Galveston (2018)

29 Monday Oct 2018

Tags

Beau Bridges, Ben Foster, Crime, Drama, Elle Fanning, Literary adaptation, Lung condition, Mélanie Laurent, Mob enforcer, Review, Texas, Thriller

D: Mélanie Laurent / 93m

Cast: Ben Foster, Elle Fanning, Beau Bridges, C.K. McFarland, Robert Aramayo, Adepero Oduye, María Valverde, Lili Reinhart

An enforcer for a local crime boss (Bridges), Roy Cady (Foster) finds out he has a lung condition but he refuses to have treatment for it. On the same day he’s given a job to scare a local lawyer into staying silent on a case that his boss is involved with; he’s also advised not to take a gun. Roy ignores this instruction, which proves fortuitous as it’s a set up that’s meant to see him killed and framed for the lawyer’s murder. Fleeing with Rocky (Fanning), a young girl he finds at the scene, Roy deliberates on what to do next, but before he can decide, Rocky persuades him to take her home so she can pick up some things. Circumstances mean that Rocky returns with her three year old sister, Tiffany, and the trio end up staying at a motel. There, Roy tries to work out the importance of some paperwork he found at the lawyer’s house, while a bond develops between him, Rocky, and her sister. He’s also approached by another resident at the motel, Tray (Aramayo), about taking part in a robbery at a local pharmacy, but it’s when the truth emerges about Rocky’s home visit that their lives are put in even further jeopardy…

For the first twenty minutes of Galveston, it’s business as usual as Foster’s brooding, moody mob enforcer acts in a brooding, moody manner in a movie that looks as if it’s going to be brooding and moody all the way through. But once Roy has been forced to rely on his violent proclivities, and he flees the lawyer’s home with Rocky in tow, the movie takes a left turn away from the kind of modern noir it looks and feels like, and becomes a different beast altogether. That noir feeling hangs around in the background waiting to be employed again, but not before the storyline morphs into a relationship drama that sees Roy become a de facto father figure to Rocky and Tiffany, and while he also explores – albeit hesitantly – his impending mortality. As Roy learns to be responsible for someone other than himself, the movie settles down into a melancholy groove that sees Rocky reveal a tragic past, and fate catch up with both of them. That this all takes up most of the movie’s running time, and the various plot strands are all tied up with almost indecent haste in the final twenty minutes, makes for a thriller that avoids being a thriller as much as it possibly can.

Part of this is undoubtedly due to the movie’s structure, and a script that was originally written by Nic Pizzolatto (who also wrote the novel from which this is adapted), but which received “contributions” from Laurent that led to Pizzolatto leaving the project (he’s credited under the pseudonym Jim Hammett). Whatever Laurent’s “contributions” were, the end result is a movie that underwhelms during its extended middle section, and which often strives for relevance in terms of its characters and the situation they find themselves in. Though Foster is as convincing as ever, this is still a role he could play in his sleep, that of the taciturn loner gradually brought out of his shell. But this time around his performance is in service to a story that doesn’t develop his character fully enough to make audiences care enough about his belated attempts at redemption. Likewise, Fanning is stranded in a role that gives Rocky little to do except make terrible decisions without ever learning from them. Laurent’s direction is uneven too, with individual scenes carrying much more weight than others (or the movie as a whole), and while the whole thing benefits from Arnaud Potier’s striking cinematography, the movie remains a frustrating exercise that never quite catches fire in the way it promises.

Rating: 6/10 – Foster and Fanning are a great pairing, but with both of them shackled by a script that doesn’t examine their characters’ relationship too closely, or exploit its potential, Galveston fails to impress in the manner that Laurent may have been hoping for; one to approach with caution then, but with sufficient bursts of the movie it could have been to make it an occasionally interesting experience.

Columbus Circle (2012)

12 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Agoraphobia, Amy Smart, Beau Bridges, Crime, Drama, George Gallo, Jason Lee, MIssing person, Murder, Penthouse, Review, Selma Blair, Thriller

D: George Gallo / 82m

Cast: Selma Blair, Amy Smart, Jason Lee, Beau Bridges, Kevin Pollak, Giovanni Ribisi, Jason Antoon, Robert Guillaume

Abigail Clayton (Blair) lives alone in her penthouse apartment overlooking Columbus Circle, and has done so for nearly twenty years. She communicates with only two people: in person with her physician and long-time family friend Raymond Fontaine (Bridges), and by note with concierge Klandermann (Pollak). Her quiet, ordered life is disrupted following the death of her neighbour. The investigating detective, Frank Giardello (Ribisi), isn’t convinced it’s the accidental death it looks like. He speaks to Abigail (much to her dislike); she in turn alerts Fontaine who reassures her that Giardello’s talking to her was just routine.

Abigail attempts to buy her neighbour’s apartment to further maintain her privacy but to her dismay a couple move in shortly afterward. Charles (Lee) and Lillian (Smart) seem like a young, prosperous, happy couple but one night, Abigail overhears an argument the couple have in the corridor. The argument becomes violent and Lillian is hit by her husband. Lillian’s cries for help prompt Abigail to do something she would never have thought possible: help the injured woman. Once inside Abigail’s apartment, Lillian makes excuses for Charles’s behaviour before she falls asleep. The next morning she thanks Abigail for her help and the beginnings of a friendship are established.

Meanwhile, Giardello’s investigation reveals a link between Abigail’s neighbour and Fontaine. When Giardello visits him, Fontaine lets slip that he knows Abigail as well. The detective begins to suspect that Abigail isn’t who she seems to be, and is probably wealthy heiress Justine Waters, who disappeared on her eighteenth birthday and hasn’t been seen since.

Abigail and Lillian grow closer, while Charles becomes more and more aggressive in his behaviour. One evening, he and Klandermann are in the elevator together when the concierge remarks that Charles is familiar to him but he can’t place where they might have met. Charles thinks it unlikely but Klandermann is convinced that he’ll remember. When he does, it brings to light a conspiracy that involves the search for a missing heiress…

Making out like a Hitchcockian thriller, Columbus Circle has a basic plot that seems clever at the outset but which quickly abandons plausibility in favour of a more tired and derivative approach, and wraps things up so awkwardly that it makes you wonder if co-scripters Pollak and Gallo really had an ending in the first place. With any thriller there’s an accepted – indeed, expected – amount of suspension of disbelief, and Columbus Circle is no different in this respect, but sometimes it’s a matter of how many times that suspension is required that defeats everything. No matter how much good will a movie generates during its running time, sometimes it’s never enough. And so it proves here.

Abigail’s reclusive lifestyle is explained via a mix of flashbacks and exposition, and is used as the basis for her helping Lillian. So far, so good. But when we see Lillian playing amateur therapist and helping Abigail down the corridor in an attempt to conquer her fear of leaving her apartment, then things begin to tumble downhill with ever increasing speed. And even later still, when the movie requires Abigail to leave the safety of her apartment altogether, she does so without a backward glance. It’s moments like these that prompt the question, why make Abigail a recluse in the first place? For ultimately it doesn’t matter. Nor does the issue of whether or not she’s really a missing heiress (something the movie gives up quite early on). What Columbus Circle does, and with a clumsiness that does itself no favours, is to take a fairly run-of-the-mill scenario and then try to make it more intriguing by having its lead character driven by a deep-rooted phobia – which it then ignores/drops/abandons in order to provide the movie with a “satisfying” ending.

Long-time mystery fans will spot the mechanics of what’s happening from a mile off, while even newcomers shouldn’t have too many problems spotting the bad guys. It all leaves the movie appearing less effective than it should be given the calibre of the cast involved. Blair is a perfect choice for Abigail, her injured looks and awkward physicality providing more character development than her dialogue, but the rest of the cast struggle to make more of their characters than is on the page or the script allows. As a result, generic performances abound, particularly from Pollak who you’d be forgiven for thinking would have given himself a better role. Ribisi takes a secondary role and employs his trademark blank-faced stare to minimal effect, and Bridges (sadly) reminds us once again why his brother gets all the good roles. Worst of all, Lee and Smart fail to convince as Charles and Lillian, displaying a lack of chemistry that hurts the movie whenever they’re on screen together.

Organising it all, Gallo starts off strong but fumbles things almost from the moment Giardello talks to Abigail. Their encounter is stiff and unfriendly and it sets the tone for many of the scenes that follow, even amongst other characters. As the mystery unfolds and the movie heads into unashamed thriller territory, Gallo loses his grip completely, leading to a final fifteen minutes that defies the movie’s own logic and screams “convenience” at the top of its lungs. The movie also looks like it was made for TV, with Anastasia Michos’ photography battling against an incredibly bland lighting design. Add an equally bland score by Brian Tyler and you have a movie that seems content to settle for second best in its endeavours.

Rating: 4/10 – of passing interest only, Columbus Circle undermines itself by dispensing with its mystery elements early on, leaving any tension or drama feeling forced and artless; the only puzzle here is why Gallo and Pollak thought this would pass muster as either a mystery or a thriller.