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The Ghost Writer (2010)
Ewan McGregor (Angels & Demons, Big Fish) stars as The Ghost (no, he never earns a name even in the closing credits). He’s an expert ghost writer for best-selling autobiographies, and his services have been enlisted for his biggest client yet. Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) is a former British prime minister currently embroiled in a legal scandal. He’s being accused of handing over British citizens to the United States to be tortured, all in the name of the War on Terror. Lang and his wife (Olivia Williams) have holed up in a fabulous house along Cape Cod, hiding from swarms of international media. The book’s due date is soon approaching and nobody is really pleased with the first draft. Mike, the first ghost writer, can’t help with the revisions on account that his abandoned car was discovered on a Massachusetts ferry and his body washed ashore the next day. The Ghost begins to suspect that Mike somehow stumbled across some very potent and damaging information, and the secrets are hidden somewhere in that manuscript.
Consider me pleasantly surprised at how effective this small little political thriller turned out to be. It doesn’t have an overworked narrative agenda, but the few things it does it does quite well. Firstly, it’s a pleasure for a thriller to actually make the audience feel as paranoid as the main character. He treats the idea of a conspiracy as nonsense to begin with, but then he starts to second-guess that car traveling behind. What about that guy two blocks down talking to himself? The screenplay achieves a palpable sense of paranoia, nicely placing you in the emotional state of our lead. You may run questions through your head as well, wondering who can ultimately be trusted, who to turn to next, what information to divulge and to whom, whether to get into the mysterious car or not. The best “thriller” moment is the Ghost waiting in his car and driving for cover, but even that is done in a style that doesn’t feel ripped from an action blockbuster. I’ve watched so many thrillers that get by on studious attention to the routines of the genre, and while The Ghost Writer doesn’t exactly break new ground, the movie keeps the threat of danger real. Actually, on that very note, The Ghost Writer does something unexpected, which is that it begins to lull you into a false sense of security or complacency, and then it robs you of that sense of security in the end. I enjoyed the film’s climax, though even at my screening I heard dissatisfied grumbles on the way out.
The movie is without exchanges of gunfire, explosions, or any nefarious, shadowy individual pressing a red button and laughing maniacally. The Ghost Writer exists in a world very similar to our own. It’s a conspiracy thriller in the same vein as The Constant Gardener or Michael Clayton. The menace is far more subdued; the danger getting tighter as we push forward yet the threat feels deceptively relaxed. It’s the kind of conspiracy thriller that feels like a workable conspiracy, which means that most of the dirty work is implied or done behind the scenes. This means that you have to work a little harder to engage with The Ghost Writer because it chooses not to spell out its litany of danger and those who are dangerous, but it also makes for a more effective experience of paranoia. The film even seems to follow this edict in its visual presentation. The movie has an eerie cool feel to it thanks to the downcast, icy blue-hued cinematography and sleek, sparse art direction, suggesting something is amiss but you can’t quite put your finger on what. It’s also continuously raining, a favorite, if overused, cinematic metaphor.
The Ghost Writer intelligently explores a current international imbroglio, making the political crisis relevant without reaching for a soapbox. The politics of torture is a topic that doesn’t appear to be disappearing any time soon. Torture also provides a fine, morally queasy subject matter to dive into and pick apart. Willful involvement in torture presents several ethical challenges for a character (unless you’re Jack Bauer), which can prove to be a meaty area to watch gifted actors chew over all that rueful decision-making and hand wringing. But alas, this is not a message movie like the slew of 2007 Iraq/torture films that fell flat, mostly because those lukewarm-to-awful movies felt a message supplanted entertainment. The Ghost Writer is a piece of entertainment first, an adult and a cerebral movie that has a striking sense of humor. The dialogue is surprisingly quippy, full of great one-liners amidst all the peril and uncertainty. So while the movie has some points about global politics, ownership and responsibility, the role of media and rewriting history, the movie doesn’t commit entertainment suicide trying to service a message.
Personally, I found the behind-the-scenes work of a ghost writer to be just as interesting, if not more so, than the conspiracy unraveling. The editing process can be fascinating for such a high profile political leader; deciding what moments to emphasize, what moments to forget, what narrative will be fashioned to make sure that a politician comes out on top, spiting his enemies without looking bitter. It’s a delicate balancing act and a precarious responsibility for the ghost writer, controlling a human beings life story for the annuls of mass market history. And these ghost writers get no recognition, even after mimicking the speaking/writing styles of their subject, and these are often subjects who are used to having their thoughts and opinions groomed, tested, and prepared by others, so what difference does their autobiographies make? I believe Sarah Palin could not write her own name without the aid of a ghost writer and/or a bevy of trained subordinates. While this storyline pretty much expectantly falls by the wayside once the conspiracy stuff emerges, I felt that the movie did a respectable service to honor ghost writers everywhere (Palin’s own ghost writer was Lynn Vincent).
The cast all seemed to dig their juicy roles, judging from the performances. Brosnan and Williams are obviously playing versions of Tony and Cherie Blair, so it’s fun to watch both actors enjoy their thinly veiled roles. Brosnan (Mamma Mia) is terrific and Williams (An Education) has this disquieting calm about her that only breaks in a handful of telling moments. Many actors have these small, sometimes one-scene, parts but they make the most of them. Kim Cattrall is spunky as Lang’s loyal personal assistant (her accent isn’t flawless, but that alone is better than her work in the Sex and the City movie). Tom Wilkinson (Duplicity) also shows up as an Ivy League professor with a mysterious background, and the man knows exactly how to play a treacherous gentleman. You may be shocked to see a bald-headed, bulldog-looking Jim Belushi appear on screen, and he’s good too as a publishing exec with no patience for niceties. But the movie is McGregor’s and the actor does not disappoint. It’s pleasing to watch his character transform from observer to actor. He’s a charismatic guy that speaks his mind and a worthy hero to root for.
And it took until the final paragraph for me to mention director Roman Polanski’s current legal woes. The Ghost Writer was Polanski’s last film he directed before being obtained by Swiss authorities and set to be expedited back to California for a 30-year-old rape charge. It’s hard not to read somewhat into the premise: a man hiding from authorities with a charge hanging over his head. This may well prove to be the last film we’ll see from the 77-year-old director judging from the pending legal issues. If it does indeed serve as the last piece in the career of a talented director, it will at least be a high point. At least Polanski’s last film wasn’t the abominable Ninth Gate.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Green Zone (2010)
I have noticed that I’ve really been dragging my feet when it comes to writing a Green Zone review. I’ve prioritized it only to have something more necessary (catching up on VH1 reality shows) come to the forefront of my attention span. It’s not like the movie is bad. It may have been misleadingly advertised as Jason Bourne’s tour of Iraq, bringing back together Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy), but it’s not bad. It’s a perfectly fine movie, except in this instance, given the politically explosive and monumentally relevant subject matter, “perfectly fine” sounds like a missed opportunity. This movie should be incendiary, shocking, aggravating, enlightening, and if it happens to be entertaining then that ain’t bad either. The subject matter –the false rationale for war, WMDs– deserves a sober examination. Green Zone is not that movie. Green Zone is about uncovering and righting the mistakes of the Iraq War, and I believe I figured out what keeps Green Zone from being a better, more powerful, more engaging movie — it fictionalizes a story that is already wroth telling. This is a true story that could have stood well on its own merits.
Shortly after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) is on the hunt for those weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the chief argument for invading Iraq. His team investigates suspected weapons sites but they keep coming up empty. The intelligence appears to be in sharp contrast with the reality on the ground. Miller butts heads with shady government officials (Greg Kinnear) and finds aid in a state department realist (Brendan Gleeson) and a reporter (Amy Ryan) who put her reputation at stake parroting the government intelligence as fact. The Iraqi army is disbanded and now the former generals under Saddam Hussein are conferring what the next steps should be. General Al Rawi (Yigal Naor, who played Saddam in a TV mini-series) is waiting for the Americans to extend a hand, and if not then they will become an insurrection. Miller is racing to track down Al Rawi because he knows the truth in the lead up to the war, which is why those shady government officials are also trying to kill him.
Based upon reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Life Inside the Green Zone, the filmmakers have resorted to a fictional narrative informed by the real events. My biggest gripe is this: the true story is far more interesting, complicated, and relevant than concocting a story about one military man’s search for answers. The film is laid out like a conspiracy thriller, where our hero gains a small sliver of information that leads to another piece, and another and another, until finally a picture emerges. I get it. With Damon as a soldier, the audience has an obvious rooting point, a protagonist who we can easily be labeled as good. And then when he uncovers the truth, and alerts the media, it provides a tidy, satisfying end for the movie. Except that’s not what happened. In the real world, the hunt for those phantom WMDs carried on for months, and the news trickled drip by drip. There were no smoking guns, no white knights to shine the light of truth (Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame might be the closest in consideration), and there wasn’t anything as conclusive as a military officer writing a report and sending it the mainstream media.
Green Zone attempts to craft a satisfying close to the WMD hunt and likewise the war itself. This is nothing more than revisionist wish fulfillment, wanting to insert a hero of conscience and ability during a time where we had a malaise of responsibility from those in the realms of higher command. And just to make sure they don’t make too many waves, Greengrass and screenwriter Brian Helgeland (Mystic River) wrap their crusading character in the uniform of America’s finest, making it difficult to criticize his noble hunt, striping away politics. The trouble is that the Bush Administration rarely made apolitical decisions; everything was steeped in politics, even the truth about weapons of mass destruction. So Green Zone does the audience a disservice by trying to play nice, setting up a villainous fictional straw man, and forgoing naming the names of those that led this country astray. Because of placing the film’s point of view squarely with Miller, we never get to examine the bigger picture, the manipulations and machinations that led to war. We are stuck in a very limited focus of finding the WMDs.
Now, I must ask whether or not I’m unfairly judging the movie. Hollywood has often taken fascinating and momentous true-life stories and redirected them toward fiction. Green Zone is certainly a technically proficient film. Greengrass’ trademark shaky camera is ever vigilant, always roving and looking for the action; although in a realistic war setting, the kinetic handheld camerawork can come across as potentially hyperactive. Conversations between two people can come across like intense linguistic battles. Walks down hallways can appear to be speedy jaunts brimming with purpose and anxiety. The tension just doesn’t materialize. Without a nervy story, the Greengrass visual staple can seem over the top, antsy, nervous, and also annoying. This is one narrative for Greengrass that could have improved by the dedicated use of a tripod.
Green Zone is not Bourne at all. The Universal marketing team was trying to hoodwink the public into seeing an Iraq War movie. Damon isn’t as polished and in command as Bourne. Those who argue that Green Zone is anti-American or anti-troops are grossly missing the point. Reactionary, bellicose rhetoric, without a wit of substance, is part of the reason the U.S. is currently in Iraq. You can argue against policy, including war policy, and still be considered a patriot. Patriotism is not synonymous with warmongering. It’s too bad that the filmmakers felt that the true story wasn’t good enough to be told, instead settling for a decent if unmemorable political thriller. This adaptation takes the most significant foreign policy event in modern American history, one where the ramifications will be felt for over a generation, and clears all the hard-boiled details to attach a conventional one-man-fights-for-truth tale. It’s hard to get self-righteous when the movie keeps trying to cover its own ass.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Repo Men (2010)
It’s not unheard of for different writers to independently create similar projects. Remember back in 1998 when there were two animated bug movies and two apocalyptic asteroid flicks? Granted, those were big budget studio movies and the final films had little in common other than concept or premise. Repo Men takes place in a world where people open contracts on new organ transplants, but if the buyer is late on the payment then a repo man will come and take back the merchandise. This gory premise might sound familiar for fans of the Goth opera, Repo: the Genetic Opera, which was released a whole 18 months earlier. The makers of Repo Men and Repo have engaged in a he-said/she-said argument over who originated the idea. Repo Men‘s screenwriters claim they came up with the concept in 2003, though the book the film is based was only released in 2009. The Repo team point out that their funky little musical began as a theatrical show that was first performed in 2002. The songwriters behind Repo say that the idea itself goes back to 1999 and began as a 10-minute opera experiment. I suppose we’ll never know who really had the idea first, though I’m inclined to side with the Repo musical fellas because they can back up their claims with evidence. It seems like a whole lot of squabbling over so little, but hey, that’s Hollywood for you.
In the not-too-distant future, one corporation, The Union, seems to hold sway in the world of organ transplants. Remy (Jude Law) is an expert repossessions officer who will slice open anybody 90 days late on his or her payment. His wife wants him to transfer to sales; it’s less messy. Remy’s partner (Forest Whitaker) is an old childhood friend and doesn’t want to lose his butcher buddy. One night, Remy is sidelined by some malfunctioning equipment that fires his heart. He has no choice but to get his own organ transplant. Following the operation, Remy finds that he no longer has the stomach for his old line of work. Remy’s newfound moral compass comes at a cost. He quickly falls behind in his payments and his old bosses plead for Remy to refinance. Reluctantly, they sic the repo men, including Whitaker, on Remy to retrieve company property.
Repo Men takes some nice commentary on predatory lending, pushing the hard sell knowing that the customer can never stay ahead of the mounting fees and payments. The allegory has some sharp moments. However, the movie would have benefited from being pushed further in pretty much every regard. The side characters are horribly shallow. I’m fairly certain that Carice van Houten (electrifying in Black Book), as Remy’s beleaguered wife, could have been replaced with a cardboard cutout boasting a disapproving look. She gets to glare and complain and talk about family issues and then she’s gone, replaced entirely by Beth, a mysterious organ replacement junkie. Beth could have an intriguing back story, and the concept of surgery addiction could dwell upon the human cost of beauty and “upgrading,” but alas, her real purpose is to become an oddly implacable love interest for Remy. She gets to hold his hand while they run. That’s her main contribution (except for one key scene detailed below).
The entire concept of a future world held hostage by a greedy health care corporation could use more contemplation. What is happening with society? No epidemic is ever mentioned, so why do people start contracts on million dollar organs? Do the heavy debts pass on to the next of kin? What is the legality of organ repossession? What level of competition is there out there in the market? What does the government have to say about all this? Does this mighty company supersede the U.S. government? How come Remy can’t even get an employee discount on the merchandise? Has anybody had enough surgeries to become the six million dollar man? There is a wealth of questions born from this premise, but the movie only scratches the intellectual surface and sets its standard change-of-perspective morality storyline into gear. I actually would have found the life of an organ salesman to be more dramatically appealing. What kind of ethical rationalizations take place in the mind of a man who makes his living signing saps into modern indentured servitude? I find that story direction to be more compelling than following the guys who bring back the company merchandise.
But then something weird happens. The movie gallops to a satisfying close, and then it somehow gets even better in its closing moments. I was certain that I was going to write off Repo Men but then 4 things happened to make me sit up straight in my chair (I’ll refrain from any large spoilers):
1) In a film relentlessly aping the visuals of other, superior dystopian films, there’s not much new to look at. You’ve seen this future society thing before, just with more flying cars or jet packs. I came to terms with this; it’s not every movie that reinvents how we interpret the future short of some calamity. Then when Remy breaks into the Company HQ, which is awfully easy by the way, he stumbles into the genetic organ hatchery, if you will. Rows and rows and rows of scientists tinker with organ replacements. The entire environment is a strikingly sterile white, including the scientists wrapped in bulky white biohazard suits. Then Remy and Beth make a run for it, and they are covered head to toe in black. It’s a fabulous visual image, watching the color contrasts. It’s debut director Miguel Sapochnik’s high point.
2) Once Remy and Beth move beyond this laboratory, they get caught in a hallway, and Remy proceeds to take out a mob of employees. The fight sequence is several minutes long and a clear nod to the memorable extended hallway fight in Oldboy (Remy takes out a hammer as his final weapon). Weirdly, Remy’s opponents are suit types, middlemen, office employees, numbers crunchers, but they all leap into battle to take out the corporate intruder. The fight sequence is bloody and stylish enough to please the senses, like when Remy swings a hacksaw and we get Swinging Hacksaw POV as characters duck out of the way lest their jugulars get sliced.
3) Following this, Remmy and Beth must deposit their corporate-licensed organ replacements. This involves cutting each other open, taking a bar code scanner (think a grocery check-out), and digging inside each other to get those subcutaneous scans. What’s amusing is that the scene is blatantly juxtaposed as a sex scene; Remmy and Beth intimately penetrate each other, the editing cuts to close-ups of moaning, and the other tries to soothe the pain with physical assurances, and it’s all set to a slow jam. It’s something of a bizarre sequence, especially upon further review (how effective can scanning for bar codes be inside the gook-filled human body?), but man is it interesting.
4) Just as I had come to terms with the movie settling for a conventional conclusion, the movie pulls the rug out from under you. It offers up a last-minute ending that upends the conventional framework, and, actually, presents the easy coast to a conventional stop in a new light. This is one of those rare instances where a last-minute ending twist actually improved the film. More often than not, a last-second twist is forced and the nail in the coffin of lasting entertainment.
Repo Men is a competently looking, competently entertaining sci-fi thriller that miraculously stumbles into a final act that not only works, it elevates the rest of the movie. My mild boredom vanished and I started wondering why they made me wait so long for the good stuff. Repo Men is a mixed marriage of overall tone. One second it will be darkly humorous, the next it will be satirical, the next it will pine for serious drama, and occasionally it goes for Guy Richie-styled slapstick. A sequence where Remy describes the three occasions he’s been knocked out, with visual interludes, feels like a deleted scene from an entirely different movie. The movie never really settles, touching upon a lot of areas but mostly poorly. The script desperately needed to be fleshed out to make any lasting impact. Now that I’m living in a two-Repo world, I’ll probably stick with the campy musical fun of Repo: the Genetic Opera. At least that movie left you humming.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Whiteout (2009)
I was expecting bad but this is shockingly bad, notably in its lapses in basic filmmaking fundamentals. For instance, there’s a scene where Kate Beckinsale talks with a superior, and the editing cuts back and forth in the middle of every damn line between a medium shot of the actress and a close-up. The jarring effect feels like the movie is punching you in the face. The movie can’t even get watching conversations right! This Antarctica-set murder mystery seems like a neat idea until you realize it’s just another lousy slasher movie, albeit in an exotic location. The Antarctica location is mostly used to make sure that nobody can tell what the hell’s going on. Furious white flurries of snow pretty much make the onscreen action oblique, like you’re trying to look through a dirty window and comprehend what’s happening. The plot sets up a wealth of disposable characters and patently obvious suspects (Gee, will the weird, tattooed pilot have something to do with a body dropped from a plane? Stay tuned). It’s all pretty stupid with no real room for brain-dead thrills because the technical craft is so shoddy. However, the movie did make it clear that when, not if, the CSI franchise expands, they need to set it in Antarctica.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
Taking a few lessons from the grisly Saw franchise, this revenge thriller follows Clyde (Gerard Butler) track and kill the men responsible for murdering his wife and child. Except that pretty gets resolved in 15 minutes. The rest of the movie is Clyde’s misguided, morally queasy assault on the justice system; the judges, lawyers, police officers that keep a dying system going, letting guilty murderers walk. Clyde is specifically targeting the prosecutor (Jaime Foxx) that made a plea bargain instead of risking his conviction percentage at a trial. This is a violent vision that wants to rewrite our very Constitution, questioning giving accused murders the same considerations as soccer moms. The movie can come across as a conservative, Death Wish-style fantasy against the judicial system and those pesky civil liberties afforded to everyone. While shrouded in the guise of being a bloody thriller, the movie’s idea of moral ambiguity is pretty thin. Its ethical arguments don’t stand a second line of questioning. Sure, director F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job) can put together an exciting and tense sequence, and the film is filled with surprise, and Butler arguably gives his best performance since 300, but while I was entertained I was also offended at being expected to cheer every time Clyde knocked off another innocent citizen.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
This is a crazy movie. It is not weird, it is not bizarre; it is not silly. Werner Herzog’s whacked-out movie is a remake of a 1992 movie that wasn’t that good to begin with. This certifiably crazy movie mostly involves Nicolas Cage as a corrupt cop playing all sides and snorting everything that isn’t bolted down in the Big Easy up his nose. For a stretch during the middle, he starts to sound like Jimmy Stewart with lockjaw. The central murder investigation plot is pretty much an afterthought in an environment like this. You want the crazy, and with Cage and Herzog, it is in no short supply. There’s Cage threatening an elderly woman at gunpoint, crawling reptile POV shots, a man’s “soul” break-dancing after the man lies dead, and neon iguanas that may exist only in Cage’s drugged-out mind. The film has been described as a trippy parody of standard cops-and-robbers fare, or as a seriously demented anti-drug message, but I think the best description is just “crazy-ass movie.” It has moments that make you do nothing but shake your head and laugh, like when Cage is about to hit rock bottom and EVERY case/storyline gets solved in a matter of seconds to his bemused disbelief. The comedy is straight-faced but it is definitely there. Cage harnesses his eccentricities and delivers an insanely entertaining performance that reconfirms that there is indeed an actor underneath his Hollywood veneer. He is compulsively enjoyable and the movie is compulsively watchable, every crazy freaking second of it. Iguanas!
Nate’s Grade: B
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Saw VI (2009)
I checked out on Saw 4 and Saw 5 feeling like this horror series had grown stagnant, plus its central villain was killed off by the conclusion of the third movie. I thought the series wouldn’t go on for much longer, and oh how wrong I was. Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) has a second apprentice now fulfilling his departed master’s bidding, capturing even more people and trapping them into the franchise-favorite death traps. This means that there are yet even MORE recorded messages and vast, abandoned warehouses out there. FBI Agent Hoffman (Contas Mandyor, an amazingly horrible actor) has taken up the contrived contraption mantle. Of course it’s all preposterous and overly gory, but that never stopped the series before. Saw 6 boasts the franchise’s fourth director (the editor of all the previous movies just graduated to the big leagues). But this is mainly a franchise built around the hardened desires of its fans, indoctrinated in the gospel of gore. As I said before with Saw 3: “Just like the collapse of the Final Destination franchise, these movies started big but then bottomed out when their audiences had the rules memorized. At that point the only thing left is curiosity in what fiendishly outlandish ways people will get horribly killed.” This pretty much still holds true.
The real interesting draw for the sixth entry, and the only reason I drifted back in curiosity, is because Saw 6 is the weirdest participant yet in the current health care debate. The victims in this installment are health insurance employees. The people in charge of deciding who live and who dies are now put through morally challenging, queasy challenges. It’s a lot harder to kill somebody deliberately rather than by omission, by denying coverage or finding a loophole to get out of paying for a perfectly reasonable, and much needed, procedure. There’s a macabre enjoyment in watching health insurance officials put through Jigsaw’s battery of tests, though some of his victims seem pitiable — one guy is thrown in just because he’s a smoker (I suppose Jigsaw didn’t consider giving the guy a nicotine patch first). The main character going through the funhouse of horrors is an insurance company CEO (Peter Outerbridge) who has his mathematical equation about who earns coverage put to the test. Jigsaw is exacting vengeance after the CEO denied him coverage on an experimental treatment for cancer. It’s easy to see what side of the issue Jigsaw is on; he says that insurance companies put profits over human lives and get in the way between doctors and patients. This is a Saw movie even Michael Moore could cheer. I wish at the recent health care summit on Capitol Hill that the president had said, “Gentlemen, we’ve heard what the Democrats had to say about health care, we’ve heard what the Republicans had to say. I’d now like us all to see what Saw 6 has to say on the matter.”
The story again is cut into two halves: the health insurance CEO going from death trap to death trap, and Agent Hoffman trying to stay ahead of the FBI investigation into the new Jigsaw killer. Guess which is more interesting? The FBI agents in this movie are those classical trained bumbling FBI goons that always come in late, take things over, and properly muck everything up. These people are lousy detectives and even worse at hiding their suspicions about Hoffman. It’s no surprise then that he manages to outsmart these idiots when Hoffman is, in fact, a dolt. This is not a smart man. Case in point, he’s using the severed thumb of a dead agent (Scott Patterson, apparently on Hoffman’s trail for the previous two films) to mark up bodies and frame the guy. Problem is that he’s framing a dead man, which means Hoffman has a really small window of plausible time to make this frame credible. It’s not going to work months later when the FBI wonders how a dead agent keeps kidnapping new people and putting them through hell. Then again, given the intelligence level of these onscreen agents, I’d assume that the FBI would blame zombies.
The apprentice aspect has always been the worst part of this series. I do not care whatsoever about the ins and outs of how Jigsaw set up his traps and who helped build the damn things. This isn’t some Discovery Channel series. I don’t need to watch the behind-the-scenes look at the grisly garage of doom. Just like the third Saw film, this is another entry that wants to play around with the bigger Saw picture. Scenes are introduced that retroactively alter the Saw timeline of events, causing characters to grow different motivations. I swear, the Saw movies all start to feel like they’ve been built from the rotting leftovers from each previous and less effective movie.
The only thing of note as far as acting goes is that the opening player (Tanedra Howard) won a VH1 reality show competition for a spot in this movie. Ladies and gentlemen, we now live in an age where people will compete for the luxury of being the first to cut open their insides in the SIXTH movie of a flagging horror franchise. You don’t want to know what they’re willing to do for a spot in the next flick.
The draw of this franchise are its clever yet queasy death traps where the audience can place itself in the victim’s position and wonder what they would do given the life-and-death circumstances. How far would we all go to live? Well, in Saw 6 the traps aren’t that fiendish or memorable. The best one involves a group of six insurance actuaries (experts at finding loopholes to deny and cancel coverage) tied to a carousel with a shotgun pointed at them. One by one they swing by the kill zone, making it the most proverbially deadly game of musical chairs ever. Even better is the fact that the CEO is given the opportunity to “save” two on the carousel from the shotgun blast, so they each start screaming little arguments why they are worthy and their peers are not. It’s a neat little pressure-cooker of a scene, especially when one guy on the carousel realizes he’s the last to die. The thing slowly reels back around as he uses his final seconds to demand that the CEO look at him (“You look at me when you kill me!”). That defiant little moment manages to pierce through the ponderous personal growth edict the series has foolishly heralded as its purpose. The rest of the death traps are just cruel and labored and not nearly as interesting. You ca only watch people singe their skin on hot burners so many times before the body begins to involuntarily yawn.
Saw 6 is certainly no better than the other movies but neither is it worse. It’s the topical subject matter that makes this the only Saw movie worth a dubious look after the first flick. It taps into a populist rage against insurance companies that makes it vicariously satisfying and truly bizarre. It would be questionable to say that the franchise has recaptured any sort of creative juice, but I wouldn’t mind catching a future Saw film take on other big issues plaguing our country. Imagine Saw tackling predatory lending and the negligible banking industry resisting reform tooth and nail. Wait until the heads of Goldman Sachs and AIG get a load of Jigsaw.
Nate’s Grade: C
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A Perfect Getaway (2009)
The movie looks gorgeous thanks to the pristine Hawaiian scenery. What is not as pristine is the overactive plot. This is a clever “who dunnit” thriller that isn’t as clever as it thinks it is. This murder mystery sets up a premise about killers on the loose in paradise and then introduces suspect couples. Every moment and every line of dialogue is overdone with foreboding to make you think every single moment is filled with suspicious intrigue. It pretty much becomes a parody of a suspense movie thanks to writer/director David Twohy. Then a second act twist retroactively rewrites the movie’s shortsighted history that doesn’t make sense. Why would the characters behave as they do when nobody’s around to watch them? Commitment to Method acting? It’s a harebrained twist up there with Perfect Stranger where it negates everything beforehand. There’s a 15-minute flashback that doesn’t need to be nearly that long and it breaks up the momentum. A Perfect Getaway does elicit some thrills and interest but you may grow tired of being beaten with overactive suspicion.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Edge of Darkness (2010)
While I was watching Edge of Darkness, a conspiracy thriller that hearkens the return to acting for Mel Gibson, one thing kept sticking out to me, and no, it wasn?t the protracted ear-splitting “Bahstun” accents. One character makes comment about the current lowly state of affairs and says, “Everything’s illegal in Massachusetts.” That perked my ears, and then a second character says the exact same thing later in the movie, like it’s this flick’s summary, “It’s Chinatown.” What exactly does that mean specifically about Massachusetts? That the Bay State is somehow a nanny state, dictating behavior? Or is this a resigned admittance toward the futility of competing against the long arm of the law? I’ll tell you something that isn’t illegal in Massachusetts — gay marriage. They got a leg up on that one. This is the kind of internal conversation I had with myself while Gibson unraveled a fairly ho-hum conspiracy-of-the-week plot.
Detective Thomas Craven (Gibson) is a decorated Boston lawman. His grown daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic), is visiting from her job when she starts throwing up blood. She needs to tell her father some important secrets about her workplace. But as the two are about to leave for the hospital, a man cries out “Craven,” and follows it with a thunderous shotgun blast. Emma gets the full force and dies in her father?s arms. The media assumes Thomas was the target and the gunman had an old score to settle. However, the more Craven investigates the more convinced he is that his daughter was the real target. He looks into Emma’s connection to some dead environmental activists caught breaking into her place of work. The head of the company (Danny Huston) has plenty of important defense contracts and suspicious behavior. As Craven tracks down the truth he is assisted by the mystifying Mr. Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), a man normally hired to cover up any messy loose ends of governmental business. Jedburgh decides to work with Craven instead of against him, and the two men must fight for their lives.
The real reason to see this fairly pedestrian police thriller is because of Gibson. It’s been a long eight years since his last onscreen role, and I must say I’ve forgotten about what a great actor the man can be. When this guy gets mad, you can practically feel the intensity. Gibson is terrific at playing a man with simmering emotions that often get the better of him. The lines and wrinkles give him a new canvas to play with, letting his age help tell the story of his character. Gibson seems to have this inner insanity to him, an admirable bent of crazy manic anarchic energy (I highly suggest checking out some of the Jimmy Kimmel Show shorts he’s been apart of). It makes him hard to ignore. He peppers in what he can with his character, a long-standing member of the law thirsting for answers and vengeance. What’s enjoyable is that he doesn’t go about knocking down every door to make people pay. Craven plays each interrogation differently depending upon his prey; sometimes he uses a soft touch and sometimes he opts for the tried-and-true punch to the nose. It’s little touches like this that bring out details in the character, and Gibson knows how to exploit them for maximum drama. Does anyone play instantly bereaved better than this man? He has a real knack for nailing scenes where a character is confronted with the sudden death of a loved one. His face is full of tics, his eyes glass over, it’s like he has lost all control and given over to the amassing and conflicting emotions. This clearly isn’t one of Gibson’s best performances, but after eight yeas of absence I’m more than willing to give the man a little latitude. An angry and bereaved Gibson is a Gibson I can enjoy watching on the big screen no matter how rudimentary the caper.
Edge of Darkness belongs to Gibson, but Winstone pretty much comes out of nowhere and hijacks the movie. Every time his character leaves the scene you’re anxiously awaiting his return. He’s an intriguing character, which makes me wonder why he’s gotten such a languished subplot. He could have been better involved in the story but the script keeps him to the narrative’s edges until the climax. Though a bit hard to understand thanks to a severe case of the mumbles, Winstone is by far the most interesting character in the movie. He’s an expert on fixing problems who tires of the long hours of shadowy, dastardly work. This is surely a character worthy of his own tale, or at least equal placement in the narrative, but instead Jedburgh functions as a sly informant when he should be running the show.
The script pretty much treads water. It’s not anything that’s particularly bad, but this story is pretty much content to stick with the basics. This isn’t a dumb movie per se, thanks to screenwriters William Monahan (The Departed) and Andrew Bovell (Lantana) adapting from the acclaimed BBC mini-series. Those guys know something about a crackling crime thriller, which this is not. The lizardly Huston couldn’t be any more obvious of a villain, but he’s not alone. The burly henchmen drive around in dark, tinted SUVs that seem to say that somebody got their nefarious goon driver’s license. This is the kind of movie that plays its hand early, telegraphing future revelations and double-crosses. When we’re introduced to a character right after Emma’s death, and the camera takes a deliberate amount of time hanging on that character’s pained expression, obviously we’ve been informed that this person is somehow connected. No prolonged reaction shot is ever meaningless in an action thriller. Every time Craven ties to gain information from a person of interest, they say, “I can’t talk. They’ll kill me,” and then that person is promptly killed as prophesied. You basically expect something “shocking” to happen every time a person leaves Craven’s presence (FYI: check both ways before crossing the street).
There’s a really engaging and politically active whistler blower story somewhere in here that could have used better attention. It seems the line between whistle-blower and activist is a thin one, and Craven must assemble enough evidence to make sure that his case cannot be dismissed as a kook. It’s an interesting dilemma, trying to assemble a compelling case that will hold up on objective scrutiny, that can’t be tossed out. That’s an interesting predicament considering the many eyes and ears of a large, legally autonomous corporate entity. Alas, that movie is not Edge of Darkness.
Gibson’s return to movie acting is definitely welcomed, even if it’s something as disposable as this. Edge of Darkness is a by-the-book conspiracy thriller that offers glimpses of something superior that could have been worked out. More attention could have been given to Winstone’s character. The whistleblower aspect could have been heightened and clarified. There could have been a bit more action and a little less blood. The bad guy could have been less obvious from the get-go. But in the end, there’s Gibson tapping into his mad Mel streak of appealing intensity. Not everybody can offer what Gibson does. It’s too bad then that Edge of Darkness fails to realize this virtue.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Legion (2010)
Just to be upfront, I am a big fan of action movies making use of Christian mythology (sorry if the use of the word “mythology” offends some). You tell me a tale about angels, demons, in a contemporary setting no less, and I’m hooked. You give those two sides weapons and have them fight over the fate of mankind, and I’m already revving my engines. So please know that no matter what the artistic achievements of Legion may be, I was predisposed to enjoying a movie that features the angel Michael (Paul Bettany) on the poster with a sword in one hand and an automatic weapon in the other. The premise of Legion is that God has finally had it with mankind and is making good on his threat to “turn this thing around right now.” He’s sending a host of heavenly angels to … eliminate humanity. Michael rebelled, believing man was still capable of making good on its promise. So he fights alongside a handful of characters shacked up in Dennis Quaid’s greasy spoon diner in the middle of nowhere. The action isn’t really involving but the movies does have some cool moments, like when Michael goes mano-a-seraphim with Gabriel (a marble-mouthed Kevin Durand). Legion deals with an antagonist (God) that is so powerful that there have got to be arbitrary limits placed on that power. So the attacking angels don’t overwhelm the tiny diner with their superior numbers, nor does the Almighty just blink the troublemakers out of existence. The end doesn’t really give much in the way of clarity but I got what I wanted from a movie like Legion. Though, in retrospect, I really didn’t want sizzling acid popping from boils.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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