Craiger’s Cinema Corner

****  out of  ****

“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.”

-  Fyodor Dostoyevsky     

Lasse Hallström’s THE HOAX is a great American film about a great American liar.  In the annals of fakery, author Clifford Irving should be considered an absolute mastermind.  His con was hardly simple.  The real accomplishment of the film is that it does such a meticulous and assured job with showing the layers upon layers of this man’s deceit to the world.  Irving was not just deluding us with a small little white lie.  He was a definitive con man with an agenda that would make Frank Abagnal Jr.  (the subject of another great film about a scam artist, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN) and Stephen Glass (ditto for SHATTERED GLASS) look like marginal pranksters and charlatans.

Abagnal was a figure that faked multiple identities and successfully eluded the FBI for several years.  He made people think that he was – at different times – a doctor, lawyer, and even an airline pilot.  Glass, on the other hand, cooked up bogus articles for the prestigious New Yorker Magazine until he was finally revealed to be a total, unethical phony.  I think what separates Irving from those two is in the scope and brevity of his lies.  Basically, he managed to make people around the world think that he was the literary voice of one of the most reclusive and enigmatic figures of the 20th Century. 

That, in retrospect, was no simpleminded prank.

By the late 1950’s Howard Hughes had become the poster boy for the recluse billionaire.  Paralyzed by a severe case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the eccentric businessman reached a point in his life where he refused to be seen in public, even in court.  According to some rumors, he was either dying, a complete lunatic, or even dead.  Surely, the public appetite for knowledge of the comings and goings of this mysterious and perplexing persona grew insatiable, and Irving recognized this.  Claiming to be writing the “book of the Century,” Irving took it upon himself to chronicle the career and life of Hughes in the ultimate, tell-all, and definitive biography, “The Autobiography of Howard Hughes.”  He was able to convince a major publisher that he had Hughes give him written permission to write the book and even managed to secure advances of hundreds of thousands to write it.  Everyone at the publishing agency seemed to think that Irving’s book could be the gigantic best seller smash of the decade.

Unfortunately, the autobiography was a complete fabrication…a scam…a pack of lies…the ultimate hoax.

The utterly fascinating element of THE HOAX is the way Hallström digs deep into the world of utter deception and misrepresentations that Irving created for himself.  What’s really clever is that the film does not really show Irving – played in one of the best performances of the year by Richard Gere – as a hateful, fraudulent, and spiteful SOB.  Rather, Irving in the film kind of lives in a state of enjoyable tunnel vision.  You never gain an impression that he went out of his way with his lies to hurt anyone in particular.  Irving is not a shameful and immoral character.  In a way, he seemed to have a level of sly - almost orgasmic - pleasure in perpetrating his scam at the thought of appeasing a country’s unfaltering appetite for a private figure that seemed forever out of the public eye.  Yes, Irving was a con artist and fooled a lot of people, but the film shows him as a man so tightly wrapped up in an aura of excitement and passion.  He truly was genuine in the sense that he wanted to tell the world about Hughes in a way that they never read about or seen.  His motivation, drive, and creative impulses are palpable and commendable; it’s just his lousy and disingenuous methods that can’t be respected.

How spectacular were his lies?  Well, at one point he managed to convince McGraw-Hill that he had corresponded with Hughes via his hand-written letters.  Of course, the letters were amazing fakes, hand crafted by Irving, who even managed to pass the test with handwriting experts.  Beyond forgery, Irving got a hefty advance of $100,000 and even managed to get Hughes a $400,000 payday.  Astoundingly, he convinced accounting to pass on the checks to him, seeing that Hughes – being chronically reclusive – would never show up to get it.  Even more shocking is that Irving managed to get McGraw-Hill to increase the sum to $1 million.  Irving, or course, received the check and – with his wife being a willing conspirator – he was able to cash it at a Swish bank by committing bank fraud.  The couple forged a new name on the paper – H.R. Hughes – to which Irving’s wife impersonated in order to cash the check.

Very rarely has the old adage “truth is stranger than fiction” more appropriate than in describing THE HOAX.

The film chronicles all of this, but it also shows us a light-hearted beginning where we see Irving as an honest, struggling writer before he throws caution to the wind.  Taking place between 1971-1972, we see Irving (Gere) poised to have a best seller on his hands, that is until his icy-demeanored McGraw editor, Andrea Tate (the always decent Hope Davis) tells him the book ain’t gonna fly.  Down and depressed, Irving yearns for a way to rebuild his decaying career and come out with a new book that will take the country by storm.  With the help of his ever-so-loyal researcher, Dick Susskind (Alfred Molina, who has never been better), the two decide to willingly embark on committing what would be the biggest publishing fraud of the last century:  They would write a fake bio on Howard Hughes.

They do all of this mostly via Irving’s remarkably verbose – but charismatic and oftentimes charming – motivation and boundless energy.  Like every man that tries to fool the world, he constantly reminds himself and those around him not “to worry” because “no one would ever catch on.”  Perhaps he was sort of on to something.  After all, Hughes never made public appearances, made very few phone calls, and never even spoke to some of his “closet” friends in over a decade.  He was severely press-aphobic.  Sure, Irving and Susskind cooked up everything, but – as they initially believed – the real Hughes would never take them to task.  Seems logical enough.

The film is intoxicating with how it shows how one small lie snowballs into larger and larger deceits.  It’s one thing to lie about writing the book of the Century, but when your bosses – including the McGraw President Shelton Fischer (Stanley Tucci, always a fiery presence) - starts to call your bluff and asks for evidence, it makes you take the deception to deeper levels.  Irving, as stated previously, forged handwritten letters.  He also claimed to his bosses that he was busy conducting interviews around the world with the billionaire (in actuality, he was – at times – hooking up with his mistress).  Irving even went as far as to get Hughes’ diction and vocal mannerisms just right.  He did this by – get this – studying Hughes tapes, dressing up like him, and actually impersonating him in fake interview sessions lead by Susskind.  It marks the first – and perhaps only – incident of method writing ever.  Even his wife – played well by Marcia Gay Harden – became involved by trying to cash that $1 million payment at a Swish bank.  It’s refreshing to see the wife-figure not be a whiny and annoying presence, but a willing crook with her husband.

Yet, like all great deceivers, Irving and company soon began to realize that their lies would eventually catch up with them.  Public betrayal can only be kept for so long, and as THE HOAX wears on Irving becomes a cauldron of suspicion and paranoia about being “made.”  In an eerie way, he becomes a pseudo-Hughes figure in his obsession with trying to hide his secrets.  The final nail in Irving’s literary coffin occurred when – miraculously – Hughes contacted the public world via speaker phone on live TV with reporters and denounced that Irving was a fake and that he had never met the man.  Disgraced and humiliated, Irving did see his day in court and eventually served nearly two years in jail.  When he was released he published his incredible memoirs of the events, which the film is based on.  His wife did not fare well either.  She did serious time for her participating in committing bank fraud in Switzerland. 

Perhaps THE HOAX’s most powerful characteristic is in the buried, subtle legacy behind Irving’s book that was never published.  Hallström does a virtuosos job of showing Irving in a seemingly never-ending tailspin of dishonesty, but the film also manages to speak on the other legacies of the failed book.  There are assertions in the film that certain content of the book included false bribery charges against then President Nixon.  As a result, it is also hinted that this forced Tricky Dick into reining in anti-trust laws to save TWA, which Hughes had a huge stake in. 

Even more sensationalistic is the notion that the very idea of the bio being published precipitated Nixon’s paranoia, which further precipitated the Watergate scandal.  This angle is captivating as it spins a different aspect of the Irving/ Hughes relationship.  Did Hughes, as he stated, never know who Irving was or did hid use and manipulate him to get what he wanted.  If he later were true, then Irving – paradoxically – can be painted in a small light as a victim.  Wisely, Hallström never shows Hughes in any scenes with the characters, nor is he played by an actor.  He appears in photos and actual newsreel films, oftentimes looming over the shoulders of characters in the background.  This is crucial to the film’s effect; having an actor play Hughes would all but destroy his essence as a creepy and powerful figure in the shadows of the public eye. 

Beyond the enthralling screenplay, THE HOAX is really held together by the uniformly powerful performances.  Gere as Irving is a real career comeback performance and represents his best work in a decade.  Oozing confidence, machismo, cool and calculating authority, and a swindler’s disposition, Gere is unmistakably brilliant as Irving.  What’s even better is the way Gere effortlessly makes the transition in the film where Irving’s life starts to spiral out of control.  His cocky, exterior bravado begins to hide his inner emotional implosion, which is accentuated by the tsunami-sized waves of lies he engages in.  Alfred Molina is equally inspired as Susskind, and perhaps he has the more difficult part.  Susskind was no babe in the woods; he willingly committed fraud alongside Irving.  However, he is a constant presence of morality in the film a seems to acknowledge – when Irving does not – the severity of what they are doing.  He is a very effective foil to Irving’s bombastic and extroverted energy.  Susskind is quiet, pensive, reserved, and – deep down – knows that what they are doing is dead wrong.

Lasse Hallström is a director of understated skill, confidence, and variety.  He has made such diverse gems like WHAT’S EATING GILBERT GRAPE (which details small, rural life in a quirky dysfunctional family) to THE CIDER HOUSE RULES (which chronicles an orphan that is raised to perform unlicensed abortions) to CHOCOLAT (which shows how a French village chocolate shop shakes up the town’s morality).  THE HOAX may be Hallström’s finest hour as a remarkably sensationalistic, darkly funny, and emotionally packed story of how one writer shocked and fooled a nation into believing the unbelievable.  With Oscar-worthy turns by Richard Gere and Alfred Molina, a gripping and thoroughly insightful script, and strong direction make THE HOAX an amazingly solid meditation on the nature of reality and trickery.  Even more solid is the film’s broad tonal range, which successfully goes from comedic to dramatic to creepy.  With all of the film’s light-hearted spirit and sense of reckless fun, there is a constant undertow of dread to the proceedings.  Because of this, THE HOAX emerges as one of 2007’s best, most intriguing efforts…and that’s no lie.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

*1/2  out of  ****

Very rarely has an action/adventure film bored me as senselessly as PATHFINDER did.  I am not sure what is the film’s most negligible flaw: The fact that it has monotonous and ridiculously repetitive action sequences that would not be held captive by most mindless 1980’s action films or that it has absolutely nothing interesting or remarkable to say about the first visitors to the Native tribes of America, predating Columbus by 600 years.  Let’s just say that the film is very appropriately titled; it inspired in me a yearning to search for the closest route to ensure my exit from the theatre in the most expeditious manner possible.

This film’s sensibilities (and aesthetic choices, for that matter) are all over the map.  PATHFINDER is a mess.  I am not sure what it really wants to be.  At certain face value, its appears that it wants to appropriate some of the elements of such historically realistic films like – for example – Mel Gibson’s APOCALYPTO crossed with the adrenaline-charged, sword-swinging, teeth-grinding bloodbaths of CONAN THE BARBARIAN.  Then there are elements of more generic and contemporary action films thrown in for good measure, and by those I mean ham-infested and groan inducing dialogue (like, “I’m not gonna leave you” and “Go on without me”), silly and annoying clichés, and chaotic and convoluted action set pieces. 

Gibson’s film – also about Native American tribes of centuries past – had an astounding level of verisimilitude and authenticity that worked primarily as an out of body experience.  APOCALYPTO is like a National Geographic documentary; PATHFINDER is like reading a Classic Illustrated comic book about history, minus the cadence and flow.  Hell, the film’s battle scenes alone lack the spirit and zeal of the CONAN franchise.  PATHFINDER is just depressing. 

It’s bathed in such a wash of sepia and grey toned washes and murky and mind-numbingly dark cinematography that it’s barely acceptable to see what in the world is going on half the time in the action scenes.  The director - Marcus Nispel, a music video vet – also has an inane predilection to filming most of the would-be pulse-pounding battles with hemorrhage-inducing editing and horrendous amounts of slow motion.  As a result, instead of being roused and entrenched in all of the bloodshed, you just grow tired and bored with it.  Most witless and infantile 80’s action extravaganzas had the decency to not inspire slumber.  In this way, PATHFINDER kind of commits an inexcusable cinematic sin: It’s a rare action film that wants us to crave for less action.  The first few scenes are…well…tolerable, but as the film bares down on you with repetition, you simply start to clue out.

Perhaps even worse is the fact that the villains are faceless and colorless drones (in this film’s case, Vikings) and the main hero is such a monosyllabic and disenchanting dullard that you just kind of lose any semblance of resonation with anyone or anything in the film.  Karl Urban, who plays the hero, looks like a comic book character come to life, but he has zero charisma, zero personality, and zero spunk.  He’s essentially a rugged and handsome actor that is reduced to performing in perfunctory fight montages and spit out dialogue that will roll many eyes.  My single favourite exchange occurs late in the film when one character tells him, “There are always two wolves in a man: love and hate,” to which he responds, “How will I know which one will win in battle?”  She tells him, “The one that you feed the most.”

Ouch.

The film begins – as the overtly simplistic title cards tell us – six centuries before good ol’ Chris Columbus set foot on any American soil.  Most adept students of history would point out that it was the Vikings that first set sail and landed in the “New World”.  Judging by the lush jungle foliage and gigantic, imposing mountain vistas, PATHFINDER certainly seems to think that the Norseman landed a million miles removed from their actual first settling point: Newfoundland, Canada (trust me – we have tourist sites).  Yet, I guess I am willing to accept a little bit of fudging of actual history.  Yes, I am willing to also accept that most scholars would point out that Vikings never really wore large animal horns on their battle helmets.  However, the stereotypical horned Viking helmets look so dang cool, so – again - I will accept that historical no-no too.

I guess what I will not accept is the film’s story, or lack there of.  The film is 5 per cent story and character development and 95 per cent blood-splattering mayhem.  In the beginning we see a group of malicious and crazy Vikings slash and burn their way through a Native American village.  During this time – 1100 years ago – the Vikings left behind one of their young children, basically because his father did not like the fact that is son would not finish off the killing of a defenseless Native child that he started.  Note to Viking kid: If Daddy asks you to behead a child – then honor daddy.

After the boy is “spanked” by daddy (a Norse euphemism for viciously whipped), he is left behind by his brethren for dead.  However, the local Natives develop a fondness for the suffering lad.  Despite his ethnic differences (he’s white, remember) the Native tribe adopt him as one of their own.  Faster than a obligatorical title card that reads “15 YEARS LATER” can come on screen, the film flash forwards 15 years later and the young and reserved lad has grown in the adult warrior, Ghost (Karl Urban), who looks likes like a GQ model version of Gerald Butler’s Rasputin-eyed warrior from 300.  Urban, as stated, is a decent and commanding presence on camera when he strikes a pose with a sword or bow and looks mean.  His only problem is when he opens his mouth and speaks.

Anyhoo’, Ghost has taken to native life as well as anyone under his circumstances.  Just when things could not get any better, those damn, dirty Vikings show up again to re-take the lands that the previous party failed to do.  The Norse leader, Gunnar (Clancy Brown) leads his horned-clad army on a barbaric assault on Ghost’s village, slashing, impaling, and beheading anything that moves.  Ghost manages to survive (big surprise) and eventually hooks up with two other Native companions – Pathfinder (Russell Means, who means well with his appearance and performance, but deserves a whole lot better) and his daughter (played by Moon Bloodgood) who sure is quite the babe for pre-Columbus colonization.  She facilitates two purposes: (a) she will be required to help nurse an injured Ghost back to health when terribly injured and (b) will offer him up unintentionally hilarious words of wisdom and motivation for the hero to continue on with his quest of getting rid of all of that Norse scrum.

I simply don’t know where to begin and where to end with discussing why PATHFINDER simply does not work on any level.  The performances are one major problem.  Urban and his Native comrades are so thinly and hastily drawn that they emerge more as being convenient plot points than developed characters.  This makes it painfully difficult to care about Ghost, the Natives, or anything that happens to them.  This makes the 99-minute film feel considerably longer than it is.  When the heroes do speak to one another, the enunciation is wooden and dull.  There is no passion, emotion, or spark to their exchanges.  We care little for them that when scenes of their demise ensue, we shrug it off instead of feeling for them.

And…another thing…I am not sure why the film chose to have all of the Natives speak fluent, modern day English and the Vikings speak in their historical tongue. Huh?  Why not have the film at least be an equal opportunist with language and have them all speak their foreign languages?  Worked for APOCALYPTO.  Well, PATHFINDER ain’t no APOCALYTPO.  This weird stylistic choice creates an odd divide in the hero and villains and affects the symmetry of the film.  I mean, if you make the Natives talk in anachronistic English, the Vikings should follow suit as well.

And…another thing…there is also no real engine to drive this story forward.  Oh, it has a story, albeit minuscule: Vikings invade Natives, kill lots of Natives; Ghost seeks revenge, kills lots of Vikings.   The film – like the recent 300 – is filled with wall-to-wall orgies of sadomasochistic violence of the most painful variety, but 300 had style, panache, and a droll sense of dark fun and whimsy to the gore.  PATHFINDER’s action is sloppy in execution and even sloppier in the editing department. 

Nispel films all of these montages as if he forgot to light the subject matter.  Color and light is vacant in the film and its constantly dark and bleached out cinematography is a real turn off.  Some shots are kind of hauntingly beautiful, and he gives the Vikings a sense of otherworldly menace and stature, but PATHFINDER seems too much like a cannibalized MTV music video for its own good.  The film is so dark, depraved, and desolate from an aesthetic viewpoint that it becomes something emotionally detaching and cold.  If anything, this film should be required viewing in film schools for how not to film action scenes.  In short, make them coherent, clear, and exciting.  PATHFINDER has none of those qualities; it’s just awash in a copious fog of grubby storytelling and even grubbier camera work.

Senseless, flavourless, bland, and uninvolving would just be a few of the many descriptors for PATHFINDER, a poor man’s APOCALYPTO and CONAN: THE BARBARIAN if there ever was one.  With one-dimensional characters far too frequently reciting banal and corny dialogue, action set pieces that are endlessly dull and carelessly realized, and an overall story arc that has none of the grandeur and allure that it should have had, PATHFINDER simply fails as a historical battle epic.  Exasperated by all of its shallowness and lack of color and finesse, I can’t even wholeheartedly recommend the film as a decent, disposable action flick.  When you have characters with the personalities of corpses, villains that are robots with swords and armor, and a physical struggle between the two that lack any meaningful dynamic, then why even bother?  Certainly, there is an intriguing and fascinating story to tell about the first meetings between the Vikings and the First Nations people well before Columbus sailed the Ocean blue in 1492.  PATHFINDER simply isn’t it.  Terrance Malik, where are you when we need you?

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out of  ****

HOT FUZZ feels like a breezy, infectiously silly, and caffeine-induced lovechild of LETHAL WEAPON and MONTY PYTHON.  That is as apt of a descriptor that I can attribute to the film.  It most certainly has the dry, articulate, and acerbic wit and humor that only the Brits can muster and it amalgamates these traits with the aesthetic of the typical, dime-a-dozen, Hollywood blockbuster action film.  In essence, HOT FUZZ is a satire of all of the schlock, sleaze, clichés, and monumental overkill that has permeated seemingly all action films of the last twenty years.  For the most part, it is an unpretentious riot and a heartfelt salute to the absurdity and stupid-as-hell conventions that made the genre so popular.

However, it should be wise to point out that this is not a spoof, ala AIRPLANE!, TOP SECRET, or the NAKED GUN films.  As Simon Pegg - HOT FUZZ’s star and co-writer - commented on in a recent interview, the film is not a spoof because it “lacks the sneer that a lot of parodies have that look down on their source material. Because we’re looking up to it.”  That is a very revealing sentiment, because HOT FUZZ seems to have a level of subverted appreciation for the spectacularly violent action extravaganzas that preceded it.  Pegg and his collaborator, director and co-writer Edgar Wright, don’t put down those films.  Instead of making silly parodies of action films, they simply make HOT FUZZ a funny genre film.  It certainly is very, very funny.

Pegg, Wright, and their other on-screen collaborator, Nick Frost, gained worldwide notoriety with their zombie themed romantic comedy, SHAUN ON THE DEAD, which was released in 2004.  That work was an uproariously hysterical homage to the near endless string of zombie and undead horror films that have been released in the last quarter of a century (although it owes a great debt to the DEAD-trilogy of zombie fright flicks by the legendary George A. Romero).  Typically accepted by critics and fans as a smart parody and a loving tribute, SHAUN OF THE DEAD did an amazingly assured job of not only revitalizing a much redundant genre, but it also was one of the funniest comedies of its year.

HOT FUZZ continues this groups’ dedication to saluting their favorite genre films by focusing specifically on the action film.  The film is remarkably broad with its skewering sensibilities; works as far ranging as COMMANDO, THE MATRIX TRILOGY, THE LETHAL WEAPON series, BAD BOYS I and II, POINT BREAK, HARD BOILED, MEN IN BLACK, STRAW DOGS, hell – even CHINATOWN – are held to ridiculous levels of hero worship in the film.  Yet, the key to the film’s overall effect is that it is almost entirely done straight-faced.  No one egotistically mugs the camera for attention; no one accentuates lines to hammer home the comedy; and no one plays things too broadly to the point of annoyance.  Like in SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ has genuine characters that are likeable and have weight, even when they are knee deep in a absurdist plot that has enough inane shenanigans, slapstick dialogue, and gory horrific violence to make even Ah-nauld blush.

Nicolas Angel (Pegg, as funny as ever) is one of the most accomplished and decorated cops in all of London.  Fit as a fiddle, emotionless, and with a by-the-book attitude, he is a one-man law enforcement machine.  He graduated at the top of his class, has a list of accommodations and awards that would take other cops a lifetime to garner, and his arrest rate is a staggering 400 – that’s 400 – per cent.  Angel is good…real good.

Unfortunately, he is too good, which – in a hilariously deadpanned opening scene – is revealed to him by his superiors (played by Bill Nighy and Steve Coogan).  It seems that torpedo-paced success is not what Angel’s department needs right now.  In actuality, Angel’s remarkably aggressive police enforcement has tarnished the department’s image.  In short, his abilities are starting to make everyone else look bad.  As a form of idiotic punishment, the department re-assigns (more like banishes) him to Sandford, a sleepy village in Gloucestershire.  Obviously, Angel – a certifiable, Martin Briggs lethal weapon – does not like this new assignment too much.  After all, Sandford is the kind of low-key, small, and underwhelming town where lost swans, odd street performers, and old grumps trimming his neighbour’s hedges too short are the only dilemmas facing officers.

At first, his arrival at Sandford is marred by an annoying level of normalcy.  Yet, he soon goes a bit bonkers and – during one evening – he manages to lay down his brand of justice for the most minute of crimes.  This worries Angel’s superior, Inspector Frank Butterman (Ian Broadbent) who pleads with Angel to simply cool down and chill out a bit.  In order to help tone down Angel’s Rambo-esque predilection for taking care of business, the Inspector decides to partner him up with his bumbling doofus of a son, Danny (the delightfully funny Nick Frost).  Danny is hopelessly naïve and wet-behind-the-ears as a cop.  When he realizes that he now has a real bad ass for a partner, his eyes bug out with childlike enthusiasm. 

He begins to flood Angel with every type of stupid and infantile question about police work, as evident in one of the film’s funniest moments (“Have you ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?  Have you ever fired one gun whilst jumping through the air?  Have you ever been in a high-speed pursuit?  Have you ever fired a gun whilst in a high speed pursuit?).  Danny has an even funnier moment during a grade school information session, which Angel heads up and fields questions.  Danny puts up his hand and asks, “Is it true that there’s a point on a man’s head where if you shoot it, it will blow up?”

The more the monotony of Sandford life drowns him, the more and more Angel looks for a crime to really, really sink his teeth into.  And, no, not the type of casual disturbance like a street performer that annoys onlookers or a hideously overwrought actor that puts on one of the most jaw-droppingly awful presentations of ROMEO AND JULIET ever to grace the stage.  No sir.  We are talking real blood and guts, wall-to-wall mayhem crime.  It soon appears that he gets his wish when the unthinkable occurs: People start to get murdered one by one in a town where killing is nothing but a fantasy. 

Of course, every one of the town’s simple folk thinks that these remarkably linked killings are nothing but coincidental accidents.  Well, Angel sure as hell doesn’t think so, and he puts his nose to the grindstone and eventually is drawn to – of all people – the owner of the town’s grocery store, Skinner (the infectiously droll Timothy Dalton) who certainly does appear to be hatching out some sort of degenerate and sick master plan.  All of this boils over to the final’s final 30 minutes, during which the film careens towards a bravura set of kinetic and wickedly energized action set pieces that are as astoudingly and absurdly funny as they are gut-wrenchingly gruesome. 

Wright and Pegg spent eighteen months writing the script for HOT FUZZ and it definitely shows.  The film is exceedingly smart and clever with its copious amounts of references to big, Hollywood action films.  One moment where Angel collects guns to arm himself for kick ass payback has obvious echoes to a similar scene in COMMANDO.  Two particular films, BAD BOYS 2 and POINT BREAK, are very specifically referenced in the film, oftentimes to witty effect (after one night of drinking and movie watching, Angel laughingly decrees that BAD BOYS 2 is “a no holds barred, adrenaline fuelled thrill ride. But, there is no way you can perpetrate that amount of carnage and mayhem and not incur a considerable amount of paperwork”).  BAD BOYS in-gags run amok in the film, as is the case with one obvious visual echo of a similar shot in the film where helicopters arrive to help Angel and Frost.  When Frost – at one point – screams out “This shit just got real,” it’s also a nod to one of the more ham-infested lines uttered by Martin Lawrence in the film.

The two main leads generate most of the guffaws.  Pegg and Frost are kind of a New Age, wise-talking Abbot and Costello and they play effectively off of one another in the film.  HOT FUZZ also generates some real comic mileage in insinuating – albeit subtly – the homoerotic undertones to their friendship.  Clearly trying to parallel the “closeness” and “bond” of the male leads that other cop/buddy films have, HOT FUZZ ups the ante even further by embedding in a pseudo-romantic interest between Angel and Danny without it being overt.  The overall dynamic here is hilarious, not because it’s overt and plays up to outrageous gay stereotypes, but because its buried under the surface.  Angel and Frost never “get it on”, so to speak, but after Angel spends the night after a binge of action film viewing and falls asleep on the couch beside him, he later goes to buy him flowers when he discovers its his birthday.  Yet – make no mistake about it – when the going gets tough for the two, they gather up all of their rugged masculinity and take care of business.

HOT FUZZ could have been flawless and note-perfect if it did not let its absorbingly long running time get the better of it.  At over two hours, the film is simply 20-30 minutes too long for its own good.  The film’s third act – which is amazingly action-packed and marvelously farcical – kind of never knows when to end.  Wright and Pegg have a real, clear cut passion and drive for the material, and it obviously shows throughout HOT FUZZ.  Yet, having said that, the film gets pulverized by their lack of discipline at times.  It’s almost as if they loved the material so much that they could not bear to trim any of it.  At 90 minutes, HOT FUZZ would still be funny, but the laugh quotient would be more consistent and evenly spread out.  Not only that, but the pacing would also not have been as sluggish during the middle section of the film, which kind of languishes around.  Nevertheless, too much of a good thing is – in HOT FUZZ’s case – not entirely a bad thing.

Despite its laboriously long running time, HOT FUZZ still emerges as a smashingly funny and worthy follow-up to Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s comic hit, SHAUN OF THE DEAD.  As a pumped up, thoughtful, and well-realized homage to the silliness and overwroughtness of modern action films, HOT FUZZ is remarkably sincere with the targets it attempts to lampoon.  The comedy in the film is sharp, perceptive, and well observed and many moments are laugh-out-loud without being too smart-alecky and self-aware.  Perhaps most important is the fact that the film has a certain - almost paradoxical - scornful love for Hollywood nonsense.  With its aggressively funny dialogue, hyperactive editing, and sardonic soundtrack,  HOT FUZZ shows that the best way to satirize a genre is by showing appreciation and contempt for it.  Then again, any film that mocks the stylistic overkill of Michael Bay is not altogether terrible.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***1/2  out of  ****

Two of the many reasons that can be attributed to FRACTURE’s overall success are in its two main lead actors.  First, we have Anthony Hopkins, a classically trained actor playing a role of a sophisticated, refined, and chillingly urbane psycho in ways only he can muster.  Secondly, we have Ryan Gosling - whose talents lend more to method acting - who again reaffirms himself as one of the most commanding and disciplined young actors to emerge in the movies in the last decade.  The two create a real absorbing level of tension and intrigue with their on-screen relationship, not to mention that they play effortlessly as intriguing foils to one another. 

Perhaps the other key to the film’s worth is that – in essence – the screenplay is able to carve out these two personas as equally compelling and layered.  That’s a tricky and difficult thing to do in a psychological thriller, and the understated genius of FRACTURE is that it presents to us a protagonist and antagonist that are likable and charismatic along with being emotionally flawed.  At times, we simultaneously like and hate both the hero and the villain.  As far as thrillers go, that’s a rare commodity.

It’s also important to note that the film goes against the grain of many modern thrillers and court room procedurals in the sense that it allows the well written and performed characters and appealing and well laid out narrative take center stage.  I’ve grown tired and bored with recent genre films that try to shock and tease with multiple twist endings, bizarre and outrageous story developments, and mindless action set pieces.  FRACTURE is a real cinematic anomaly in the sense that it places paramount importance on a good, linear storytelling, a smart script laced with sly dialogue, and two main characters that are nuanced and multi-faceted.  The film has gimmicky plot elements, to be sure, but it rises above clichés in its handling of the underlining material and with the strengths of Gosling and Hopkins.

The trailers for the film never really do it any justice.  Watching them makes FRACTURE look like a dry and redundant SILENCE OF THE LAMBS watered down for mass consumption.  We are shown glimpses of the icy and hypnotic gaze of Hopkins playing a deranged killer and Gosling playing the young, idealistic, and cocky man of the law that tries to crack through Hopkins’ rugged and tough emotional exterior in an effort to break him down and beat him (sound familiar?).  The previews made FRACTURE look painfully routine and shallow.  Yet, the film kind of subtly defies expectations and creeps up on you slowly to the point where you get more deeply drawn into the proceedings. 

All of the ads make the film look like a thriller, murder mystery, and a John Grisham courtroom drama.  FRACTURE has all of those elements, but at its core is an enthralling chess game of wits between an intelligent and cunning older man and an equally intelligent and cunning younger man.  Both know they are shrewd, resourceful, and prideful of their astuteness, and both use this against the other.  The two men are guilty of one thing: they think they are smarter than the other – and this gives FRACTURE a sense of purpose and involvement.  For the viewer, it’s easy to empathize and relate to both them.

Perhaps even more captivating is the fact that the guilt of the villain is never held in question throughout the film.  Simply put - we know that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  However, it’s the manner that the bad guy tries to deceive the hero to prove his innocence that’s quite ingenious.  Ted Crawford (played in a virtuoso performance by Hopkins) is just smart enough to pull that off.  At the beginning of the film he has everything that life could offer him.  He is the owner of a huge aeronautics company, is filthy rich, drives a super fast and sleek sports car, has a gigantic mansion, and is married to a gorgeous woman half is age (Embeth Davidtz), the kind of woman that any husband would be checking constantly to ensure that other men from around the room would not be trying to pick her up.  Unfortunately, Crawford’s paranoia about his wife is well founded: she is actually having an affair with a man close to her age.

Interestingly, this is no secret to Crawford.  One day he leaves work early so that he can spy on the two lovers at their hotel getaway.  Crawford goes mad seeing his wife betray him so willingly, and he has already decided that this adulterous woman does not deserve to live with another man at her side.  However, Crawford is not an impetuous and hasty killer; he is thoughtful, calculating, and absolutely meticulous in planning his crime.  Perhaps his job in mathematics and engineering predicates his attention to every minute detail of plotting his ultimate revenge.  This is crucial, because Crawford does not simply want to point a gun at his wife’s head and pull the trigger.  Rather, he waits for precisely the correct moment to catch her off guard to do the deed, not to mention the right time to set the rest of the film in motion during which he masterfully tries to prove his innocence.

Not surprisingly, Crawford shoots his wife in the face.  What is surprising is the fact that – when the police come – he matter-of-factly pledges guilt to the crime.  What’s even more interesting is the fact that Detective Rob Nunally (Billy Burke) is the cop that Crawford admits this too.  Turns out that it was Nunally himself that was actually sleeping with his wife, to ultimately complicate matters.  When Nunally uncovers that it was his lover that was shot by Crawford, he attacks and proceeds to pound on him, which Crawford hoped would have happened.  You see, what looks better in court, a confession to an anonymous cop, or a confession to a cop that was sleeping with the accused’s wife that was “beaten” out of him?  Crawford has thought every detail through to mathematical precision.

Of course, it would seem that the case should easily be closed.  Crawford did, indeed, shoot his wife and he did confess to it to the police.  At least that’s what a young, cocky assistant DA named Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) thinks.  Beachum is an attorney that rarely loses; he has a 97 per cent conviction rate.  When he catches wind of the Crawford case, he thinks it’s an absolute win-win.  After all, he sees evidence in the form of a smoking gun, not to mention Crawford’s admission of guilt.  However, Beachum’s sin is ego and pride.  He has let his own inflated sense of worth and power as a lawyer cloud his judgment: he thinks he will not loose the Crawford case, and Crawford himself senses this like a wild predator sniffing out vulnerable prey.  At the arraignment he goes out of his way to defend himself without counsel and pleads for Beachum to prosecute. 

Beachum, of course, thinks he can’t loose, but is seriously not altogether with it for the case.  Firstly, he is distracted by the fact that it is his last week working for the taxpayers and for his boss, Joe Lobruto (David Straithairn, in a small, but memorably restrained performance), and that he is to start work shortly for one of the most notable law firms of Los Angeles.  Not only that, but he begins a sorted fling with his new boss (played by the incredibly fetching former Bond girl, Rosamund Pike). 

Things snowball really fast when Beachum and Crawford meet in court and – to the amazed Beachum – he totally owns him during the proceedings, despite his lack of judicial experience. Unfortunately, Crawford’s ace in the hole is the fact that (a) he has miraculously been able to hide the murder weapon from the law, thus helping to absolve his guilt, and (b) Beachum never finds out about the cop’s relationship to the victim until he’s on the stand during the trial.  As a result, the once hot-shot attorney is reduced to mince meat in the courtroom.  The mind games have now begun.

It is for those reasons why FRACTURE is more than just a run-of-the mill legal thriller.  The film has a level of disciplined and systematic patience with showing Crawford’s master plan bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece, and clue-by-clue.  Everything happens with an orderly cadence, and this only heightens the film’s momentum; just when you think you know Crawford’s plan, new tidbit emerges without you (or Beachum for that matter) guessing what they are.  Again, the pleasure of watching FRACTURE is not in terms of discovering who is actually guilty of the crime.  This is a not a who-dunnit: we know Crawford - within ten minutes of the film - is unequivocally guilty.  FRACTURE is more of a how’s-he-gonna-get-away-with-it and the more the film unfolds the more diabolical and masterful Crawford emerges as a criminal.  The way he is able to effectively and lawfully prove his innocence in the courtroom is imaginative and deliciously inspired.  This makes Crawford, in turn, even more sadistic and creepy and this furthermore makes us root for the hero to cage this criminal mastermind once and for all.

Beyond the film’s intuitive and quick-witted script, FRACTURE’S real assets are Hopkins and Gosling themselves.  Weak actors would have sunk the characters into B-grade waters.  Lesser talent would have made Crawford into a stereotypical, one note monster.  In Hopkins’ hands he makes Crawford a figure of soft-spoken malevolence.  This is not Hannibal-redux here.  Crawford is less theatrical and more real in the sense that he is a jilted husband (rightfully so) that goes too far.  We feel for him and understand his plight, even if we can’t support his motives.  Hopkins plays the role with effortless charm and slimy bravado. 

Gosling is equally compelling.  His Beachum is like Crawford in the sense that we feel for his frustration in not cracking the case, but scorn him for his egotism and self-righteousness at times.  Watching Gosling, hot off his Oscar nominated work in HALF NELSON, is a real sight to behold.  Just look at the way he quietly commands the screen with the smallest hand gesture, glance, or turn of the eye.  I have compared Gosling to a young Brando or De Niro in past reviews.  It’s not hard to see.  Like those immortal actors, he conjures big emotions and payoffs with being low-key and under the radar.  He never overplays; he quietly inhabits the moment.  He makes other actors around him look better.

FRACTURE could have been yet another predictable and formulaic suspense, courtroom thriller, but it suspends itself highly above the norm with its intelligently crafted screenplay and its wonderfully textured performances by Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling.  The film is manipulative, but it is also assured and cagey in the way it shows two diametrically opposed men engage in an ultimate battle of wits and ego.  FRACTURE works very effectively on us by allowing the smartness and ingenuity of its characters and the economically paced script grab a hold of us for its 113 minutes.  The film is a pleasurable and entertaining surprise in the sense that it creates a real rooting interest in its story and characters, aspects that would often be overlooked in similar thrillers.  FRACTURE is slick, well directed, impeccably acted, involving, and -most crucially - a lot of diabolical fun.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

*  out of  ****

PERFECT STRANGER should not in any way be confused with the mid-1980’s TV sitcom – PERFECT STRANGERS – staring Bronson Pinchot.  However, I will go on record to say that there were moments in the film where I laughed out loud as if it were a sitcom, which may not be the intended reaction considering that this was advertised as an erotic thriller. 

Let’s just say that as an “erotic thriller” PERFECT STRANGER is neither sexy nor erotic; as a murder-mystery/who-dunnit, the film is about as involving and suspenseful as ear wax; and as a worthy film for the likes of such A-list talent as Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, and Giovanni Ribisi, it is a shameful, forgettable waste.  PERFECT STRANGER is a failure on all accounts.  Hell, it’s not even good, tawdry, exploitative trash that would occupy low-rent cable television.

There is nothing more unappealing than an erotic thriller that lacks heat and - for that matter - copious amounts of nudity and seamy sexuality.  Even worse is a film of this genre that attempts to shock and titillate at the same time.  The abysmal aspect of PERFECT STRANGER is that it has no sizzle (despite it very hot main actress), coherence, nor does it have a workable script that does justice to the performers that are in it.  Thrillers and mysteries should be enticing and provocative, leading the viewing into its proceedings with well-drawn characters and a narrative that has edge and allure.  PERFECT STRANGERS is so hopelessly silly and inane that – when the final scene rolls by to the end credits – you kind of scratch your head and wonder where you’ve been for the last 90-plus minutes.  Some of the best films are out-of-body experiences in the way they allow you to forget your surroundings and immerse yourself in the film altogether.  PERFECT STRANGER is not an out-of-body-film; it’s a no-brain-in-the-body film.  I felt cheated and stupid after watching it.

The movie does not even attain the dubious credit of a guilty pleasure.  Perhaps even more noteworthy is that the film churns out yet another lackluster, sub-par, and all-over-the-map performance by Halle Berry, who appears in PERFECT STRANGER as if she were attempting to secure the honor of most appallingly awful follow-up films to an Oscar winning performance.  There is no doubt that Berry is one of the most glamorous and beautiful specimens in the movies, but in PERFECT STRANGER she lets her wonder-bra, ample cleavage, and deranged and incoherent performance do all the talking. 

Add this film alongside such career lows as CATWOMAN, GOTHIKA, and SWORDFISH and its deceptively easy to see that Berry has gone terribly astray from her Academy Award winning turn in MONSTER BALL.  Hyperbole aside, Berry’s acting here is cataclysmically embarrassing.  She seems to have no clue as to whom she is playing.  There is no flow, cadence, or any semblance of consistency here.  Add to the mix Bruce Willis (who phones in a one-note performance that gives his work in COLOR OF NIGHT a whole new respectability), and Ribisi (who is reduced down to a sniveling, drooling stooge) and you have a instantly forgettable and wholeheartedly disposable effort.

Berry (looking as characteristically fetching as ever) plays Rowena, one of those crusading, winner-take-all investigative journalists that seems to occupy a story from fifty years ago.  Believing that all female journalists are not treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve, she writes all of her columns under a male pseudonym.  Huh?  Call me crazy, but I can name on both hands and all ten fingers some fairly respected female print writers, but in Rowena’s mind, she’s of an ill-treated breed and decides to bury her gender in her stories. 

Near the beginning of the film one of Rowena’s childhood friends, Grace (Nicki Aycox) has died a very violent and tragic death.  Appealing to her sensibilities as a cunning sleuth, Rowena decides to investigate the shady circumstances.  Along for the ride is her trusted sidekick and very, very loyal friend named Miles (Ribisi), a computer whiz that works at her newspaper who is an unqualified genius with a computer, which makes him invaluable at helping Rowena at a moment’s notice.  Ribisi is a very fine actor – one of the better to emerge from his generation – and he plays Miles with that right element of sly, daft, and caffeine-induced energy. Yet, he telegraphs the motives of his character way, way to much.  During some moments of the film he showcases such elements of stalkerish behaviour towards Rowena that it would be easy to see that this guy is not who he really says he is.  Okay, maybe he’s really just a trusted and true confidant to Rowena, but maybe he really likes the way she looks in a low-cut dress.

Needless to say, the dynamic duo of Rowena and Miles set their sights one man, Harrison Hill (the absurdly bad Willis), who is the chief of one of the most successful advertising agencies around.  Hill has everything: money, power, a super-model gorgeous wife, and corporate respectability.  But, Rowena thinks that this man is a sex addict, adulterer, and pervert.  How does she come to think this?  Well, she uncovers some rather incriminating evidence in the form of chat room transcripts from Grace and a user named ADEX.  Is ADEX Harrison?  Rowena seems utterly convinced, and she subsequently plans to reveal him to the world by going in undercover into his agency and will then use her innate sexuality as a weapon.  She will place herself within Harrison’s organization and get “close” with him as she works as a temp and then she will log on, with Miles’ assistance, to the same chat room ADEX uses and in hopes to lure ADEX into admitting that he is – in fact – Harrison.

Got all that?

One thing that is deliciously implausible is how Hill is able to maintain his actual job.  At times, he is seen as the poster boy for upper management and is suave, debonair, and well spoken at engagements.  At other times, he is such a caldron of anger and hard-edged violence that he is not below grabbing a fellow worker out of his desk and kicking the crap out of him for not doing his job faithfully.  Then, to make the character even more improbably absurd, he is shown flirting with everything that has high heels, a short skirt, and a plunging neckline.  Whether this man is ADEX and a cold-hearted murderer is something the film asks us to ponder, but how Harrison is not brought up on assault and sexually harassment charges is beyond me.  The character is not helped by Willis performance, who plays the role so broadly that you never seem to think that he is sure whether he is an amoral corporate CEO or a goodfella from a Scorsese crime epic.

Now, to amp up the film’s limitless amount of silliness and unintentional camp appeal, Harrison instantly becomes smitten with Rowena, renaming herself Veronica so she can be “undercover”.  The film quickly piles on one ridiculous and contrived plot element after another.  While she is seducing Hill, Rowena hooks up with and bangs her ex-boyfriend (Gary Dourdan), who is revealed to have had an affair with Grace in the past, thus complicating matters.  Even more complicated is the fact that Hill actually catches Rowena trying to sabotage his office PC, after which time he forgives her by firing her and taking her out for a night on the town.  She may have tried to steal all of his PC secrets and destroy his career, but - hot dang -  Harrison thinks she so sexy that a night on the town would be punishment enough.

Meanwhile, we discover that Grace may have been sleeping with other men and – to add extra flavor to an ultimately flavorless thriller – Miles seems to get agitated and jealous the more time Rowena spends with Hill in an effort to get information from him.  Miles becomes such an obvious figure of hate and envy that it looks like he could drop down on his hands and knees at any given time and proceed to suck on Rowena’s toes.  He’s that creepy of a presence.  And then there are some odd and awkwardly revealed flashbacks to Rowena’s childhood with her and her abusive father. 

PERFECT STRANGER is a dumb film made by an intelligent filmmaker, James Foley, who made great films like crime classic AT CLOSE RANGE and one of the best assemble-actor films of the last 15 years in GLENGARRY GLENROSS.  PERFECT STRANGER is a perfect example of how atrocious and untamed performances coupled with a convoluted and messy script can trump a director’s talent.  Berry seems oblivious to the type of film and character that she is supposed to play, Willis hams it up and overacts like he was just plucked off the set of HUDSON HAWK, and Ribisi is simply too good of an actor to play such a mishandled character that he has to sludge through here. 

PERFECT STRANGER also commits the unforgettable by adding on one would-be shocking plot twist after another within the film’s closing moments.  They are such unmitigated howlers that it needs a long and laborious sequence where one key character has to engage in dry and routine expositional dialogue to make us believe that the actual killer is had the most probable motives.  Very rarely has a thriller had a persona with such improbable motives as revealed in PERFECT STRANGER.  The final, final twist is such a jaw-dropping groaner that rings so utterly false that the dramatic weight of the rest of the film has imploded within itself.

PERFECT STRANGER is the type of intellectually vacant dribble that makes one yearn for the tense and taut thrillers of yesteryear, which concerned themselves with the subtle nuances of storytelling and characters.  With flaccid and sloppy direction, unhinged and manic performances by most of the film’s lead actors, and a story that throws endless amounts of red herrings at the viewers to the point of nausea, PERFECT STRANGER does not ever achieve the passable level of cheap and dirty B-grade, direct to video sex thriller.  It does deserve to go on a long recent list of erotic thrillers that have no eroticism, no thrills, no believable character motives, and no plot twists that are legitimate surprises.  If anything, PERFECT STRANGER is the epitome of labored, tired, and instantly forgettable filmmaking where the film’s half-baked premise and horrendously unbelievable story developments ultimately does it in.  The movie is like a shoddy commission salesman that engages in bait n’ switch.  It advertises and offers up one thing, but switches gears and gives us something we never expected, nor wanted.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out of  ****

Shia LaBeouf kind of reminds of me of a young Jimmy Stewart.  He is funny without over-hamming up the zaniness; he’s cool, collected, and reserved, but not without having charm and charisma; he’s instantly an affable screen presence, even when he has a clear cut darker edge to his character; and lastly he effectively balances earnest sentiment with a nicely underplayed goofiness, a trait that some actors twice his age have a difficult time mustering. 

I pay LaBeouf all of these juicy compliments as a prelude of sorts to discussing DISTURBIA, which is a clear-cut homage to REAR WINDOW – one of the greatest of all films – which starred Jimmy Stewart.  Calling it a blatant rip-off kind of does it disservice.  I think that the best way to typify the film would be to call it an appropriation of elements of REAR WINDOW that are absorbed in with subtle differences in character, location, and story.  In a way, it’s TEEN REAR WINDOW, kind of John Hughes meets Alfred Hitchcock, and the one thing that ultimately surprised me about the film was that it takes its time building on characters and tone and then allows for the action and suspense to take over in the final thirty minutes. 

Considering the relative smorgasbord of dumb teen slasher films that permeate the cinemas these days, DISTURBIA is uniformly refreshing in the sense that it does an exceedingly effective job of being smart, sly, funny, and legitimately thrilling.  Considering the amount of divergent material and themes here – like teen angst and alienation, mother/ son relationships, family trauma, first crushes, and the more obvious elements of the thriller genre – seeing DISTURBIA find the precise balance of tone and mood is to its credit.  Perhaps even better is that it treats its teen characters plausibly as resourceful, intelligent, and crafty.  I love it when films give us adolescent characters that are not stock types, nor are they meandering zombies servicing a paint-by-numbers narrative.  Because of that, the film is much smarter and craftier that one would initially think.

And - yes - the parallels to Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW are all here in abundance, but DISTURBIA has a lot of fun and spirit with modernizing them.  In WINDOW we had the middle-aged Stewart who is wheel chair bound who passes the time everyday by watching the comings and goings of all of his neighbors outside his apartment complex.  In DISTURBIA’s case, LaBeouf is confined to his home, but not via personal injury, but by the ankle bracelet the cops make him wear for his house arrest sentence.  WINDOW had the gorgeous Grace Kelly as Stewart’s leading lady and love interest.  IN DISTURBIA we have the fetching Sarah Roemer that catches LaBeouf’s eyes and heart.  Finally, WINDOW had the imposing and quietly commanding presence of Raymond Burr as the evil killer next door.  In DISTURBIA, we have David Morse as the potential killer of the LaBeouf’s block, and Morse has such a field day in the film with his effortlessly creepy and slimy performance that you instantly know from the second you lay eyes on this guy that he may – just may – have several corpses hidden in his home.  As Morse has successfully proven time and time again, he is one of the best actors at playing festering, unapologetic slimballs with a screw loose.

However, before the mayhem and suspense unfolds, DISTURBIA opens quietly and modestly with Kale (LaBeouf) and his father enjoying a peaceful and relaxing vacation fly-fishing together.  What happens next is interesting from a story standpoint:  On the way home Kale swerves his car to avoid a collision on the highway, but still manages to roll the vehicle.  Just when they think they’re safe, another car comes thundering in and obliterates the passenger side that carried Kale’s father, instantly killing him.  The immediacy of this opening sequence has real strength and potency because it allows for the film to not dwell on introductions – we immediately make the transition into the main guts of the rest of the story.

One year later we see an emotionally troubled Kale in school.  After his history teacher scolds him for not finishing his homework – and after making a crackpot and snide remark indirectly about his dead father – Kale jumps his teacher and punches him out.  At his hearing the judge has mercy on him…to a degree.  Taking into consideration his father’s recent, tragic death – and the fragile state Kale is in as a result – he sentences him to three months house arrest with – gasp! – his mother (Carrie Anne Moss, nicely playing against her kick-ass MATRIX persona) facilitating as warden.

Kale agrees to his punishment and banishes himself to his home.  How hard could three months of house arrest be?  He has all of the cool tech gadgets that any teen – or adult for that matter – would have at his disposable to kill 90 days with.  He has a PC with thousands of hours of downloaded music; a home theatre system with big screen LCD TV; and an XBOX 360 hooked up to the Internet so that he can play endless games against his friends.  His life is only really complicated by the fact that he has to wear an ankle bracelet and can’t go beyond 100 yards of the house, otherwise the cops come pronto and bust him again.  Unfortunately for Kale, the bracelet becomes a bane of his existence, and not only that, but his stern mother cancels his Internet and 360 live accesses.  Nooooooooo!!!!

Realizing that he can’t simply pass the days with his eyes to the tube or computer monitor, Kale soon tries to find ways to curb his ever-growing boredom.  He does this – of course – by watching everything that is going on with his neighbors through his second level bedroom window.  Much like Stewart in REAR WINDOW, Kale becomes an increasingly inquisitive judge and eyewitness to the most minute of activities by the other people of his block.  He observes one neighbor having an affair, on neighbor that likes to cut his grass a lot, one neighbor whose young kids like to watch soft-core porn when mom is not looking, and so on.  Oh, he especially likes peeping on his sexy new neighbor, Ashley (Roemer) who likes to exercise in next to nothing and swims daily in her tiny bikini.  And then there is Mr. Turner (Morse) who Kale observes having a dented car that has an eerie similarity to one that TV reports say was at the scene of a recent kidnapping…hmmmmm.

Within no time Ashley catches on to the fact that Kale has been “eavesdropping” on her life and knocks on his door one afternoon after catching Kale and his buddy (Aaron Yoo) checking her out in the swimming pool.  Kale thinks it’s great having the girl of his dreams spend time with him and eventually lures her into his daily escapades of spying on the neighborhood.  However, the more they both watch  Turner every night and day, the more suspicious they grow of him.  After all, he does not seem like a decent chap.  One night he causes a date to run screaming through his house, all while he has a knife in his hand.  On top of that, they catch a wild splatter of blood hit the window one night and then see Turner take a giant, bloody bag down to his garage.  Is he a stone cold sociopath and killer, or are they just paranoid and delusional?  Well, Kale will not rest until – dammit – he has absolute proof.  Like a classic Hitchcockian protagonist, he lets his inner obsessions consume him to the point of fanaticism.

The film then gets very engaging in the way it taps into the imagination and ingenuity of the teens.  I appreciated the manner with which the script treats these characters as having brains in their heads.  They don’t just use binoculars, but they set digital camcorders with night lenses to record all suspicious activity, set up specialized ring tones for each other to know who is calling each other on their cells when one is doing recon work, and so forth.  One sequence is especially ingenious in the way it shows the characters’ affinity and utilization of technology.  Wanting concrete evidence of a body in Turner’s garage, Kale gets Ashley to follow Turner to the hardware store and take snap shots with her digital camera while he is buying shovels.  She then emails them to Kale who saves them to the hard drive of his PC.  Meanwhile, as Ashley tails Turner, Kale pulls a MacGuyver and concocts a digital survelience camera that his buddy can take with him while he breaks into the garage.  This way, if he is caught, he may get video proof.  However, the vile and menacing Turner soon discovers that the armchair sleuths are watching his every move and this makes him…angry…which leads to a thrilling and violent third act.

I will go on record to say that DISTURBIA is no REAR WINDOW.  The film has many predictable elements, like the fact that Kale tries to prove that a seemingly ordinary man is a vicious killer, but that everyone thinks he’s insane for thinking that (including the cops).  Also, we are given the requisite red herrings that absolve Turner of guilt but later evidence springs up to support his homicidal tendencies.  Furthermore, we just know that Turner will try to come off as a nice, congenial gentleman to Kale’s mom – which will tick him off – and that Kale will inevitably go beyond the hundred yard perimeter of his home to scope out Turner’s pad, hence enticing the police to rush out and threaten him with jail time for breaching his house arrest sentence.  Finally, we know that there will be the perfunctory showdown between the kid and the killer, which will not end well for one of them.

Yet, DISTURBIA does not work efficiently because of its stock elements, but rather by how it uses them to tell an absorbing yarn that creates a palpable and realistic sense of dread and paranoia.  The film was directed by D.J. Caruso (who worked on TV’s THE SHIELD, as well as directing another decent thriller, TAKING LIVES, and the very under-rated TWO FOR THE MONEY), who knows precisely how to hone in the film’s humor, intensity, and scares in equal dosages.  The film is sneaky and sly in the way it gradually develops the story and characters and does not just parade around as a witless series of gratuitous slasher moments. 

The film is more patient and pays its teen characters more respect than many other modern films do, and Shia LaBeouf’s work is layered and nuanced.  He’s done decent work in the past with smaller roles in films like CONSTANTINE, i, ROBOT, and HOLES, but in DISTURBIA he emerges as one of Hollywood’s brightest new talents.  He makes Kale a believable figure of obsession and innate mistrust, but he wisely plays him with a droll undercurrent that never makes him a downer.  Again, like Jimmy Stewart, he’s sullen without being overbearing and likeable without being squeaky clean.  LaBeouf’s snarky demeanor and internalized awkwardness makes him more real and this consequently allows for the film to resonate with audiences that much more.

DISTURBIA is – at face value – a teen-centric clone of Hitchcock’s vastly superior REAR WINDOW.  However, superficial similarities alone should not instantly discredit its merits as an expertly manufactured thriller.   It has many stock elements of the genre, to be sure, but the smart writing and slick direction create forward momentum and a decent, escalating sense of impending dread and tension.  Beyond that, the film has the always credible and assured presence of Shia LaBeouf, who seems to be getting better with every new film (he may achieve world wide exposure with his presence in the next installment of the INDIANA JONES franchise in 2008) .  As a grisly and perpetually creepy whodunit, DISTURBIA is proficiently riveting and chilling and – unlike other recent horror/suspense films – it treats its angst-ridden teens with a lot more respect and dignity.  Instead of letting them populate the film as mindless drones at the service of shockingly gory action scenes, the film allows for them to be bright, creative, shrewd and have actual personalities.  Hitchcock would approve.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out of  ****

Shia LaBeouf kind of reminds of me of a young Jimmy Stewart.  He is funny without over-hamming up the zaniness; he’s cool, collected, and reserved, but not without having charm and charisma; he’s instantly an affable screen presence, even when he has a clear cut darker edge to his character; and lastly he effectively balances earnest sentiment with a nicely underplayed goofiness, a trait that some actors twice his age have a difficult time mustering. 

I pay LaBeouf all of these juicy compliments as a prelude of sorts to discussing DISTURBIA, which is a clear-cut homage to REAR WINDOW – one of the greatest of all films – which starred Jimmy Stewart.  Calling it a blatant rip-off kind of does it disservice.  I think that the best way to typify the film would be to call it an appropriation of elements of REAR WINDOW that are absorbed in with subtle differences in character, location, and story.  In a way, it’s TEEN REAR WINDOW, kind of John Hughes meets Alfred Hitchcock, and the one thing that ultimately surprised me about the film was that it takes its time building on characters and tone and then allows for the action and suspense to take over in the final thirty minutes. 

Considering the relative smorgasbord of dumb teen slasher films that permeate the cinemas these days, DISTURBIA is uniformly refreshing in the sense that it does an exceedingly effective job of being smart, sly, funny, and legitimately thrilling.  Considering the amount of divergent material and themes here – like teen angst and alienation, mother/ son relationships, family trauma, first crushes, and the more obvious elements of the thriller genre – seeing DISTURBIA find the precise balance of tone and mood is to its credit.  Perhaps even better is that it treats its teen characters plausibly as resourceful, intelligent, and crafty.  I love it when films give us adolescent characters that are not stock types, nor are they meandering zombies servicing a paint-by-numbers narrative.  Because of that, the film is much smarter and craftier that one would initially think.

And - yes - the parallels to Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW are all here in abundance, but DISTURBIA has a lot of fun and spirit with modernizing them.  In WINDOW we had the middle-aged Stewart who is wheel chair bound who passes the time everyday by watching the comings and goings of all of his neighbors outside his apartment complex.  In DISTURBIA’s case, LaBeouf is confined to his home, but not via personal injury, but by the ankle bracelet the cops make him wear for his house arrest sentence.  WINDOW had the gorgeous Grace Kelly as Stewart’s leading lady and love interest.  IN DISTURBIA we have the fetching Sarah Roemer that catches LaBeouf’s eyes and heart.  Finally, WINDOW had the imposing and quietly commanding presence of Raymond Burr as the evil killer next door.  In DISTURBIA, we have David Morse as the potential killer of the LaBeouf’s block, and Morse has such a field day in the film with his effortlessly creepy and slimy performance that you instantly know from the second you lay eyes on this guy that he may – just may – have several corpses hidden in his home.  As Morse has successfully proven time and time again, he is one of the best actors at playing festering, unapologetic slimballs with a screw loose.

However, before the mayhem and suspense unfolds, DISTURBIA opens quietly and modestly with Kale (LaBeouf) and his father enjoying a peaceful and relaxing vacation fly-fishing together.  What happens next is interesting from a story standpoint:  On the way home Kale swerves his car to avoid a collision on the highway, but still manages to roll the vehicle.  Just when they think they’re safe, another car comes thundering in and obliterates the passenger side that carried Kale’s father, instantly killing him.  The immediacy of this opening sequence has real strength and potency because it allows for the film to not dwell on introductions – we immediately make the transition into the main guts of the rest of the story.

One year later we see an emotionally troubled Kale in school.  After his history teacher scolds him for not finishing his homework – and after making a crackpot and snide remark indirectly about his dead father – Kale jumps his teacher and punches him out.  At his hearing the judge has mercy on him…to a degree.  Taking into consideration his father’s recent, tragic death – and the fragile state Kale is in as a result – he sentences him to three months house arrest with – gasp! – his mother (Carrie Anne Moss, nicely playing against her kick-ass MATRIX persona) facilitating as warden.

Kale agrees to his punishment and banishes himself to his home.  How hard could three months of house arrest be?  He has all of the cool tech gadgets that any teen – or adult for that matter – would have at his disposable to kill 90 days with.  He has a PC with thousands of hours of downloaded music; a home theatre system with big screen LCD TV; and an XBOX 360 hooked up to the Internet so that he can play endless games against his friends.  His life is only really complicated by the fact that he has to wear an ankle bracelet and can’t go beyond 100 yards of the house, otherwise the cops come pronto and bust him again.  Unfortunately for Kale, the bracelet becomes a bane of his existence, and not only that, but his stern mother cancels his Internet and 360 live accesses.  Nooooooooo!!!!

Realizing that he can’t simply pass the days with his eyes to the tube or computer monitor, Kale soon tries to find ways to curb his ever-growing boredom.  He does this – of course – by watching everything that is going on with his neighbors through his second level bedroom window.  Much like Stewart in REAR WINDOW, Kale becomes an increasingly inquisitive judge and eyewitness to the most minute of activities by the other people of his block.  He observes one neighbor having an affair, on neighbor that likes to cut his grass a lot, one neighbor whose young kids like to watch soft-core porn when mom is not looking, and so on.  Oh, he especially likes peeping on his sexy new neighbor, Ashley (Roemer) who likes to exercise in next to nothing and swims daily in her tiny bikini.  And then there is Mr. Turner (Morse) who Kale observes having a dented car that has an eerie similarity to one that TV reports say was at the scene of a recent kidnapping…hmmmmm.

Within no time Ashley catches on to the fact that Kale has been “eavesdropping” on her life and knocks on his door one afternoon after catching Kale and his buddy (Aaron Yoo) checking her out in the swimming pool.  Kale thinks it’s great having the girl of his dreams spend time with him and eventually lures her into his daily escapades of spying on the neighborhood.  However, the more they both watch  Turner every night and day, the more suspicious they grow of him.  After all, he does not seem like a decent chap.  One night he causes a date to run screaming through his house, all while he has a knife in his hand.  On top of that, they catch a wild splatter of blood hit the window one night and then see Turner take a giant, bloody bag down to his garage.  Is he a stone cold sociopath and killer, or are they just paranoid and delusional?  Well, Kale will not rest until – dammit – he has absolute proof.  Like a classic Hitchcockian protagonist, he lets his inner obsessions consume him to the point of fanaticism.

The film then gets very engaging in the way it taps into the imagination and ingenuity of the teens.  I appreciated the manner with which the script treats these characters as having brains in their heads.  They don’t just use binoculars, but they set digital camcorders with night lenses to record all suspicious activity, set up specialized ring tones for each other to know who is calling each other on their cells when one is doing recon work, and so forth.  One sequence is especially ingenious in the way it shows the characters’ affinity and utilization of technology.  Wanting concrete evidence of a body in Turner’s garage, Kale gets Ashley to follow Turner to the hardware store and take snap shots with her digital camera while he is buying shovels.  She then emails them to Kale who saves them to the hard drive of his PC.  Meanwhile, as Ashley tails Turner, Kale pulls a MacGuyver and concocts a digital survelience camera that his buddy can take with him while he breaks into the garage.  This way, if he is caught, he may get video proof.  However, the vile and menacing Turner soon discovers that the armchair sleuths are watching his every move and this makes him…angry…which leads to a thrilling and violent third act.

I will go on record to say that DISTURBIA is no REAR WINDOW.  The film has many predictable elements, like the fact that Kale tries to prove that a seemingly ordinary man is a vicious killer, but that everyone thinks he’s insane for thinking that (including the cops).  Also, we are given the requisite red herrings that absolve Turner of guilt but later evidence springs up to support his homicidal tendencies.  Furthermore, we just know that Turner will try to come off as a nice, congenial gentleman to Kale’s mom – which will tick him off – and that Kale will inevitably go beyond the hundred yard perimeter of his home to scope out Turner’s pad, hence enticing the police to rush out and threaten him with jail time for breaching his house arrest sentence.  Finally, we know that there will be the perfunctory showdown between the kid and the killer, which will not end well for one of them.

Yet, DISTURBIA does not work efficiently because of its stock elements, but rather by how it uses them to tell an absorbing yarn that creates a palpable and realistic sense of dread and paranoia.  The film was directed by D.J. Caruso (who worked on TV’s THE SHIELD, as well as directing another decent thriller, TAKING LIVES, and the very under-rated TWO FOR THE MONEY), who knows precisely how to hone in the film’s humor, intensity, and scares in equal dosages.  The film is sneaky and sly in the way it gradually develops the story and characters and does not just parade around as a witless series of gratuitous slasher moments. 

The film is more patient and pays its teen characters more respect than many other modern films do, and Shia LaBeouf’s work is layered and nuanced.  He’s done decent work in the past with smaller roles in films like CONSTANTINE, i, ROBOT, and HOLES, but in DISTURBIA he emerges as one of Hollywood’s brightest new talents.  He makes Kale a believable figure of obsession and innate mistrust, but he wisely plays him with a droll undercurrent that never makes him a downer.  Again, like Jimmy Stewart, he’s sullen without being overbearing and likeable without being squeaky clean.  LaBeouf’s snarky demeanor and internalized awkwardness makes him more real and this consequently allows for the film to resonate with audiences that much more.

DISTURBIA is – at face value – a teen-centric clone of Hitchcock’s vastly superior REAR WINDOW.  However, superficial similarities alone should not instantly discredit its merits as an expertly manufactured thriller.   It has many stock elements of the genre, to be sure, but the smart writing and slick direction create forward momentum and a decent, escalating sense of impending dread and tension.  Beyond that, the film has the always credible and assured presence of Shia LaBeouf, who seems to be getting better with every new film (he may achieve world wide exposure with his presence in the next installment of the INDIANA JONES franchise in 2008) .  As a grisly and perpetually creepy whodunit, DISTURBIA is proficiently riveting and chilling and – unlike other recent horror/suspense films – it treats its angst-ridden teens with a lot more respect and dignity.  Instead of letting them populate the film as mindless drones at the service of shockingly gory action scenes, the film allows for them to be bright, creative, shrewd and have actual personalities.  Hitchcock would approve.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***1/2 out of ****

Robert Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR  ***1/2  out of ****

Quentin Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF  **1/2  out of ****

GRINDHOUSE is a glorious, rambunctious three hour-plus love sonnet to schlock and sleaze.  It falls completely within the realm of love it or leave it variety cinema.  If you dig your films with flesh eating zombies; amputee exotic dancers; red-necked- shotgun shooting sheriffs; smutty, revenge-seeking babes in short skirts; psychotic, babe-hating stuntmen; slimy and boil-laden zombies; attempted rapes; decapitations galore; and wall-to-wall mayhem and gratuitous gore, then GRINDHOUSE is definitely for you.

It’s no wonder that GRINDHOUSE is the brainchild of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, two self-professed fanboys of the exploitation genre of the same name.  “Grindhouse” movies were the type of degenerate, gutter trash films that never made the regular multiplexes.  They were played in lower marquee cinemas of the late 60’s and 70’s that would have no problem playing any type of cheap, low budgeted exploitation flick, whether it be martial arts, horror, sexploitation, blacksploitation,  red neck car chase action films, revenge thrillers…the list could go on and on. 

These films were not avant garde, nor were they independent, art house films; they were trash, but trash that made them so bad that they were, in effect, good and a heck of a lot of fun to sit through.  Laced with nickel ‘n dime production values, horrendous acting and wooden dialogue, and a genuine disdain and respect for good taste and decency, these grindhouse efforts were the type of drive-in fodder that some people grew to embrace and cherish.  What some people place in their toilet, others place on a mantel.

And Tarantino and Rodriguez have certainly placed these films that they remember so vividly and fondly on their mantels.  GRINDHOUSE does something rather ingenious with their appreciation of these bad films: It’s not one, but two films (one written and directed by Rodriguez, the other by Tarantino) about 80 minutes each that include – in between them – fake exploitation-inspired film trailers directed by the likes of Eli Roth, Edgar Wright, Rob Zombie.  If the films were not inspired enough, then the faux trailers are an unmitigated riot (my favourite among them was the riotously funny HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN).  Note to viewers: don’t take bathroom breaks between the films, or you’ll miss out on these gut-wrenchingly drool previews, which are almost worth the price of admission alone.

Both Rodriguez and Tarantino are no strangers whatsoever when it comes to playing the homage game.  Certainly, Tarantino’s last two efforts, KILL BILL: VOLUMES I and II, were direct descendents of the kung fu, chop sockey flicks of the past.  Even Rodriguez’ FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (co-starring Tarantino, who also wrote the screenplay) could be said to have found inspiration in the lurid and grotesquely slimy horror films of thirty years ago.  Yet, they amp up their respect for these types of genre films that much further in GRINDHOUSE.  Their two individual films not only pay respect to the grindhouse efforts of the 60’s and 70’s, but both (albeit much, much more in Rodriguez’s film) try to be as rigidly faithful to the films from an aesthetic standpoint.

In essence, they set out to make really, really good bad movies, all down to the simplistic storylines, the in-your-face ultra-violence and carnage, the intentionally funny and inspired dialogue, and the cardboard cutout characters.  Even more inspired is their choice to make the physical film look as cheap and dated as possible.  Using special effects – and a lot of ingenuity – Rodriguez and Tarantino added age, wear and tear to the look of the film’s negative.  New films have not looked in as worse shape as GRINDHOUSE does, and that’s on purpose. 

Don’t be expecting crystal clear, IMAX clarity in terms of picture and multi-channel digital sound.  Both GRINDHOUSE features show their cheapness in the form of shaky projection, bad color timing, horrible continuity errors, buzzes and pops on the soundtrack, scratches and lines in the negative, and – in two of the funniest instances in both films – titles cards reading “REEL MISSING: APOLOGIES FROM THE THEATRE MANAGEMENT” are shown just when we think we are getting a glimpse at the films’ more raunchy moments. 

I chuckled during those two moments, and smiled considerably throughout most of GRINDHOUSE.  Its spirit, sense of reckless abandon, and lovingly faithful desire for its filmmakers to be as true to the genre conventions as possible make the film (or…films) a really fun and exuberant three hours of banal, infantile, and ludicrous fun…even if one film is far better for what it does than the other.

After getting a glimpse of one spot-on accurate trailer (for HOBO WITH A GUN, a revenge action film that looks like it would be a pleasure to sit through) we get our first film of the GRINDHOUSE double feature, Rodriquez’s PLANET OF TERROR.  Done in the great tradition of lowbrow, zombie scarefests, Rodriquez does an amazingly realized and competent job of making a truly awful film, and I mean that as a very sincere compliment.  It’s classic zombie fun and done with a very typical genre setup: Take a ragtag group of utter misfits from all walks of life and band them together in a collective effort to save humanity.  Oh, but this one is different – it has a go-go dancer that has her legged gnawed off by a face dripping ghoul and then has her boyfriend attach a makeshift machine gun to the stump.  Trust me…it looks a lot sexier than I have described it.

In a small rural town of Austin, Texas we meet the buxom, brunette bombshell named Cherry Darling (played in a go-for-broke performance by Rose McGowan, a very good sport).  At the beginning of the film she decides to abandon her go-go career and do something else with her life.  She eventually hooks up with an old flame, El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez).  Meanwhile, there are some serious problems around them.  Mysterious government officials, led by Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis) have learned that psychotic, man eating zombie have freed themselves and now pray on the  countryside. 

Within no time, infected townspeople seek help from two doctors, William and Dakota Block (Josh Brolin and Marley Shelton).  Despite their efforts, they can’t find a cure.  And to make matters worse, their marriage is on the rocks and William wants to kill Dakota for what he thinks is adultery!  Along the way, Wray and Cherry meet up with a bunch of other townspeople, ranging from a tough as nails sheriff (played in a tongue in cheek performance by Michael Biehn) and a wise-cracking, grarly BBQ chef (Jeff Fahey) and they all eventually are forced to combine their efforts to fight off the zombie plague and discover its true origins before they take over the planet. 

When that film concludes we get a series of more fake trailers, which are certainly worth the price of admission.  First, we get MACHETE (directed by Rodriguez), which features an incredibly lethal assassin that uses…yup…machetes, and one priest that has a real zest for shotgun justice “God has mercy,” he blurts out, “but I don’t!”).  Then, we get Rob Zombie’s inanely titled WEREWOLF WOMAN OF THE SS, which is a cross between a Nazi and Girl-Prison flick and has one of the funniest cameos of the year by a very famous Oscar winning actor as Fu Manchu.   Next up w