creasy is left for dead. When he recovers, he vows merciless vengeance on anyone involved in Pita’s kidnapping.
Denzel Washington is competent in his role, but there aren’t many films that wouldn’t be better by having a Denzel Washington performance in it. Fanning has a robotic nature to her delivery. The wacky Christopher Walken is in this movie somewhere, but you would be hard-pressed to find him in the last hour or so. It’s kind of nutty that Walken of all people plays the voice of reason in a revenge movie.
Director Tony Scott (Crimson Tide, Top Gun) has flat-out forgotten or lost interest in telling stories. His direction of Man on Fire is erratic and heavy on stop-the-action-dead visual flourishes. Scott is a slave to visuals, but so many of them are jarringly miscalculated that the audience can never fully immerse themselves in the film. It’s like a kid fiddling with a new camcorder and wanting to try all the super cool special features (Whoa, I can make things slower … now grittier stock … now sepia … now I can make a mirror of things … etc.).
It takes over an hour to get to the key kidnapping plot point. Until then the audience is relegated to watching scenes of Creasy find redemption through the eyes of a child. Denzel and Fanning have a nice mentor camaraderie, but after an hour the audience is impatiently waiting for the inevitable kidnapping that the movies foreshadowing has been tripping all over.
When Man on Fire does hit the kidnapping, the ensuing movie gets very messy, and boy does it get ugly. Creasy goes on a grisly killing spree that turns him from a sympathetic loner into a one-man wrecking crew. Vengeance is an easy emotion for an audience to get behind a character, but Man on Fire goes way beyond audience empathy. Are we to cheer when Creasy goes about ruthlessly killing unarmed people and threatening families, pregnant women, and kids? I didn’t cheer. I was somewhat appalled that the filmmakers expected us to revel in this violence as if it was more than justified. It’s just ugly, plain and simple. It is also sickeningly sadistic.
The most bizarre thing about Man on Fire is the subtitles. When I think back on this film in the future, that is the one thing that will stand out for me. These arent your ordinary stay-at-the-bottom-and-do-as-you’re-told subtitles. Oh no. These subtitles dance, jump around, float, fade, expand and shrink in size, and do about everything but make balloon animals (or, I should say, subtitle animals). It’s like a living comic book; however, this is yet another visual trick that draws the audience out of the film. The unusual subtitles call too much attention to themselves, especially when they just pop up for a single word, spoken in English, as if to clue in the audience that this point of information will be vital somehow.
Man on Fire is a sadistic action film that is too full of itself for amusement. By the time that mea culpa comes onscreen its almost a relief to laugh again. The hard-driving ugliness of Man on Fire might make you forget how to. Fans of revenge films may find some redeemable qualities, but Man on Fire is one gruesome 145 minutes to squirm through.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Training Day (2001)
Denzel Washington won an Oscar for this? Instead of Malcolm X? For THIS?! Yes he gets to huff and puff as he plays against type as a dirty cop, but is this reason alone to give an Academy Award to such a forgettable and collectively implausible film? Ethan Hawk, his co-star, is actually better in the film. All I can say is right actor, wrong movie. It’s like rewarding Kevin Spacey for Pay It Forward over the other screamingly better movies. It doesn’t make sense. There are plenty of hip-hop stars making cameos or small roles (Dr. Dre, Snoop, Macy Gray) but most of the time Training Day feels like tired and dead air especially as the contrivances begin to pile onto one another the longer this day goes. And Denzel is huffing and puffing but the house still stands. Man, the voters must really have not wanted Russell Crowe to win.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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The Bone Collector (1999)
Another serial killer movie? Didn’t we as an audience learn our lesson already with Kiss the Girls? Apparently not with this latest adaption of standards and predictability that does nothing more then reinvent the old blaming the butler routine. And may I affimingly add that whoever the critic who gasped that this is on par with the masterpieces of Silence of the Lambs and Se7en either is lying through their teeth or has their children’s college education payed exclusively by Universal.
The Bone Collector has fancy gloom, grit, and gore, but it has no substance whatsoever. The script has the feel of being pasted together from leftovers of earlier better movies. It takes one illogical shift after another until the supposedly “surprise payoff” ending comes charging in but echoes more of a unified feel of rip-off instead. Contrivances are in abundance with every scene, and further prove the superiority of Lambs and Se7en in how well they achieved perfectly tuned thrills. The Bone Collector‘s biggest disappointment is in its utter lack of substantial entertainment when the core of the movie is Angelina Jolie getting dirty in dark places wielding a flash light. This kind of stuff may have worked at summer camp around the fire to scare people, but on the big screen the only ones to cower in terror will be the extensively naive.
Not to lambast this clunker too much, because there is some credible acting from the star leads. Denzel Washington at least makes his role non-laughable which is saying a lot in respect, and Jolie looks like she is a fresh talent but this ain’t her vehicle to hitch on to. Her “gifted” police specialist at finding evidence doesn’t seem to special to me with the easily found clues that anyone could trip over.
The suspense in The Bone Collector boils down to flashes of gore and jumps to frighten instead of the meticulous psychological and intense battles in Lambs and Se7en. The serial killer genre is at a glut again, and The Bone Collector is merely the fat of that over-extension that would serve best to be cut loose.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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