Tag Archives: Louisiana

The Whole Truth (2016)

22 Saturday Oct 2016

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D: Courtney Hunt / 93m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Renée Zellweger, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Gabriel Basso, Jim Belushi, Jim Klock, Ritchie Montgomery, Christopher Berry, Nicole Barré, Sean Bridgers, Mattie Liptak

In a small Louisiana town, young Mike Lassiter (Basso) is arrested for the murder of his father, Boone (Belushi). Having confessed to the crime, Mike says nothing more, even to his lawyer, Richard Ramsey (Reeves). Obviously this makes it hard for Ramsey to mount a defence, but as a friend of the family, and someone that Boone helped become a lawyer, he has inside knowledge about Boone that the jury won’t be aware of. With his client staying quiet, Ramsey’s only choice is to malign Boone’s reputation as a good father to Mike and loving husband to Loretta (Zellweger).

As the trial begins, Ramsey is joined by a junior lawyer, Janelle Brady (Mbatha-Raw). Together they begin to piece together a defence based on Boone’s abusive behaviour towards Mike and Loretta, while the prosecution – led by Leblanc (Klock) – reinforces the details surrounding the murder and Mike’s subsequent confession. The case seems hopeless until Ramsey calls Loretta to the witness stand, where she confirms just how abusive her husband could be. But as the trial continues, Janelle becomes suspicious about what might have really happened; she comes to believe that Mike is taking the fall for his mother. There’s no evidence to support this, however, and when Mike takes the stand and delivers a bombshell that no one could have prepared for, his testimony takes the trial in a direction that no one could have prepared for either.

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With an introductory voice over by Reeves that sets the tone for the whole movie (he sounds bored and uninterested), The Whole Truth is one of those courtroom dramas where secrets are revealed every so often in an effort to keep the audience guessing as to what’s happened, or is happening, and which should add up to a last-minute revelation that will have said audience saying to themselves, “Wow! I never saw that coming!” Except, in reality, The Whole Truth opts for secrets that have no impact on the movie’s ending, and which are pretty much forgotten about once they’ve been revealed.

You don’t have to have seen hundreds of courtroom dramas to know that ninety-nine per cent of the time, if the defendant has confessed to the crime (but isn’t saying why they did it), then the chances of them actually being guilty are greatly reduced. And while it would be unfair to reveal if this is the case here, let’s just say that there is a formula here that’s being adhered to, and said formula shouldn’t spring too many surprises on anyone familiar with the genre. And thanks to screenwriter Nicholas Kazan (known here as Raphael Jackson, and perhaps wisely), the movie plods along from one unexciting revelation to another in a dour effort to appear exciting. It’s all so sloppily written that, from Ramsey’s “knowing” voice over to both his and Leblanc’s inability to cross-examine witnesses, The Whole Truth acts more as an educational movie about how not to make a courtroom drama than the effective thriller it wants to be.

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Kazan’s script is one of the main offenders, but it’s not alone in handicapping the movie at every turn. Since coming to people’s attention with her well-received debut, Frozen River (2008), director Courtney Hunt has only worked on five TV episodes before taking on the challenge of molding this movie into something that isn’t the cinematic definition of “generic”. That she never gets to grips with the material, and films everything in a bland, TV-movie-of-the-week style, is evident throughout, and the look of the movie – all washed-out and looking as if bright colours were a no-no – further undermines any attempts the movie might make to stand out from the crowd. It’s as if cinematographer Jules O’Loughlin was instructed not to make the movie look attractive.

And then, somewhat inevitably, there’s the cast. Keanu Reeves has the kind of career that fluctuates between godawful and cautiously optimistic with almost absurd regularity. John Wick (2014) was a reminder that when he’s asked to play taciturn and given minimal dialogue, he’s playing to his strengths as an actor. But then he also appears in movies such as Man of Tai Chi (2013 – and which he directed), and Knock Knock (2015), and you’re reminded that he’s only good with certain material. Here he struggles as usual with both his character and his character’s dialogue, with his occasional voice overs further underscoring how often he looks and sounds removed from the movies he makes. He makes for an unconvincing trial lawyer as well, and The Whole Truth teeters on the edge of disaster every time Ramsey gets up to question a witness.

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Making her return to acting after a six-year hiatus, Renée Zellweger is, as many people have already pointed out, hard to recognise as Loretta. Even when she speaks you could still be forgiven for thinking she’s someone else, and this proves to be something of a distraction whenever she’s on screen. Why she picked this movie to make her comeback is a mystery that’s more intriguing than the central mystery around who killed Boone, and though she has second billing, Loretta is more of a supporting role than a lead. She’s not asked to do too much, and when Loretta takes the stand, Zellweger treats us to a glimpse of what she’s capable of, but otherwise it’s a performance that dozens of other actresses could have given. Mbatha-Raw is underused as well, her character the inexperienced, somewhat naïve ingenue who gets her one chance to shine in court before being relegated back to the sidelines.

With the performances unable to lift the movie out of its self-imposed narrative doldrums, and Hunt apparently unable to make much out of the material, The Whole Truth proves to be hugely disappointing, and resoundingly flat. There’s no impetus, no energy in the courtroom scenes, and by the end it’s difficult to care who did what, why or how. Courtroom dramas succeed or fail on the quality of the secrets that are revealed during a trial, and the odds against the defence lawyer winning, but here there’s so much apathy on display that any impact is curtailed before any such secrets are fully revealed. This may be a courtroom drama per se, but someone really should have pointed out that the drama was, in legal terms, misrepresented.

Rating: 4/10 – originally set to star Daniel Craig as Ramsey, The Whole Truth is a movie that wouldn’t have turned out any better even if he hadn’t dropped out just days before production was due to begin; clumsy and dull, the movie is like drudge work for the eyes and ears, and never once feels like it’s going to step up a gear and become even slightly interesting.

Swamp Fire (1946)

19 Thursday Feb 2015

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Swamp Fire

D: William H. Pine / 69m

Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Virginia Grey, Buster Crabbe, Carol Thurston, Pedro de Cordoba, Marcelle Corday, William Edmunds, Edwin Maxwell, Pierre Watkin

Coming home from the war, bar pilot Johnny Duval (Weissmuller) is a veteran whose return is tinged with a bittersweet quality. He lost both his ship and his men during the war and he’s haunted by the event, so much so that he’s lost his confidence as a bar pilot completely. But he does have the love of Toni Rousseau (Thurston) to look forward to, and the welcome of his friends. Travelling through the swamp to his home at Cypress Point, his row boat is side-swiped by a motor boat being driven by Janet Hilton, a wealthy socialite who lives at nearby Delta Island. With her motor boat run aground, Johnny offers to take her to Cypress Point where she can rent another boat. Once there, she wastes no time in alienating Johnny’s friends, including Toni, before leaving.

Johnny goes back to work for the Coast Guard but he takes a junior role, until one night the bar pilot on his ship feigns an illness that leads to Johnny taking over and seeing another boat through the river’s perilous sand bars. The boat belongs to Janet’s father; she’s also on the boat and makes advances towards him, but even with that and other distractions such as an hallucination from the war, he guides the boat safely through the waters, and regains his confidence. Quickly promoted to a lieutenant in the Coast Guard, Johnny resumes his usual work as a bar pilot. In the meantime, Janet continues to pursue him, much to the annoyance of Toni, and to the satisfaction of Mike Kalavich (Crabbe), a trapper who wants Toni for himself. Johnny decides to marry Toni and the date is set, but the night before, he finds himself persuaded to guide a ship through dangerous fog. There is a collision with another boat, one that leads to the death of Toni’s grandfather (de Cordoba).

Unable to cope with the guilt of what he’s done, Johnny goes away on leave and bar hops until he’s so drunk he stumbles into the path of a truck and is knocked down. He ends up in hospital and is there for two weeks before anyone discovers who he is. The news makes the papers and Toni and Johnny’s boss, Captain Moise (Maxwell), head to the hospital to bring him home. But when they get there they find Johnny has already left – in the care of Janet Hilton. At the Hiltons’, Janet tells them – falsely – that Johnny doesn’t want to see them, or anybody, from Cypress Point. Janet takes further steps to stop Johnny and Toni from contacting each other. With both believing the worst of the other, Johnny and Toni’s relationship falters then fails, until the capture of one of Kalavich’s comrades in poaching leads to Janet’s duplicity being revealed. But while Johnny tries to find Toni, Kalavich, enraged by this turn of events, decides to set fire to the swampland, putting them all in danger.

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The first of two movies uniting former Olympic swimming champions Weissmuller and Crabbe – the second would be the Jungle Jim adventure Captive Girl (1950) – Swamp Fire is an absorbing, though pedestrian drama that unfolds at a steady, if sometimes soporific pace, and which offers both actors a chance to spread their wings in roles they wouldn’t normally have played. Weissmuller, though as wooden as usual, does his best as the taciturn, PTSD-suffering Johnny, and makes a decent fist of his love scenes with Thurston (he certainly kisses her with gusto). Crabbe has the greater challenge, playing a disgruntled bad guy with a dodgy Cajun accent and a pencil-thin moustache, but it’s a more natural performance, and he seems more at ease in the role than Weissmuller does as Johnny, and the movie gains a noticeable energy whenever he’s on screen.

They’re kept apart for most of the movie, however, leaving room for Weissmuller to romance both Grey and Thurston in equal measure, and to show that his muscular frame still looks good in a T-shirt (he doesn’t go bare chested in this movie, perhaps because of the extra weight he’d put on at the time). The twin romances are agreeable, if not entirely believable. Grey’s character is so stuck up and manipulative that when Toni ends up in the river and at the mercy of an alligator, it’s likely the viewer will be wishing it was Janet in the water. The character vacillates between arrogant, passive and flirtatious (sometimes in the same scene), and Grey doesn’t always know when to move from one aspect to another. Thurston plays Toni as if she were more of a tomboy than a young woman with eyes for only one man, but she’s consistent in her approach to the character and makes slightly more of things than the script – by Daniel Mainwaring (credited as Geoffrey Homes) – would appear to allow. There’s an argument that both roles are underwritten, but the truth is they’re quite stereotypical for both the time the movie was made and its milieu.

In the hot seat, Pine – noted for being a producer more than a director – shows a sure hand in moving the camera around and elicits good performances from the supporting cast, including Edmunds as the local bar owner, and Maxwell as Johnny’s suppportive superior. The Louisiana locations are well chosen for their beautiful scenery, and make for splendid backdrops to the (occasionally) overheated emotions of the main characters (though the amount of rear projection work going on almost negates their effect). As well as being involved in several river collisions, Weissmuller gets to wrestle and kill an alligator – the danger of which he brushes off with manly stoicism – and there’s a catfight between Grey and Thurston that is, sadly, over almost as soon as it’s started. The fiery climax doesn’t look as impressive in the long shots as it does close up, but the emotional undercurrent is brought to the fore, making the denouement unexpectedly compelling, and satisfying as well.

Rating: 5/10 – like a lot of low-budget, modest post-War productions, Swamp Fire is borderline forgettable, but despite its faults, is a pleasant enough diversion for sixty-nine minutes; Weissmuller and Crabbe make for great adversaries, and the plot isn’t as banal as it seems, making this a notch above other, similar movies from the period.

Jessabelle (2014)

27 Saturday Dec 2014

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Jessabelle

D: Kevin Greutert / 90m

Cast: Sarah Snook, Joelle Carter, Mark Webber, David Andrews, Ana de la Reguera, Amber Stevens, Chris Ellis

Following a car accident that kills her fiancé and leaves her paralysed from the waist down, Jessie (Snook) goes to recuperate at what was her parents’ house but is now just her dad’s, her mother (Carter) having died from cancer when Jessie was very young. She’s given her mother’s room, and settles in, but her dad (Andrews) is distant and not very supportive. One day, Jessie discovers a number of old video tapes in a box labelled “Jessabelle”. When she plays one she finds herself watching her mother playing with a deck of Tarot cards and talking to “Jessabelle”. Jessie thinks her mother means her, but some of what she says doesn’t relate to Jessie at all. When her dad finds out about the tape he gets angry and destroys it; he also throws her wheelchair into the nearby lake.

The next day he apologises and gives Jessie her mother’s old wheelchair so that she can still get about. When he goes out she watches another tape; on it her mother mentions a man named Moses. On the next day, Jessie is helped into a bath by a physiotherapist. She falls asleep, and the bath begins to fill with blood. When Jessie wakes she finds the ghost of a girl a few years younger than her in the bath with her. The ghost (Stevens) attacks Jessie but when she screams and her dad bursts in, the ghost disappears, as if it was all an hallucination. Her dad finds the other tape and tries to burn both of them but he gets locked in his shed and burns to death.

At her dad’s funeral, Jessie is reunited with an old flame, Preston (Webber). She confides in him about the tapes, and although he’s married he promises to help her as much as he can. Jessie later finds more tapes, one of which contains her mother telling “Jessabelle” that she’s already dead. Things take a strange turn when Jessie and Preston discover an infant’s grave in the bayou, an infant named Jessabelle. They alert the police and the remains are taken away to be examined. Jessie and Preston also discover a shrine to the man known as Moses but are warned away from it. Echoes of the past begin to reveal themselves, and soon Jessie learns the truth about Jessabelle and her parents, and a terrible crime that was committed before she was born.

JESSABELLE, Sarah Snook (right), 2014. ©Lions Gate/Courtesy Everett Collection

While Jessabelle attempts to bring something new to the sins of the past sub-genre of horror movies, regular viewers of this sort of thing will find it commendably low-key and sadly unambitious at the same time. The source of most viewers’ consternation will be Robert Ben Garant’s screenplay, his first proper outing in the horror field (he also wrote Hell Baby (2013) but that was more of a horror-comedy hybrid – and didn’t work in either department). Garant is better known as the writer/creator of the Night at the Museum movies, as well as being an actor, but on this occasion his enthusiasm for trying to tell a ghost story that isn’t as derivative as all the rest, is the one thing that actually gets him – and the movie – into trouble.

From the moment Jessie arrives at her childhood home it’s clear that her dad’s behaviour towards her is borne out of guilt over something he’s done in the past, and while this type of relationship isn’t exactly unusual in horror movies, here it’s more awkward than usual thanks to the script’s refusal to portray him as anything other than angry and scornful – which in light of what we discover he’s done, actually makes him appear self-deluded and cruel; it also makes the viewer wonder why Jessabelle’s vengeful spirit hasn’t killed him already. The mother’s appearance is problematic as well, her graduation from early video blogger to phantom presence in the movie’s final quarter being needed not to provide any unexpected scares but to explain the plot amid a welter of artless exposition.

The answer to the mystery of Jessabelle and the tapes Jessie’s mother recorded, when it comes, is as underwhelming as the relationship between Jessie and Preston, an attempt at romance that even stops the plot long enough for them to end up between the sheets. The clues that lead to the discovery of Jessabelle’s identity are so heavily signposted it’s like playing connect-the-dots (and there’s only three dots to be connected). Again, Garant’s script wants to appear more clever than it is, but lets itself down time after time with weak scares and even weaker plot developments (experienced viewers will have worked out what’s going on long before Jessabelle shows up in the bath).

Things aren’t helped by Greutert’s disinterested direction, nor Michael Fimognari’s pedestrian camerawork, reducing the beautiful North Carolina locations to gloomy backdrops. The performances aren’t that convincing either, with only Snook offering anything like a commitment to her character, making Jessie far more sympathetic than she has any right to be (she’s the most likeable character in a movie that makes it extra hard to root for anyone). And with an ending that is as predictable as it is entirely derivative, Jessabelle winds up disappointing far more than it entertains.

Rating: 3/10 – stupid is as stupid does – a phrase that applies to so many horror movies that it’s embarrassing, and Jessabelle does nothing to avoid being added to the list; despite Garant’s efforts this is dispiriting stuff indeed, and with only Snook’s performance to warrant a viewing, can be consigned to the so-bad-it’s-bad list of recent horror movies without a moment’s hesitation.

The Lucky One (2012)

16 Friday May 2014

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D: Scott Hicks / 101m

Cast: Zac Efron, Taylor Schilling, Blythe Danner, Jay R. Ferguson, Riley Thomas Stewart, Adam LeFevre, Robert Hayes, Joe Chrest, Ann McKenzie, Kendal Tuttle

Adapted from the novel by Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One opens in Iraq and a night mission where Logan (Efron) and his platoon run into Aces (Tuttle) and his platoon. There is a firefight with some Iraqis and Aces is killed. The next morning, Logan spies a picture of a woman in the rubble. He picks it up just seconds before an incendiary device goes off, killing several of his comrades. Logan survives, and for the rest of the tour he keeps the photo with him and it acts as a talisman, warding off harm and keeping him safe. He also tries to find out if anyone knows who the picture belongs to, but no one recognises it.

Back home, Logan traces the location where the picture was taken, and with his dog, Zeus, heads off on foot across country from Colorado to Louisiana, and the small town of Hamden, where after asking around, he discovers the woman’s name is Beth Green (Schilling) and she runs a kennels on the outskirts of town. When Logan goes there to tell her about the picture he finds he doesn’t know how to, and the situation is further complicated by Beth’s assumption that he’s there to apply for a job. Accepting the job, but with Beth having reservations about someone who walks so far just to work at a kennels, Logan makes himself useful doing repairs and general chores.

Beth’s grandmother, Ellie (Danner) takes to Logan from the start, as does Beth’s seven year old son, Ben (Stewart). The one person who doesn’t is Beth’s ex-husband, Keith (Ferguson), a deputy sheriff whose jealousy and violent temper have him believing that Logan is trying to usurp his position as Beth and Ben’s protector. With Keith making it difficult for Beth to move on with her life, Logan becomes increasingly close to her, and soon they are looking at each other with more than curiosity. They begin a hesitant romance, but Logan still finds it impossible to tell Beth about the photo, even when it becomes clear that Aces was her brother.

When Keith finds out that Logan was showing Beth’s picture around town he wastes no time in telling Beth (he also has the picture, stolen from Logan’s home). Beth confronts Logan and she asks him to leave. Keith makes an attempt to reconcile once more with Beth but when she rejects him, he threatens to take Ben there and then. Ben runs away, but in doing so, puts his life in danger…

The Lucky One

With its typical stranger-with-a-secret-comes-to-town storyline, The Lucky One doesn’t bring anything new to the romantic drama genre, but in many ways that’s its strength. Its reliance on minor soap opera clichés to reinforce both the romantic and the dramatic aspects helps establish the movie as a straightforward telling of a familiar story, and one that the audience can take a great deal of comfort from. As Logan and Beth circle each other, there’s never any doubt as to how their romance will proceed, and the familiarity of the situation is aided greatly by the performances of Efron and Schilling, his brooding reticence complimenting her fragile beauty.

Beautifully set (and shot) in Louisiana, the movie moves easily from one reassuring plot development to the next, almost casually hitting its emotional high points, and thanks to Will Fetters’ astute screenplay, never trying to subvert or over-complicate matters. Hicks, who shot to fame with the altogether weightier Shine (1992), directs with a confidence that is reflected in the ease with which the cast inhabit their characters, and the credibility of their interaction. Efron plays the strong, silent type effortlessly but for long stretches Logan is almost a secondary character, as the movie sets up the family dynamic around Beth, Ben, Keith and Ellie. Once the romance kicks in, Efron gets to show just why he’s become one of the most sought after actors working today, showing a vulnerability the likes of Channing Tatum and Josh Duhamel (both male leads in other Sparks’ adaptations) would struggle to portray. It’s a low-key performance and one that befits the character of an ex-Marine trying to rebuild his life one step at a time.

Schilling also impresses as the put upon single mother putting a brave face on being divorced and bereaved at the same time, as well as looking for some way to rebuild her own life. Beth and Logan are kindred spirits in that sense, and when they begin their romance, their need for each other ignites a coming together that breathes new fire into both their lives (surprisingly, their love scenes are quite steamy for a PG-13 movie, but that’s not a bad thing). As Keith, Ferguson (mostly known for his TV work) makes more of the dastardly ex-husband role than appears to have been a part of the script, and the scene where his armour cracks during a recital given by his son is both unexpected and affecting in equal measure. Danner outshines them all, of course, but then if she hadn’t then something would have really been wrong.

The movie does have some faults, however. Logan’s PTSD is clumsily dealt with and is forgotten once he’s met Beth, and there’s a few too many occasions where the central conceit struggles to fend off its own implausibility, and Ben behaves a little too much like the semi-adult he clearly isn’t at seven years old, but these are minor complaints. All in all, The Lucky One is a rewarding experience, cleverly presented, and if things are a little too predictable at times – fans of this type of movie will be able to spot the outcome from a mile off – as noted above, the filmmakers’ determination to embrace the customary elements of such a storyline is a benefit and not a detraction.

Rating: 7/10 – a solid if unspectacular production, The Lucky One will please fans of the genre for its straight on approach and for treating its main characters with sympathy and respect; bolstered by often beautiful location photography, it’s also blessed with a score by Mark Isham that avoids all the usual emotional cues.

(for Roxanne xx)

Mini-Review: Bad Country (2014)

11 Friday Apr 2014

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Bad Country

D: Chris Brinker / 95m

Cast: Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe, Neal McDonough, Amy Smart, Tom Berenger, Chris Marquette, Don Yesso, John Edward Lee, Alex Solowitz, Christopher Denham, Bill Duke

At times, Bad Country seems like an Eighties throwback, a Walking Tall-type movie that swaps Tennessee for Louisiana, and Buford Pusser for Willem Dafoe’s detective Bud Carter.  Its production design and filming style is reminiscent of other movies from that era, and while that’s no bad thing by itself, this grounding doesn’t add anything to the movie, or make it stand out.

With an opening statement that gives the impression the movie is based on a true story (but it’s not), Bad Country sees Carter bust a small-time gang of thieves.  Their arrest leads him to Jesse Weiland (Dillon).  Weiland is a safecracker-cum-enforcer for local syndicate kingpin Lutin Adams (Berenger); he also has a wife, Lynn (Smart) and baby son.  Adams is in Carter’s sights and he turns Jesse, aided by Jesse’s animosity towards Adams for having his brother killed, and his need to provide for Lynn and the baby (which will be difficult if he ends up in jail).  With the Feds, represented by rookie Fitch (Marquette), muscling in on Carter’s operation, the original plan is hijacked and things quickly go sour, with further loss of life on both sides.  When an attempt is made on Weiland’s life, he goes after Adams himself.

Bad Country - scene

There’s little that’s fresh or new here, and the movie trundles along in fits and starts and never really springs to life.  The plot is perfunctory and often banal, while Chris Brinker’s direction is drab and uninvolving.  The cast do their best – Dafoe gives his usual impassioned performance, despite the material – but Smart and McDonough are given short shrift, while Dillon often seems on auto-pilot.  The Baton Rouge locations are well-used but not enough to make them a feature, and there’s one too many scenes that fade to black, as if those scenes should have continued a bit longer but the script didn’t know how to manage it.  There’s plenty of gunfire, and a final shootout that lacks energy and focus when it should be thrilling.

Rating: 5/10 – more ho-hum than humdinger, Bad Country plods along without ever really getting going; set against other, more recent crime thrillers, it lacks more than most, and the Eighties setting ends up being of no benefit at all.