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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

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Tag Archives: John Leguizamo

The Infiltrator (2016)

04 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Benjamin Bratt, Brad Furman, Bryan Cranston, Diane Kruger, Drama, Drug cartel, John Leguizamo, Literary adaptation, Money laundering, Review, Robert Mazur, Thriller, True story

infiltrator

D: Brad Furman / 127m

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Diane Kruger, John Leguizamo, Benjamin Bratt, Juliet Aubrey, Yul Vazquez, Elena Anaya, Rubén Ochandiano, Simón Andreu, Joseph Gilgun, Juan Cely, Art Malik, Saïd Taghmaoui, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs, Olympia Dukakis, Michael Paré

Number four hundred and twenty-nine in what feels like 2016’s never-ending list of true stories – or movies based on true stories – The Infiltrator is a throwback to the kind of crime dramas made in the Seventies, with the main character going undercover  and putting their life on the line in order to expose the mob boss/cartel leader/fiendish criminal mastermind who has so far remained untouchable. Here the main character is Robert ‘Bobby’ Mazur, a veteran US Customs special agent nearing retirement, but who takes on one more undercover case when another agent, Emir Abreu (Leguizamo), asks for his help. Abreu’s case involves an informant (Cely) with ties to a Colombian drug cartel, and the aim, at first, is to follow the drug trail from America back to Colombia and catch the cartel leaders red-handed. But Mazur has a better idea: instead of following the drugs, why not follow the money?

Assuming an alias, Bob Musella, Mazur poses as a businessman who can launder the cartel’s money through the companies he owns, effectively making it clean and untraceable. He and Abreu are put in contact with a couple of the cartel’s men (Ochandiano, Andreu), who in turn introduce them to Javier Espina (Vazquez), a high-level enforcer whose job it is is to assess whether or not Musella can be trusted, and his claims for the cartel’s money are true. Reassured that they are, Espina gives the go ahead for Musella to start laundering the cartel’s money, but when Mazur is put in a compromising situation with a lap dancer – he’s happily married with two children – he invents a fiancée to get himself out of it. Mazur’s boss, Bonni Tischler (Ryan), is less than happy with this, but arranges for a female agent, Kathy Ertz (Kruger), to step into the role.

infiltrator-2

With his “credentials” proving satisfactory, Mazur cites a problem with the way the cartel currently moves its money as an excuse for meeting with the person who runs it all. This leads him to both the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which will help him launder larger quantities of the cartel’s money than he can make look legal, and the acquaintance of Roberto Alcaino (Bratt), whose role is to facilitate both the movement of the cartel’s money and the distribution of its drug shipments through an entry point in Miami. Alcaino welcomes Mazur and Ertz into his home, and they become friendly with both him and his wife, Gloria (Anaya). Using a tape recorder hidden in a briefcase, Mazur is able to gain evidence on all the parties concerned, but needs just one more thing to happen before he can have everyone arrested: the release of funds belonging to Pablo Escobar which the US government has frozen. Without these funds, Escobar, who is the head of the cartel, will not commit to using Mazur exclusively, and the undercover work he’s done will only cause so much damage.

In the hands of director Brad Furman and screenwriter Ellen Sue Brown (Furman’s wife), Robert Mazur’s tale of deception and intrigue becomes a tale of patience and deferment for the audience, as any likely tension or nail-biting moments are kept to a minimum, and Mazur’s scam on the cartel moves along slowly and relentlessly to its expected denouement. Along the way, there are lots of scenes where Mazur as Musella insists on doing things his way and the cartel almost meekly agrees. His cover remains intact throughout, as does Ertz’s, and only Espina suspects they’re not who they say they are. At this point, the viewer will be grateful for something going wrong, as up til now it’s all gone along too smoothly (it may well have been this way, but it doesn’t make for compelling viewing). But not for long; Espina’s potential threat is removed before it’s even had time to get going, and the viewer is left wondering if anything is ever going to upset Mazur’s carefully balanced apple cart.

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The movie also struggles to maintain a consistent focus, with subplots that come and go without advancing the main narrative, and scenes surrounding Mazur’s home life that feel tacked on and derivative. His wife, Evelyn (Aubrey), is supportive of his work even though she wishes he’d retired when he could have, but is inexplicably jealous of Ertz and their fake relationship (she even asks Ertz if she’s sleeping with him). Elsewhere, Mazur is followed by someone who turns out to be a CIA agent, but you have to be paying attention to the end credits to learn why. And both Mazur and Ertz appear to bond with Alcaino and his wife to the point where they feel sympathy for them. These and other aspects of what should be a fairly straightforward storyline may well be meant to add depth and complexity to proceedings, but instead they only show just how bland that storyline really is.

As for the performances, Cranston plays Mazur with a great deal of charm (and a quite impressive wig), but we never really get to know him as a person. He’s good at his job, but we don’t know what motivates him to be so good, or what makes him so effective as an undercover agent. Kruger comes on board halfway through and her character’s (quickly ignored) inexperience proves a good foil for Cranston’s taciturn dedication, though viewers may well be surprised by the number of times they hug. Leguizamo offers good value for the viewer’s time (as always), portraying Abreu as a thrill-hungry agent with an attitude to match; whenever he’s on screen the movie livens up a little. As a second tier kingpin, Bratt exudes a glossy menace that is much more effective for being delivered with a reluctance born out of long experience of the life he leads, while from the supporting cast, Dukakis has a ball as Mazur’s aunt, Vazquez is unnerving as the camp yet deadly Espina, and Aubrey expresses more in a look than seems entirely feasible.

infiltrator-3

With its slow but steady pacing and attention to period detail, the movie doesn’t lack for sincerity, but it doesn’t quite know how to pick up the pace when it’s needed. Furman concentrates on explaining how the cartel’s money can be laundered, but it’s exposition that only needs confirming once, whereas it’s explained on at least four separate occasions. There are twists and turns here and there, some entirely predictable, others less so but lacking in impact. And there’s one scene, in a restaurant involving an unlucky waiter and an anniversary – no, birthday – cake that appears out of nowhere (and context) and tries to make Mazur something he’s not: a hardass.

With so many angles to cover, and not all of them as effective as needed, The Infiltrator relies more and more on Cranston to pull it through the weeds, but it’s an uphill struggle even for him. With Leguizamo given less and less to do thanks to Kruger’s involvement, and her role almost entirely (and deliberately) superficial at times, it’s only Bratt’s urbane take on Alcaino that keeps the final third interesting. It’s all given a rosy patina of sophistication by DoP Joshua Reis, though, and the movie benefits greatly from the way in which Furman uses composition to establish mood. But this particular tale eschews mood too often for it to work as a tense, engaging thriller, and in doing so, manages to downplay the enormity of Mazur’s achievement. And when it comes, it comes at a wedding that looks like it’s been put together for a reality TV show rather than a Customs Office sting operation.

Rating: 6/10 – moderately absorbing, yet banal in execution, The Infiltrator suffers from being too much on an even keel, and not loosening up in its approach at telling Robert Mazur’s amazing story; Cranston is a pleasure to watch, even if you think Mazur was inordinately lucky in what he did, and he keeps things from disintegrating too quickly, leaving a movie that wants to be topical (despite being set in the late Eighties), but lacks the modern day relevance that could be assigned to it.

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The Hollow Point (2016)

22 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Bullets, Cartel, Drama, Gonzalo López-Gallego, Ian McShane, Jim Belushi, John Leguizamo, Mexico, Patrick Wilson, Review, Thriller

the_hollow_point_-_official_poster_1200_1778_81_s

D: Gonzalo López-Gallego / 97m

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Lynn Collins, Jim Belushi, David H. Stevens, Karli Hall, Derek Boone, Nathan Stevens

In a small, dusty town near the US-Mexico border there’s a new sheriff about to settle in. He’s a replacement for the current sheriff, Leland Kilbaught (McShane) who’s been suspended pending an investigation into his shooting and killing a young man, Clive Mercy (Nathan Stevens), attempting to smuggle bullets across the US-Mexico border. The new sheriff, Wallace (Wilson), brings with him some emotional baggage, thanks to an old relationship with Marla (Collins) that still prompts some animosity on her part. While Wallace attempts to fit back into his hometown, Clive’s brother Ken (David H. Stevens) waits in Mexico for him to arrive. When his contact from the Mexican cartel threatens him with death if his brother doesn’t turn up, Ken figures he’s got nothing to lose. He kills the contact and steals a load of money in the process.

Ken’s actions have a knock-on effect he couldn’t have predicted. Wallace begins to look into his brother’s case and starts to put two and two together. Figuring out Ken’s involvement, Wallace begins to look for him, unaware that the cartel have tasked a killer called Atticus (Leguizamo) with getting to him first. Wallace and Atticus find Ken at the same time; in the ensuing fight, Atticus cuts off Wallace’s right hand. Wallace escapes and manages to reach Kilbaught’s home. While his successor recovers, Kilbaught discovers that a local businessman, a car dealer called Shep Diaz (Belushi), is behind the runs the Mercy brothers have been making. With his dealership on the rocks, Diaz has been using the smuggling operation to prop it up. But the cartel aren’t satisfied that he wasn’t involved in Ken’s actions, especially when the money he stole isn’t found straight away. With Wallace determined to bring Diaz to justice, and protect Marla who becomes unfortunately involved in it all, Atticus is sent once more to clean up all the loose ends…

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Fans of slow-burn, violent crime thrillers set in the American Southwest will find much to enjoy in López-Gallego’s latest feature. Assembling a great cast and setting them to work on a script that doesn’t provide anything new in the way the story pans out, but which nevertheless is admirable for its simplicity, López-Gallego has made a movie that resonates far beyond anything you might expect. One of the main reasons for this, is that well assembled cast. Wilson – a last-minute replacement for Timothy Olyphant – excels as the new sheriff who’s tested by the loss of his hand, but who won’t give up protecting the love of his life – even if she doesn’t want anything to do with him. Wilson has a knack for playing the everyday hero, and he uses that knack to provide an unexpectedly riveting performance, and one that makes the viewer wish he’d make more of these kinds of movies instead of any more Conjuring or Insidious sequels.

He’s more than ably supported by the likes of McShane – all grizzled disregard for the law and its finer distinctions – and Leguizamo as the hired killer who just won’t stop. Both are fine actors, and they inhabit their roles like second skins, with Leguizamo in particular, reminding us what a dangerous presence he can be. But both men are upstaged by a resurgent Jim Belushi, his performance as the duplicitous car dealer, Diaz, a shot in the arm for a career that has seen him take on too many undemanding minor roles in recent years. Diaz is as amoral as they come, and Belushi plays him to perfection, highlighting the sweaty, greedy machinations that will ultimately betray him.

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The script – by newcomer Nils Lyew – plays with relative notions of revenge and karma, property and theft, and sneaks in a thin line of religiosity via Atticus’s relationship with Lilly. He further grounds the various relationships – criminal and otherwise – through keen observation and how each character deals with a variety of physical pain and emotional distress. The self-contained nature of events, and the way in which Lyew isolates the characters against the bleached desert backdrop, adds further to the sense of tragedy that percolates through the narrative once Kilbaught fires his gun. And that last scene? Justice or revenge? Actually, it’s both, and completely understandable as both, thanks to the previous interaction of the characters involved.

It’s a very violent movie in places, and López-Gallego doesn’t shy away from showing both the violence and the often bloody aftermath (though one character does appear to cheat death very conveniently at one point). Consequences are the order of the day, for everyone, and no matter how hard they try to avoid them, those consequences have a way of catching up with them and adding an extra layer on top. Even Wallace, who becomes the anti-hero of the story, insists on taking a path that will lead to more and more pain, but he’s a fatalistic anti-hero, and in his own way, just as stubbornly recidivist as Kilbaught.

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Set against a pitiless desert backdrop, The Hollow Point has enough tension and undiluted malice for two movies, but López-Gallego is more than up to the task of maintaining that tension and then stretching it further, making some scenes feel hyper-realistic in the process. This isn’t a bad thing, as it all adds to the grim sense of inevitability that powers each confrontation and showdown, and each twist and turn in the narrative. As a result, the viewer is never too sure just how things will turn out, or even if the (relatively) good guys will triumph in the end. López-Gallego is also the movie’s editor, and he adopts an initially measured approach that develops over the course of the movie into a more rapid, insistent rhythm. It also helps that he has the assistance of regular DoP José David Montero, whose lensing brings out the rugged beauty of the desert surroundings, and the rundown, seen-better-days façades of the town and its buildings.

Rating: 8/10 – an underrated gem that could all too easily fail to atrract the attention it deserves, The Hollow Point benefits from a clutch of great performances, a tough, uncompromising script, and the careful ministrations of its director; it’s rare to see such a moderately budgeted project achieve so much and with such apparent ease, but this really is a movie that deserves a wider audience.

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Monthly Roundup – August 2016

03 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

A Perfect Day, Aid workers, Animation, Benicio Del Toro, Blue Sky, Curt Siodmak, Denis Leary, Drama, Espionage, EVP, Fedja Stukan, Fernando León de Aranoa, Galen T. Chu, Harrison Gilbertson, Haunt, Haunted house, Horror, Ice Age: Collision Course, Ione Skye, Jacki Weaver, Jean Byron, John Leguizamo, Ken Hughes, King Donovan, Liana Liberato, Little Red Monkey, Mac Carter, Mélanie Thierry, Meteorite, Mike Thurmeier, Morello Curse, Murder, Nuclear scientists, Olga Kurylenko, Queen Latifah, Ray Romano, Review, Richard Carlson, Richard Conte, Rona Anderson, Russell Napier, Sci-fi, Scrat, Simon Pegg, Spaceship, Sylva Langova, The Balkans, The Fifties, The Magnetic Monster, Thriller, Tim Robbins

The Magnetic Monster (1953) / D: Curt Siodmak / 76m

Cast: Richard Carlson, King Donovan, Jean Byron, Harry Ellerbe, Leo Britt, Leonard Mudie, Byron Foulger, Michael Fox

The Magnetic Monster

Rating: 6/10 – a sample of selenium, bombarded with alpha waves, becomes a lethal danger to mankind as it develops exponentially – and only the A-Men from the Office of Scientific Investigation can stop it; an exposition heavy sci-fi thriller that takes time out for (stranger) domestic interludes involving Carlson and Bryan, The Magnetic Monster packs a lot in to its relatively short running time and is unexpectedly entertaining for all its techno-speak and overly serious demeanour.

Haunt (2014) / D: Mac Carter / 86m

Cast: Harrison Gilbertson, Liana Liberato, Ione Skye, Jacki Weaver, Brian Wimmer, Danielle Chuchran, Ella Harris, Carl Hadra

Haunt

Rating: 3/10 – a family move into a house where tragedy struck the previous owners, and the son (Gilbertson), along with abused neighbour Sam (Liberato), discovers that the place is haunted by a vengeful spectre; muddled, confused and scare-free, Haunt aims for unsettling and frightening but misses by a mile thanks to weak plotting, a jumbled storyline, stock characters, absentee direction, and an overbearing score (and that’s without mentioning the performances, particularly Weaver’s – which is dreadful).

Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) / D: Mike Thurmeier, Galen T. Chu / 94m

Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Simon Pegg, Keke Palmer, Adam Devine, Wanda Sykes, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck, Jennifer Lopez, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jessie J, Nick Offerman, Chris Wedge

Ice Age Collision Course

Rating: 5/10 – while Scrat does his best to keep his acorn safe aboard a spaceship, his actions lead to a massive meteorite heading for Earth, which in turn leads to Manny (Romano) and the usual gang having to formulate a plan to avoid the extinction of them all; while the series can still manage to sprinkle a handful of inspired visual gags throughout each entry (and this is no different), the law of diminishing returns is having a savage effect on the storylines, with this outing proving less than inspired, and leaving the characters teetering on the edge of becoming their own caricatures.

Little Red Monkey (1955) / D: Ken Hughes / 71m

aka The Case of the Red Monkey

Cast: Richard Conte, Rona Anderson, Russell Napier, Sylva Langova, Colin Gordon, Donald Bisset, John King-Kelly, Bernard Rebel, Arnold Marlé, John Horsley

Little Red Monkey

Rating: 7/10 – when several nuclear scientists are murdered, and the culprit appears to be a little red monkey, Scotland Yard and a visiting US State Department agent have to make sure that defecting Professor Leon Dushenko (Marlé) doesn’t end up dead as well; an agreeable, fast-paced thriller, Little Red Monkey mixes international espionage, early Cold War paranoia, romance, and intrigue to good effect, and thanks to the script by Hughes and James Eastwood, has a discreet Hitchcockian vibe that benefits it tremendously.

A Perfect Day (2015) / D: Fernando León de Aranoa / 106m

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Tim Robbins, Olga Kurylenko, Mélanie Thierry, Fedja Stukan, Eldar Residovic, Sergi López

A Perfect Day

Rating: 7/10 – a group of aid workers in the war-torn Balkans try to have a dead body removed from a well that provides drinking water, and are met by every type of obstruction possible – bureaucratic, cultural, and just plain bizarre; A Perfect Day‘s very good cast can’t mitigate against the episodic nature of the story, or de Aranoa’s offhand treatment of some of the minor characters, but otherwise this is a pointed, unsentimental look at the quieter horrors that war can throw up, and when it wants to be, uses black humour as a trenchant counterpoint to all the tragedy.

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Sisters (2015)

06 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Amy Poehler, Booze, Childhood home, Comedy, Drugs, Ellis Island, Jason Moore, John Cena, John Leguizamo, Maya Rudolph, Mother/daughter relationship, Parents, Party, Review, Romance, Tina Fey

Sisters

D: Jason Moore / 118m

Cast: Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Ike Barinholtz, James Brolin, Dianne Weist, John Cena, John Leguizamo, Bobby Moynihan, Greta Lee, Madison Davenport, Rachel Dratch

Making the transition from TV to movies can be tough. For every Mike Myers or Johnny Depp, there are dozens more actors and actresses who make the leap only to find their particular schtick isn’t as popular with cinema audiences. Often it’s down to their choice of material, sometimes they make the mistake of doing exactly the same thing as they do on their TV show, and sometimes there’s just no explaining why their movie doesn’t click with audiences. Many persevere, trying time and again to make it work and be successful, and just as many fail.

Welcome then to Sisters, the latest attempt by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey to translate their TV personas into box office success. It’s a mix of teen party with adults, sibling dependency, and awkward romance, and it struggles to make any of these aspects even remotely entertaining. The teen party with adults is the worst of Sisters’ many creative decisions. Maura and Kate Ellis (Poehler, Fey) are middle-aged sisters. Maura is a nurse whose need to help others can be suffocating, and who hasn’t been in a relationship for some time. Kate is a nail technician who has a teenage daughter, Haley (Davenport), but no man, and has trouble keeping it together. When she loses her job it coincides with an invitation from their parents (Brolin, Weist) to come visit their childhood home before it’s sold.

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Maura and Kate are horrified by this, especially as the invite has really been about them coming to clear out their room. Left to get on with it, Maura and Kate decide instead to have one last party in the house, and set about inviting all their old schoolfriends – with the exception of realtor Brinda (Rudolph) – along with a neighbour, James (Barinholtz), that Maura has the hots for. Everyone turns up as expected but as everyone is as middle-aged as the sisters are, the party isn’t as exciting as they’d hoped for. The intervention of local drug dealer, Pazuzu (Cena), leads to a much wilder, much more enjoyable party, and inevitably, the house suffering some extreme wear and tear. And then Kate learns that she and Maura stand to benefit from the sale of the house. But by now it’s too late to put a halt to all the damage that’s been done, and matters are made even worse by the efforts of Brinda to crash the party, and the imminent arrival of Maura and Kate’s parents.

There’s no denying that Poehler and Fey are two very fine comediennes – on TV. With Parks and Recreation, and 30 Rock respectively, both women have carved out hugely successful careers for themselves, and earned a sackload of respect and admiration in the process. But on the big screen the results haven’t exactly been that impressive. Fey’s attempts have included Date Night (2010), Admission (2013) and This Is Where I Leave You (2014), while Poehler, who admittedly has been trying for longer, has struck out with the likes of Spring Breakdown (2009), Freak Dance (2010), and A.C.O.D. (2013). The idea of them appearing together as sisters sounds like a great idea on paper (and the roles of Maura and Kate were written specifically for them), but it’s the movie itself that stops them from making much of an impact.

There’s plenty of scope to be had from making Maura and Kate as different as chalk and cheese – Maura is the dependable, slightly strait-laced sister, Kate is the carefree, mainly irresponsible free spirit – but without any friction between them until very late on, most scenes they appear in until then tend to focus on highlighting those differences to the point where even someone whose not even watching the movie will be aware of them. But still they’re no cause for disagreement or arguments or any kind of falling out. As a result, the movie plods along, content to find humour in the behaviour of secondary characters such as grinning hound dog Dave (Leguizamo), and mildly depressed Kelly (Dratch). But even then the laughter is thin on the ground, and has to be propped up by some actually quite funny verbal barbs courtesy of Kate.

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And once the party gets really started, and several chocolate brownies have allowed the guests to loosen up, the movie encounters another problem. It wants to be a raucous comedy at this point, a la American Pie (1999), but as that series discovered when it arrived at American Reunion (2012), the idea of adults behaving like teenagers isn’t inherently funny, and something that audiences don’t really want to see. So the behaviour in Sisters is toned down to such an extent that whatever shenanigans or hijinks do happen, they’re about as funny as watching Amy and Tina trying on party dresses while a shop assistant drones that their outfits suit them (when of course they don’t).

Another part of the problem with Paula Pell’s script – and by extension Jason Moore’s direction – is that early on, scenes drag on past their proper length, partly in an effort to provide both actresses with equal screen time, and partly in an effort to wring out some extra laughs from situations and scenes that don’t support many laughs in the first place. That’s not to say that the movie isn’t funny it places, because it is, it’s just that it’s not funny consistently. It also tries too hard, and to the point where it tries to provoke a laugh from Weist using the C-word. When your comedy movie can’t manufacture enough laughs to maintain interest over nearly two hours, then you’ve got a problem.

Sisters - scene3

As the sisters, Poehler and Fey are likeable enough, but even they can’t do much with a script that lacks substance as well as sustained humour. Rudolph pulls a lot of faces to make up for the one-note character she’s been given, Brolin and Weist have to settle for being constantly annoyed by their daughters’ behaviour, Leguizamo is wasted in the kind of minor supporting role he takes on every now and then, and Moynihan, tasked with playing the kind of too loud funny man whose jokes are always awful, is saddled with mimicking Al Pacino in Scarface (1983) in a charades scene that feels like it’s never going to end. Only Cena as the taciturn drug dealer (whose safe word is “keep going”) avoids being hampered by the material, and the movie picks up whenever he’s on screen.

Sisters would be a better movie if it was twenty minutes shorter and if Pell’s screenplay had concentrated on laughs rather than giving its two main characters “life lessons” to learn. Viewers looking for a great time in the company of two very talented comediennes would do better to try their respective TV series’, while anyone unfamiliar with their TV work, but thinking of giving the movie a try on the off chance that a movie featuring Poehler and Fey must be good (right?), should take a hasty step back and save themselves from being disappointed.

Rating: 5/10 – sporadic laughs do not a comedy make, and Sisters struggles repeatedly to get the mix of visual and verbal humour to work effectively, leaving it feeling and looking dull and uninspired for long stretches; best viewed as a valiant attempt to give Poehler and Fey their big screen breakthrough, but otherwise a movie that fails to deliver both for them and for the audience.

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American Ultra (2015)

08 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Action, Animation, Apollo Ape, Assassin, Chip the Brick, CIA, Comedy, Connie Britton, Jesse Andrews, John Leguizamo, Kristen Stewart, Nima Nourizadeh, Review, Stoner, Thriller, Topher Grace, Tough guys, Ultra program

American Ultra

D: Nima Nourizadeh / 96m

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Topher Grace, Connie Britton, Walton Goggins, John Leguizamo, Bill Pullman, Tony Hale, Stuart Greer, Monique Ganderton

Mike Howell (Eisenberg) is charitably known as a stoner. He works in a mini-mart that rarely sees any customers, and he lives with his girlfriend of five years, Phoebe (Stewart). Having made plans for a romantic trip to Hawaii, Mike doesn’t make it further than the airport as he always gets panic attacks when he tries to leave the sleepy town of Liman, where he and Phoebe live. Mike was going to propose when they were in Hawaii, and has kept the ring, waiting for the right moment.

At the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, veteran agent Victoria Lasseter (Britton) receives a mysterious phone call that warns her that “Tough Guy is moving in on Little Man”. This refers to two separate CIA programs: the Little Man referred to was part of the Ultra program that was shelved several years before, while Tough Guy is the brainchild of fellow agent Adrian Yates (Grace). Lasseter confronts Yates who tells her he’s cleaning house and the one remaining participant in the Ultra program is regarded as a liability. Blocked by Yates’s seniority, she decides to take matters in her own hands.

That night, Lasseter visits the store where Mike works. She tells him some coded phrases that are meant to reactivate him, but they appear to be ineffective. But later, when he sees two men tampering with his car, he finds himself being attacked. Without thinking, he defends himself and kills both men. Freaked out he calls Phoebe and tells her what’s happened. When she arrives, she’s just ahead of the sheriff (Greer), who arrests them both. Mike is unable to explain how he was able to kill the men, but his newly realised (or reawakened) skills prove useful again when Yates sends two Tough Guys – Laugher (Goggins) and Crane (Ganderton) – to finish the job the other two couldn’t. In the process, the station is destroyed and all the police force killed; Mike kills Crane and he and Phoebe get away.

They head for the home of Mike’s dealer, Rose (Leguizamo). There they learn that the town has been quarantined and that Mike and Lasseter are being labelled animal rights terrorists who have released a deadly virus in the area. Two more Tough Guys arrive and start to flood the place with a deadly gas. Phoebe and Mike get out but not before he ingests a dangerous amount of it. She saves his life, but in the process Mike realises that she knows too much about what’s going on. Phoebe is forced to confess that she’s been hiding something from him, and this changes things between them. While Phoebe tries to explain things, Laugher pushes their car off a bridge. Mike is trapped, but Phoebe is captured by Laugher who takes her to Yates – but not before he’s poured gasoline on the overturned car and set it alight…

American Ultra - scene

An uneven mix of stoner comedy and action movie, American Ultra is the kind of late summer crowd pleaser that will likely please fans of both genres as it comfortably combines both to generally good effect. It’s a movie where lots of things happen coincidentally and predictably, but this is one occasion where it doesn’t really matter, as whatever flaws it has are compensated for by the huge sense of fun to be had, from Mike’s drug-fuelled paranoia – at one point he thinks he might be a robot – to the moment where he finally proposes to Phoebe.

It’s a deliberately offbeat, totally ridiculous slice of escapist fantasy that knows exactly what it’s doing, and if screenwriter Landis and director Nourizadeh between them can’t quite wrestle the whole premise into a manageable whole, it’s still comforting to know that they get it right more times than not. On the plus side, there’s the relationship between Mike and Phoebe, a touching, believable couple with minimal ambitions and secure in their love for each other (even if Mike can’t make an omelette without nearly burning down their home). As played by Eisenberg and Stewart, reuniting at last after first appearing together in Adventureland (2009), Mike and Phoebe provide the sweet-natured heart of the movie, and you root for them when Yates and his operation come to Liman. Even when Phoebe’s revelation threatens to come between them, there’s enough investment in their relationship made already that even though their reconciliation is inevitable, you still want it to happen sooner rather than later.

Another plus factor are the inventive fight scenes, particularly a standout sequence at the mini-mart that is shot almost like a first-person video game, and sees Mike using anything that comes to hand to ward off over a dozen Tough Guys. Eisenberg makes a convincing action hero, his slight frame and long hair at odds with the muscular attributes of most action stars, and he’s a revelation in these scenes, kicking ass in a way that the portrayer of Mark Zuckerberg wouldn’t usually be thought of. Stewart also has her moves, and she too is surprisingly effective as a bad-ass. There’s still a tendency to shoot the action sequences and fight scenes with too much of a nod to rapid editing, though there is a fair amount that’s seen in long shot, and is all the better for it.

On the downside, Leguizamo has an awkward role that sees him using the N-word too often, while Grace mugs and overacts in a way that suggests he’s read a different script to everyone else. The real script’s implausibilities threaten to derail the narrative at times, and Landis can’t always resist the temptation to throw in a few unnecessary curve balls (the character of Laugher and his eventual fate is a case in point), but as mentioned above there’s more than enough to make up for it all, including some very humorous moments that show Eisenberg’s complete ownership of his character (Mike’s reaction to a call from Yates is the best example, and very funny indeed).

And lastly, there’s Apollo Ape and Chip the Brick. Who are they? They’re characters Mike draws who have adventures – very violent adventures – in outer space. They make an animated appearance at the movie’s end that’s hopefully not the last time we see them.

Rating: 7/10 – too messy at times to be entirely effective, American Ultra is still a worthwhile view, ably enhanced by the pairing of Eisenberg and Stewart, and feeling fresh when concentrating on the action; if the machinations of the plot are too far-fetched to work as well as they should, it’s still good to know that there are far worse, similar movies out there that aren’t half this enjoyable.

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Cymbeline (2014)

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Anton Yelchin, Biker gang, Crime, Dakota Johnson, Delroy Lindo, Drama, Ed Harris, Ethan Hawke, Iachimo, Imogen, John Leguizamo, Literary adaptation, Michael Almereyda, Milla Jovovich, Mistaken identity, Murder, Penn Badgley, Posthumus, Review, Shakespeare, Thriller

Cymbeline

D: Michael Almereyda / 98m

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich, John Leguizamo, Penn Badgley, Dakota Johnson, Anton Yelchin, Peter Gerety, Kevin Corrigan, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Delroy Lindo, James Ransone, Spencer Treat Clark, Harley Ware, Bill Pullman

Imogen (Johnson) and Posthumus (Badgley) are young lovers who have married in secret and exchanged gifts of a ring (for Posthumus) and a bracelet (for Imogen). Their marriage is not to the liking of Imogen’s father, biker king Cymbeline (Harris). He banishes Posthumus, and so paves the way for his second wife, the Queen (Jovovich) to advance her own son, Cloten (Yelchin) as Imogen’s husband, in an attempt to secure control of the biker gang when Cymbeline is dead. Aided by his servant, Pisanio (Leguizamo), Posthumus goes to stay with his friend Philario (Ransone). There he meets Iachomo (Hawke) who wagers that he can seduce Imogen to prove that she isn’t as virtuous as Posthumus believes. The wager accepted, Iachomo visits Imogen and when a direct assault on her virtue backfires, he portrays it as a test of her commitment to Posthumus – which she accepts. Before he leaves he asks her to look after an item for him overnight, which she also agrees to.

The item is a chest, one that Iachomo has hidden himself inside. While Imogen sleeps he climbs out of the chest and puts together evidence that he has slept with her. He takes this evidence back to Posthumus who, enraged by Imogen’s seeming duplicity, sends two letters: one to Imogen asking her to meet him at Milford Haven, the other to Pisanio asking him to take her there and when they arrive, to kill her. Pisanio, however, is unable to carry out his order and shows Imogen his letter. He has her disguise herself as a boy and tells her to travel on to Milford Haven; he also gives her what he believes to be a remedy for travel sickness that he has taken from the Queen, but which is a potion that will mimic death.

Meanwhile, Cloten discovers Posthumus’ plan to meet Imogen and heads to Milford Haven himself with the intention of killing Posthumus and bringing Imogen back to marry him. Imogen has reached the town already and fallen in with Belarius (Lindo) and his two “sons” Guiderius (Clark) and Arviragus (Ware). She tells them her name is Fidele. While they are out hunting, they encounter Cloten who insults and then threatens Guiderius, who in turn kills him and then beheads him. Imogen, feeling unwell, takes the remedy and becomes as dead. Belarius decides to bury her with Cloten’s body; when she wakes she believes Cloten to be Posthumus as he is wearing similar clothes. With both she and Posthumus believing themselves lost to each other, an impending war between Cymbeline’s gang and the Rome police – to whom they pay a tribute – proves to be the unlikely cause of their reconciliation.

Cymbeline - scene

In adapting the play by William Shakespeare, writer/director Almereyda has done two things very well, and two things not so well. The first is to employ an incredibly talented cast, all of whom are able to take Shakespeare’s lines and make them sound as natural as modern day speech, fully understandable and with clear purpose in their meaning. The likes of Hawke – reuniting with Almereyda for the first time since Hamlet (2000) – Harris, Leguizamo and Lindo provide convincing interpretations of the prose and help the casual viewer through some of the more confusing aspects of the plot (mistaken identities are key here). The second is to condense the play’s final third into a more manageable “wrapping up” of things, even if it all feels rushed and at the expense of the movie’s previously more measured pace.

But where Almereyda gets those things absolutely right, where he gets it absolutely wrong proves too damaging for the movie to recover from. The first is to set the action in a modern day setting, mostly Brooklyn, and to flavour the movie as if it were a version of Shakespeare meets Sons of Anarchy. This backdrop, given that it should enhance the drama – the Queen persuades Cymbeline to back out of his arrangement with the Rome police in the hope that war between them will see him dead – instead seems ponderous and ill-considered, more of a budgetary consideration than a narrative one. It leads to some incongruous moments, such as Cloten pushing a motorbike along a gravel road, Imogen choosing her nom-de-plume thanks to a T-shirt worn by Guiderius, and Posthumus getting about on a skateboard. While some of these tweaks may have appeared sound in the pre-production phase, on screen they’re not as effective as was probably hoped for.

The second problem is with Almereyda’s direction itself. The movie plods along from scene to scene with little energy or flair displayed, and struggles to provide any momentum to take the audience with it. There’s a signal lack of connection between scenes that makes for a stop/start experience, the narrative appearing jumbled and ill at ease with itself, like a story that needs more cohesion. With so many subplots and supporting characters, Cymbeline looks and feels like a movie that can’t quite get a grip on what it’s trying to say, or even how to say it. Again, if it weren’t for the very talented cast, the movie would founder even more, and the audience would be left adrift, waiting – unsuccessfully – for Almereyda to place his authority on the material and make it work with more style and verve.

Generally regarded as one of Shakespeare’s weaker plays (written at a time when he seemed to be bored with them), Cymbeline is a strange choice for a movie adaptation, its tale of thwarted lovers and political machinations proving not quite as amenable to the translation as might be expected. It also looks very much as if it were shot too quickly – some of the set ups look rushed or improvised. Still, it’s a brave choice by Almereyda, but if he has any plans to adapt any more of Shakespeare’s works, he might be better off securing a bigger budget, and concentrating on the script rather than directing. After all, “the play’s the thing…”

Rating: 5/10 – a dour, unimpressive adaptation, Cymbeline is rescued by a set of strong performances and an astute conflation of the plot; not as engrossing as it should have been, but not as awful as the early scenes seem to indicate.

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Summer of Sam (1999)

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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1977, Adrien Brody, Ben Gazzara, CBGB's, David Berkowitz, Disco, Drama, Drugs, Homosexuality, Jennifer Esposito, John Leguizamo, Mira Sorvino, Punk, Relationships, Serial killings, Sex, Son of Sam, Spike Lee, True story

Summer of Sam

D: Spike Lee / 142m

Cast: John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, Mira Sorvino, Jennifer Esposito, Michael Rispoli, Saverio Guerra, Brian Tarantina, Al Palagonia, Ken Garito, Bebe Neuwirth, Patti LuPone, Mike Starr, Anthony LaPaglia, Roger Guenveur Smith, Ben Gazzara, John Savage, Michael Badalucco, Spike Lee, Jimmy Breslin

New York City, 1977. The serial killer known as Son of Sam (Badalucco) is terrorising the city, randomly shooting people. He sends taunting messages to the police who are no nearer to catching him after seven murders than they were after the first. Against this backdrop, a group of friends try to make sense of what’s happening as well as trying to deal with their own problems. Vinny (Leguizamo) is a hairdresser working in the Bronx. He’s married to Dionna (Sorvino) but cheats on her every chance he gets. His best friend, Ritchie (Brody) has adopted a punk lifestyle, complete with spiked hair and punk clothing. It bothers Vinny and the rest of their friends, but proves attractive to Ruby (Esposito), who’s treated poorly by everyone else because she’s perceived as “easy”.

With the police struggling to make any headway in the Son of Sam case, the lead detective, Petrocelli (LaPaglia) approaches local crime boss, Luigi (Gazzara) for help in catching him. His men begin compiling a list of suspects, an idea that spreads throughout the neighbourhood and which is taken up by Vinny’s friends, led by Joey T (Rispoli). Suspicious of Ritchie’s new lifestyle, they add him to their list. Meanwhile, Vinny and Dionna’s marriage is unravelling. Vinny is still seeing other women – including his boss, Gloria (Neuwirth) – and he’s flirting more and more with drugs. He and Dionna are invited to a gig that Ritchie’s band is playing at CBGB’s but Dionna refuses to go inside. Vinny suggests they go to Studio 54 instead but they’re not able to get in. A photographer (Savage) who’s coming out of Studio 54 takes a liking to Vinny and they go with him to Plato’s Retreat, a swingers club. There, Dionna and Vinny have sex with other people, but on the way home Vinny becomes resentful and accuses Dionna of being a “lesbian freak”. Outraged by his accusation (and his double standards) she reveals she knows about his affairs and leaves him stranded at the side of the road.

Ritchie’s relationship with Ruby, however, is going from strength to strength, even though he dances at a gay club and prostitutes himself with the clientele. When Brian (Garito), one of Vinny’s friends, discovers this and tells Joey, it serves to make Ritchie more suspicious in everyone’s eyes, and when an artist’s impression of Son of Sam is published in the newspapers it looks enough like Ritchie for Joey to believe he is the killer. With Dionna having ended things with Vinny, and his reliance on drugs taking over his life, he’s persuaded by Joey to lure Ritchie out into the street where he can be attacked by his “friends”. But what none of them realise is that the police have made a breakthrough in the case, and that a terrible injustice is about to be carried out.

Summer of Sam - scene

Filmed in and around the actual areas where David Berkowitz killed six people and wounded seven others between July 1976 and July 1977, Summer of Sam is a jarring, hedonistic movie that paints an hallucinatory portrait of the time, and which acts like a fever dream of desire and mistrust. It’s a scurrilous, profane movie, sometimes scabrous and full of bile, as its characters deal with their own personal hells, all potent counterpoints to the madness experienced by Berkowitz. It deals with themes of betrayal and promiscuity, xenophobia and suspicion, and is unforgiving in its attempts to shine an unforgiving light on the social mores of the time.

The time period is recreated with verve and attention to detail (though it does get quite a few of the punk-related details wrong), and Ellen Kuras’ cinematography captures the vibrancy of the era, as disco battled with punk, and misogynism and distrust maintained a firm stronghold in Italian neighbourhoods. The lighting often makes scenes, and especially interiors, look grimy and slightly soiled, a trenchant reflection of the characters and their rude approach to life and each other. Lee explores and exploits the late Seventies with gusto, ramping up the intensity of the emotions and the spirit of the times, and encouraging a handful of career-best performances from his cast. The movie benefits enormously from its depiction of the fear and terror people felt in the wake of Berkowitz’s murderous activities, and the closed-minded vigilantism that grew out of them.

The movie generates such a speed and a momentum that it propels the viewer toward its denouement with alacrity, and through the machinations of Vinny and his friends, with undisguised relish. All this leads to a movie that operates at such a pitch that there’s little room for subtlety or tenderness. However, Lee’s confident handling of the narrative more than compensates for any rough handling or delirious imagery. When the heatwave of the time results in a power outage which in turn leads to rioting and vandalism, it’s depicted with a torrid matter-of-fact quality that it fits in completely with Lee and co-scripters Victor Colicchio and Michael Imperioli’s aggressive, no holds barred approach to the various storylines.

Lee is incredibly well served by his cast, who enter into things with complete commitment. Leguizamo, one of the most prolific and versatile actors working today – he currently has five movies in various stages of post-production – puts in a career best performance, expertly displaying the narcissistic selfishness of a man who projects strength but who is battling his fear of commitment every day. It’s a riveting portrayal, and even when he’s not the focus of a scene the viewer’s eye is drawn to him, as if at any moment he’s going to demand their attention again. He’s matched by Sorvino, whose quiet, unassuming portrayal of Dionna in the movie’s early stages gives way to a gutsy, impassioned performance that matches Leguizamo’s for emotional ferocity. Like her co-star, it’s a career best outing, and it’s a shame that post-Summer of Sam she’s not appeared in any movies that have allowed her to shine as she does here.

Brody offers strong support though he’s given less and less to do as the movie progresses, while Esposito suffers the same fate. Badalucco is an imposing presence as Berkowitz, and sharp-eared viewers will recognise John Turturro’s voice as Harvey the Dog (who tells Berkowitz to “kill”). LaPaglia’s detective flits in and out of the narrative (and is nowhere to be seen when Berkowitz is arrested), Gazzara coasts as the local mob boss, and Savage is on screen for all of a minute. The soundtrack consists of a great mix of contemporary songs alongside Terence Blanchard’s driving score, and there’s terrific use of The Who’s Baba O’Riley two thirds of the way in to accompany a brilliant montage (another song by The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again, is used near the end for another very dramatic sequence, but it’s not as effective).

Rating: 9/10 – Summer of Sam won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it is one of Lee’s most daring, uncompromising movies, and has a charge that few other movie makers could achieve or maintain over such a long running time; demanding and uncompromising, it’s a movie that doesn’t pull any punches and is all the better for it.

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Chef (2014)

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Comedy, Cooking, Cuban food, Dustin Hoffman, Food blogger, Food truck, John Leguizamo, Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Sofía Vergara, Twitter, Vine, Viral video

 

Chef

D: Jon Favreau / 114m

Cast: Jon Favreau, John Leguizamo, Sofía Vergara, Emjay Anthony, Scarlett Johansson, Bobby Cannavale, Oliver Platt, Dustin Hoffman, Amy Sedaris, Robert Downey Jr

Chef Carl Casper (Favreau) has been working at the same restaurant for ten years.  The food he cooks is well liked but when the movie opens he’s been cooking the same menu for the last five years, so when word gets out that influential food blogger Ramsey Michel (Platt) has booked a table, Carl wants to do something different to impress him.  However, Carl’s boss, Riva (Hoffman) wants him to stick to the existing menu and give Michel what Carl is famous for.  Carl reluctantly agrees.  In his review, Michel slams Carl’s efforts and wonders what happened to the culinary genius he first encountered ten years before.  The next day, with Michel’s review trending on Twitter, Carl – with the help of his son, Percy (Anthony) – sends Michel an angry tweet that he doesn’t realise will be seen by everyone.  A brief war of words leads to a challenge: if Michel comes back to the restaurant, he’ll cook food that will make Michel eat his words (excuse the pun).

This time, with the restaurant fully booked (thanks to Twitter), and with Riva even more concerned that Carl’s attempts to do something different will backfire on the restaurant’s reputation, he forces Carl to make a choice: either cook the established menu or leave.  Carl leaves.  Michel is bemused by receiving the same food again and assumes Carl has backed down on the challenge.  Carl reads Michel’s tweet and heads back to the restaurant where he lambasts the critic in front of everyone; unfortunately a customer films Carl’s rant and the video goes viral.  While all this has been going on, Carl has been trying to maintain an amicable relationship with his ex-wife, Inez (Vergara), and spend time with Percy, but his work has always gotten in the way.  Now out of a job, Inez suggests he start afresh with a food truck, making the food he wants to make, and being his own boss.  Carl isn’t keen on the idea, but with getting another job at a restaurant proving more and more unlikely, and while on a trip to Miami with Inez and Percy, he eventually agrees.  Given the truck by Inez’ other ex-husband, Marvin (Downey Jr), and helped by Percy and his friend and colleague from the restaurant, Martin (Leguizamo), Carl gets it up and running and the three of them embark on a cross country journey selling food that reinspires Carl’s love for his work, and goes a long way to improving his relationship with Percy.

Chef - scene

Each year, there’s always one movie that serves as an antidote or an alternative to the usual fare of summer blockbusters, a modestly budgeted, small-scale movie that entertains, moves, and delights audiences, and leaves them feeling that they’ve actually experienced something.  Last year that movie was Before Midnight, this year it’s Chef.  It’s one of those movies that inspires audiences to go home and take up whatever it is the central character does, and here it’s to make food that looks so mouth-wateringly delicious you want to jump into the screen and devour it (even the fried breakfast Carl makes Percy at one point looks heavenly).  Carl’s passion for food is his life, and while other parts of his life don’t fare so well, it’s his faith in food that keeps him going, even when his professional life goes into meltdown.  As played by Favreau, Carl is an outwardly positive man apparently in a good place in his life, but inwardly he’s stifled and lacking the drive to take his career to a new level.  Losing his job turns out to be the best thing that could have happened to him, and it sees him reconnect with the other important parts of his life.

In particular, this means his son Percy.  Carl is oblivious to Percy’s need for a proper relationship with him, and he doesn’t see his son’s unhappiness each time he lets him down.  Even when they do spend time together, such as when Percy shows Carl how to use Twitter, Carl can’t wait to get back to cooking.  The road trip from Miami back to California, where Carl teaches Percy how to cook, and father and son bond more effectively, helps Carl focus outside of being a chef, and brings him back to being the young(ish) tyro he was ten years before.  It’s these scenes that give the movie it’s heart, and a couple of minor lapses aside, make for often touching viewing.  There’s plenty of humour here too, with Favreau’s script hitting the funny bone with impressive ease.  There’s a pleasing mix of situational comedy, quirky one-liners (“Come here, amuse-douche”), and visual gags, all seamlessly integrated into the whole, and the cast judge their performances accordingly, the obvious fun they’re having with the material easily transferring itself to the audience; it’s just infectious.

There are some minor quibbles – Johansson’s character is jettisoned halfway through without a backward glance, Carl behaves stupidly towards his son until his behaviour appears stupid for the sake of it, Riva is unnecessarily antagonistic towards Carl (especially the second time) – but for the most part Favreau gets it just right, balancing the comedy and the light drama with aplomb, engaging the audience from the outset with likeable characters and familiar situations that leave the viewer smiling in affectionate recognition.  He’s also an unselfish director, knowing when to let his cast take the lead in a scene, and giving a largely unshowy performance himself.  Leguizamo and Cannavale make a great double act in the restaurant kitchen, Vergara adds just the right amount of sophisticated glamour, and Downey Jr almost steals the movie with his portrayal of an entrepreneur with cleanliness issues.

It would be easy to dismiss Chef as a feel good movie that never really makes Carl’s situation too dramatic, and there’s certainly large swathes of the movie that are both predictable and overly familiar, but again, it’s Favreau’s adept handling of the material that makes Chef so enjoyable, so much so that any reservations are swiftly cancelled (excuse the pun).

Rating: 8/10 – to borrow a title from Queens of the Stone Age, Chef is “the feel good hit of the summer”, a warmly funny celebration of food and its overriding importance in one man’s life; a treat indeed and one that should be returned to as often as possible.

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Ride Along (2014)

07 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Arms deal, Blackhammer, Bruce McGill, Ice Cube, John Leguizamo, Kevin Hart, Laurence Fishburne, Omar, Review, Serbian gangsters, Tim Story

Ride Along

D: Tim Story / 99m

Cast: Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, John Leguizamo, Bruce McGill, Tika Sumpter, Bryan Callen, Laurence Fishburne

There’s a moment in Ride Along where the viewer – even if they’ve only ever seen one other mismatched buddy-cop movie – has to say to themselves, “Whoa, hang on!”  The moment occurs when Ben (Hart) walks into a strip club convinced he’s dealing with a 126 (a nuisance call) and finds two guns pointed at him.  He doesn’t realise he’s in trouble and berates the two gunmen and challenges them to shoot him (he even throws in some reverse-racist taunting as well).  It’s the moment when the viewer has to throw his or her hands up in the air and say to themselves, “Okay, I know this isn’t the best mismatched buddy-cop movie in the world, but really, am I supposed to believe Ben is this dumb?”  Sadly, the answer is yes.

Ride Along is yet another dispiriting movie where the premise of two mismatched people having to work together to solve a mystery or crime is trotted out with ever decreasing results.  Ben is planning to marry Angela (Sumpter) but first has to get the approval of her brother, James (Cube).  James is a cop and thinks Ben isn’t good enough for Angela; he’s also trying to track down and apprehend a mysterious criminal called Omar (Fishburne).  Ben wants to impress James, and lets him know he’s been accepted to the police academy.  In an effort to dissuade him, James invites Ben on a ride along, a day spent with James to see if Ben has what it takes to be a police officer.

Ride Along - scene

There’s no prizes for guessing that while Ben makes mistake after mistake, he still manages to stumble onto clues that help James get closer to catching Omar.  It’s a tried and tested (and trusted) formula, but here it’s so wrung out and poorly plotted that even the average viewer is going to shake their head in disappointment.  It’s the same problem that most of these movies have to overcome: just how dumb or stupid does the main character have to be, and yet still be able to credibly help resolve whatever problem, crime or investigation is at the centre of the movie.  Hart is a promising talent – he’s like a less high-pitched Chris Tucker – but as Ben he’s unable to show a through line to both parts of the character.  He plays video games and it’s this that’s supposed to help him when he and James get into a firefight; but other than being able to recognise the sounds different guns make, it’s baffling how this could be of any real benefit, yet it’s treated like a major asset (and then only as briefly as it will take to read this).  Hart also falls into the trap of thinking that if he shouts something loudly enough it will be funny (it’s not).

Cube clumps through the movie like it’s a contractual obligation, using his trademark scowl as if it’s the only piece of characterisation he needs.  He has two expressions: mad and angry, and he uses them like weapons to batter the other characters.  It’s like watching someone who’s been told he’s got a week to live and the only item on his bucket list is to be as miserable as the situation demands.

With scenes that either outstay their welcome after a couple of minutes, or fail to advance or add to the storyline, Ride Along stutters and stumbles its way from the  lacklustre, poorly edited opening action sequence to the ridiculous denouement that inevitably involves Angela being put in danger by Omar.  By that point, anyone who’s stayed the distance will be hoping Omar wins out and shoots both Ben and James so that we don’t have to endure the inevitable – and recently announced – sequel.

Further down the cast list we have John Leguizamo, an actor with such a varied range and filmography that he can be forgiven his involvement here, while Fishburne pops up to provide unconvincing menace as Omar.  In the director’s chair, Tim Story brings a journeyman’s approach to the material, failing to add anything special to proceedings and shooting in a predictable, straightforward style.  It all adds up to something that’s actually less than the sum of its parts.

Rating: 4/10 – a dire retread of an already overworked “comedy” formula, Ride Along is about as rewarding as a cold sore; derivative, embarrassing and just plain bad.

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Walking With Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie (2013)

26 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

3D, Animation, Barry Cook, BBC series, CGI, Dinosaurs, Drama, John Leguizamo, Justin Long, Karl Urban, Neil Nightingale, Pachyrhinosaurus, Patchi, Review

walking-with-dinosaurs-3d_086fd500

D: Barry Cook, Neil Nightingale / 87m

Cast: John Leguizamo, Justin Long, Tiya Sircar, Skyler Stone, Karl Urban, Charlie Rowe, Angourie Rice

Taking his kids Ricky (Rowe) and Jade (Rice) to an archaeological dig, Zack (Urban) fails to engage a reluctant Ricky into moving far from the car.  While he waits for his dad and sis to come back, Ricky is greeted by a talking bird, Alex (Leguizamo).  Alex chides Ricky for his lack of interest in the past and begins to tell him a story set 70 million years before, the story of Patchi (Long), a pachyrhinosaurus.  Born the runt of a litter, Patchi has trouble fitting in, especially with his brother Scowler (Stone); they are at odds from day one.  After a run-in with a predator leaves him with a hole in his frill, Patchi’s efforts to fit in become even harder.  When the weather changes, an older Patchi must join his herd on a great migration; thus begins Patchi’s road to acceptance not only by the herd, but by his brother and by love interest Juniper (Sircar).

Walking With Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie is a mash-up of The Land Before Time (1988) and The Incredible Journey (1963). The mix of live action and CGI is impressive, with several of the dinosaurs achieving a level of photo-realism that bodes well for the forthcoming Jurassic World (2015).  Their “interaction” with the real world is well-staged and handled, and there is a pleasing sense of verisimilitude throughout.  Taking its cue from the BBC TV series of the same name, Walking With Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie looks amazing from start to finish (and in 3D it looks even better – despite being converted in post-production).  The detail is nothing less than breathtaking.  The backgrounds, shot in Alaska and New Zealand, are spectacular, and add a pleasing sense of scope to the movie despite its (relatively) small budget of $85m.

Walking With Dinosaurs The 3D Movie - scene

What isn’t so pleasing, however, is the script by John Collee (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Happy Feet), a dialogue-driven disaster that manages to make dinosaurs seem un-cool and almost entirely lame in their pea-brained outlook.  That their lips don’t deliberately move in sync with their lines isn’t as distracting as the fact that what’s being said is so childish and immature (it’s actually amazing there isn’t a fart gag in there somewhere).  While Leguizamo fares better than the rest, even he can’t pull off some of his dialogue, and Long is saddled with some of the dopiest, silliest lines he may ever have to deal with.  Granted Walking With Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie is meant to be a children’s movie, but do kids really respond to, or appreciate, this level of half-baked, jokey, verbal simplicity?  If I was over the age of eight and watching this movie I might feel so insulted I’d want to chuck my popcorn at the screen in protest.

With things so hampered by the script, everything else suffers.  The plotting and story arcs are simplistic and predictable, the characterisations equally so, and the sense of danger provided by a pursuing trio of Gorgosauruses is never allowed to accrue too much tension.  Directors Cook and Nightingale at least ensure that things move along at a decent pace (helped by their editor, John Carnochan), but fail to inject much of note into proceedings.  The photography, as already mentioned, is impressive, and the scenery often breathtaking, but these aspects are unable to offer a distraction from the awkwardness of the movie as a whole.

Rating: 5/10 – saved from a lower score by its visuals, Walking With Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie is a movie that will probably impress very young children, but will frustrate teens and adults alike; a missed opportunity that sounds as if the producers lost faith in it somewhere during the production.

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