A Gruesome Build-Up To An Imaginative Last Act: The Last Temptation Of Christ!

The Good: Direction, Acting, Final act
The Bad: Alternatively boring and gory, A LONG way to go before it gets original and interesting.
The Basics: The Last Temptation Of Christ works its way up to being a theological recasting of Jacob’s Ladder.


My relationship with the film The Last Temptation Of Christ is an interesting one. Until tonight, I had not seen the movie, but it had a profound effect on my development as a liberal and as a rational human being. When I was in middle school, The Last Temptation Of Christ was released theatrically and one of the people in my class, a Ukrainian immigrant, was part of the local protests against the film. His mother and him were out picketing against the showing of The Last Temptation Of Christ in the local art theater and I remember asking him, “What is so bad about the movie?” And he told me that the movie was blasphemous and I asked him what about it was blasphemous. He dodged the question with pat answers and I distinctly recall asking him what he saw in the film that was so disturbing as to be worth protesting, a question I asked with my usual youthful, earnest curiosity. His response was that he had not seen the movie and that caused me to ask instantly, “How can you criticize and protest something you have not even seen?” Yup, that was the moment I credit as being the moment I became a fully rational being.

So, tonight, my wife and I sat down to watch The Last Temptation Of Christ. I had been told – in the intervening years – that it was something of a death dream, like Jacob’s Ladder (reviewed here!). Having finished it, my disappointment comes more from the fact that the hype was once again far greater than the film that it surrounded. The Last Temptation Of Christ is hardly an audacious film. It is not as creative as Dogma (reviewed here!) and I cannot really understand why the film garnered so much controversy. It is not as gory or pointless as The Passion Of The Christ (reviewed here!) and most of the film is a surprisingly straightforward retelling of the story of Jesus Christ. It takes a very long time to get around to being anything truly original. It is also worth noting that I have never read the novel upon which The Last Temptation Of Christ is based; this is a pure review of the film only.

Jesus Christ is a crossmaker for the Romans who has no particular agenda. Judas, working for the Zealots, killing Romans and working against the Empire, is given orders to kill Jesus. Judas does not carry out the directive and journeys out into the desert. There, he is tempted by the devil for forty days and forty nights and is then baptized by John The Baptist. After that, he begins preaching love and the philosophy of the ax (cutting away the old ways), which makes him a target for the Israelites.

Eventually, Pontius Pilate sentences Jesus to death on the cross, where the devil appears before him. Then, he has a vision of his life as an ordinary man who is able to marry, have children and live under the radar while his disciples are persecuted.

The Last Temptation Of Christ features a ridiculous disclaimer at the outset announcing to the viewer that it is a work of fiction and given how it resolves itself, it is hard for me to imagine why the Religious Right actually had an issue with the film. The Last Temptation Of Christ is much more the story of Jesus Christ than it is not. The final resolution puts Jesus on the familiar path after a remarkably brief interlude where Jesus experiences temptation. It’s a lot of boring and familiar story until the last act.

The characters of Jesus and Judas in The Last Temptation Of Christ are interesting characters. Jesus is filled with self-doubt and the desire to get the voices out of his head. Willem Dafoe plays Jesus with uncertainty and in a way that makes it almost seem like he is schizophrenic in the beginning. Harvey Keitel’s Judas is mercenaric and angry and he and Dafoe play off one another exceptionally well. The Last Temptation Of Christ is a good character study of an uncertain character finding his way and a righteous, angry character.

But we see that in innumerable movies. The fact that it is set in biblical times and/or that the characters are recognizable religious icons is unimportant. This is, for the most part, just another retelling of the story of Christ and its original aspects hardly justify the first two hours of the film. Martin Scorsese directs the film well, but the story is hardly as audacious as it originally promised.

On the Criterion Collection DVD, The Last Temptation Of Christ has an engrossing commentary track and featurettes. For those who find the source material engaging, the bonus features are impressive enough to make one want to buy the DVD.

For other films with a theological bent to them, check out my reviews of:
Ben-Hur
Constantine
Left Behind

4/10

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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The Gangs Of New York Is A Lacking Tale Of Revenge And History

The Good: Daniel Day-Lewis, Moments of directing
The Bad: Howard Shore's soundtrack, Lack of use of quality actors, Romantic subplot, Idiot characters
The Basics: When gangs ruled the Five Points of New York City, Irish immigrants rise up against the Native New Yorkers in a dull tale of revenge and confused character types.


Most everyone says that Martin Scorsese is a genius and it's easy to see why when watching The Gangs Of New York. Scorsese has a great eye for movement and framing and using the camera to tell the story he wants to tell. He populates his film with talented actors and has a decent sense of pacing. Unfortunately, there is little that lives up to his potential genius in this film.

The Gangs Of New York begins with the slaughter of the Dead Rabbit gang in the Five Points in New York City (made even more distracting by the time frame of the massacre being given after the battle as opposed to before). This is not a big plot revelation as anyone who knows movies can figure that Liam Neeson's character will not survive given he is not billed near the top in the credits. Priest Vallon is killed and sixteen years later, his son, Amsterdam, comes looking for revenge. He quickly absorbs into the corrupt New York City run by Boss Tweed and Bill the Butcher, the man who killed Priest. Amsterdam gets closer to Bill until he is exposed and leads an Irish revolution against the "Native" New Yorkers and the Civil War draft changes everything.

First, the high points. Daniel Day-Lewis is phenomenal as Bill the Butcher. He brings William Cutting to life with a crooked grin, an expert sense of timing and a fury and ferocity that is unlike anything he has ever done on film before. There is no trace of his subtle and likable character from The Last Of The Mohicans, nor his dull, plodding character from The Age Of Innocence. Here, Day-Lewis performs and convinces the viewer he is someone and something totally different, a corrupt killer. In short, he does everything an actor is supposed to with smashing results.

Unfortunately, Day-Lewis is the exception to the rule. A lot of talented actors appear in The Gangs Of New York and are woefully neglected and/or ignored completely. Jim Broadbent's Tweed is decent, but remains almost entirely a peripheral character. The acting talents of John C. Reilly and Brendan Gleeson are almost entirely wasted in the bit roles they perform in this movie. Similarly, Liam Neeson's performance is too easy to neglect given that the entirety of his performance is in the first fifteen minutes of a 166 minute epic.

The real loser of The Gangs Of New York (outside the viewer who sits through the entire thing), is the story. We've seen revenge stories before. I happen to like a decent story of revenge and intrigue. This is not that. It has all of the same, old cliches. Parent is killed, disappears, returns years later with vengeance on their mind, gets close to killer, is discovered, the situation moves to a resolution. Even the confused, out of the subtext ending that might surprise some, seems canned and serves only to rob the film of a decent catharsis. Instead, the conflict between Amsterdam and the Butcher seems simply like it wasn't worth resolving. It's a lot of blood and violence to lead to a vengeance not worth the effort to resolve.

Moreover, the romantic subplot, and I use the term "romantic" loosely, in The Gangs Of New York between Amsterdam and Jenny is both entirely cliche and tacked on. There is an attempt to make triangle issues between Amsterdam, Jenny and the Butcher, but it feels like a cheap romantic tool used to add a woman to the mix. In short, Cameron Diaz's Jenny feels like a character added at the last moment so there could be some sort of romantic interest for Amsterdam and it fails to engage the viewer. Instead, we feel like we are being cheated because it distracts from the emotional intensity of the revenge plot. This is a rare instance where the film would have been fine without trying to balance the cast and it might have made a more powerful commentary to show the obsession of the vengeful son to not include anything as redemptive (or in this case, obscuring) as a romantic attachment.

Like Jenny, many of the characters are simply archetypes that fit into a rather generic role in the larger storytelling mythos. The problem is, we - as viewers - want actual characters and end up woefully disappointed by The Gangs Of New York. The let down here is that almost all of the characters turn out to be complete idiots in the end. For example, Brendan Gleeson's world-weary warrior Monk transforms in an instant from a battle-hardened soldier and mentor to Amsterdam into an idealistic moron who is willing to turn his back on the greatest villain he has ever known. And unfortunately, he is not the exception in this movie, he embodies the rule. All of the characters defy their better judgment and the common sense of the viewer by reversing their own wariness and anger.

My final problem with The Gangs Of New York was Howard Shore's derivative score for the movie. As a big fan of The Lord Of The Rings saga (reviewed here!), I was surprised while watching The Gangs Of New York to find many similarities in the soundtrack to the Trilogy, especially in the battle scenes. This disappointment was amplified when Howard Shore's name came up in the credits; the similarity was the result of Shore's sudden lack of musical imagination and it plagues the movie as Shore attempts to link (musically) gang-ridden New York City to Middle Earth. That's just wrong.

In short, The Gangs Of New York may have had potential and there are stylistic elements like directing and costume design that work in its favor, but the potential is never reached because the actors are underused or are playing characters with such contrast to sensibility that they are almost unwatchable and ultimately not relatable.

For other films with Jim Broadbent, be sure to check out my takes on:
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince
Inkheart
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe
Nicholas Nickleby
Bridget Jones’s Diary
Smilla’s Sense Of Snow
Brazil

5/10

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

© 2012, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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I Might Be The Only One Not Enchanted By Hugo

The Good: Look, Theme
The Bad: Erratic Look, Character, Acting, Pacing, Dull Plot
The Basics: Hugo is a slow, unimaginative, film that never quite gets going.


When this year's Oscars aired, I found myself losing many of my bets. Every year, I get a little thrill off of betting on the various categories and this past year, I kept finding myself on the losing end of the wagers (even if this year they were mostly friendly bets between my wife and I). The source of my losses (though she lost even more than I!) was that I continued to bet on pretty much anything but Hugo or The Artist in virtually every category. Unfortunately for me, Hugo won quite a few awards, which saw me betting wrong. So, tonight, I decided to see what all the fuss was about and my wife and I took in Hugo.

Hugo is Martin Scorsese's attempt to make a movie his children would be able to watch and I have to wonder why his children would want to watch such an unspeakably boring movie. I mean, I have a love of fantasy and the fantastic, but it's entirely possible to make a movie where children discover the magic of the world and the world around them and make the film interesting. Hugo, alas, is not that film. With a quest that oscillates between the boring and the pointless, Hugo is very much a children's movie, but one that never seems to land. Instead, it is a film that seems to be about finding magic in the world, but it is packaged in a disappointingly slow, meandering film that is too mundane to be truly fantastic.

Young Hugo Cabret lives in the clockworks at the Paris train station. There, as an orphan, he keeps the clocks running and steals the parts he needs to make an automaton function and the food he needs to stay alive. Hounded by the station inspector and threatened by Melies, the owner of the toyworks, Hugo desperately works to get the automaton working, as it was the last thing he and his father worked on together. With the help of Isabelle, Melies's goddaughter, Hugo looks deeper into the mystery of the unfinished mechanical man.

When Isabelle's key necklace allows the automaton to be wound up, the pair discover that the automaton draws. But the mystery deepens when it signs the drawing "Georges Melies." As Hugo struggles to avoid the station inspector, Gustav, he works to reanimate the automaton and discover its relation to Isabelle's godfather . . . and his own father.

Hugo is, in part, a movie about the love of movies. Unfortunately, the movie is very erratic. From the opening shots, where the setting appears animated, the film wanders between a pointless series of chases and a series of vignettes that express a love of movies. Hugo sneaks Isabelle into her first movie, the automaton's drawing is of a frame from the first film Isabelle's father saw and while Gustav poorly flirts, Hugo recounts a history of early movies. The movie could truly be about finding magic in the mundane, save that elements like Gustav's relentless hunting of Hugo is painfully realistic. The story seems much more sloppy than in any way incredible. Hugo is like a boring version of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (reviewed here!). At least A.I. had a clear purpose, even if it undermined itself.

In Hugo, Martin Scorsese wanders and the result is a film that is full of melodrama - Hugo's tantrums as he tries to recover the book that seems to have the clues to fixing the automaton from Melies wear thin - and distractions to what seem like the movie's sense of purpose. For a master filmmaker, Scorsese seems unsure of what the story he wants to tell is. Moreover, he does not seem to know how he want to tell it. Is it a story of the triumph of love, the magic of the movies, a generic adventure with classic villains, the story of how children grow up, who the heck knows? But more than that, the pacing is very slow and fails to capture the enthusiasm of youth. Instead, Hugo is somewhat tortured and trapped in his own anguish and Isabelle is more antagonistic and pedantic than an interesting sidekick.

As for the acting, Asa Butterfield does Hugo no rich services as the title character. To be fair, he is a child actor, playing a kid and he is awkward and stiff through much of the film. While Chloe Grace Moretz has not even a hint of her character from Kick-Ass (reviewed here!) as Isabelle, she does not make Isabelle very interesting at all. In the scene where Isabelle experiences her first movie, she opens her eyes wide like children are "supposed" to, but she seems like what she is; a girl putting on an air. That's not the character, that's the acting.

Sir Ben Kingsley does what he can as Melies. For such a refined actor, he is relegated to a surprisingly monolithic role. Kingsley does best with depth and subtlety and Melies does not start that way at all. He is angry and even Kingsley cannot sustain generically angry in an interesting way. Surprisingly, Sir Ben Kingsley is trumped on the acting front by Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen, best known for his absolutely zany roles, plays Gustav and he actually has quite a bit of depth in the role which is tangential to the primary story. Sacha Baron Cohen plays shy surprisingly well in Hugo and as little as I liked the character and plot thread, his performance is one of the best of his career.

It is not, however, enough to save Hugo. Hugo is a children's movie made far too dull to entertain or inspire even a child.

For other works with Sacha Baron Cohen, check out my reviews of:
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Da Ali G Show

2.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the movie reviews I have written!

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

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An Urban Comedy Under The Sea: Shark Tale

The Good: I'm stretching here, so I'll say "moments of humor"
The Bad: Unimpressive Animation, Obvious overused story, one-dimensional characters, just dumb
The Basics: Shark Tale should be avoided for its gross racism and sexism that attempts to fly by as "family fare."


Some time ago, it became part of popular culture to refer to all things "black" as "urban." That is to say, when people want to use a polite euphemism for "black," they say "urban." Thus, it became something strangely appropriate to talk about the language of "urban music" as opposed to saying "man, people swear a lot in that newfangled black music." Or we started to talk about "urban crime" instead of "black on black crime." Sometimes, things are just plain ridiculous.

I preface this review this way because within five minutes of beginning Shark Tale, it became obvious to me that I was watching the same "urban comedy" I've seen before. I've seen such jokes and character types in such bla . . , er, "urban" movies as Barbershop and . . . well, others that aren't coming immediately to mind. All I know is that within a few minutes of watching the protagonist in Shark Tale, I felt that someone at Dreamworks, at some meeting somewhere, said "we need to do something to bring in more money. We need to target a new audience. What audience haven't we exploited yet?" "Well, there's a black audience we've neglected." "Phil! It's 'urban!' But good idea. We could make an urban film and use all sorts of urban actors to flesh out our world. Who's the most popular urban actor of our time?" "Well, there's Denzel . . ." "What about that Fresh Prince guy? He's kind of urban?" "Yeah, he's wildly popular! Call Will Smith! We'll need a good urban actress to star along side him. Who could that be?" "Well, how about Angela Bassett? Or Vivica A. Fox?" "No, Phil, we need someone even more Urban, you know with a capital B, er, U." "How about Renee Zellweger and Angelina Jolie?" "Well, they're pretty whi . . . er, suburban, but at least they'll let us draw them as fish." "Yeah, Jolie might even complain that we made her lips too small . . ." "Shut up, Phil."

All humor aside (and if that amused even one of you, it's more than Shark Tale would do), Shark Tale is a pretty pathetic and transparent tale of Black America set under the sea. The saddest part of this incorporation is that it lacks all of the genuine social commentary that could set it apart from a decent satire or an original urban comedy. Instead, in attempting to be a "family friendly" movie, Shark Tale incorporates and reinforces much of the worst stereotypes in American Ethnic relations today.

Enter Oscar, your slacker-type, minimum wage stereotype. He is the type of lazy fish that Conservatives like to characterize all urban fish as. He is a barely-working grunt, showing up late to his job at the Whale Wash. Like other urban fish, he has maxed out his credit to loan sharks and bookies on ridiculous get-rich-quick schemes because, as any Conservative will tell you, those urban fish can't be trusted to use credit responsibly. And they're always dreaming of something better. I wonder why they do that? Oscar, being a male urban fish, is completely oblivious to the affections of Angie, another urban fish working at the Whale Wash in an administrative capacity.

The Reef, the urban area where Oscar, Angie and others live, is plagued by sharks, who in this incarnation take the stereotypical role of the Italian-descended Americans. Naturally, then, the sharks are all into organized crime, led by Don Lino, who is trying to teach his pacifistic shark son Lenny how to be ruthless enough to run the racket on the Reef. When the Don's other (more vicious) son is killed in an accident while chasing Oscar, Oscar and Lenny become buddies (in a real Eddie Murphy/Judge Rienhold way). Oscar becomes the celebrity of the Reef, Lenny gets to go into hiding and Don Lino, believing his sons have been killed, goes off with murderous rage as we all know sharks are inclined to do.

Okay, first off, the positive. I laughed once during the movie. I don't remember even what the joke was. But there was a laugh involved. And it didn't come when the vaguely homophobic reference to Lenny as a dolphin was made (hey, if the movie is going to be pretty transparently anti-Italian and anti-Bl . . . urban, why not throw in a few anti-gay pokes, too?). I laughed once.

Beyond that, there's nothing impressive about Shark Tale. Indeed, just the opposite, this is an unremarkable movie. From the outset, the animation is nowhere near as impressive as previous Pixar or Disney-Pixar movies. In their new thrust to churn out some computer-generated animated fodder at least once a year, Pixar has lost its magic for detail. In Monsters, Inc., there was a real treat seeing the film on the big screen for the impressive details. At least on the big screen, the viewer could marvel at how distinct every one of Sully's hairs were. Shark Tale lacks that level of animation detail.

Shark Tale is also disappointingly humorless. It is hard to see how even a child would find Shark Tale funny. I suppose another reason for making a "children's movie" with an "urban flavor" is that a lot of music, fashion and popular culture is taking more from popular urban culture. Little children of all ethnicities have baggy jeans and basketball jerseys and know what "bling-bling" is (though the origins of the latter term, as a poignant moment on The Wayne Brady Show illustrated, has its origins in the early portions of the previous century's monied classes). Perhaps even whites do not get off scot-free in this movie if the slow, rich whales are the metaphor for caucasians.

But there is something to the argument that Shark Tale is perpetrating dangerous stereotypes under the guise of the same old stupid "rags to riches" story. I was concerned that perhaps I was putting forward an argument that was not necessarily there, but the more I consider this movie, the more disturbing and dangerous I think it may be. Just about every subculture portrayed in Shark Tale is from a minority (save women) and none is portrayed positively. Here, in frank language, is how Shark Tale pervades and reinforces terrible ideas about how people who aren't white live:

Black Americans - characterized, or caricatured, by Oscar (voiced by Will Smith) are portrayed as lazy, poor, and not terribly cunning. Oscar is an opportunist who lies, is caught in his lie, lies some more, comes up with a crazy scheme to continue perpetrating his lies, until he is put in a situation where he is in danger and he folds like a cheap card table. And at the end of the character's journey from rags to riches, he is put back in his place, servicing the whales. The difference between Oscar at the beginning of the movie and at the end is that at the beginning he has real dreams for advancement and riches and living in the skyrise, and at the end, finding himself back at the Whale Wash as the new owner of the facility, he finds that he can dream, but only so far. In the greatest work of American Literature (my obviously unbiased opinion), Invisible Man (reviewed here!), Ellison writes the line of the Black Predicament in the business world, "Please hope him to death, and keep him running." The idea there is that the key to controlling the oppressed minorities (especially true of the economically disadvantaged) is to give them hope, but no real hope for progress. Shark Tale reinvents this idea that Ellison wrote about in 1947 through Oscar by dashing Oscar's dreams, but leaving him positive about where he is left. So, Oscar goes from the bottom of the sea, to the top of the Reef and ends up back at the bottom of the reef, but feels better about it because now he has slightly more of a stake in it. If the trend held, any Shark Tale sequel would have to, by necessity, begin with Oscar near to losing the Whale Wash (probably through his irresponsibility) and then ending with him reclaiming the small business. Shark Tale illustrates how complacent the masses of poor and predominantly Black Americans may be kept in their place by simply turning their dreams of equality into minority partners in the worst possible businesses in America. And that suits such ill-educated and lazy people anyway, if Shark Tale is any indication.

Women - fare no better in Shark Tale as characterized by three personas: Angie, Lola, and Katie Current. Angie (Zellweger) is intelligent but refuses to express herself. Indeed, she is characterized as demure, subservient (or at the very least deferential) to Oscar in all things and lacking in confidence in her own abilities and beauty. She has a crush on Oscar, wants to help him out, but only expresses her true love for him through violent, irrational outbursts when she has pushed him away. Moreover, her affections for Oscar compel her to remain silent when she learns of his duplicities rather than exposing him. Men, rejoice! Women won't turn you in if you pay them lip service from time to time. Show them the least amount of affection and they'll trail you like puppies. Except, that is, for the type like Lola (Angelina Jolie). Lola is a golddigger type explicitly (through music) characterized as a woman who is only after money. Of course, an urban fish like Oscar just sees good tail and will go after it, never thinking of the consequences. And then there's the annoying cameos by Katie Currant (Katie Couric), who is pushy and invasive as the lead reporter on the Reef. If her real shows are like the parody here, one wonders who watches her shows. So, to clarify, women in Shark Tale are either deferential, spineless and starved for attention or emotionless predators hungry for men's money or just plain annoying.

Italian-Americans - are simply brutish mobsters. The sharks in Shark Tale are the parody of Americans of Italian decent. Allow me to preface this by saying my view on the Italian-American Defamation League's problems with The Sopranos was an overreaction: "The Sopranos" never tried to characterize all Italian-Americans as gangsters, merely exploring that sect of Americans of Italian decent who happen to be mobsters and how they operate. Conversely, Shark Tale characterizes all sharks as mobsters (save Lenny, who is something of a pouf). Robert De Niro voices Don Lino and helps to perpetrate the stereotype of Italians as ruthless, family-loving mobsters who will terrorize those who they can hold any sort of power over, including their own assistants (characterized by an octopus in Shark Tale). The sharks solve their problems through asserting dominance and threats, respecting only strength and having a fiery temper.

Homosexuals - might be a bit of a stretch in Shark Tale, but Lenny (Jack Black) is played as an effeminate shark who disguises himself as a dolphin to leave the shark mob. The most obvious implication is that the pacifistic Lenny is somehow less of a man, a common stereotype about gays that the rabid homophobics never seem to spread when confronted with the athletic (and clearly masculine) sect of gays who place an emphasis on bodybuilding and fitness. Lenny is a caricature with a faint lisp, enthusiasm for dressing up and also happens to be an unmanly vegetarian.

Jews - what is far less opaque is the stereotype of Jews in Shark Tale. Since well before the time of Shakespeare, Jews have been characterized as the business-people, the money lenders, the people who are good with money and seem to have the financial advantage over everyone else. Martin Scorsese plays the pufferfish Sykes who is both an agent and a money lender. He is the common link between Don Lino and Oscar, the middleman between the Reef and the Mob. Which, if we've learned anything from the ethnic stereotypes in Shark Tale is appropriate. After all, who better to deal with the money of two vastly disparate groups as Blacks and Italians than a Jew?

And the final nail in the ethnic culture might well be Sykes' assistants. Two Rastafarian jellyfish who act as muscle for the Jewish accountant. Well, at least Shark Tale was smart enough to avoid any allegations of promoting hate crimes. After all, if a little urban fish is assaulted by Jamaican Immigrant jellyfish, it's not really a hate crime. It's "those people" doing it to themselves. And popular culture seems to have little problem with depictions of black on black crime, er, make that "urban on urban violence."

Shame on Shark Tale and those involved with it for their lack of foresight and transparent poor depictions of so many different ethnicities. For some of us, positive relations between all peoples - regardless of color, gender, sexuality or country of origin - is more than some fish story.

For other animated Dreamworks films, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil
Shrek Forever After
Hoodwinked!
Shrek

1.5/10

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

© 2012, 2007, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Another Year The Best Picture Probably Wasn't: The Departed.

The Good: Decent acting, Moments where characters are interesting, DVD extras
The Bad: Pacing, Plot becomes tired, Does not seem all that fresh
The Basics: The Departed, another weak Best Picture win, is filled with gore, generic archetypal characters and performances that simply use the innate talent of the performers.


For years now, I've been taking cracks at the Emmy's, Oscars and Golden Globes for their obsessive need to present their awards annually. Indeed, my best argument comes in the form of the Best Picture awards given out by those shows that deal with films. The luck some films have is in being nominated in a year of mediocre films. The result is a collection of remarkably mixed "Best Picture" wins. Sure, The Departed might be the best film to hit theaters in 2006, but it's not a particularly great film, not one likely to endure as a true American classic. Yes, I'm arguing that the Academy ought to have held off a year until there was a Best Picture that was also a Great Picture, because for as good as The Departed is, it's no Casablanca.

Opening with lines that are intended to shock the viewer - Jack Nicholson's character opens the film with a voice over that includes racist epitaphs - The Departed relies more on setting than actual character to establish the world it embodies and while it is entertaining, it's not the masterpiece of all films that several people seem to want it to be.

Frank Costello is an Irish gangster in Boston who has the good fortune of having a long view and has never been effectively caught by the corrupt police in Massachusetts. The State and the Feds have a long view as well and they have worked hard to train an officer, Billy Costigan, to infiltrate the mob. He had pretty sterling connections considering his father was corrupt, so he is compelled by two chief detectives to take on additional training (like jail time) to establish an image that will effectively allow him to infiltrate Frank's gang to get the evidence needed to put Costello away for good.

The problem the Feds and the Massachusetts State troopers have is that Costello had essentially the same plan, raising Colin Sullivan to be a brilliant cop who is assigned to Costello's case. It does not take long before Costigan realizes there is a mole within the agency and Sullivan is forced to work extra hard to cover his tracks. In the process, Costigan and Sullivan share the same woman, Costello becomes sloppy and a killing spree breaks out that puts a real timetable on every person's agenda.

The Departed is a police drama that is deeply involved with undercover characters and the only character aspect that is genuinely interesting from the beginning to the end of the film is the identity-in-trust of Costigan. In order to have Costigan become an effective mole of Costello's organization, his identity must be erased and completely restructured. Costigan, Captain Queenan and undercover Sergeant Dignam are the only three people who know the truth or have access to it. So on a character level, the viewer knows that Costigan is safe and can get out once his assignment is over, so long as either Queenan or Dignam is alive and in a position to help him.

Thus, The Departed only becomes truly interesting when those three characters are placed in real jeopardy. Fortunately, the script is just smart enough to recall this and keep Sullivan smart enough to rearrange the proverbial pieces on the board to keep those three essential characters off balance with is machinations. When Queenan, for example, is menaced, the viewer cares because we understand the real threat is to the strung-out Costigan.

That said, most of the characters are either unlikable (like Costello) or more archetypes than actualized characters. The female characters - notably police psychologist Madolyn Madden - are generally flat and serve to advance the fairly male-dominated plot line. Madden is as corrupt and easy to manipulate as all of the men and the suggestion in her character that because she is open to lying to her boyfriend (Sullivan) that she wants to be lied to is particularly disturbing. Indeed, the problem with the Sullivan/Madden relationship is that it is built on lies that come far too easily for both characters and leave the viewer wondering what truly motivates the pair to be together other than simple physical lust. At the end of the day, though, the role is inconsequential; Madden is mostly used as a tool to expose more plot points and continue to paint Sullivan and Costigan. In other words, she never pops as a character who is distinct in her own right and does not seem to have a life or identity outside serving the basic plot of the main story.

And for as edgy as the film is supposed to be, so much of it feels like it has been done before. The Departed hinges on a series of twists and turns and by the time the viewer gets to a certain point in the film, the twists become predictable and we accept that the good guys might not win the day. The bloodbath that ensues over the turf war between the law and the mob becomes an almost predictable series of strikes and counterstrikes. There comes a point in the film that the bodies start piling up and I began to call just who would be killed off next. I got them all right. It's pretty sad when a supposed thriller is not quite engaging enough to keep us within the film long enough to finish its story. But I found myself bored with the chase and the sequence of reversals which allowed me to start commenting on the work as I watched it. That's never a good thing.

And perhaps the most shocking element of characterization - the use of racist terms and the boatload of swearing - has been done before. The Departed thinks it's new to characterize bad people by illustrating their unacceptable social behavior with their language. Well, Costello is pretty bad from the outset without throwing around "nigger" and every other word in the book. And by the end of the film, who is good and who is less than based on the number of shots fired is pretty clear.

The Departed is also fairly graphic with the violence and gore. Those who complain about such things as the alien blowing out the head of a convict with its inner jaw in Alien 3 will be hard pressed to say that the gore in this film is not more significant. After all, here we see multiple people shot - including right in the face with big gory splatters behind them -, thrown off buildings, and dying in other painful ways. And we see it happen on screen through the magic of special effects and make-up and the difference between it being done by alien life forms and humans should be more horrific in this context. Yet, most of the reviewers praised The Departed and found the gore in films like Alien 3 to be over-the-top. I suppose times change. Or Martin Scorsese gets a freebie for being Martin Scorsese. I'm becoming convinced that certain directors are able to get away with more based on the virtue of being famous and well-respected. In The Departed, Scorsese pushes the limits of violence and gore with a story that is violent at its core, but that could have been classier with its presentation of death.

In other words, Scorsese illustrates death with little poetry and quite a bit more realism than most directors would choose to. But even Scorsese does not go the whole distance. Like so many, he seems terrified of showing the true impact of firearm deaths. It's one thing to blow away a character on screen and illustrate the back of their head splattering against the wall; it's entirely another to make the front of that same face unrecognizable with that blast or illustrate what happens to the body when it hits the ground (yea collapsing skull!). My point here is that the arguments for realism fall short with the follow-through. Scorsese, like so many directors, tries to make killing artistic and entertaining and while he ratchets up the gore as a result, it cannot be said it's purely for realism's sake. Of course, in order to show a truly realistic wasting of a human with a shot to the face, the MPAA would probably only pass the film with an "R" with one such incident.

That said, the place where the film deserved to excel was in the casting. I love great actors, but in the case of The Departed, the casting makes the movie more than the acting does. Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg are not playing characters that are a real stretch for them. Indeed, some of the best actors in the film are playing well within a niche we have seen them in before. One of my favorites, Martin Sheen, who plays Captain Queenan, is playing the role essentially identically to his bit role in Bobby. In other words, we've seen the performance before and with most of the other principle characters, it's a similar thing.

The big exception is Leonardo DiCaprio as Costigan. DiCaprio caught my eye last year in Blood Diamond and he was great in that role. It was different for him and he used the opportunity to stretch as an actor. In that part, DiCaprio plays more of a rogue and the challenge for him in The Departed is to play a straight-laced man as a rogue and his performance lives up. He is easily the shining star of The Departed and he was robbed for an acting award for either this or Blood Diamond that year. As unlikely as it might be, DiCaprio becomes completely convincing as a man on the right side of the law working on the wrong side of it. He is able to embody a ruthless quality through much of the film, but play the scenes where that is wearing on his character with an essential humanity that rings true. It is possibly his best performance to date.

And it is that that finally pushed the film up to a territory where I felt I could recommend it. The Departed is a long film that feels long (it's 151 minutes) and it has more than the requisite twists and turns to keep the average film viewer entertained. But for those looking for something truly groundbreaking or sophisticated, this didn't add up. In other words, it's fine entertainment, but it's not truly more than that. I suppose I want my Best Pictures to be more than just entertaining.

The DVD has a commentary track and a bonus disc filled with featurettes, none of which excited me enough to more enthusiastically recommend the film.

As a winner of the Best Picture Oscar, this film is part of W.L.'s Best Picture Project, which is available by clicking here! (Please do!)

For other works featuring police as primary characters, please check out my reviews of:
Did You Hear About The Morgans?
Blade: Trinity
L.A. Confidential


5/10

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

© 2010, 2009, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Martin Scorsese Directs Horror Ho-Hum Which Still Works With Shutter Island!

The Good: Actually scary, Decent direction, Cool character development, Good supporting performances.
The Bad: Some truly hammy acting from DiCaprio, Overbearing soundtrack, Serious pacing issues.
The Basics: Despite some campy moments, Martin Scorsese manages to direct a horror film which is appropriately deep and unsettling with Shutter Island!


I wonder if, when Martin Scorsese learned his film Shutter Island was being pushed back from October (2009) to February 2010, he thought, “Oh, crap.” February is a notoriously bad month for films. It’s pretty much the dumping ground for bad films, the way late-August/early-September is. In that case, movies that couldn’t quite perform during Summer Blockbuster Season are dumped into the marketplace as the studios gear up toward the push for the winter movies and Oscar Pandering Season. In the case of February, cinephiles who are burnt out from Oscar Pandering Season watch a lot of schlock while the Oscar votes are tabulated and the new year of movies actually begins with March’s attempt to make new year blockbusters. Scorsese, having been around the movie business for many years, had to have known he was being bumped to the theatrical equivalent of a Friday night prime time timeslot. Shutter Island opens during a particularly dismal time of the movie year.

So, I was unprepared for how good it was. In fact, having seen the preview trailers, I was entirely unenthusiastic about the screening I attended and I went with a sense of trepidation and the feeling that I was wasting my time and gas money. It’s always nice when I can admit I’m wrong. Shutter Island is dark, moody and despite an overbearing soundtrack and problematic performance bits by Leonardo DiCaprio, the psychological horror shakes things up in a moody and wonderful way. The result is a movie which is actually scary and is difficult to watch. As always under such circumstances, it is worth noting that I have not read the novel upon which this was based, so this is a very pure review of the film alone.

Teddy Daniels and Chuck are U.S. Marshals who are sent to Ashecliffe Hospital For The Criminally Insane on the mysterious Shutter Island when one of the inmates, a murderer named Rachel, goes missing. Baffled at how an inmate might disappear without a trace, the Marshals are met with hostility by the doctors and workers on the island as they join the search for the dangerous fugitive. But the mystery compounds for the investigators when they turn up no clues, except for a note which implies that there might be more inmates in the facility than there are on record. When the investigation is halted because of a hurricane on the coast, Teddy and Chuck are cut off from the mainland and trapped on Shutter Island.

At that point, Teddy begins to hallucinate and the hospital administrator, Dr. Cawley, tips his hand in insinuating that understanding the minds of the killers is the best way to cure them. The mystery rapidly compounds when Teddy’s reality becomes unsettled and the mystery he was sent to investigate may not be the true reason he is at the facility. Distancing himself from Chuck, haunted by memories of liberating a concentration camp and the death of his wife, Teddy flees the facility and searches for answers outside the hospital.

Shutter Island quickly becomes a “haunted house” type horror story and the house is both the physical boundaries of Ashecliffe which is cut off from the rest of the world and the limits of Teddy’s mind. Teddy’s hallucinations are psychologically significant and terrifying and while his backstory is mentioned, seeing the manifestations of his past as he becomes more twisted by his surroundings is effectively frightening and compelling. And while Shutter Island is racked with the “haunted house” conceits of things in the dark jumping out and location-based jumpy moments, what is most impressive about Shutter Island is that there is a decent amount of character work in it. This is essentially a combination of a “mess with reality” story and a “haunted house” story.

Teddy arrives at Ashecliffe having lost his wife and having witnessed atrocities in World War II, so he arrives on-screen as something between a gumshoe and a worldly man who is looking to keep order in the world. From the moment he is compelled to surrender his sidearm, he becomes unsettled; he is not a man who likes giving up control and it quickly becomes apparent that Cawley, Dr. Naehring, and the hospital warden are all about maintaining control. So, Teddy becomes a likable protagonist and while he becomes unsettled rather early on, the film remains watchable because it unfolds in a way that is both stylish and compelling. Despite never having read the book, the film feels like it is moving toward a science fiction-type reversal at the end and there is one, but writers Laeta Kalogridis and Dennis Lehane do a decent job of laying the clues before the viewer so seasoned cinephiles will see it coming.

What makes it worthwhile is the journey in this case. While the film is dreadfully slow in parts, it has a decent “jump” factor. It has been some time since a thriller actually got my heart pumping, but Shutter Island made me jump and flinch, which are both excellent traits for a movie like this. Martin Scorsese does a good job of using shadows both to hide and reveal and the way he keeps the cameras close to ceilings during many of the chase scenes gives the entire place a very claustrophobic feel. The sense of being trapped plays well on the big screen and helps enhance what might be a very average horror movie otherwise.

What does not work so well is the soundtrack and some of DiCaprio’s acting. While Sir Ben Kingsley manages to never go over-the-top with his performance – letting his lines drip occasionally with menace, but never becoming b-rate – and Max von Sydow understates to make Dr. Naehring unsettling, DiCaprio is outright hammy with his fake accent (which slips several times in the movie) and stare which seems to want to scream “I’m intense,” but comes across as “Look at my eyes, stop listening to my voice!” DiCaprio does not seem to have a physical presence to make the investigative portion of his character’s role seem plausible. As well, the soundtrack is overbearing and telegraphs far too many of the moments when the viewer is intended to jump, gasp or feel grossed out.

Barring that, Shutter Island works and it does so in a way that has enough substance so those who are not fans of horror movies are likely to enjoy the movie. Still, it’s not for the weak of heart and it’s not for those who can’t handle a twist.  Now on DVD and Blu-Ray, Shutter Island has a commentary track, movie previews and a few other goodies.

For other films featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, please check out Inception!

7/10

For more film reviews, please check out my index page!

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