Surprisingly Good And Less Funny, Tower Heist Holds Up Remarkably Well!

The Good: Engaging plot, Wonderful acting, Good tension/mood
The Bad: Light on character development, Moments where the humor is forced
The Basics: Tower Heist may have been misbilled as a comedy, but it is surprisingly smart with a wonderful cast performing well!


Lately, my wife has been going through my DVD collection and we've watched a lot of things I like. So, for a date night last night, I made sure to have some movies on hand that I thought she might enjoy. She is a fan of both Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, yet we somehow managed to miss Tower Heist when it was in the theaters. I was open to the movie, especially because I am a bit of a fan of Alan Alda. So, last night, we sat down to a movie that we both figured would satisfy both of us, especially with my wife's love of comedies.

The first "problem" with Tower Heist is that it is not actually a comedy. I put problem in quotes because the advertising of the movie should not actually affect the film all that much. Sure, my wife and I sat down expecting a zany robbery comedy and we were instead treated to a surprisingly tense action-drama, but the strength of Tower Heist is that it was so engaging that we did not care. It is a very rare thing these days when we sit down for one type movie and discover it to be something else entirely that we are not horribly disappointed. But Tower Heist did not disappoint us. Instead, we found ourselves more excited by how the movie was developing. And the comedy that is in the movie, while mostly incidental, generally worked.

Josh Kovacs is the general manager of the Towers, a luxury apartment complex and the most expensive property in New York City. Each day, he arrives at work to tend to the staff and residents of the Towers with a strong sense of professionalism, despite working in a place he could never hope to afford to live in himself. One morning, he believes that the wealthiest resident, Arthur Shaw, is being abducted and he tries desperately to stop the abduction. As it turns out, Shaw was trying to escape the FBI, who arrests him for securities fraud. While Josh tries to keep the staff of the Towers professional, it does not take long for even Kovacs to suspect that Shaw may be guilty. This takes on a deeply personal aspect for Kovacs and the staff of the Towers when Kovacs reveals to the employees that he requested Shaw manage their pensions and now their entire life savings is frozen or missing altogether.

When the doorman, Lester, attempts to kill himself by throwing himself in front of a subway, Kovacs - who has had meetings with FBI Special Agent Denham who further implies the government has a case against Shaw - confronts Shaw. In the process, Kovacs does serious damage to Shaw's prized car and gets himself, Charlie and Enrique fired. Now, with nothing left to lose, Josh decides to get the staff's pension money back the best way he knows how; stealing it from the cash safety net that Denham implies all white collar criminals have. Kovacs assembles a team, including Slide, a smalltime criminal from his neighborhood, to break into the Towers and steal from Shaw.

Tower Heist was largely advertised as a buddy comedy with Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy and it does Brett Ratner's work a serious disservice to consider it that way. First, Murphy's character, Slide, is a comparatively minor character who truly only has a presence in the latter half of the film. Second, virtually every scene that actually features Murphy and Stiller together doing anything remotely like comedy is featured in the many trailers for the movie. Apparently, the advertising executives for Imagine thought that audiences would not be able to accept Ben Stiller or Eddie Murphy in roles where they are not being funny, despite Stiller's role in Envy (reviewed here!) and Murphy's role in Dreamgirls (though, truth be told, I've found very little of what Murphy has done in recent years to be funny). So, the first useful aspect of a consideration of Tower Heist is that it is not, actually, a comedy. It is far, far too serious for that and the comedy that does come up is mostly just to break the tension.

Tower Heist, instead, is a surprisingly engaging story of what happens when economics drives smart people to do bad things. Arthur Shaw is an exceptional antagonist. Never taking responsibility for his actions, he starts off Tower Heist with a friendly relationship with Josh. Even when he is first arrested, Kovacs is careful to trend more toward neutrality than suspicion. He is a rich man who covers his crimes well. He appears decent and even offers Kovacs future employment before his crimes are revealed. But the real greatness of how horrible the character is comes when he is arrested. He turns to Kovacs and the two begin playing a very different chess match than the games they play against one another online. Shaw's coolness and confidence and his lack of interest in Lester's condition reveal to Kovacs the man's inhumanity. From that point on, Kovacs is on a righteous cause.

In the process of achieving a larger sense of justice, Tower Heist argues that some lesser wrongs must be perpetrated. Kovacs is essentially a leader looking out for the needs of the many. By taking on Shaw and attempting to get Lester, Charlie, and everyone else's money back, Shaw becomes a modern day Robin Hood (which is alluded to within Tower Heist). What is so smart about the story written by Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson is that they are not monolithic in the characters they created.

Tower Heist may be very low on character development, but it is populated by characters who make sense and fit a very diverse sense of what the world is. So, for example, Mr. Fitzhugh is an investment banker who has had some serious bad luck with the economic downturn in the world and as a result is being evicted. Well before his eviction, he has sold off most all of his possessions in order to try to save his marriage and keep his children from finding out. It is only as a last resort that a man like that turns to crime and that is reflected perfectly in Fitzhugh's objections within Tower Heist. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is Slide, who has never pulled off a job anywhere near as sophisticated as the one Kovacs brings him in to do. So, when there is the possibility of success, he is predictably treacherous. He does not grow, change or develop in the course of the movie, he simply reveals more of who he was all along.

In fact, there is no real character development in Tower Heist. Kovacs is a leader, Charlie is a worried soon-to-be-father, Lester is a man who has lost everything and sees no chance of ever getting it back. All of the characters, as adults of their age and socioeconomic statuses, are predictably set in their ways. So, what Tower Heist helps to show is the power fairly normal people actually have. Ratner and the writers create a very satisfying morality play that works with Tower Heist.

Tower Heist is also notable for the performances. Casey Affleck, Matthew Broderick, Michael Pena, Tea Leoni and Judd Hirsch give memorable supporting performances. Eddie Murphy's role of Slide is essentially a supporting role as well and he is good as the fast-talking scam artist and balcony robber. Ben Stiller performs well. Actually, Stiller illustrates that he has all of the serious qualities to be a captain in the Star Trek franchise in Tower Heist. Far from being at all zany or utilizing his gift for physical comedy, in Tower Heist Stiller is physically restrained, articulate and he embodies a concerned leader expertly. Never before has Stiller appeared on screen as commanding as he does in Tower Heist.

But, it is Alan Alda who deserves the real acting kudos for Tower Heist. Usually good natured, Alda appears in Tower Heist as Arthur Shaw. Here is trades in his genial grandfather image for a cold, calculating white collar criminal who is as heartless as he is efficient. Anyone used to seeing Alan Alda as an articulate, emotive liberal needs to watch Tower Heist, for he convincingly becomes one of the most compelling and realistic villains on film in years as Shaw!

Now on Blu-Ray and DVD, Tower Heist comes with a bevy of entertaining bonus features. In addition to alternate endings and commentary tracks, there are behind-the-scenes featurettes of some of the movie's memorable sequences. The DVD of Tower Heist will give fans their money's worth! But during this time of economic instability, Tower Heist is a satisfying and engaging story of how men and women must fight for basic fairness in an economic scheme that is played on the most uneven playing field in history. Watching how much they accomplish makes Tower Heist both entertaining and deeply cathartic.

For other Brett Ratner works, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Horrible Bosses
Skyline
X-Men 3: The Last Stand
Prison Break - Season 1
The Family Man

7.5/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for all the film reviews I have written!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold Adequately Explores Marketing In Movies!

The Good: Moments of humor, Informative
The Bad: Very limited concept that is repetitively bludgeoned into viewers.
The Basics: Morgan Spurlock's latest documentary, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold explores the problematic aspect of product placement in movies without actually punching at the key moments.


Right now, I am in the process of following up my Best Picture Project (that's here!) with reviews of documentaries. So, while visiting family out of town, when I had the opportunity to watch Morgan Spurlock's new documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, I was actually pretty excited. I like a good documentary and Spurlock's certainly qualify. Moreover, there is a certain underdog quality to Spurlock's exposes and learning that The Greatest Movie Ever Sold only recouped about a third of its budget made me a little sad.

Part of the reason for feeling disappointed is that I liked The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, despite feeling like Spurlock made his point exceptionally early in the film and the feeling that he squandered some real opportunities for hard-hitting journalism. Actually, long after I felt Spurlock made his point, I was annoyed to actually see him interview someone I hoped he might hold accountable (more than that later) and was unpleasantly surprised when he let him go. C'est la vie.

Morgan Spurlock is tired of seeing advertisements everywhere, but especially in movies and on television. Product placement in movies and television has been rising in the last few years and so Spurlock seeks to explore just what kind of movie he can make with corporate sponsorship exposing corporate sponsorship in movies. He approaches the big name corporations, but it is Ban, JetBlue, Sheetz, GMC and Pom Wonderful that actually invests in making his documentary in exchange for prominent product placement.

And that's it. Spurlock figures the film's budget at $1.5 million and he finds the sponsors needed to make the documentary and with that money - other than creating an advertisement for POM Wonderful, JetBlue and Hair & Mane shampoo - is interview prominent directors of the day on their feelings about product placement in movies.

It is in interacting with directors that Spurlock pulls his punches. After getting a truly inspired story out of Quentin Tarantino, Spurlock lets J.J. Abrams off the mat. J.J. Abrams managed to do in the first twenty minutes of Star Trek (reviewed here!) what everyone associated with the franchise managed to avoid in the prior forty years of the franchise: sell out. When Abrams directed Star Trek, he prominently featured Nokia in the film and while that might be expected considering his show Alias got boku advertising dollars from the company, it was noticeably out of place in Trek. Spurlock included that clip from Star Trek and does not call Abrams on its use when he had the opportunity to interview him.

The result is a documentary DVD that has a serious lack of punch. Spurlock proves early enough in the movie that corporate sponsorship of movies is antithetical to artistic license, but then he does very little with the premise. Sure, we get a tour of Sao Paolo where billboards were outlawed, but there is less substance to why the advertisements in movies is a problem. After all, despite all of the rejections Spurlock gets for his concept, he finds corporate sponsorship to make his documentary.

Ultimately, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is entertaining, but after it makes its point early on, it does nothing significant with the idea that Spurlock is objecting to. Yes, art is getting its ass kicked in the war between art and commerce, but Spurlock just seems content to note that as opposed to make any daring sort of commentary on it or propose any radical solution to it. That makes for a less thrilling documentary than I would hope for, though it is entertaining and worth seeing.

For other documentaries, please check out my reviews of:
Capitalism: A Love Story
The Cream Will Rise
Fahrenheit 9/11

5.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

|

It Takes A Lot Of Flack: The Family Man Is Sappy And Predictable, But Worthwhile.

The Good: Acting, Writing, Directing
The Bad: Pacing, Somewhat predictable
The Basics: The Family Man is a good film, though the pacing is choppy and the idea is hardly original.


The Family Man is a surprisingly good film given the rather overdone nature of the plot. It's pretty much your basic "what if you had a chance to see the consequences of one of your major decisions from the other perspective" plot. We watch the film with the basic understanding that we have an idea of what will happen: the protagonist will see the other perspective and be affected by it. I watched The Family Man on DVD and before watching it, I read the "production notes" on the film, it said that film seeks not to make a judgment, saying which decision was right or wrong, but rather illustrate how they were simply different decisions. While the film almost explicitly states that, it doesn't live up to it and that's probably the only real disappointment of the film.

Jack Campbell was offered a job in London in 1987. His partner, Kate Reynolds, had a job still in the States. So, Jack got on a plane intending to be gone for a year. Thirteen years later, he's successful and alone and he's offered, against his will, the opportunity to see the consequence of the decision to leave. Jack finds himself married to Kate and with two children, living in suburbia. Jack takes time getting used to new friends, a new job (he goes from upper management to tire salesman), and a new car. He doesn't appear nearly as shocked as one might suspect. From then on, he experiences life as a father and tire salesman until his "glimpse" ends.

The strength of the film is in its writing. While The Story of Us (reviewed here!) was made annoying by loud, long fights that took up most of the film, The Family Man is enhanced by a tension in the romance between Jack and Kate. They have some disagreements and they are emotional. The writing on those exchanges of dialogue reads as very real. Jack is surrounded by people that sound like real people. His sudden change in status is mostly realistic. Despite his flamboyant anniversary celebration with his wife, there's a moment when he must forego an $800 bottle of wine and instead get "red wine, by the glass" and that moment is quite genuine.

Films like this rely on the strength of their characters. The only character flaw here is that it's never explained what went wrong the first time through. That is, if Jack was supposed to be gone for only a year, what happened in his relationship with Kate in that year that ended up ruining it? That's never explained and it makes the end of the film quite hard to swallow. Jack and Kate, otherwise, are very well defined. They work. The peripheral characters do enough.

The weakness of the film is in its pacing more than anything else. The nature of the film makes it difficult to do something truly new or original and while The Family Man has moments where it seems to accomplish just that, but then it - for one reason or another - fails to live up to its potential. So, the beginning goes at an appropriate pace, it has a strong middle, a terribly slow late middle and then a well-paced (if thematically unsatisfying) end. This means that the film does not flow organically. In the end, that - more than any plot points - ruins the film consistency. When a film doesn't flow, it ruins the experience.

In this case, The Family Man suffers from pacing issues. It doesn't suffer much because of the acting, writing and the view of the film. I was surprised by how good the directing was. The film looks good, the camera angles flatter the movement, for the most part. A satisfying, if not extraordinary, film.

For other films with intriguing family dilemmas, please visit my reviews of:
The Spitfire Grill
Ordinary People
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

7/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


| | |

Standing Again Yields Little New, But Is Still Enjoyable :X-Men III: The Last Stand

The Good: Fun, Excellent casting, Generally good acting, Decent plot
The Bad: Plot intensive, Lack of character development, Nothing especially new
The Basics: When the X-Men return to the big screen, the plot muscles out all attempts at character development, leaving little chance for the actors to shine.


I'm often told that it takes too long for me to get to my final evaluation of a work, so with X-Men III: The Last Stand, I shall start with the bottom line. This is a fun movie, but it's nothing we haven't seen before as viewers of X-Men and X-Men 2.

Picking up where X-Men United left off, save that Nightcrawler has disappeared, the X-Men team is recovering from the loss of Jean Grey. The love of her life, Cyclops, runs off to where she died only to discover he has the ability to resurrect her. Poor Cyclops. Jean isn't well following her return and it is at this inconvenient junction that Professor Xavier informs everyone that Jean led a troubled childhood suffering from something much like multiple personality disorder where she battled for control of herself with an alternate persona known as Phoenix. Well, the Phoenix has come home to roost and after a fairly violent battle, she joins Magneto and his Brotherhood in his war against normal humans.

And what's the bug up Magneto's butt this time around? Well, it seems an incredibly rich human has managed to concoct a "cure" for mutantism. He's giving every mutant a chance to become mundane and this causes some conflict within the X-Men, but brings Magneto throngs of supporters who want to destroy the cure and wipe out humanity. Storm and Wolverine lead the X-Men into battle to defend the humans and it's all pretty extraordinary in a summer blockbuster, special effects kind of way.

X-Men: The Last Stand suffers almost exclusively through its attempt to take on too much, without actually giving the viewers anything new. In the past two installments, the storylines have dealt with alienation and prejudice. There's not much more to do with it, so the "cure" problem is simply a minor variation on the old theme, albeit a clever one.

Worse, though, is that the bloodbath ensues as the plot executes itself is certainly nothing we have not seen before. Following the big fight in X-Men, which seemed to kill off Toad and Sabretooth, X-Men United had giant battles that brought an end to Deathstryke and Jean Gray as well as other antagonists. So, while the scale of the assault on Alcatraz is bigger than the Alkalai Lake or Statue of Liberty battles, it is not fundamentally anything different. And because so many of the mutants involved are new and underdeveloped, there is a severe lack of emotional resonance to the scenes. Indeed, the most significant death in X-Men The Last Stand's climactic battles leads to an extreme "ho-hum, I know I've seen that before!" reaction.

It's not all bad, though. Indeed, outside the feeling that this is a movie we've already seen, there is much to recommend X-Men: The Last Stand. Fortunately, it's a movie we have already seen that we enjoyed. The whole concept of a cure to mutantism is a compelling one and part of the problem with the movie is that it undervalues the emotional resonance of such an idea. And while there is outrage over the cure being used as a weapon against mutants, which is very real and intriguing, the idea then of voluntarily taking the cure is subjugated.

And the effects are quite cool. The make-up for Beast is absolutely brilliant. And in many of the big battle scenes, the special effects are flawless and bring the viewer in, which is what special effects ought to do. Special effects ought to support, not dominate. With Beast, they certainly do that. With some of the other mutants, they succeed as well.

The problems, then, are that the plots motivate the story and move it, not the characters. It is, for example, laughable to me that actress Halle Berry appears in this movie as Storm, given her public declarations after X-Men 2 that she would not return unless her character was given character. Berry and Storm certainly appear in more scenes in this movie, but not with more character. She becomes an appendage, an accessory to Hugh Jackman's Wolverine.

Similarly, the wonderful Anna Paquin, who was given such a compelling role in the first two installments, is neglected and shoved under a rug for most of the movie, leaving newcomer Ellen Page to take her place. And Page is not given much to work with, either. Come to think of it, the only new mutant presented that has a decent role is Beast.

It's hard not to love Beast, played adeptly by actor Kelsey Grammer. Grammer is genius casting for the role and he lives up to it. He shines in every scene he is in.

Alas, he is the acting bright spot here. Patrick Stewart and Anna Paquin who are usually powerhouses on the screen are given almost no screentime. Famke Janssen's part is reduced too often to blinking and Sir Ian McKellen is challenged to show us nothing new and he lives up to the challenge. Ben Foster, who ruled the third season of Six Feet Under is a wet noodle in X-Men 3, being given a character with serious and difficult concepts to express and have those challenges brushed aside ridiculously quickly.

Sigh. It's hard to remember why I liked this movie now. Oh yes, it was fun. For once, I'll let that be enough. Sadly, it did not improve with subsequent viewings.

For other works featuring characters with super powers in the process of becoming, please check out my reviews of:
I Am Number Four
Heroes
Kick Ass

5.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2006 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |