Shia LaBeouf Naked, Drugs, Souls And Traveling Lead To The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman.

The Good: Decent acting, Good pacing
The Bad: Meandering plot, Cuts between scenes are frequently awkward.
The Basics: The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman follows an American in Bucharest where he gets mixed up with a woman and her violent estranged husband.


With a lull in weeks between two of the major studio-released blockbusters, I find my attention once more going to independent cinema. This has been a good year for me and indie films, though I have still not managed to see Adult World and none of the indie films I’ve yet watched have managed to top Bert And Arnie’s Guide To Friendship (reviewed here!). My first indie film of the weekend is The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman, which seems to be dumbed down to Charlie Countryman in the United States.

The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman is one of those independent films with an amazing cast that is not given enough exposure to be considered Oscarbait and it’s surprising that the producers aren’t making more of a push for it. Answering the question of what Rupert Grint has been up to since the ending of The Harry Potter Saga (reviewed here!), The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman has a cast led by Shia LaBeouf and Evan Rachel Wood, supported by Vincent D’Onofrio, Melissa Leo, and Mads Mikkelsen. With such a cast, it is surprising that The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman isn’t being given a push on the off week to get good play. The fact that director Fredrik Bond uses the cast exceptionally well should have gotten it more off-week attention.

Opening with a man hung upside down being cut from his rope to fall into the water below, Charlie Countryman goes with his father to take his mother off life support. After she dies, with Charlie seeing her soul leave her body, he is visited by his mother, who tells him to visit Bucharest when he begs her to give him a specific task to do in his life now that she is dead. En route to Bucharest, Charlie’s seatmate, a Romanian named Victor, strikes up a conversation with Charlie before he dies and after he is dead, he asks Charlie to deliver a hat to his daughter. Freaked out, Charlie tries to recover the hat when it falls off the body and is tazered for his efforts. At the terminal, Charlie meets Gabi, Victor’s daughter and delivers the hat and the message Victor asked him, post-mortem to deliver. Before leaving the terminal, he literally gives Gabi the shirt off his back.

Riding in a cab through Bucharest, Charlie sees Gabi in her car and helps her (basically hijacking her car!) to hunt down an ambulance she was following. The hash-smoking ambulance drivers crash, moments after Gabi and Charlie catch up to it, leaving Victor’s body on the pavement. With Gabi riding with the body after it is recovered, Charlie takes her car and discovers a gun in it. Charlie takes the car and Gabi’s cello to the opera house where she works and there he meets Nigel, her menacing husband whose name was on the gun. Arriving at the Marco Polo youth hostel, Charlie meets Karl (an aspiring porn star) and Luc, who slip him some ecstasy. He is then confronted by Nigel who warns him that friendship with Gabi could be dangerous for him, though he pursues the friendship anyway. As grief, loss, and desire mix with drug hallucinations and fish-out-of-water complications, Charlie’s world blurs and he comes undone.

First and foremost, what sets The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman apart from other films this Oscar Pandering Season is the quality of the acting. Fredrik Bond does not keep the principle actors within their safe zones. Evan Rachel Wood’s Gabi speaks with a heavy accent and she pulls it off in every one of her scenes. Wood’s ability to emote confusion helps sell the cultural differences between Gabi and Charlie better than some of the lines on their own do. Shia LaBeouf, who is unlikely to be considered a great actor by anyone, pulls of a surprisingly deep performance. When LaBeouf’s Charlie meets Wood’s Gabi, the sympathy LaBeouf is able to emote through only his eyes and body language is exceptional. The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman is unlike anything else LaBeouf has done and the performance continues throughout the film to be one that is impressive (and not just for him). LaBeouf actually has some decent charm as Charlie and that carries well on-screen to play as chemistry between him and Wood that sells their relationship.

The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman is not the Oscarbait that Black Swan (reviewed here!) was a few years ago, but there are a number of similarities between that film and this one. In fact, The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman is much like Black Swan meets Lost In Translation (reviewed here!). While The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman has decent performances and characters engaging enough to make the film move along at a generally good pace, the film is aimless in its plotting and the supporting characters remain largely undeveloped.

As well, The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman uses its soundtrack in an annoying way. The film includes several scenes with melodramatic crescendos that make little moments seem much, much bigger than they actually are. Beyond that, there is choppy editing that makes the film less well-assembled than most indie movies.

Still, The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman is a fairly solid film that is shot with a beautiful sense of style. Was Shia LaBeouf’s use of acid necessary to pull off the ecstasy scene? Probably not. Was he convincing? Sure. But given how Fredrik Bond keeps the film moving almost constantly, the brief moment’s performance is easy to overlook amid the frenetic cuts and scenes that lead the viewer back, inevitably, to the beginning. Amid mobsters, sexual tension, and drug hallucinations, The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman becomes a decent, moody, contemplative alternative to this season’s predictable blockbusters.

For other works with Melissa Leo, please check out my reviews of:
Oblivion
Olympus Has Fallen
Flight
Red State
Welcome To The Rileys
The L Word - Season Two
Hide And Seek
Homicide: Life On The Street

6.5/10

For other film 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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Bobby: Another Big Cast Movie I Wanted To Like More

The Good: Awesome cast, Some decent acting, Some interesting characters, DVD extras
The Bad: Most of the characters are not developed enough, Use of archival footage/direction
The Basics: Awkwardly combining archived footage and newly directed material, the fateful day of RFK's primary victory in California is recreated in a painstaking and painful way.


Sometimes movies that have huge casts know how to use those big casts. They wow the audience with their performances with sheer force of numbers. So, for example, critics often overlook the magnificent Cradle Will Rock (reviewed here!) because the caliber of the actors in it is so high as to overwhelm the audience and for as hard as I was on Mystic River (reviewed here!), the main reason was because all of the actors were so extraordinary that their performances only lived up to the high expectations of greatness from such a group. In fact, the last movie I saw with a massive, well-known cast that truly disappointed me was A Prairie Home Companion (reviewed here!). And then there was Bobby, a film I was excited about and just caught on DVD.

On June 6th, 1968 in Los Angeles California, the California primary is heating up as a contest between Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Senator McCarthy and the victory speech for RFK is set for that night at the Ambassador Hotel. As the day progresses, workers, performers and patrons of the Ambassador Hotel prepare for the arrival of Kennedy and there are numerous conflicts and collisions that occur, prompting actions and reactions. The people spending the day going about their lives include kitchen help, notably Jose and Miguel - Latino workers compelled to work a double shift - and black chef Edward Robinson. When Timmons fails to allow the workers to go vote, his boss Paul fires him. Paul is not having the best day as this is the day he and his mistress, Angela, part ways and his wife Miriam finds out about his indiscretion. Retired doorman John Casey sits in the lounge playing chess with those who will play with him, like Nelson. In the hotel's lounge, Virginia Fallon is set to give her final performance and leave town after introducing RFK.

Outside the immediate politics of the hotel, though still encompassed within the walls of the structure, there are a number of personal and political machinations at work. Fallon's husband Tim has chosen this day to leave Virginia. The establishment is overrun with campaign workers for Robert F. Kennedy, like Jimmy and Cooper who spend the day getting high instead of working. They get LSD from Fisher and spend the day tripping. This is unlike Wade and Dwayne, who have spent the day working to create a victory for RFK in the primary. This is the day that Diane is marrying William so he will be sent to Germany instead of Vietnam. It is also the day RFK supporters Jack and Samantha arrive to see the future president.

The recent success of such movies as Crash (reviewed here!) that employ large casts with characters involved in intertwining storylines have encouraged other writers and directors to explore the same with their own ideas. Bobby is written and directed by Emilio Estevez, who also appears in the movie as Tim Fallon. The problem here is that while Estevez certainly captures the chaos and scope of the Ambassador Hotel on that June day, the character elements are sacrificed to fit all of the stories in.

In short, because there are essentially twenty one integral characters (none of whom are Bobby Kennedy) with at least three other recurring characters that try to squeeze in for time, none of them have the chance to fully develop and be explored. Instead, they are almost all given the short run of screentime.

Which leads me to one of the biggest criticisms of Bobby; the title. Titles, any writer will tell you, are incredibly important and Bobby is a misnomer. This is not a film about Robert F. Kennedy. While it certainly does tell the story of one of the most fateful days in American history, it almost completely neglects the real stories of Robert F. Kennedy's day. This is a story about the Ambassador Hotel, building up to RFK's arrival, it's not about Bobby Kennedy. Certainly everyone in the hotel is there directly or indirectly because of Kennedy, but he is an ancillary character in the story.

Moreover, Kennedy appears in the film through use of historical clips, many from news reports using archive footage. Kennedy, Mike Wallace and another news anchor appear in grainy clips that illustrate the reality of the day. Unfortunately, Estevez combines these clips with the main footage of the movie, pulling the viewer out of narrative as he tells it. Instead of relegating the quotes and clips with RFK to a prologue and epilogue, Bobby uses footage throughout that integrates poorly with the actual movie.

Nowhere is this more problematic than near the climax of the film. While Kennedy is on stage in clips that are wonderfully restored for the film, he is flanked by historical figures who the viewer have been watching for the past hour and a half. Yes, Estevez clumsily integrates footage that includes the real Wade - for example - and for those looking at the continuity, this is a terrible attempt to reconcile the movie with itself. To make clear, Estevez uses footage from reality and tries to put it into the movie, usually when RFK is involved and the footage does not match in terms of quality nor composition, making the movie very poorly assembled in the end.

Estevez should have used his RFK stand in Dave Fraunces - or found another actor - to recreate RFK footage for the movie as opposed to sloppily sticking in old clips.

That said, what we do see about the various characters is enough to make this film work at least one viewing. The dialogue between Jose, Miguel and Edward is phenomenal. Rarely in American cinema is there discussion of interethnic dynamics that calls it as it sees it, documenting the tensions between blacks and latinos. Edward's conversation about how he lost his anger is amazing and very compelling. Despite how little screentime he has, he resonates as a worthwhile and intriguing character.

Similarly, the weird relationship between soon-to-be-spouses Diane and William is awkward, stilted and in every way wonderful. When Diane quietly declares that she would have married the two people from her high school that recently were killed in Vietnam if it would have saved their lives is telling and sad. William's understanding that Diane's willingness to marry him is not necessarily based on love is sad and touching.

The character that is most developed and least overstated is John Casey, the former doorman. He is quite simply lonely and retired, occupying a couch in the lobby playing chess in order to stave off utter loneliness and lethargy. His mind is sharp and he has wonderful memories of the Ambassador Hotel, but he is a man who had nowhere to go in retirement and ends up desperate for any interaction with people.

Casey is played with wonderful simplicity by Sir Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins has one of his most understated roles here and he creates a character with both quiet dignity and desperation as he waits for the day to end. I've never seen Hopkins played bewildered as well as he does in the climax of this film.

Sadly, most of the other actors do not have the chance to shine as much as they deserve. Almost completely neglected is Martin Sheen whose bit part in Bobby makes the viewer wonder why he took it (though supporting his son is a good enough reason for me!). And while Laurence Fishburne is wonderfully cast as Edward Robinson, his performance is nothing we have not seen from him in, say, The Matrix. He plays the sage quite well, but here he does nothing to impress the viewer with his range.

Neglected even more is one of my favorites, William H. Macy, who wowed me in Magnolia (reviewed here!). Macy plays the hotel's manager, Paul and his role is little more than a cameo at key moments, a clear underuse of his talents. Also appearing with minimal screentime are Elijah Wood, Lindsay Lohan, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and Emilio Estevez. And while it's wonderful to see Freddy Rodriguez in a film, his part is nothing terribly challenging or different from his signature role in Six Feet Under.

I will note that Joshua Jackson stood out as Wade. Jackson has a seriousness to him that allows him to perfectly embody a young aide to a politician. He seems like a manager and he has a dignity that I would not have anticipated from him.

On the DVD presentation, one of the coolest features is a panel discussion with people who were actually at the Ambassador Hotel the night in question. Their conversation is insightful and it has a strength to it that wonderfully tells the story of reality from a different perspective after Estevez's production is over.

It is only the strength of what is revealed by characters in what little time they are given, combined with the strength of the acting when the actors are permitted to present their talents and the decent DVD bonuses that save this otherwise mediocre film. Sadly, while I watched, I continued to wait for it to become extraordinary and was a little let down when the best it achieved was adequate. Recommended for a viewing, as opposed to purchasing for a permanent collection.

For other works with Freddy Rodriguez, check out my takes on:
Six Feet Under
Havoc
Payback

6/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Theological Action-Adventure Meets Its Star With Constantine!

The Good: Decent characters, Good plot, Decent DVD extras, Decent effects
The Bad: Some of the acting does not hold up
The Basics: While John Constantine's time on Earth runs out, he works to vanquish demons back to hell and uncover the mystery of what truly happened to Isabel Dobson.


Have you ever watched a movie and thought, "I wonder why that didn't do better at the box office?" Too often lately, I've seen flicks where my reaction is "I can't believe that grossed as much as it did!" Then I sat down and watched Constantine on DVD and my thought was that of all of the film's based on comics or graphic novels lately, this one was possibly the best and most interesting of the bunch. And you know, it kept me interested the entire film, which is pretty much a rarity these days. Here's what you can expect from Constantine:

John Constantine, a chain-smoking exorcist who has the ability to see the shadow realm of demons that coincides with the known real world, is drawn into a case where a police detective's identical twin has committed suicide, much to Angela's complete disbelief. Constantine begins to doubt that everything is as it seems as the forces of Heaven and Hell converge on Earth in such a way that indicates that the fragile separation between the realms is breaking down.

Constantine soon finds himself working to protect Angela from one of the prime servants of Hell, Balthazar, who is bent on capturing her. Problematic as it is, Constantine finds his clock ticking as God prepares to claim his soul and he finds himself trying to outrun the angel Gabriel and his coming mortality.

Constantine is a pretty pure action-adventure with a little mystery-horror twist to it. The film takes a few minutes to clearly establish the tenants of the universe it embodies, with the clear understanding that there is a heaven, hell, and Earth and John Constantine is able to see the forces of both sides on Earth. But more than that, it becomes clear that Constantine is part of a war between the forces of heaven and hell where he is a tool and the rules are pretty simple: Demons cannot appear on Earth in their natural form. Apparently the rules of engagement allow for the forces of hell to possess any life on Earth, but not appear directly.

The film begins to get real interesting when it becomes clear that that rule is being broken by Satan.

The whole conflict about whether or not Isabel was killed or killed herself becomes a decent incentive to involve Constantine and Angela and the search for the truth is both a good plot point and an opportunity to explore the characters. And they are reasonably dark characters. John Constantine is a man who has been to hell and returned and while he now works for the forces of good, he lives with the knowledge that he is soon to die and that he will not be going to Heaven when he dies.

Constantine might sound like a lot of religious hoopla and no one is more wary of the advance of the Evangelical Right into the mainstream (check out my review of The Sinner's Guide To The Evangelical Right here!), but it's basically an action-adventure/horror film using religious characters. Think of it as Van Helsing with characters from the Bible as opposed to Bram Stoker. And unlike some of the films made and marketed toward the Evangelical Right, Constantine is pretty strongly edgy and dark as opposed to uplifting and preachy.

John Constantine is a pretty clear anti-hero, he's not looking out for his own best interest and he's not looking for redemption because he knows he's not getting it. Instead, he accepts his place as a tool in the grand scheme of things and he works for Gabriel and god only because he is compelled to, not out of some sense of nobility or desire for grace. Constantine is played by Keanu Reeves with the same sense of destiny and quality as he played Neo in The Matrix (reviewed here!). In other words, Reeves isn't asked to play above his ability here and instead, the role seems tailor made to his understated ability to deliver lines and his ability to do things like run, play opposite CG villains and shoot a gun. Reeves is fine as the title character and he leads the cast well.

In fact, if anyone disappoints, it might be - sadly - Tilda Swinton as Gabriel. Swinton is such a great performer that one instantly notices her nuances. As a result, it is Swinton who ruins one of the bigger surprises of the film with her portrayal of Gabriel. Swinton tips her hand as to her character's conflict and it's unfortunate because had she held out longer for the surprise, the character's motivations could have been seen as truly shocking.

Either way, this is a dark film loaded with special effects and one of the nicer bonus features on the DVD deals with the special effects and the making of the movie. The behind-the-scenes featurette is worthwhile and entertaining and adds value to the disc.

At the end of the day, it's entertaining and pretty well made. The film holds up over multiple viewings and it's worthy of the attention of anyone who likes a good, dark action-adventure story or who has been waiting around for a horror film that is interesting. Much more on the side of action-adventure/detective, Constantine is well directed by Francis Lawrence who has a good sense of how to keep the convoluted plot moving along at a decent pace.

For other works with Rachel Weisz, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Definitely, Maybe
The Fountain
Envy
The Mummy Returns
The Mummy

7.5/10

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

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Legs, Special Effects Robots And Strong "Guy Appeal," Transformers: Dark Of The Moon Is Fine For What It Appears To Be, But Not What It Is.

The Good: Special effects, Elimination of ridiculous ethnic pandering, Generally consistent acting, Moments of plot.
The Bad: Subversive nature of the movie, Ridiculous treatment of women, Obvious reversals, Disgusting abrogation of philosophical high ground.
The Basics: Initially engaging, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon quickly degenerates from a fairly clever science fiction work into an invasion story into a military advertisement.


I have not, traditionally, been a fan of the Transformers movie franchise.  I did not particularly enjoy Transformers (reviewed here!) and I think I liked the sequel Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (reviewed here!) even less. So, it might seem odd that I was the first in my local theater last night for the nine o’clock showing of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. Despite her gasping and “ooh”ing and “ahh”ing each time we saw a preview for the movie, my wife begged off attending with me. Ultimately, I think she was glad she didn’t attend; I came to the point where I was not glad I had gone.

Explaining what is wrong with Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is initially difficult because the film is almost subtle in what it does, but not so subtle that if the viewer is engaged while watching the movie it doesn’t stand right out for them. I went into the movie engaged. I was initially excited because some of the elements that had been very, very wrong with the earlier two installments had been fixed. As my wife pointed out when we watched the other two recently, it’s hard to imagine a super-intelligent mechanical race that still speaks like a bunch of teenage street gang members. In other words, to appeal to the young, hip (and black) audience(s), some of the Transformers in earlier installments spoke more with ebonics and that was pretty ridiculous. That’s gone from this adventure, as is Megan Fox and her unsupported bosom.

Unfortunately, what the movie puts in their place goes from bad to worse on two very important fronts. While Megan Fox’s character in the first two installments had obvious t&a appeal, there was at least a passing attempt to give her character character. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s Carly isn’t even given the passing attempt. She is a pawn and her entire function in the movie is to present a pair of legs that will leave boys, men and many women salivating for weeks, eager to return to the theater just to see them again larger than real life. Unfortunately, this completely mortgages the one strong female character, played by Frances McDormand. McDormand, a universally respected actress of great quality and caliber, appears in Transformers: Dark Of The Moon as Mearing, the Director Of National Intelligence. She starts the movie as a powerhouse and in the last third of the film, I cannot recall any lines she had, save the punchline to her arc with John Turturro’s Simmons. This is because she is lost in a sea of masculine characters and by that point in the movie, it’s appealing to a very different audience, one where respecting women is not a primary concern. But, alas, I get ahead of myself.

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon opens, engagingly enough, with new information on the long-ago war on Cybertron. As the Decepticons moved toward complete defeat of the Autobots, Sentinel Prime created a technology that would definitively end the war with an Autobot victory. Unfortunately, before he could activate this ultimate weapon, the Decepticons shot down his ship and their valuable cargo. Somehow, the escape craft for it made its way to the moon, where it crashed in 1961, sparking the space race. And during the blackout during Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk, two American astronauts uncovered the crashed ship and brought back Cybertronian technology to Earth.

In the present day, Sam Witwicky, hero of two incursions on Earth by the Decepticons, is desperately searching for a job. He is a kept man, living with his new girlfriend, Carly, in Washington, D.C. and striking out at virtually every job interview he has. When his parents come to visit, he redoubles his efforts and manages to score a job in the mailroom of Bruce Brazo’s company. While Sam tries not to be too jealous of Carly and her boss, Dylan, Lennox and the Autobot-allied NEST team work a couple of clean-up operations in the Middle East and one in the Ukraine (at Chernobyl) that goes horribly wrong and exposes a powerful Decepticon, Shockwave.

As the Decepticons start killing off their human collaborators, Optimus Prime reveals that the Ukraine mission has uncovered a piece of technology from Sentinel Prime’s downed ship. Using the ship that brought the second wave of Autobots to Earth, Prime and another Autobot recover Sentinel Prime and five pieces of the ultimate technology from the Ark. Reunited with his former mentor, Prime is thrilled, but his elation is short-lived. Laserbeak, a Decepticon assassin, attacks Sam’s workplace as part of the Decepticon endgame. Sam tries to get Carly to safety, but the pair discovers that Dylan is a powerful collaborator who uses Sam to get information on Optimus Prime’s next move. That next move is one of utter defeat when Sentinel Prime reveals his true intentions and a full-scale invasion of Earth by the Decepticons begins.

Recapping the plot of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon might make the movie sound impressive or engaging (and for those worried about spoilers, Dylan and Sentinel Prime’s betrayals are pretty obvious from the outset because it’s That Kind Of Movie) and it could have been, but that it changes in tone and tenor for the last third. The first portion of the movie is pure science fiction. It’s not always good science fiction, whatwith the announcement that the world is in peril followed immediately by a scene where the viewer is taken to a car museum to look at shiny restored cars and the camera virtually molests Carly, and an appearance by Bill O’Riley. But for the most part, the movie starts well and it gets better. In the middle portion, the betrayals we know are coming arrive; Dylan is too smarmy to be good and the lack of Megatron for the bulk of the film tells anyone with more than a tenth of a brain that Sentinel Prime is not all Optimus hopes he will be. And in that section, the movie becomes a heart-pounding alien invasion flick. It’s a good one, but don’t expect the philosophy of something as smart as V (reviewed here!). No, any sense of what could have been even Autobot philosophy disintegrates when Optimus Prime tells everyone that the plan is to kill every Decepticon.

And then the movie goes to hell for the final third. The last third of the movie is complete, cinematic trash. Indeed, the best possible recommendation I can give in regard to Transformers: Dark Of The Moon is to walk out after the deportation scene. After that, the movie is over. What follows for the final third of the almost-three hour movie is what made me absolutely come to loathe Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. The movie stops being a story and it becomes the job advertisement for the U.S. Armed Forces that the movie was set-up (unbeknownst to the audience in the first third) to be. The last portion of the movie has Epps, Lennox and their teams moving through the besieged Chicago where the Decepticon forces have taken up, picking up different units of military forces and showing off what their talents can do. Sam Witwicky and the audience are exposed to a virtual job fair wherein the paratroopers, Navy SEALS, sharpshooters and ground troops all illustrate their special talents.

It’s dumb. Flat out. People might not want to read such precise criticism, but it’s dumb and it’s exploitative. Readers might want to believe they are watching an epic of science fiction, but they start watching one of the most absurd infomercials of all time. In the final third, Mearing gets all of her information from people who are not even assets and all of the men around her define what is important and essentially make the decisions that she ruled in the first third of the film. This is even more absurd than Carly being dragged through rubble, falling through and out buildings and being proximate to explosions without getting a single stain on her white outfit. And if one wishes to make the argument that I’m reading too much into this obvious candy for Summer Blockbuster Season, I’d ask who is shooting the firearm when the movie suddenly turns into a first-person shooter perspective for a scene?

Who knows? We don’t. We don’t know because that’s not the point. The point of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon at this point in the movie is not anything reasonable, rational or even entertaining. The point of the movie at this point is “You’re looking for a job, these are your options: Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Pick whichever you want, your life will be exciting like a first-person shooter game and your prize is this dripping chick who wants you, who cares that she can’t string together a coherent sentence? You don’t; you get to be her protector!”

It’s cheap. It’s almost as cheap as the way Leonard Nimoy uses his line as Spock (it’s actually Dickens, not Spock, but Nimoy made it famous for a whole new generation) in the mouth of Sentinel Prime. I had decided to watch Transformers: Dark Of The Moon because I enjoyed Star Trek (reviewed here!) and I thought that this movie might provide some hint as to the quality of the forthcoming sequel. We can only hope it does not go in this direction.

Usually, I spend some time discussing the character development and acting, but I’m done. Sam Witwicky doesn’t develop, he gets tossed around and goes to a job fair. The female characters get put in their places by men who act smarter and more powerful than they are and the acting is entirely familiar. Blowing up Abraham Lincoln was pointless and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has such a pointless role as Carly that it’s no surprise in the last half that she struts more than acts.

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon might be the best of the franchise, but it’s still a lousy movie, despite the potentials from the beginning.

For other works with Alan Tudyk, please check out my reviews of:
V - Season 1
Serenity
Firefly
28 Days

4.5/10

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

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


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More CG Robots And Megan Fox's Jiggling Breasts Cannot Save Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen!

The Good: Moments of special effect, Moments of story/character
The Bad: Predictable plot, Jumbled effects, Terrible acting
The Basics: With the second attempt to make Transformers an interesting live-action film, Michael Bay and his team give us nothing more than we've already seen before.


As a creative person, it always disappoints me to see things I know I have seen before coming out of supposedly talented individuals. Sadly, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is probably a flick that should have remained a film trailer only. Yes, I'd say it would not be wrong to make the movie trailer and have that be the entire cinematic experience in this case. This might not seem like a surprise, considering how my recent viewing of Transformers (reviewed here!) was enough to convince me not to drive down to a screening in IMAX that the director himself was at. Still, I went into Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen with an open mind and even preparation emotionally for some big, nonsensical action that pretty much defines Summer Blockbuster Season. Unfortunately, this sequel does not even insult the intelligence of the viewer by attempting to be surprising, original or even good.

Building on Transformers, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen has the inevitable return to power of Megatron and the Decepticons and while the viewing experience for the mysticism introduced in the first film might make one think seeing Transformers was essential, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen stands well-enough on its own to not truly need the first installment. The story of what happens between the two films is told in the graphic novels Defiance and Alliances in more depth. As a result, that's a few hours of one's life one may save by not wasting on the first film, though by the end of the two and a half hour sequel, one might wish they simply took my recommendation and passed on this film. It is worth noting, as well, that my critique of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is biased by the fact that I saw the movie on the big screen. The larger-than-life and often confused special effects are more fun on the big screen, yet will probably be less-overwhelming on the small screen when this arrives on DVD. I'm not sure if that made me rate it higher for the big-screen presentation, but I suspect it might.

Filling in the backstory of the denizens of Cyberton (a robotic race that later split into the Autobots and Decepticons), it is revealed that there was an older society of robots, known as the Primes. The Primes created an energy source, Energon, from stars, but their society fractured over capturing energy from stars with planets where life existed. The Primes thwarted The Fallen's ancient plan to destroy Earth's star by sacrificing themselves. Now, as Sam Witwicky leaves his girlfriend Mikaela behind, Sam heads to college while the Autobots search out and eliminate Decepticon forces on Earth that are still active. Sam, though, soon begins to suffer mysterious visions of symbols written in Cybertron glyphs.

As the Decepticons reanimate Megatron, Sam undergoes a nervous breakdown. On orders from The Fallen, Megatron and his forces regroup with a hunt for Sam as the remaining Prime understands that Sam's visions have to do with the location to the Sun Harvester, the weapon which will destroy Earth's sun. The U.S. military, Sam, the Autobots and former Section Seven agent Simmons converge in Egypt, but the Decepticons meet them there. After baiting a trap with Sam's captured parents, the Decepticons wage a battle which threatens to destroy the entire world.

The sense of scope in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is decent, but writers Alexander Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, teamed for this with Ehren Kruger, have certainly lost their spark on this one. While fans of science fiction will enjoy their tongue-in-cheek references to The Matrix, this is no The Matrix. While the authors rewrote the Star Trek universe quite effectively earlier the same Summer Blockbuster Season, they fail to convince the viewers of the jeopardy to Earth in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. While the idea of the Sun Harvester is not a bad one, there is never a single moment in the film where the viewer honestly believes that Sam, Mikaela, Major Lennox (and sidekick Epps!), and Simmons might fail. To be sure, the guys make a good stab at making the situation seem dire, but they borrow from the animated Transformers film that hit the big screen when I was a kid for their big sense of surprise (or at least the significant death) and that's just sad.

Yes, we've seen it all before. Even as I try to think of what I enjoyed about the movie, it is tough to consider objectively. While Devastator is a pretty wicked Decepticon revealed in the Egypt scenes, it was also in every preview I remember seeing. Yes, you get the best of the film from the trailer as this is probably the coolest, most innovative robot monster introduced in the film. And, without ruining anything, Devastator's exit from the film makes little sense. Simmons, working to save his birthland, calls in a secret weapon (amid some of the dumbest gonad-related humor seen on the screen in some time) which seems to hit Devastator in the shoulder. While this would certainly blow off an arm, it doesn't exactly explain how the evil robot is stopped, other than that it is knocked out of frame.

But this, then, comes back to the fundamental problem with the special effects; the effects are big and ballsy. This is a turn-off-your-brain summer blockbuster with lots of explosions and people running and a final forty-five minutes that have only about ten pages of actual dialogue. But the special effects are often too big and special effects are only special if they are rendered in such a way that the viewer can tell what is going on at any given time. Bay fills his screen with long shots of massive battles with robots and humans shooting everywhere, smoke blowing and giant columns being torn apart and he alternates them with close-ups of robot parts that lack a strong sense of identifiability. And some of the effects work only if one shuts their brain off; the robotic junkyard dog is very cool, but why its spine is covered in gore when it is torn out (even if it is lubricants) makes no real sense.

What also fails to make sense are the characters. Mikaela is little more than Sam's obvious love interest/sexy sidekick, but the writers and Bay give up on even trying to make their relationship make sense. In the midst of the huge battle, Sam orders Bumblebee to take his parents out of the war zone (they pop back up before the battle is actually over with no explanation, so Bumblebee pretty much stinks as a protector), turns to Mikaela and orders her to go, too. She says no and that's the end of it. Call me a romantic softy, but I think if I were trying to save the woman I loved from being crushed to death by psychotic robots with heavy artillery, I might not simply accept her "no" an let it go!

The relationship between Sam and Mikaela and Simmons' sudden desire to explore his heritage are all the character viewers get this round. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is dreadful on the character front and it devotes its time and energy to being plot-intensive (though there are not huge dissimilarities between the chase for the All Spark in Transformers and the search for the key matrix in this sequel) and special effects-filled. At least actor John Turturro as Agent Simmons illustrates that the actor wasn't about to waste all his time on screen. Turturro might not be terribly funny in the role as Simmons, but he works with the recognizable bits of a character arc well-enough that the viewer actually cares what happens to his character. Sadly, his is the only one viewers are likely to care about.

Personally, I feel sorry for Megan Fox as Mikaela in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. Outside Transformers, I've only seen Fox in How To Lose Friends And Alienate People where she played the over-the-top sex symbol and her role was to glide through her scenes looking beautiful. Michael Bay rides the camera over Fox's curves like a car magazine soft-core photographer and seems content to not have her speak much. Instead, Fox is put in a top with minimal support and run through the desert jiggling. Sure, with all of the explosions going on, there is plenty to draw the eye outside Fox's flopping breasts, but given the target audience, Bay knows where most eyes will be.

And those eyes certainly wouldn't be on Shia LaBeouf, whose acting is so wooden I continue to wonder how he gets work. Granted, LaBeouf is not being asked to recite Shakespeare or even make us care too much about his character, Sam, but when Kevin Dunn outshines LaBeouf as Sam's father constantly (and in the big scene of emotional resonance after Sam rescues him), one wonders how he keeps getting top billing.

On DVD, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen arrives with a commentary track and an additional disc loaded with featuerettes. Many of the bonus features focus on the special effects, rather than the storytelling elements and those who watched the bonus features to the first Transformers are likely to feel a little cheated; there is not much different in the effects in this film. As well, there is the theatrical trailer to the movie.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen sets up for a sequel and while we can hope it might be better, it seems a vain hope. Given the chance to explore the characters of the Transformers universe, the writers returned to that franchise with more absurd plots (we never believe Earth's sun will be obliterated by The Fallen), more complicated special effects and more obvious exploitations of the franchise's most recognizable asset.

For other works by Alex Kurtzmen and Roberto Orci, please check out my reviews of:
Fringe - Season Two
Fringe - Season One
Star Trek
The Proposal
Lost

3.5/10

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

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Before The Next Sequel Bombs, Why Transformers Is So Very Bad.

The Good: Special effects, General attempt to create a larger sense of the world.
The Bad: Terrible acting, No real character development, Direction, Light on plot
The Basics: In an often-ridiculous special effects film, Transformers shows the appearance of giant robots who camouflage themselves as vehicles bringing their war to Earth.


As I entered the last few hours between when I have to "fish or cut bait," as it were, on an opportunity to journey down to see Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen at the Smithsonian IMAX with director Michael Bay (it was a VERY cool offer and given I had a free ticket to the event, it was very tempting), I found myself considering the original film Michael Bay released for Summer Blockbuster Season two years prior and that I saw for the very first time the night before the special event in order to prepare myself for the sequel. I was surprised to realize that I had never actually watched a Michael Bay film before seeing Transformers, so that might have been cool. In fact, it turns out the only film I had seen where Michael Bay had a big role was Friday The Thirteenth, which Bay produced. So, with one strike against Bay, I sat down and watched Transformers on DVD in my home theater. This, though, made the decision to drive six hours to see the director and the newer film in IMAX very easy. Arguably the best deterrent to wasting my time and money (and possibly just asking "Really?! Are you serious? This is the best you've got?" to the director), is seeing the film upon which the sequel was based. And, before any potential trips arise for Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, I think it’s good for me to be thinking of this film.

That might seem like a cruel assessment for a film based upon an animated series which was built around a popular toy line, especially when one considers that films like Masters Of The Universe were nowhere near as successful as Transformers, what made my stomach sink after this boring, overbearing special effects flick was seeing who wrote it. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who are responsible for the reboot of Star Trek (reviewed here!) also have the indistinction of writing this trainwreck. Where they were creative and clever for the Star Trek reimagining, here they are a strange mix of overly ambitious as storytellers and cliche in the dumbest possible ways with their few attempts at making character. All of this is eventually for naught, though, as the final act is devoid of even the pretense of character and instead devotes itself to huge special effects battles that soon become repetitive and unimpressive. And the easy bottomline here is this: this is very much a "guy's movie" with utterly unrealistic women, a boy living out pretty much the male fantasy for a seventeen year-old, cars (where the very act of driving is supposed to be impressive or cool) and big explosions.

In the desert of Qatar, a United States military installation is attacked and the target of the attack seems to be a classified database. The mechanical assailant, cut off by a hard-line cut, appears to be searching for an object in U.S. custody. In the wake of the attack, Defense Secretary John Keller mobilizes every possible resource to determine who the attacker is and how to disable the new weapon system that seems invincible. Meanwhile, in the United States, Sam Witwicky is a high school junior who is trying to sell his grandfather's relics on eBay to afford a car for himself. His father takes him to purchase a car and he leaves the lot with a little yellow jalopy that he is not truly wild about. The car soon begins to cause problems for Sam, communicating through the radio and doing its best to hook Sam up with an attractive, but snooty popular girl named Mikaela.

The storylines rapidly converge as Sam is hunted by giant robots who realize that his grandfather's glasses contain an imprint with the coordinates to the mysterious object that is being sought by two mechanical armies. As the military forces flee the active Decepticons who are searching for an object known as the All Spark, Sam - and his car, a robot named Bumblebee - is rescued by the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime. The Autobots are seeking the All Spark to try to save Earth from the war they inadvertently brought here. The problems multiply, though, when the special teams that converge at the Hoover Dam - where the Decepticon leader, Megatron, has been kept cryogenically suspended for decades - and Megatron is reanimated and the All Spark is left in the hands of a boy.

I feel like I have been running low on synonyms lately, so perhaps simplicity is what Transformers truly demands, given the way the film degenerates into a simple shoot-em-up popcorn flick; Transformers is bad. Transformers is so bad that the only reason theaters are currently packed with people checking out the sequel is that it made so much money. And by the end of Transformers, there is only truly one character who is "franchise" who actually has to be returned for the sequel. Seeing as though that character is played by Shia LaBeouf - whose acting career as the star of summer blockbusters seems to prove that miracles can happen and talent is not necessary for Hollywood success - one suspects that the relative expenses of the sequel were fairly low. In other words, no one is tuning into Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen or Transformers: Dark Of The Moon for the storyline or characters, they want to see a big special effects film and to be dazzled without having to think about much of what is going on.

Sadly, that is where Orci, Kurtzman and Bay put the viewers of Transformers as well. The film is remarkably busy and stupidly simple before it becomes a fairly lame special effects flick. I say "fairly lame special effects" even though the special effects are arguably the best thing this movie has going for it in the end because while director Michael Bay employs some ridiculously talented people for the special effects, he has little in the way of eye for making it interesting. As I watched Transformers, there was a shot in the film where missiles are being fired and giant robots are running that looked ridiculously familiar. I realized that it was because I had seen the exact same shot - framing, movement, explosions, etc. - in the trailer for the new G.I. Joe film (reviewed here!). This is not Bay's fault, but then I realized the shot was pretty much the archetypal running gunfight shots, just with bigger guns.

Where does Transformers go right? The movie starts fairly well, with the idea that there is something of international consequence going on and that no single group can figure it out. The Secretary Of Defense reasonably calls in all possible analysts in order to try to evaluate the weapon's system that attacked the U.S. in Qatar. But by the time "Sector Seven" emerges, though, the sense of reality has already been mortgaged by too much time spent with Sam Witwicky.

Sam is a pretty dull high school student who is interested in girls and cars and that's about all. He slides by doing the least possible work and that his teacher bumps his grade from a botched oral report up because of "What Would Jesus Do?" would be decent farce if only the rest of the movie were nearly as smart. Instead, though, Bay's Transformers quickly becomes less about character and any sense of how real agencies would react to an attack from giant robots to a ridiculous chase around the world with little sense of consequence or character.

In the special effects, Bay and his people get the film very wrong by an almost complete neglect of basic physics. One Autobot, Jazz, does a few funky dance moves before sliding onto the hood of a car. The last time I saw one car or car-weight/car-material object strike another car the result was not a robot leaning back looking the robot equivalent of urban funky. It was a mess. Okay, Bay wants viewers to turn their brains off. But there is turning one's brain off and there's lobotomizing oneself. Sam and Mikaela get bumped around quite a bit, falling great distances only to be caught by giant metal hands. Yet, they never react like they are in pain or that there is any consequence to the dives they take.

This brings us back to the acting in Transformers. When the cast is led by actors like Shia LaBeouf, whose acting differed very little from the virtual version of LaBeouf used in special effect sequences in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (reviewed here!), one has to cringe. Megan Fox and Rachael Taylor are cast for the obvious salivation factor that the average viewer of this PG-13 will bring to the theater. Taylor is asked to play an analyst and while that might be plausible, the fact that she picks up an accent halfway through the film is just terrible. Josh Duhamel is plausible as Captain Lennox, though he had more dramatic gravitas back when he was on All My Children. Lennox's cliche "soldier waiting to meet his baby girl back home" is so canned that one suspects Duhamel was cast for the role because he was the only actor who could pull off the lines with a straight face, whatwith his background on soaps.

But the mystery here is how Bay managed to snag John Turturro and Jon Voight for Transformers. Turturro, more than any other performer in this film, is used in a way that completely mortgages his credibility as a great actor. Turturro performs well with the virtual characters, but arrives in the film long after most viewers will care and will be looking for anything remotely about performance.

On DVD, Transformers is accompanied by Transformers: Beginnings, which is a seventeen minute, poorly animated feature that spells out the complete backstory of Transformers. Illustrated - where the film merely tells - the program shows Bumblebee sending the All Spark away from Cybertron (the planet of the Transformers) and the pursuit by Megatron. After Megatron arrives in the primordial soup and is sucked under the surface, ages go by until Captain Witwicky finds him and sets off the events in the feature film. This is all covered in the actual film, so it is pretty much a waste of time.

Then again, I suspect that for most film buffs, watching the Transformers Beginnings disc and then the trailer for the film will be more than enough to entertain them. The trailer contains many of the big special effect battles, a few shots of Megan Fox and the shots of the Transformer as ordinary cars and trucks driving along a desert road. That's about the substance of the film in a nutshell. Life is too short for more.

For other big budget special effect-driven films, please check out my reviews of:
Battle Los Angeles
2012
Tron Legacy

3/10

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

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Indiana Jones' Dismal Close Encounter: Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Flops!

The Good: Moments of concept, Moments of performance
The Bad: Direction/editing, Obvious character and plot twists/development, Special effects
The Basics: Entirely predictable after the first minute, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull plummeted from the most anticipated film of the summer when it was released.


It is a rare thing that I begin a review before I have sat through a film. I mean, I like to think I go into virtually every experience with as little bias as possible and so it's unheard of for me to begin a review before I've experienced a product. My anticipation, however, for the film that would make the boxed set Indiana Jones Trilogy (click here for my review!) obsolete was so great that I wrote some preparation notes and had a basic outline ready for my review. When I first started reading reviews of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull on its debut weekend, I began to update my notes for how I would be bucking the trend of other reviewers.

Well, that version and all of my other notes went out the window and now that I have returned from the midnight showing of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, I have just two thoughts. First, I suspect that most of the people who started this film out with a bevy of average ratings had not seen Smilla's Sense Of Snow. Second: Steven, George, I want my eight bucks back!

Anyone looking for the logical successor to Raiders Of The Lost Ark will be utterly disappointed by Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

Dragged out to Area 51 (no kidding, folks!) by agents of the KGB, Dr. Jones reluctantly aids the Russians in recovering mummified remains that were part of the 1947 incident in Roswell. Betrayed by his MI-6 friend, Mac, Jones returns to his university where he is promptly blacklisted and heads for the hills. On the train out of town, he is accosted by a young man, Mutt Williams, who begs his help to save a mutual friend.

The friend is Oxley, Mutt and Jones' mentor and his abduction by the Russians while searching for a mythical crystal skull implies the end to a quest Dr. Jones has been on for decades. Armed with new information, Indiana Jones drags the kid along for an adventure to Peru and beyond where he is reunited with Marion, who happens to be Mutt's mother, hounded by the KGB paranormal investigator, Irina Spalko, and works to solve the riddles of ancient contact by higher beings. This puts Indiana Jones and his allies and enemies on the road to Acator, better known as El Dorado, the legendary city of gold.

First, I was ready to love this movie from the beginning. I found myself in an audience of mostly younger people, which surprised me whatwith it being a school night and figuring that the crowd that would be most drawn to Indiana Jones would be closer to middle age. I was the only one in the theater to laugh, for example, when the famed Paramount logo faded into a prairie dog's hill. So begins a witless chase/race sequence that opens the film and sets a tone that is more like American Graffiti than Indiana Jones.

It did not take long before the film began to get sucked down into the territory of questionable to lousy. I mean, it takes some pretty powerful boredom for a cinephile like me to start questioning things that I have only peripheral knowledge about. So, for example, after the director rather uncleverly beat into the viewer's head that the military compound is Area 51 (done quite subtly in the first shots, then made more and more explicit in case a complete ignoramus was watching), the Russians hunt through the artifacts there for a powerfully magnetized mummy. The object is so magnetized that it tears glasses off people's faces and attracts the metal in gunpowder from long distances away. And rather than do anything so clever as allow Indiana Jones to foil all of the villains with guns by using his nonmetallic bullwhip vs. all their bullets getting sucked toward the magnetic field, the director instead begins an elaborate chase sequence through the building. To properly describe how exciting this sequence is not, it was just begun when I asked myself, "Aren't there a lot of metal parts in a car engine? Wouldn't a magnet of this strength essentially freeze up the motor?" Moreover, the viewer is asked to believe that an object that is this powerfully magnetic is either not attracting any other metal in the building or that none of the other objects in Area 51 are metallic. Please!

The point with this is, of course, that the action sequences are hardly special or interesting in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Indeed, they remind us why special effects are best in limited quantities as the editing and special effects are so poor that virtually every time the image switched from an actor to their digital stunt copy, the viewer was aware of it.

Even more important than the poor special effects - the exception to these, by the by, is this film's creature swarm sequence that easily trumps the rats in the prior installment - are the problems with the story. From the outset, the film is a mess in that it is clear that it is unsure what it wants to be. This becomes painfully obvious when the first sequences are plagued by excessive comments on aging and slapstick humor. Yes, old people fall down in the first part of this movie . . . frequently. The viewer knows that both Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford are older here. There is nothing classy or subtle about the way this is handled.

Moreover, there is the entirely problematic aspect of Indiana dealing with his father and Brody's deaths. Looking at a photograph on his desk, he laments the death of Henry Jones, Sr. What could have been an interesting or touching scene is gutted by the limitations of cast and then story. It is well-documented that Sean Connery's recent retirement put him out of play for even a cameo in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. However, it is equally clear that Steven Spielberg wanted to do something with Connery's character in this film. As soon as Indiana laments his father's death, there is a slow pan in on the photograph, desperately awaiting a flashback scene that does not exist. The viewer is set up for an entire plotline that does not exist.

But this is the tease of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull; we are set up for an Indiana Jones archaeological adventure story and instead, we get Steven Spielberg's 2008 incarnation of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. The Smilla's Sense Of Snow comparison is an apt one; both films start out as a logical, ordered, very real world and then take an abrupt right turn. This installment of the Indiana Jones story is especially banal in this regard as Spielberg attempts to mix it up by pretending the viewer did not guess the end from the very beginning. As a result, he peppers in unnecessary details that make distinctions that are both useless and unbelievable derived. Yes, the inhabitants of El Dorado, we are told, are very specific type beings, not quite like what we expected them to be, but in a useless way, much like bothering to tell an audience that the character they thought was British is from Manchester.

The truth, however, is that the moment Area 51 is shown - and repeatedly beaten into the viewer's head that it's THAT Area 51 - the film is set up as a very different film from every other Indiana Jones film, but, alas, identical to every other science fiction film of that ilk. It is no surprise, then, that this film begins to take the tact of Smilla's Sense Of Snow or even more accurately, The X-Files: Fight The Future. Once Area 51 is shown in the first five minutes, the film becomes a pathetically predictable cinematic event. Every conceit that the seasoned cinephile would predict comes to pass.

Even worse is that the character elements take on an equally predictable formula. Mutt and Indiana have a special relationship, Marion's return to Indiana's side sparks the same chemistry they once had and the babbling professor's obvious riddles begin to tire rapidly. Yes, this is a film that will make virtually any science fiction or action-adventure film fan feel smarter than Indiana Jones himself. In Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, Indiana is hardly clever; most of his lines are simple exposition as he provides the clues for where the story is going next. These are all facts not at the viewer's disposal and the film makes little sense until Indiana tells us what he knows and thus why he's about to do something.

No kidding, the person sitting next to me through the viewing was a deaf girl. When the lights came up at the end of the film, this complete stranger looked at me and shrugged. I wish I had been able to remember enough sign language to assure her that the film made little more sense with words to it.

That said, there were moments that were exciting, though this is no thanks to the awkward direction or the choppy editing (seriously, it's a rare thing I am able to notice editing problems enough to comment on them, but in this movie there are entire sequences that look like they were cut and pasted together by a fourth grade student). Moreover, for all of the plot predictability and the bits where the character's stories are obvious and entirely predictable, the concept of the film has some merit.

This is not the straightforward story and that is admirable. It is rare that a series that relies very little on supernatural elements leaps over into hard science fiction. That, however, is exactly what Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull does. This is very much a science fiction piece.

The acting is fair at best, mostly because most of the characters are cutout types that are predictable. Shia LaBeouf plays Mutt like a typical '50's greaser and he could be playing the same role in a rendition of West Side Story next month, if he wanted to, his performance was so generic to the type. Similarly, Cate Blanchette's Irina Spalko is largely the archetypal KGB operative.

The only bit of genius here is in the inclusion of Marion Williams (formerly Marion Ravenwood). Some performers are blessed with an unaging quality; Erin Gray comes immediately to mind. Should anyone wish to do an update on the 1980's Buck Rogers In The 24th Century, Colonel Wilma could still be played easily and plausibly by Gray as she has virtually not aged. Similarly, Karen Allen has that same timeless quality and she effortlessly returns to the role of Marion and makes it look simple! Allen does not so much push the role but illustrates acting genius by recreating her performance, now over twenty years past, and makes it seem effortless.

Similarly, Harrison Ford lives up to plausibly re-establishing Indiana Jones when he is not so busy delivering stale lines about how much he has aged. Once the film gets going, Ford beautifully recreates his character's mannerisms and body language.

On DVD, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is loaded with extras. The two-disc special edition might not have a commentary track, but it does have a slew of featurettes on the making of, development of the story, and very in-depth exploration of the making of the special effects. There are trailers and advertisements for other Indiana Jones products, like the Legos. This pretty much meets the industry standard of what to expect out of a DVD for this type of film.

Still, it is not enough to sell this film. By the time the most wacky and - almost - original science fiction elements enter the mix, the viewer has long since stopped caring. Instead, I find myself considering the words of a much younger person at the film tonight. As he walked out, he said, "George Lucas, is there any masterpiece you won't go back to and screw up?"

Well said, young man. Well said. Unfortunately, those looking for greatness or even entertainment are unlikely to find it here.

For other works starring Harrison Ford, please check out my reviews of:
Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars - Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi

4/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page for lists of all I have reviewed in a nice, organized fashion!

© 2010, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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A Sequel Too Smart For Summer Starts Fall Movie Season With Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

The Good: Good story, Good acting, Good characters
The Bad: Pacing, Some jargon.
The Basics: While a little slow in parts, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps returns Gordon Gekko to freedom and he sets his sights on reconciling his broken relationship with his daughter.


As summer winds to a close with inane comedies and dramas that would not hold their own during the spectacle times of Summer Blockbuster Season, I find myself - like many movie reviewers - in a lull until the Christmas Blockbuster push and Oscar Pandering Season. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps promises to buck the trend of the September Slump.

When I first saw the movie poster for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, I thought, "That's an odd choice for a sequel" and "I can't wait for Shia LaBeouf's bubble to pop!" But as inane comedies hit theaters alongside back-to-school date movies, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps offers a very different option for movie viewers and it is an option moviegoers ought to exercise. It has been years since I watched Wall Street, but the film catches the viewer right up with the important aspects of that film in order to watch this blind. However, for those who want to be surprised by Wall Street (click here for my review!), they must stop reading now. It is impossible to discuss Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps without referencing the consequences of the end of Wall Street. That said . . .

After years in prison, white collar criminal Gordon Gekko is paroled for his abuses of Wall Street trading and he finds himself unable to work in the financial markets again. Even so, by 2008, he sees a the bloated market and attempts to warn those still in financial power that a downturn is coming, but is ostracized at virtually every turn. He sees his “in,” however, with Jacob. Jacob is a young investment banker who is working his way up at Keller Zabel. Idealistic, he is troubled because he begins to suspect rival investment banker Brenton James of corrupt activities, but is unable to prove it. Gordon enters his life when Jake introduces himself at a lecture, as Gordon's daughter's fiancé. Winnie, Gordon's daughter, still loathes Gordon and the ever-calculating Gordon sees helping Jake as a step on the road to redemption with his daughter.

But soon, Brenton James – the manager of  Churchill-Schwartz, where Jake goes to work after Keller Zabel collapses – begins covering his tracks well and he reveals himself to be a virtual disciple of Gordon’s “greed is good” ideals. With Gordon pulling the strings, Jacob works to prove just how corrupt James truly is.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is the movie Oliver Stone’s other film, W. should have been. W. was a character study that failed to truly explore or extrapolate the consequences of one man’s actions. By contrast, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is almost entirely about consequences and Stone beats the viewer over the head with that idea. James is suffering the consequences of (allegedly) driving Lewis Zabel to his death, Gordon is suffering the consequences of his manipulations of the market and Bud Fox, Winnie is suffering the consequences of lacking a father figure for so many years. But even as Jacob works to prove Bretton James’ crimes, he moralizes about what getting in bed with Gordon actually means and he, arguably, is the one most aware of the potential negative consequences of his actions.

The brilliance of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is not that director Oliver Stone and writers Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff keep one guessing about whether or not prison has truly reformed Gordon Gekko or not. Gordon is Gordon and manipulation is what he does. From almost his first scene, the viewer knows he is up to something and it does not take long for that to start to be made explicit in ways that are enjoyable to watch. The initial confrontation between Gordon and Winnie gives Gordon a wonderful goal: to try to get back in his daughter’s good graces. From the moment Gordon sets his mind to that, the brilliance of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is not that Gordon is reformed, it is how he uses the same influences and manipulations to achieve a personal goal that he used to achieve his professional goals. In other words, no matter how bad Bretton James is supposed to be, Gordon Gekko’s manipulations always have at least as seedy a sensibility to them.

And, because of the Jacob/Bretton plot, there is plenty of money changing hands and financial information being spewed about. And this, naturally, puts Gordon Gekko close to the field that he is legally prevented from entering.  It also leaves many viewers confused by the jargon. It is unsurprising how Gordon manipulates Jake in the same arena and one of the saving graces of the movie is that even while it is bogged down with exploring the idea of consequences, it also explores the basic human desire for revenge. When Jake loses Zabel, something in him does snap to the irrational and the exploration of the drive to right the wrong makes his character interesting, even when the viewer feels he is just a puppet to Gordon.

Michael Douglas reprises his role of Gordon Gekko for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and he is able to humanize the character some by playing off his own charm, especially in early scenes between Jake and Gordon. But during key monologues, Douglas re-establishes the charisma and coldness that made Gordon such a great villain in Wall Street and there is an unbroken strength to the character and the performance that resonates quite strongly.

As for Shia LaBeouf, this is arguably his best work since he played Richie Lupone as a kid on The X-Files. Yes, I go that far back for a time I liked LaBeouf’s performance, but as Jacob he brings a detachment and stiffness that actually works wonderfully for making him seem to be a credible member of the financial community. In fact, his weakest moments are those when he has to be credibly in love with Carey Mulligan’s Winnie Gekko. LaBeouf may not sell the basic human love connection, but he performs well with the jargon surrounding both money and revenge. And the movie does have a lot of jargon to it.

Carey Mulligan is arguably the human heart of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. She plays an adult level of hurt beautifully and she holds her own for screen presence against Michael Douglas. Josh Brolin, Charlie Sheen and Frank Langella give memorable supporting or cameo performances (Sheen’s appearance is rather minor) that tie together the world of the Wall Street films quite well.

Ultimately, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a split movie that only truly comes together in the final scenes. It is half a revenge story with a wounded young man pairing with a master manipulator, it is half a financial story of the consequences of rampant greed. But ultimately, the film is about the dehumanizing nature of unrestrained capitalism and that is as poignant today as it was twenty-plus years ago.

For other movies featuring Michael Douglas, please check out my reviews of:
Wonder Boys
The Game

7/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my index page!

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


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