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Contagion (2011)
For the germophobes amongst us, you probably want to skip seeing the new thriller, Contagion. Like for life. Never see this film if you’re the type that needs a paper toilet seat cover before sitting down to do their business. Contagion is a movie that makes you reevaluate basic human interaction. You may not leave the house again without covering yourself in plastic and a year’s worth of Purel. Director Stephen Soderbergh (Che, Ocean’s Thirteen) has assembled an all-star cast to drop like flies like only Hollywood’s most talented can do. Contagion is an intelligent, unnerving, technically authentic thriller that will make you cringe just watching people cough.
Contagion’s main character is a virus that begins its origin in a Hong Kong casino and quickly spreads from there. A British model takes it to the UK, a Chinese waiter goes home infected, a Japanese businessman keels over dead on a return trip home, and Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) comes home from her business tripe back to Minneapolis and goes into seizures. The next day, she’s dead and soon after having her brain dug out for an autopsy. The spooked docs alert the Centers for Disease Control immediately; something is definitely wrong with Paltrow’s brain (insert Coldplay joke here). The head of the CDC, Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne), and his specialists track the expansion of the virus. He dispatches Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet), to Minnesota to coordinate inter-agency action and interview Beth’s husband (Matt Damon), who appears to be immune to the virus. He’s in shock and isolated from his remaining daughter. He’s still trying to make sense of how quickly everything fell apart for his family. Capitalizing on fear, anti-establishment medical blogger Alan Krumweid (Jude Law) steers a panicked public toward a homeopathic medical alternative that he just so happens to have a financial stake with. The World Health Organization sends Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) to investigate the Hong Kong casino and overview hours of security footage to glean the origins of the virus. But she, like others, soon find themselves in ever-increasing danger as the world races against time to beat this new threat.
For those expecting an action-thriller with plenty of doctors barking moral quandaries and racing against time to escape government agents… you will be sorely disappointed. Contagion is much more cerebral, cool, like a scientific procedural that plays the premise out in a realistic fashion, which means it’s often short the fireworks that mainstream audiences have come to expect from disaster movies. The CDC is really the main setting as they try and determine the origin of the virus, breaking down the virus, and projecting its rate on infection and contamination. Soderbergh has onscreen titles indicating how large the population centers are for the plot settings, reminding us simply with text how vulnerable to danger all those people are. The real pleasure of the film is watching A-level Oscar actors puzzle out how to solve this multi-faceted crisis. The movie does a minimal amount of explanation and expects an audience to be able to keep up with its scientific analysis. Soderbergh’s film is much more in keeping with The Andromeda Strain than Outbreak (find that monkey and all will be happy again!). You witness smart people doing smart things and still making little traction. This isn’t necessarily Irwin Allen territory of disaster. It’s a disaster that seems all too reasonably possible rather than being trapped in the belly of a ship that has turned upside down. Getting sick is a lot harder to avoid especially in our modern world. Globalization has done many wonders for the world, but by making the world a smaller place it also means that we’re all much more susceptible to the spreads of pandemics. No longer can geography be held as a total defense. We’re all one flight away from the spread of the next great illness (as the end credits to Rise of the Planet of the Apes also remind).
Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Informant!) cast a wide net all over the world to see the ramifications of crisis. Things go rather quickly. By the end of the first week, the CDC is coordinating its resources and media strategy to not inflame panic. Easier said than done when ignorance and fear are in large quantities. The reaction to the news, the intra-government squabbles over resources and money, the exploitation of fear by opportune business types, the rising resentment of those left out of the loop, and even the kidnapping schemes for those known to have access to medicine. Contagion works because it gets the details right without losing track of the big picture. The film feels eerily plausible at every beat. Nurses are on strike refusing to be near the sick until uniform safety protocols are established. Funeral homes refuse to handle infected bodies out of health concerns. These are absorbing details that feel completely authentic yet would easily have been overlooked in other disaster pictures. The movie even addresses recent pandemic fears related to H1N1, SARS, and the perceived “overreaction” when these potential worldwide disasters turned out to be milder bugs. A government agent asks the head of the CDC if some terror organization could have weaponized the bird flu. “They don’t have to. The birds are already doing it,” the CDC head replies.
While Burns lies out a host of characters and scenarios with increasing tension as stakes mount and the death toll rises, Contagion just kind of drifts into an ending for the last 20 minutes. I was expecting another big wallop, some kind of sudden plot turn that reestablished an ongoing threat, but it wasn’t to be. The tension just sorts of lets out slowly like a balloon, playing against movie laws. That means that Contagion, wile tense, eschews a dramatic buildup for a climax. Burns and Soderbergh instead to play out their realistic “what if” experiment to its conclusion, which makes for a realistic if somewhat inert final act. There’s no chasing monkeys or butting with government agents willing to sacrifice infected town for “the good of mankind”; it’s just government employees doing good work and trying to minimize damages. It’s exciting to watch smart characters break down a nasty new virus and try to understand it and get ahead of it, but once they succeed, it’s not as exciting to watch the aftereffects of people getting better and returning to a normal existence (minus 30 million people on the planet – the solution to fixing unemployment?).
Because the emphasis is on the cross-sections of plot and scientific breakdown, the emotional connection to the characters is limited. There are a lot of famous faces that appear in this movie; even bit parts are taken up by the likes of Bryan Cranston (TV’s Breaking Bad), John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone), Demetri Martin (Taking Woodstock), Enrico Colatoni (TV’s Veronica Mars). Damon (The Adjustment Bureau) is probably the closest thing the film has to an emotional center. He’s immune to the virus but he has to watch his family fall apart with the knowledge that his wife was Patient Zero. On top of that, he has to deal with the fact that she was cheating on him. That’s a healthy brew of emotions to confront in such a heightened situation, and Damon does a nice job of putting a human face to the mass tragedy. Winslet (The Reader) is superb as a CDC investigator, so duty-bound that even when she awakes to discover she has become infected she goes through protocol trying to investigate who serviced her room so that others will not share her fate. Law (Sherlock Holmes) is suitably sleazy as a moral relativist trying that uses his army of Internet followers to discredit the government’s response. Fishburne (Predators) has terrific poise as the man in charge of scrambling the response forces, keeping his cool, and being the public face of the government response until an all too human scandal tarnishes him. But perhaps the best performer is Jennifer Ehle (Pride and Glory, The King’s Speech). She plays one of the chief CDC scientists studying the virus and takes some extreme measures to test a potential vaccine. She has a scene with her sick father that is likely the most emotionally affecting moment in the film. Her sturdy determination even when most vulnerable is selfless.
Contagion is a smart by-the-book procedural thriller that may not be dramatic enough for audiences fed by Hollywood disaster films. The film is far more analytical and detail-oriented to its benefit and sometimes detraction. It’s got stars galore and some plenty of rising tension, but the film also follows a realistic blueprint toward a rapid world response to a new pandemic, which means that well-developed characterization is spared amidst all that fraught scientific lingo. As a result, Contagion feels more like a docu-drama than an amped-up Hollywood thriller with its finger firmly pressed upon American anxieties. Contagion is a bit overextended and data-heavy. It’s a stripped down indie in studio clothing. Soderbergh’s movie is a bit too lean and clinical to be fully satisfying and emotionally engaging, especially with its somewhat inert ending. It’ll sure make you look at free bowls of peanuts differently. And Gwyneth Paltrow’s skull.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Skyline (2010)
This movie is out-of-this-world terrible. Who wouldn’t want to spend an alien invasion stuck in some L.A. condo with a load of insufferable Los Angelinos? From a storytelling standpoint, watching characters I don’t care about talk about amazing and horrible things happening off camera is not the best use of anyone’s time. Skyline is a movie that keeps surprising you with the depths of its stupidity; just when you think it couldn’t plumb any deeper, the aliens have invaded to eat our brains. Yes, they’re after our brains. So that explains why gigantic monsters will claw away at a building, scrounging for the tiniest morsel of human (that still doesn’t explain it, really). That does not explain why they targeted L.A. if they’re after brains. The special effects are notable for a $10 million dollar movie, but due to the budget restraints, that’s probably why most of this alien invasion is spent indoors and behind trusty sets of Venetian blinds. The pacing is as shoddy as the character work. I kept waiting for these nitwits to step into the light and be vacuumed up into the alien mothership. The end almost looks like it might redeem part of this monstrosity, with our survivors accepting a doomed fate together. But then… I can’t even put into words how shocking, dreadful, and groan-inducing the true ending is for this junk. Suffice to say, it ends with zero resolution, a jagged plot left turn, and setup for a sequel that I’m absolutely positive not one person will be demanding.
Nate’s Grade: D
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Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)
Consider the ultraviolet, gleefully vulgar movie Hobo with a Shotgun is the SECOND feature-length film that began life as a fake trailer for the 2007 exploitation opus, Grindhouse. Except this film began as a fan-made trailer to win a Grindhouse contest. Director and co-writer Jason Eisener’s winning entry followed a homeless defender of the streets, a hobo who found himself thrust into greatness thanks to oen fortunate shotgun. The two-minute fake trailer became a viral hit, was even attached to Canadian prints of Grindhouse, and Eisener was asked to extend his bloody trailer into an actual movie. He scored Rutger Hauer (Bladerunner, The Hitcher) as the star. finally, an actor from the 1980s who begs for change – on purpose! Hauer’s hobo rides the rails into a very Canadian city (the hookers say “aboot” – it’s cute) discovering an urban landscape overrun by scum. Drug dealers, gangs, pedophiles, crooked cops, all under the thumb of crime boss, the Drake (Brian Downey) and his two sons, Slick and Ivan (Nick Bateman and Gregory Smith). Can one hobo, shotgun in hand, inspire a city to stand up?
Hobo with a Shotgun is a movie that lives up to its very title. It’s a gleeful, jubilantly violent, colorfully over-the-top genre exercise that doesn’t push your nose in its campy excesses. But it is excessive, and to what effect? If you stop to catch your breath, you’ll start to realize that there isn’t a whole lot holding the film together. It barely covers 80 minutes and that’s with a lot of wheezing to get to the finish. The plot is mostly a series of beheadings, stabbings, and, of course, gunshots. Sure it’s a fun throwback and meant to be entertaining due to its homage to awful exploitation films, but it’s a one-joke movie that’s pretty hollow at its center. He’s a hobo, he’s dispensing justice (“one shell at a time” a newscaster reports), that’s about all there is, not that I expect a film with a title like Hobo with a Shotgun to tackle weight philosophical topics (the titular hero seems like a figure that would give Ayn Rand fits). If somebody wants to go to the effort of making the hobo some metaphorical everyman, lashing out at a society he feels impotent and angrily displaced by, then by all means. This is not a film with commentary in its blood. It lacks the creative consistency of a Black Dynamite or the narrative pulse of a Planet Terror, or the genre-rattling re-purposing of a Tarantino effort (have your pick). But the violence is often brutal and sickeningly clever, sating base appetites.
This is a movie chiefly about grotesque characters, grotesque violence, and grotesquely dark and demented laughs. Luckily, the film has a finely attuned sense of humor that elevates what otherwise might be static genre exercises. The film is fully aware of its outrageousness. One of the Drake’s thuggish sons literally walks around with ice skates on before confronting the hobo of fame. He declares somebody’s going to be “skate raped.” He then uses these unorthodox shoes as an unorthodox weapon. A hooker (Molly Dunsworth) with a heart of gold saves the hobo. He remarks, without a hint of irony: “You’re smart. You should be a teacher.” He then refers to her as a teacher for the rest of the film. They develop a bizarre relationship that involves the shared desire to see a bear in a zoo (no joke). A cop reasons, “Well at least he’s only shooting the dirty cops,” in reference to the hobo, to which the chief responds, irony-free, “We’re all dirty cops!” A pedophile is dressed up as Santa Claus and abducts children, including one who bangs on the back windshield of a car as it drives by our hobo. The fact that it happens not a second later than two or three other incidents of crime, creating a melange of overrun criminality, made me giggle. And some of the jokes in this movie are dark; I’m talking scorched earth dark, but I was howling throughout. Now you know where my sense of humor lies. The newspaper headlines decrying the vigilante uprising have a frenzied penchant for rhyme and overly serious statements that are often hilarious (“Hobo Refuses Money, Demands Change”).
Eisener takes care to make his film look like a relic from the 1970s, from the low-budget mayhem, to the ominous synth-laden score, to the highly saturated film colors that advertise being phony “Technicolor.” His camera is antic, constantly swooping to find its intended target, and the cinematography feels grimy, constantly lit by strong neon colors like Joel Schumacher was a paid consultant. Eisener would do best to settle down a bit at times. His direction is a little too erratic, a little too antsy, like he’s constantly afraid that his audience will turn on him. Hobo with a Shotgun is a loving yet messy and uneven homage to the schlock movies of old, and your enjoyment level of this flick will depend greatly on whether or not you appreciate movies aim low on purpose. The crazy nature of the film, its frenetic pacing, and its strong sense of humor will delight fans of trashy cinema. The rest of the audience will probably just view it as trash.
Hauer is a classic movie tough that actually has a bit of a soul inside those steely blue eyes. He’s an actor that’s been giving small, quietly menacing performances over the last decade. He plays the character completely straight, which makes him far funnier and even somewhat surprisingly sympathetic and less sociopath than a Travis Bickle-esque figure that wants to cleanse society through blood. His dream is to own a lawnmower, which he loftily dreams of opening his own lawn care company. He’s spat on, beaten, and treated without a shred of respect. To many, the hobo is just a nuisance at best and a subhuman lecher at worst. Hauer doesn’t even have to say a word, just hang onto his weary grimace and it says enough about the character. The hobo character makes for an interesting dispenser of justice, though the character is little more than a concept with legs. However, Hauer makes this hobo one for the ages. Way better than the creepy magic hobo from The Polar Express.
The movie is more fun than it should be and at the same time the movie is nothing more than the power of its admittedly awesome title. This seedy, blood-soaked is destined to be an acquired taste for a select few, however, I doubt anyone will randomly stumble into something as provocatively titled as Hobo with a Shotgun. This is a self-aware B-movie celebration of the grindhouse canon while giving is a gentle parody nudge; enough to capture a wink without going into camp. It has enough of a chaotic energy and cracked sense of humor to make up for its narrative deficiencies. Hauer somehow finds a soul inside his cartoon hobo, which is more than I can say about any of the other actors. But when you’re in a movie with burning school children, pedophilic Santas, oddball lines like, “When life gives you razors… make a baseball bat filled with razors,” and a hero who dreams of owning a push mower, well, you’re not expecting Shakespeare.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Hanna (2011)
We all seem to love child prodigies. The concept of someone so small doing something well ahead of their years seems to fascinate our minds. I suppose the same holds true for professional killers. We all seem smitten with teenage depiction of super-powered killing machines. Last year presented Kick-Ass whose real star was the adolescent Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz-Grace), pint-sized reaper of carnage. Then there’s River from Serenity, Gogo from Kill Bill: Volume One, the ladies of Sucker Punch, the Heavenly Creatures girls (at least this one is based on a true story), and pretty much half the cast of Battle Royale. Just wait until The Hunger Games comes to screens in 2012, built upon the premise of 12-18-year-olds fighting to the death on national television (so the premise is almost exactly Battle Royale). We love our innocence mixed with ironic cynicism. Along comes Hanna, the tale of another teenage girl leaving a trail of bodies in her wake.
Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is a sixteen-year-old girl living above the Arctic Circle with her father, Erik (Eric Bana). She’s been in survival mode all of her life, preparing for a day when she would finally break free and seek vengeance. CIA Agent Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) killed Hanna’s mother and has been lying in wait to finish the job, eliminating the rest of the family. Erik has taught his daughter well to think on her feet, master several languages, and become an excellent marksman/fighter. Hanna makes the choice to set their plan into motion. She triggers a device that signals to the CIA where they are. Marissa sends a crew to pick up Hanna and Erik, but only finding the girl. Once in an underground CIA compound, Hanna turns her focus on Marissa, killing her double (good call, lady), and breaking out of the compound. She finds that she’s been taken to Morocco. Fortunately, a family is traveling through the land and Hanna can catch a ride before she meets up with dear old dad in Berlin. Marissa sets out on a manhunt to find Erik. She hires a group of German criminals (led by Tom Hollander) to retrieve Hanna (“I need you to do things my agency will not let me do,” she reasons). Everyone is on a crash course to Berlin, where Hanna’s mysterious origin will be finally revealed.
Director Joe Wright blew away all my expectations for him. The British director was mostly known for visually lavish period pieces like Pride and Prejudice and Atonement. This is a drastic change of pace and proof that the occasional art director can produce a great-looking, meditative action thriller that still delivers the goods. Wright’s camerawork is beautiful, making artful use of composition, lighting, and editing to deliberate purpose. There were several moments that I just got caught up in the look of the film, aided by the energetic if sadly too-often absent score by The Chemical Brothers (I love the chunky bass groove on “Container Park”). I was just impressed what could be produced under the guise of action cinema. This is an elevation of the genre. Wright’s color palette is awash in ominous reds, soft blues, and delicate yellows, which helps give the film this painterly approach to photography. Pay attention to the dream-like visual metaphors connected to fairy tales (Marissa seems to have a tooth cleaning fetish –“What big teeth you have…”). At the same time, Wright knows how to stage a terrific action sequence. His signature tracking shots allow the audience to become enveloped in the action, taking in the punches and kicks without the disorientation of the popular erratic editing style of modern action cinema. Bana taking down a bunch of goons in a subway level is made more thrilling because we see every second of activity, allowing the moment to build in tension as he is followed, then cornered, then strikes out.
17-year-old Ronan has left the awkward pubescence of The Lovely Bones far behind her. Like her Atonement director, she too steps far beyond our concept of what she is able to perform. Ronan is a five-foot-tall wrecking crew. She keeps her eyes intensely focused, tense blue orbs. At the same time that she convincingly kicks butt up and down the screen, Ronan successfully communicates the internal drama of her character. Hanna is an outsider trained her whole life for a single purpose. When she’s left in a Moroccan back room, Hanna is overwhelmed by the cacophony of noises by electronic appliances, at a loss to make the melange of sound cease. She’s a victim of her own upbringing and her father’s quest for vengeance. Ronan keeps her icy cool demeanor when she means business, but the Irish lass and her straw-blonde hair manage to find the girl inside the super girl. Bana (Star Trek) is suitably stoic and conflicted as the father, and all hail Blanchett (Robin Hood) as a good villain for once. With her Southern drawl, she presents an alluring sense of menace throughout without breaking down into over-the-top histrionics. Blanchett is so good as a slippery CIA agent that you wish she didn’t farm out her villainy to a group of German goons.
What holds Hanna back from greatness is it uneven natures of its plot and the lack of sustainable action. The movie is just as much a strange coming-of-age saga for a girl who was raised in the woods. The lengthy travelogue with the British family from North Africa through Spain kills the film’s momentum routinely. Things will start picking up, the excitement builds, and then we cut back to the goofy caricature of a flighty liberal family (Olivia Williams and Jason Flemying as the parents). Despite the painful “do what you feel?” parenting cues, the family unit seems to have some level of functionality. These scenes are meant to contrast with Hanna’s own upbringing. It’s meant to show the life that Hanna has never been allowed to choose. But I got that rather quickly. Also, if you want to sell the “alternative path” contrast it would have more impact if this foil family were more appealing and less annoying. Even moment Hanna tags along as a stowaway with this family it disrupts the momentum. I understand that Hanna needed some narrative excuse to get from the rocky deserts of Northern Africa into central Europe, but when you’re dealing with a super kid, why rely on her just hitching a ride with a van full of hippies?
What really let me down was the lack of sustainable action that developed. While I’ve already credited Wright’s handling of the onscreen fisticuffs, I just wish there was more of it. The action occurs in spurts that fail to keep up. That tracking shot fight sequence is wonderful, but it’s too short. Hanna taking out men twice her size is undeniably enjoyable, but short of an excellent sequence of hide-and-pummel through a cargo ship yard, Hanna is never put in a position of risk. Sure she’s in danger but she’s never overmatched, which is part of the reason why the action sequences only happen in bursts. Her competition never seems to be truly threatening. Hollander (looking eerily, eerily like celebrity blogger Perez Hilton) in white bike shorts is not that intimidating. He’ll stand out, which might not be what a CIA agent wants when she hires goons to track and kill a super kid, but he’s never more threatening than Henchman #2 status, though he’s been irresponsibly promoted for the purposes of this movie. I realize that Wright and his screenwriters, Seth Lochhead and David Farr, wanted a character-based action thriller. Hanna is that film, but it could have been a more thriller vehicle if more attention was spent on the realities of their dramatic setup. The problem with making Hanna a super kid warrior is that she needs either BETTER competition or MORE competition. Pick one. But having a small number of inferior toughs seems like the worst outcome for people who want solid, sustainable action.
The plot of Hanna is fairly conventional but the style and feel of the film are anything but. Wright has assembled a first-class art-thriller that would have been a work of true greatness if the plot could have gotten itself figured out. Splitting time between action set pieces and a family road trip is not an ideal use of running time. The action works fantastic, that is, when it does make its too-brief appearances. I’ve read several comparisons to Run Lola Run due to the stylized visuals, pace-setting electronica score, and likely general German setting, but I feel these comparisons are surface-level; Lola was a firecracker of style and energy rarely replicated in film (it’s my go-to film to show people who are self-described haters of foreign films). Hanna is no Lola, but Hanna is still a class ahead of her peers. Wright and company have produced a film that is moody, stylish, thrilling, and just a little bit ridiculous. As Hanna says to her prey, she just missed your heart. Whether that’s by design or accident, we’ll never know.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Unknown (2011)
With Liam Neeson kicking ass in a European country, fighting a nefarious conspiracy, and trying to reclaim what has been taken from him, you’d be excused for thinking that Unknown is a sequel to the highly popular Taken. And the films do share plenty in common. Both involve Neeson trying to regain his life against a ludicrous conspiracy, and both are equally ludicrous in their action sequences, and yet both are fun, passably diversionary entertainment. Neeson gets into a car accident to find that his wife (January Jones, blankly Betty Drapier wherever she goes) doesn’t recognize him and enjoys the company of another man asserting the identity of Neeson. Is he really crazy? That idea lasts about ten minutes before the bad guys and their bad guy accents come to kill Neeson and tie up a loose end. The action is swift, well edited, and fairly exciting, a highpoint being a thrilling car chase through the streets of Berlin. The movie has enough clues and questions to string along an audience, though by film’s end you wish you got more scenes with Neeson in full-on attack mode, as seen in Taken from start to finish. What is it about losing one’s memory that always turns men and women into better people? Perhaps prison rehabilitation should consist of a Flinstones-esque treatment of knocks to the head to adjust moral consciousness for the better.
Nate’s Grade: B
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A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
The next in an endless assembly line of vapid horror remakes, a new trip to the realm of Elm Street at least held some promise. The famous boogeyman Freddy Kruger was going to be played by Oscar-nominee Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen). Has any other actor of Haley’s caliber played a blatant slasher villain in recent memory? And the playground of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise was the world of dreams, which should be fruitful territory for some bug screen chills. I mean you don’t have to adhere to earth logic anymore, not that horror movies tend to. I didn’t expect much but I expected the movie to do more. Many of the signature moments from the first film are simply repeated. How does an entire school of young kids forget that Mr. Krueger molested them? What is the point of hiring Haley and giving him nothing to do? Lead actress Rooney Mara (soon to be seen in as the “girl” in David Fincher’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) looks as bored as somebody watching her movie. Her performance is lifeless for a film that requires energy and action. There is such wasted potential in the world of reams and personal fears. The whole movie just feels so rote and routine, following an established pattern of terrorizing the teens and knocking them off one-by-one; you get an overwhelming impression that everyone was just going through the motions, repeating someone else’s song and not bothering to make it their own.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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The Eagle (2011)
In 140 AD, the Roman Empire has spread its reach across the European continent. Commander Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum) is stationed in northern Britain. 20 years earlier, Marcus’ father led a legion of Romans into the northern British territory. The natives attacked them and Rome’s golden eagle, a significant idol under the guidance of Marcus Senior, was lost to history. Marcus has endured shame and vowed to redeem his family name. After surviving a nightly attack at the fort, Marcus displays great bravery but is injured. He’s honorably discharged from the Roman military. While he regains his strength, Marcus plans on venturing into the northern British highlands and finding that missing eagle. He teams up with Esca (Jamie Bell), a slave whose life he saved, and the duo goes beyond the wall that separates civilization (Rome) for the wilderness (native Britons).
Too often The Eagle feels like its wings were clipped. With such life and death stakes, the movie feels curiously adrift and prosaic. It never feels like it has any rush to go anywhere. In some regard, that makes the film feel like a product of the Hollywood of old, where a plot was allowed to meander and marinate to build to something worthwhile. But The Eagle is hardly worthwhile. It begins with some amount of excitement but that quickly dissipates with an interminable middle that feels like it’s still going on even as I write this. The plot is far too lean to cover a wide canvas, and the characters are far too shallow and incurious. They say so little, and what they do say means so little. It’s general variations on the idea of honor and sacrifice. They’re just focused on retrieving the prize. Meaningful conversation would just get in the way of things. The character dynamics between Marcus and Esca is stilted and kept at a distance. The class struggle and history of foreign occupation is never really addressed beyond a superficial nod. It’s like being stuck with two boring guys on a long, uninteresting road trip. Director Kevin Macdonald (State of Play, Last King of Scotland) gives the proceedings a docudrama touch thanks to his background in nonfiction films; too often this means he goes on half-baked Terrence Malick-like asides to admire a grain of wheat or some old artifact. The docudrama approach seems to conflict with the relatively old fashioned feel for this film, like Macdonald is trying to do his best to lift up material in want. There’s just so little at the core of this movie.
Tatum (G.I. Joe, Step Up) tries some form of an accent, though I’m not exactly sure what region of the Roman Empire the man is hailing from. He still has an imposing presence that manages to fill in the gaps of his acting ability, much in classic Hollywood tradition. And yet the man seemed more masculine in a Nicholas Sparks movie from last year. Bell (King Kong, Jumper) takes his haunted, submissive character to heart and gives a performance that confuses submission with understatement. He main mode of acting is the power of serious staring. The two actors don’t ever develop any onscreen sense of camaraderie or warmth. Even during the climax, you never feel like these guys have anything more than a civil employer/employee relationship. That’s why the laugh-out-loud, tonally jarring ending seems so out of place. Instead, Marcus and Esca strut through the halls of Rome, music triumphantly rocking out, and says, “What do you want to do now?” like they’re lining up weekly wacky adventures to be had. You’ll be surprised to see actors like Donald Sutherland, Mark Strong, Denis O’Hare, and even A Prophet‘s Tahar Rahim littered among the cast. Why are they in this movie when they have such insignificant parts compared to their bland leads?
The colonial perspective also started rubbing me the wrong way. Now colonial tales have long been featured in pop culture. I don’t on the surface have an issue with a storyteller utilizing a massive horde of natives to stand in as an antagonistic force. But sometimes that dynamic creates a skewed rather culturally tactless portrayal. Are the overpowered, conquering empires always blameless? Do the natives, who have been displaced and killed, not have a respectable grievance? Do they not have a right to fight for the lands that have been taken? Too often, the natives are viewed as blunt brutes (just watch the “cowboys and Indian” pictures from the 1950s) and the figures of expansion are viewed as heroic pioneers. The Britons come across as, essentially, the Indians. The filmmakers always want us to side with our hunky hero Marcus and his quest for honor at every turn, but the movie takes great turns to make the natives seem extra villainous. For a while they just come across like another culture. They have community, customs, and the like; it’s just not the dominant culture’s community and customs. And then, in an appalling moment of cheap melodrama, the Briton chief kills a child to send a message to Marcus and his Romans. This material is handled so indelicately that an unsettling undercurrent emerges and gains steady traction.
So what if the Britons stole one gold eagle 20 years ago? “It’s not just a piece of metal. The eagle is Rome,” we are reminded by Marcus. Symbols are great, but a one-man search in a land as large as Scotland seems impractical so many years hence. And then you have to take into account the time passage. It’s been two decades seen this beloved bauble went M.I.A., and damn near anything could have happened to it. It could have been thrown into the ocean. It could have been buried. It could have been smashed to smithereens. It could have been taken to another land. It could have been melted down into smaller, gift-shop sized eagles on sale to the general public. I’m just saying that in the ensuing 20 years anything could have happened to this bird. The fact that one guy can traipse on foot through Scotland and the first group of natives he runs into happen to possess the artifact that went missing 20 years prior is just insulting. First chance and he lucks in? I was eagerly waiting for an ending where Marcus, brimming with pride at having returned the eagle to Rome, is informed by one of the politicians that it’s the wrong eagle (“Here we go again!”).
The Eagle is dressed up to be an old time adventure story, but it’s just too slovenly paced and generically plotted to work. The lead characters are bland, distant, and noble to the point of annoyance. When a character is defined entirely as forward thinking, exceptionally lucky, ethically straight figure of honor, excuse me when I start to yawn. And when all he’s tasked with is finding an old relic that miraculously happens to be with the first freaking group of people he finds, then excuse me for eyeing my watch. The Eagle has some workmanlike action and suspense to it, brief moments of activity over what is in essence two hours of silent walking (it’s like somebody cut out the middle of a Lord of the Rings movie and sold it). The Eagle, both the film and the titular hunk of metal, are simply not worth the effort.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Let Me In (2010)
Essentially a faithful remake of the Swedish pre-teen vampire romance, Let the Right One In, this American reinterpretation loses points in originality and freshness but makes up for it with a bigger budget and better acting. Even fans of the original, and count me as one, must admit that Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass) as a pint-sized vampire stuck forever in pre-pubescence, and Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) as her aging caretaker, are upgrades. The true surprise is the eerie assuredness of the entire production from director Matt Reeves, he of shaky-cam Cloverfield fame. The entire film just feels so placidly precise, even as it draws tension and sets up for one vicious poolside climax. Some of the audience unfriendly moments from the original have been exorcised (say goodbye to lingering gender identity questions), but Let Me In still happily dwells in an unsettling place, forcing its characters to do questionable things in the name of companionship and forcing the audience to decide how they fell about that. Also, the film still retains its ambiguity for interpretation; whether you view it as a depressing saga of use and abuse, or an disaffected teen romance is entirely up to you. Let Me In won’t grab peoples’ attention in the same way its Scandinavian predecessor did, but it doesn’t screw it up either. And these days, that’s got to count for a lot.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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The Mechanic (2011)
The Mechanic is a routine remake of a 1972 Charles Bronson hitman thriller. But when did “mechanic” ever become commonplace slang for “killer”? The film treats this concept like everyday knowledge. Bishop asks, “You know what a mechanic is?” A character responds matter-of-fact: “A hitman.” And the “mechanic” services are advertised via a system that includes a Craigslist style message board. It makes me wonder what the “adult services” section on Craigslist was really all about this whole time.
Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) is the world’s greatest hitman. He meticulously plans his hits, deciding whether to make it look like a suicide or an accident or whether to send a message. He’s the cleanest of the cleaners. Then he gets a very delicate assignment – he’s to take out his mentor, Harry McKenna (Donald Sutherland, taking a paycheck). Bishop’s boss (Tony Goldwyn) tells him that somebody is going to kill Harry. If it’s Bishop at least he can make it more humane. Bishop takes out his mentor and makes it look like a carjacking. Then Harry’s screw-up of a son, Steve (Ben Foster), appears to get vengeance for his old man. Bishop takes the hotheaded kid under his wing and trains his to be an assassin. Then, naturally, Bishop discovers he was set up and played by his employers, which brings about a larger examination on the cyclical nature of violence. Just kidding. There’s more killings.
To say that The Mechanic is a well-oiled formula picture is probably the kindest thing that can be said. It follows the path of its hitman forbears fairly close. The opening pre-credit sequence is a hit that established the abilities of our deadly lead, Donald Sutherland pops up just long enough to lay down the necessary exposition for the film, and then before we even finish the first reel (20-minute mark) the movie manages to introduce a sexy female (Mini Anden) whose only purpose, in grand action movie tradition, is to have enthusiastic sex with the lead whenever his tank is low. The rest of the movie follows rather lockstep with the various beats of the genre, meaning that Bishop takes on an apprentice, shows him the ropes, they bond by taking out the bad guys, and then of course the final show drops and the truth about Bishop killing Harry is revealed. Along the way, The Mechanic does enough to satisfy genre fans looking for the goods when it comes to thrills.
The best moments are the tag-team hitman efforts of Bishop and Steve. The stuntwork is occasionally impressive like when Bishop and Steve repel down a large hotel building or when a car literally drives all the way inside a bus. There’s a brutal, visceral fight between Steve and his first kill that serves as the film’s highpoint. It was these sequences that made me actually sit back and think, “You know, I think this concept would actually play best as an ongoing TV series.” Think about it: you’d have your target of the week, the planning and execution that always make for satisfying payoffs, and then week-to-week Bishop and Steve would continue their complicated relationship with Bishop’s guilt eating away at him while he tries to keep the truth at arm’s length away from his neophyte partner. To me, that sounds much more dramatically rich while still keeping the body count consistently high.
Of course by hewing so close to the confines of genre, The Mechanic also has very little going on outside of the mini-missions of the hit jobs. Bishop obviously has been misled and setup by his sleazy employers. It’s fairly clear early on that when a guy gets out of a limo in a three-piece suit and tells you that the old man in the wheelchair is the bad guy, red flags should be waving. There doesn’t seem to be a formidable opponent in this fight mostly because Bishop is long described as the best at what he does. So how do you stop the best? You’d think you’d hire other players of comparable skill or offer an incalculable amount of money to kill the guy. But our villain doesn’t do any of this. Five minutes prior to his death, our villain fails to even once threaten Bishop (don’t even pretend like that’s a spoiler). The main conflict is really the complicated connection between Bishop and Steve; however, this relationship is kept at a slow simmer the whole film, even after Steve pieces together the ugly truth. The character development is left mostly at an inferential level. That means that there are long stretches where the characters glare, dispense with macho cool speak, glare with sunglasses, and then fall back on some unique hitman quirk they all have to relax (Bishop listens to classical music on vinyl records because he takes life yet appreciates beauty! IRONY!).
But the ending needs to be further discussed because it leaves a terrible aftertaste. Given the dramatic dynamic at work, you pretty much know that Bishop and Steve will eventually come to a head. Bishop regrets what he’s done and is trying to make amends and find some meager form of redemption by taking Steve under his wing. He’s trying to make amends for the many sins in his life. He’s coming to terms with his life’s choices. So then you would assume (spoilers to follow) that when Steve ultimately seeks his own very deserved sense of vengeance, that the old pro would accept his doomed fate. It makes the most sense. It provides an end for the character’s journey, it provides closure to Steve, and it allows for an ending where people have to pay for their life’s mistakes. It’s not even downbeat because it feels right; it’s the correct ending for this material. It’s also the way the original Mechanic ended. But why end the movie on Statham accepting death? That would shuttle any chances for Mechanic sequels. And so, in a colossal cop-out, our hero narrowly survives and even manages to set up a bomb to take out Steve. While his young partner was emotionally unstable and looking for an outlet for his billowing anger, but the man was warranted in his vengeance. It’s entirely the wrong ending for not just this kind of movie but this movie specifically. It smacks of a pathetic attempt to leave the option open for a would-be franchise. It eliminates the entire idea of consequences mattering.
Statham gives the exact same performance he’s been giving in every movie for a decade plus. You know what you’re getting with a Statham action vehicle, for better or worse. He’s going to get shirtless, he’s going to dispatch the bad guys with relative ease, and never once will an expression flash across his stony face. He even verbalizes guilt while still being completely stone-faced. You don’t really buy any inner turmoil with this guy; he’s too “cool” to have feelings other than anger and vengeance. But then Foster practically redeems the entire movie. The young actor has been delivering intense performances for years now, whether it is an emotionally unstable guy in Alpha Dog, an emotionally unstable guy in Hostage, an emotionally unstable guy in 3:10 to Yuma, or an emotionally unstable guy in The Messenger. Notice a pattern? I’m amazed the reservoir of little tricks Foster finds to make Steve pop. Foster gives a far better performance than the movie deserves.
The Mechanic is a routine action movie that fails to rise above its genre conventions due to a lackluster plot, some vapid character development, and a horrendous ending. Statham does his thing, his shirtless chest gets due prominence, but the movie lets both he and a game Foster down. The kills are rather sloppy leaving behind mountains of evidence and dead bodies, and yet there seem to be no consequences. That makes for a long march to an inevitable conclusion with a few bursts of colorful violence to entertain. But what actually exists on the screen isn’t half bad. It’s fairly unremarkable, straightforward genre pap, but that can be suitable for the right audience and the right frame of mind. I was seeking something brainless to excite me when I caught The Mechanic, and it modestly achieved these modest goals.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Saw 7 (2010)
The story behind Saw 7 (or as presented in theaters, Saw 3D) is more intriguing than anything you’ll find in this lackluster chum bucket of guts. The director of Saw 6, series editor Kevin Greutert, was all prepared to go off and direct the sequel to the surprise smash, Paranormal Activity. The folks at Paramount even penciled in a Halloween release date, long the fertile ground for the annual Saw sequels. It seemed like Paramount was rubbing in the fact that they now had the more exciting, buzz-worthy franchise and they would tap dance on the grave of Saw. Well the studio suits didn’t take too kindly to this broadside, so they activated a clause in Greuter’s contract. The man was legally required to leave the Paranormal Activity 2 project so that he could direct a seventh Saw film. Because nothing says “work of art” like forcing your director to make a movie by threat of legal action.
Saw 7 is billed as the “Final Chapter” but it doesn’t feel like a satisfying conclusion, more like an overdue mercy killing. It’s no secret that the Saw franchise has been flailing and sputtering for quite some time, with the bizarre exception of Saw 6 (my friend Eric proudly deems it the “Godfather II of the Saw franchise”). It was because of Saw 6, a fascinating return-to-form by tackling the topical issue of health care reform, that got my hopes slightly renewed for the franchise’s finale. Having health insurance employees as the victims gave the franchise some much-needed populist anger, a renewed morbid fascination that was surprisingly enjoyable. Imagine Saw 7 taking on the extension of the Bush tax cuts? Alas, my fledgling hope was for naught.
Part Seven follows a self-help guru Bobby Dragan (Sean Patrick Flanery) who talks about surviving a Jigsaw death trap as a spiritual awakening. Except that he’s a fake; he’s devised this phony survival tale as a scheme to get rich. Naturally Jigsaw (Tobin Bell, as always, in flashback) doesn’t take too kindly to this misrepresentation. Dragan would seem like a prime candidate for the haunted warehouse of horrors that Jigsaw usually specializes with, except that Jigsaw has been dead for four films now. His second apprentice, Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), is wanted by the police and FBI and even Jigsaw’s own widow (Betsy Russell), who unsuccessfully tried killing Hoffman with one of the series’ infamous bear traps masks. So let’s stop and think this out. Hoffman, who is on the run and established as a serial murdering fiend, still takes time out to set up a warehouse full of death traps for Dragan to fulfill his late employer’s wishes. If it’s not obvious now let me make it pointedly clear – in whatever city these murders, take place, it has the most incompetent police force in the history of the universe. Did they literally hire the Police Academy crew? That would make for an entertaining diversion that might reboot two franchises.
As always, the sinister death traps are the real draw of the franchise, and these convoluted killing devices have been getting less inspired from each shallow sequel. These contrived contraptions always bothered me in their uniform intricacy. The franchise began with some pretty simple scenarios: crawl through barbed wire to reach an exit, while covered in kerosene hold a candle to see a written combination, saw off your feet if you want to escape a filthy bathroom of doom. Then in order to top the previous film, the death traps got more contrived and involved a lot more engineering muscle. The more complex they got the less interesting they became. Now with Part Seven, some traps include a three-headed saw with each member of a love triangle in its aim. Two guys, the boyfriend and the “other man,” have to overpower a saw or they can relax and let the woman that’s come betwixt them lower onto a saw blade. This opening trap is the start of some dubious misogyny even for a genre as female punishing as horror. There’s a gauntlet of grisly horror in store for a bevy of female characters, usually involving something sharp penetrating them. But for the lone man who falls into a Jigsaw trap he meets his death by… hanging. Yes, a simple almost merciful hanging compared to the gruesome fates the women encounter. I’m not seeking feminist sensibilities from a genre that profits from their half-naked terror, but Saw 7 is even sicklier because of the undercurrents of misogyny. The traps in number seven aren’t memorable, interesting, and they feel like they’ve been done before in some earlier incarnation (a woman being “smoked” in a mechanical pig does seem to be different).
The biggest problem with Saw 7 is that it doesn’t feel like anybody gives a damn anymore, including the filmmakers and actors. The production values seem like a world away from other movies in the series. The entire affair reeks of “direct to video” even though it was shopped as a 3-D theatrical experience. As you can imagine, because of the gimmicky 3-D, the movie is filled with plenty of pointy objects pointed at the screen. When watching in traditional 2-D, it gets fairly tiresome. Also because of the 3-D presentation, the filmmakers had to compensate for how dark the 3-D glasses make the movie. That means that the spurts of blood are in a rather unrealistic pink lemonade shade, like the retro blood from 1970s exploitation flicks. Without the glasses, as most will view the film at home, it further cements the overall cheap atmosphere. The production design, cinematography, and editing all feel like the Lionsgate intern team performed them. Every technical aspect feels more than sub par, it feels like no effort was exerted whatsoever. Sure it got finished, but finished and complete are different.
The Saw franchise has always been built around the craft death traps and a last-second twist ending accompanied by a barrage of scenes given new context. This formula has been repeated with each installment, so I expected nothing more and “nothing more” is what I received. Saw 7 thinks its audience demands to know its convoluted back-story, which gives way to all sorts of behind-the-scenes flashbacks that are always retroactively changing and channeling the timeline of events and participants. I think it’s all frightfully boring. I don’t care who screwed what bolt into what. I’m not watching Saw for realism (hence why the police NEVER think about tracking what vacant warehouses are sucking down gads of electricity). But at this point, with the thrill of the death traps long beaten into a bloody submissive pulp, I don’t even know what I would watch this series for. The appeal seems to have died along with its boogeyman, Jigsaw, four films back. The subtitle “The Final Chapter” seems like a promise destined to be broken. In the annuls of horror, any successful franchise will live on forever with cheap made-for-DVD sequels. Saw 7 just feels like the first made-for-DVD sequel, except it got a theatrical release as one final gasp at cash. Just wait twenty years and the whole thing will be rebooted as some sort of prestige picture that speaks to man’s inhumanity to man circa 2030.
Nate’s Grade: D
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