More Wall Street Than A Lesbian Love Masterpiece, Passion Is Engaging, But Erratic.

The Good: Noomi Rapace’s performance, Visual appealing, Moments of plot and tension, Strong ending!
The Bad: Some very clunky line deliveries, Abrupt transition in the type of film it is.
The Basics: Passion starts as a corporate drama but changes jarringly into a psychological thriller that mortgages its major villain for a far less compelling one.


More often than not, it takes something quite a bit more significant than a movie poster to get me interested in watching a movie. Still, the advertisers for Passion did their work well with their initial movie poster; two glossy pink, feminine lips facing each other so close that one can almost feel the breath between them was not a bad sales pitch. In fact, given that the two actresses named above the lips were Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace. Noomi Rapace might have a big international following (which is why it has taken so long for Passion to premiere in the U.S. while elsewhere it is already out on DVD), but thus far I had only seen her in Prometheus (reviewed here!). Still, the chance to see her in something new and to see what direction McAdams is going in now was worth getting excited about, regardless of the effective movie poster.

The new poster, which features full head shots of Rapace and McAdams looking anything but passionate much more accurately captures the actual content of Passion. Passion is not like Bound (reviewed here!), it’s more analogous to Wall Street (reviewed here!) where people manipulate one another for their own gains. Passion was made very much on the celebrity of Brian De Palma, who wrote and directed the film. While the movie has its moments, it does not represent De Palma’s greatest success as either a writer or a director.

On the writing front, there are several clunky lines that do not sound realistic for the way people actually talk. On the directing front, some of the deliveries are unfortunately stiff. Very early on in Passion, when Rachel McAdams as Christine is interacting with Isabelle during a business meeting, her transition from the professional to the deeply personal is not just an awkward shift; her lines are delivered so stiffly that one has to wonder why De Palma did not insist on a second (or third or however many more takes it needed to get it right) take. Passion quickly evolves from a film with vague sexual titillation and flirtations into a story about workplace manipulations.

Working together on a cell phone project, Isabelle and Christine run into a mental block. When Dirk returns to Christine’s home, Isabelle leaves, obviously uncomfortable. But, in the middle of the night, Isabelle has a brainstorm and with her friend/assistant Dani, she develops Asscam, an app that allows women to see how men on the street react to their walking away. Isabelle goes to London on Christine’s behalf and pitches the app, which Christine then takes credit for (which almost balances out the fact that Isabelle sleeps with Dirk in London and then afterward). With Christine needing revenue and more accounts to cover a risky scheme Dirk created (and needs bailing out of), she pushes for a move to New York and pushes both Dirk and Isabelle away.

Angered at how Christine is manipulating her and Dirk, she puts her advertisement for the Omniphone online and it goes viral. Christine’s move to New York is cut when Isabelle is offered the same opportunity by the corporate partners that the three work for. Dirk tries to warn Isabelle about how dangerous Christine is, but it is not until Christine humiliates Isabelle in front of the company and extorts her with a damning e-mail she claims came from her computer, which leads Isabelle to prepare retaliation. What follows is a game of cat and mouse between Isabelle and Christine where they exert control over one another and their most damning secrets. When Christine is murdered, Isabelle is the prime suspect and she works to exonerate herself and find the true culprit.

The writing in Passion creates an obvious situation where Isabelle is being manipulated by Christine. When Isabelle gets an ally in Dirk, though, she fails to ask a number of key questions that would illustrate she is smart and able to keep up with her boss’s machinations. For example, when Dirk tells Isabelle that Christine does not have a sister (after Christine has told her a sob story about her dead twin sister), she does not ask if Isabelle ever had a sister, she just accepts the truth from Dirk (which is the same version Christine gave her before) that Isabelle does not have a sister. Moreover, Isabelle seems surprisingly dim. She works on a smartphone account, developing a camera-based app and yet seems completely oblivious to Dirk using his cameraphone to make a video of their liaison in London.

Despite her few awkward line deliveries, Rachel McAdams has moments where she is entirely credible as a leader of a powerful and successful advertising firm. But she plays even more effectively as a woman scorned and angered by the corporate and personal stresses she encounters. When she coldly sets out to humiliate Isabelle and her employees, she plays cold and deliciously evil amazingly. She is backed by a number of effective background performers who look uncomfortable at the circumstances in the most realistic way possible. In that way, De Palma creates a very realistic sense of place and characters who react in a compelling way to their challenges and manipulations. McAdams is all kinds of evil as Christine, like the way she kisses Isabelle harder in front of Dani, who has obvious affections for Isabelle.

Noomi Rapace is exceptional as Isabelle. Rapace is able to emote exceptionally well with only her eyes. De Palma smartly manages to capture her expressions. When Christine humiliates Isabelle at the company party, Rapace says so much without any lines and De Palma captures her performance exceptionally well. Similarly, as Isabelle sits in Inspector Bach’s office, Rapace looks haggard and horrible and De Palma gets every nuanced moment amazingly well. (Annoyingly, Bach and Dirk are cast remarkably similarly, which adds to the confusion as the psychological horror of the movie deepens.)

Ultimately, though, Passion degenerates into a weird reality-bending mindfuck of a movie more akin to Black Swan (reviewed here!) than anything truly passionate and the abruptness of the transition from a flirtatious corporate drama to a psychological thriller is jarring. While that can work in a movie to play to the stress of the protagonist, in Passion it just seems more erratic. The result is a film that is more inconsistent than it is cleverly constructed.

For other films with two women in a relationship, please check out my reviews of:
Compulsion
The Incredibly True Adventure Of Two Girls In Love
Concussion

6/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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One Iconic Scene Does Not Justify The Lackluster Spy Film Mission: Impossible

The Good: Smart protagonist, Generally good acting
The Bad: Special effects, Obvious plot reversals, No real character development, Dumb peripheral characters, Overbearing soundtrack
The Basics: When Ethan Hunt’s team is burned, he learns there is a conspiracy within the Impossible Missions Force and he is the prime suspect.


With so many reviewers going gaga for James Bond in celebration of his 50th Anniversary and the accompanying Blu-Ray/DVD collection for that milestone, I thought, “Now’s the perfect time for me to review Mission: Impossible.” What can I say? I’m a contrarian at heart. Actually, I have a thing about having sensibility in my reviews and I vaguely recalled seeing Mission: Impossible III (reviewed here!) and being disappointed by how derivative of Alias (reviewed here!) it was. Conversely, I enjoyed last year’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (reviewed here!), so I thought it was time to go back and see the first Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible film.

I am not impressed. Within the film and as a professional reviewer, there were too many conceits utilized by Mission: Impossible that made it problematic at best. As a viewer who understands how Hollywood works (at least in general terms) the fact that the film opens with a shot of Emilio Estevez, whose name does not appear in the opening credits, is a disturbing nod that informs the viewer they should not get overly attached to his character. In the film itself, Mission: Impossible features one of the dumbest criminal masterminds of all time in that the “diabolical genius” who is behind the film’s conspiracy (which he has apparently been planning for some time) stupidly tells the truth at key moments which allow the protagonist to easily reason who is behind everything. Obviously, if one is a mole in a government agency, they should be used to lying and working covertly. The villain in Mission: Impossible does so so poorly that it is hard to believe that the person gets as far as they do.

Following a mission in Kiev, Jim Phelps assembles an Impossible Missions Force Team in Prague. With the stated mission being to recover a disc that has the aliases and mundane names of every IMF operative working in Eastern Europe, Phelps’s team, which includes Ethan Hunt, Claire Phelps, Sarah, Jack and another operative, infiltrates a party. The mission, however, goes sour and everyone but Hunt appears killed. Contacting command, Hunt is put in contact with Kittridge, who happens to be in Prague and is able to extract Hunt. Meeting with him, Kittridge reveals that there is a mole in the IMF and because Hunt’s family farm has suddenly come out of debt, he is the prime suspect.

Evading Kittridge’s men, Hunt makes it to a safe house, where he attempts to find the people who gave the IMF the mission and he discovers Claire is still alive. Claire and Hunt assemble their own team of former IMF agents to get the list which was used as bait to draw out the real mole. As Kittridge closes in on his team, Hunt learns the identity and motivations of the enemies of the IMF.

To the credit of Mission: Impossible, Ethan Hunt is characterized as a realistically smart protagonist. He asks – immediately – one of the key questions of Kittridge when he learns that the other agent is in Prague. Hunt is operating on a level that makes him seem like a credible, realistically-seasoned spy. He might not be a good son (why would he let his family farm stay in debt if he had such a good job?!), but he is a realistically competent spy protagonist.

The acting in Mission: Impossible is fair. Tom Cruise is credible, if young looking, for a superspy action hero Ethan Hunt. On the character front, Ethan Hunt and his family ties make less sense for a spy of his caliber (obvious weakness), but Cruise gets into the role after the opening meeting scene (in that, none of the performers seem to be taking the briefing seriously enough to be actual intelligence agents. The scene is fun, but not at all believable). The only other truly credible actors in Mission: Impossible are Emilio Estavez and Ving Rhames. Jean Reno, who can usually be counted on for a great performance, plays Krieger as clumsy at a moment when the character cannot afford to be and he does not sell the moment. Similarly, Emmanuelle Beart, who plays Claire, is a pretty generic pouty-lipped, Hollywood ideal who has no presence or gravitas on the screen. Henry Czerny, at least, has the excuse that he isn’t given much to do with Kittridge as a generic antagonist.

Several of the shots in Mission: Impossible do not work in a rational sense. Coming off the iconic scene in the record’s room, Ethan Hunt catches a bead of his own sweat to prevent it from setting off the alarm. The shot looks marginally good, but it is so obviously an insert shot that it is distracting to the seasoned viewer. In other words, there is no way the hand could be at the angle and placement it is shot in, especially catching the sweat, in the reality of Hunt’s body position in the shot. In fact, the movement needed to make it work would have caused the suspended character to pinwheel.

Director Brian De Palma sacrifices rationality for the cool look in several key moments. The finale of the film involves Ethan Hunt laying inches away from a helicopter blade and he looks mildly startled. That helicopter blade should have been exceptionally hot; regardless of it missing slicing open Hunt’s neck, he should be pretty uncomfortable from the heat. De Palma hopes the viewer will not notice this. Furthermore, he uses an incredible reliance on the soundtrack to telegraph the emotions and tension the viewer is supposed to feel.

They do not.

As well, De Palma makes several obvious cuts - most obviously with Jack's demise - where he is obviously laboring to keep the film PG-13 and it looks and feels sloppy at those moments.  The result is a spy film that strives to be even average, but is so preoccupied with creating the next “surprise” twist that the viewer is left bored for much of the movie.

For other spy thrillers, check out my reviews of:
Skyfall
The Bourne Identity
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

3/10

Check out how this film stacks up against others I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Eyes Gone Blind: Snake Eyes Blinks!

The Good: Carla Gugino, First half hour
The Bad: Second half, Lack of consistent characterization, Unsatistfying ending
The Basics: An excellent setup leads into a terrible disappointment when Snake Eyes attempts to be clever but instead negates all real characterization.


It's the unfortunate film that begins so well as to be called engrossing and then degenerates into something silly and unprovacative. Yet, such is what you have with Snake Eyes. It is not, as the video box suggests entitled "Cage Snake Eyes" which is as it appears on the box, movie poster, etc. It seems like they're selling Nicholas Cage. Well, his character is bought, perhaps he is as well.

Cage plays Rick Santoro, a mostly-corrupt cop who gets jazzed about fight night. Rick has an old time friend Kevin Dunne, who is a Commander in the army and is set the task of guarding the Secretary of Defense. After betting heavily, Rick goes to the prize fight to watch the heavyweight champion duke it out with a competitor. Kevin, apparently concerned with a security risk, takes off after a redhead. Moments later, Kirkland is shot and Rick has to piece together what happened. Rick's main lead is a woman who approached Kirkland moments before the shooting, Julia.

The problem lies in how everything goes from there. It's not too revealing to suggest that Gary Senise needs to get cast as something other than a villain. The problem is, it's not revealing anything. It's not a surprise. Gary plays Kevin as too perfect, it's set up to be a surprise that he's involved. The problem with that is that it doesn't read as real. Kevin and Rick have a real bond. Or so it appears. Rick doesn't appear nearly as traumatized as he ought to considering the set up in the beginning.

There's something to be said for the idea that two people who are close can't change without the other knowing it. The film sets up their relationship as one such relationship and then it doesn't realize it. Kevin comes off as too true for how far he falls. Sadly, Rick's rise to heroism makes more sense than Kevin's decline into villainy.

The only great acting in the film comes from Carla Gugino. Her character is the most consistent, the most real and the best acted. Julia seems giving and kind and concerned. She is exactly the conscientious citizen that does rise up to fight corruption when she learns of it. Carla Gugino acts perfectly for the role, adding more than simply an innocent face, but genuine confusion and realistic movement to a person out of place in a world where law enforcement and criminals lay in the same bed.

Sadly, even Carla's wonderful acting is not enough to recommend this film. If you ever catch it on television, set a timer. When you hit thirty minutes, turn it off and make up your own ending. Trust me; it's better that way.

For other works featuring Carla Gugino, please check out my reviews of:
Sucker Punch
Watchmen

2.5/10

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

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


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The Untouchables: Making Treasury Officers Look Good & The Law Of White

The Good: Pace, Moments of acting, Tone
The Bad: Plot, General Character Issues
The Basics: A fine film with competent acting, characters and plot in a standard morality play in 1930s Chicago.


Whenever I get into a foul mood, I go to get movies out of the library and I look for something violent. Sometimes when I do that, I want something that will make my heart beat a little faster, something where there were people with guns in just about every scene. I've not yet seen Reservoir Dogs and my hope once upon a time when I saw The Untouchables was that I'd be able to find that to satisfy my once-yearly desire to see something violent, action-filled and bloody. I suppose I'm no worse off for seeing it.

That's not to say The Untouchables is terribly violent. It isn't, at least not by comparison. But it has enough action to keep one watching it. In fact, the rate at which things happen in the film is nice; there's always something happening in the movie and that makes it easy to keep the attention of a viewer.

Basically, the film is the pursuit of gangster Al Capone by Elliot Ness. This fictionalized version has the U.S. Treasury Officer coming into Chicago, enlisting a streetsmart cop, Malone, and searching for a way to bust the mob kingpin. As Ness becomes more successful, Capone becomes more desperate, hunting down the inner circle of Ness' group.

The tone of the film is as obvious as the plot: it's a pretty standard good vs. evil play. What succeeds about the tone is that it explores the blurring of the two. Capone doesn't seem all bad (until he takes a baseball bat to an associate's head) and Ness clearly struggles with doing the right thing. That it is explored is nice, that it is explored well is even better. However, in the end, the truth is, no matter how they accomplish their ends, the bad guys are still motivated by greed and avarice, the good guys have the higher principles of law enforcement working for them.

The movie follows, quite well, the Law of White. The Law of White in moviemaking states that if you're going to dress a character in bright, flashy whites, at some point there will be blood on it.

What fails is the obviousness of the plot and none of the characters seem to be terribly well drawn. The educated viewer knows what happened historically, so it's a matter of how that is pulled off. It's pulled off adequately, but not superlatively. Just like the characters. Their lines are pretty much what we expect from "heroes" and "villains" and little more. The acting is likewise competent, but not terribly superlative.

In truth, The Untouchables is almost an archetypal average movie. It does everything well, but not extraordinarily. It lives up to our expectations, but does not exceed them or enhance our appreciation of history, the action genre or develop an emotional attachment to it.

For other tense movies with a bit of violence to them, please check out my reviews of:
The Game
The Departed
Gamer

6/10

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

© 2010, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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