Craiger’s Cinema Corner

1/2*  out of  ****

If one scene alone sums up my viewing experience with SHOOT ‘EM UP then it would be the moment where one of the bad guys takes a feces-filled diaper and shoves it in another man’s face. 

I felt as if the whole film was doing that to me.   

SHOOT ‘EM UP is the kind of incessantly implausible, inanely exploitive, and nauseatingly wretched action film that has to be seen to be believed.  Honest.  Just consider its opening scene. 

It involves all of the following elements, and in no particular order: a pregnant woman given birth; a bunch of armed assailants in hot pursuit of her; a lone man with no name figure that manages to gun down most of the baddies, at one point utilizing everything from motor oil to a carrot to do so.  Oh, he also manages to assist the mother give birth to her child.  He has one hand on his gun and shoots anything around him that moves, whereas his other hand is…well…you know.  Finally, the icing on the cake to this introduction is the sickening manner with which the “hero” manages to remove the baby’s umbilical cord.  Considering everything that I witnessed in SHOOT ‘EM UP’s first few minutes, I was really, really worried that the “hero” would also perform a circumcision with his semi-automatic pistol.  Thankfully, I was spared of such an incident happening. 

My description of the beginning of SHOOT’ EM UP only barely scratches this film’s surface.  This has to be one of the most outrageously violent and chaotically over-the-top films that I have ever seen.  Should that be construed as a vile criticism of it or a tongue-in-cheek compliment?  Well, after sitting through the film’s utter onslaught of depravity and violence, I believe that I strongly follow the former sentiment.  SHOOT ‘EM UP is a wasteful and remarkably soulless action spectacle that left a real sour taste in my mouth.  Very few genre films like this have made me feel so totally empty.  When I exited the theatre I felt the need to pull a stranger aside that I passed on the street just for a little bit of human contact and conversation, perhaps to ground myself back to reality.   

There is just something so puerile, nasty, and repulsive about this whole enterprise.  I not sure that it is the violence in it, per se, but how it uses violence to get cheap, infantile laughs.  I have been a remarkably liberal minded person when it comes to movie gore, so I don’t entirely think that it is the number of bodies that are left in this film’s wake that turned me off to it.  No, I think that it is the film’s wanton, almost sadomasochistic, fondness and appreciation for endless carnage that made me ill at ease.  I have seen countless violent films in my time, but this perhaps is the first one that has prompted me to use the term “gratuitous” in a review.  Readers, please take me to task if I have already done so. 

SHOOT ‘EM UP is tawdry pornography that substitutes gun violence for explicit sex…but then again, one moment in the film nearly combines both.  It’s offensive not for its cruelty and savagery with its images and action sequences, but rather in the way it sort of holds them all up for hero worship.  I recall hearing many patrons in the theatre hoot and laugh at the sheer ludicrousness and level of violence in the film.  Certainly, SHOOT ‘EM UP is in no way framed in any sort of earthbound reality (this is the type of film that takes stupendous leaps of logic with its stunts and mayhem), but there is something disturbing with the way some found cheerful entertainment value in the ways its hero kills other people.  I will give the film props for ingenuity in coming up with new and inventive ways for murder (a carrot will never, ever be looked at in the same manner again), but SHOOT ‘EM UP is nothing but a two minute action trailer spread out over 86 minutes.  Everything else in the film is superfluous.  Sure, the film keeps a strong forward momentum of bloody and gory barbarism, but beyond that there is nothing really to recommend it on.   

I dunno.  Does this film think its hip, cool, and irreverent?  Most certainly, but it is nowhere near as clever and acerbic as it thinks it is.  Other trashy films with violent, excessive flourishes never made the bloodshed their main attraction.  The same can’t be said for SHOOT ‘EM UP; this is like a pulpy Quentin Tarantino work minus all forms of intelligence and wit.  The dialogue in SHOOT ‘EM UP is so outrageously wretched that I found myself neither laughing at or with it, the characters are so unsavory and unreservedly cruel and viscous that you never once invest in them, and underlining story is so unabashedly ill-conceived and mind-boggling that you have to wonder whether or not it was the product of a hundred monkeys collective typing away on a hundred PCs.  This is perhaps the first film that involves a conspiracy involving a dirty and unscrupulous politician that is trying to make a bid for the White House and a secret, underground fertility clinic that harvests babies for a rare type of bone marrow.   No…seriously.  The plot is a silly and absurd as the film’s unrelenting murder spree.   

Perhaps worst of all is the talent that is wasted.  We first get Clive Owen, one of our finest actors, who is reduced to playing a monosyllabic hero that goes by the name of Mr. Smith and lashes out with beyond-lame one-liners that would even make James Bond’s stomach churn.  He is a bum with no home or family, but make no mistake about it, when he gets a gun in his hand…or a carrot…he is one of the most dangerous bums on the planet.  As the film opens he miraculously saves a newborn baby from the hands of its dead mother.  Of course, Smith is not a remorseful, stone cold killer without a conscience.  He takes the baby and tries to find the most suitable environment for its safety: a S&M whorehouse that has prostitutes dressed as nuns.  While there he meets up with an old flame, DQ (Monica Bellucci) whose name is an acronym for “Dairy Queen”, which is quite apt for her considering that she allows her customers to guzzle milk right from her…uh…yeah…use your imagination. 

Anyhoo’, it seems that one nasty piece of work really – and I mean really – wants this baby dead.  He is Mr. Hertz (played by Paul Giamatti like he was just the victim of an all night bender of cigarettes, speed, and crystal meth), and he is the kind of foul, repugnant, and reprehensible creature that is not too sick to…say…feel up a dead woman’s breasts, which he does at one point.  Hertz meets ups with DQ, who is almost sexually violated by his smoking gun pistol until Smith turns up to save the day.  After a narrow escape from Hertz and his cronies, DQ, Smith, and the baby seek shelter and time to regroup to plot their next action.  What they uncover is a vast governmental cover up, which culminates in a barrage of gun fights, often involving Smith battling an unspeakable number of evil henchman. 

The baby in the film has to be the most resilient baby in the history of the movies.  He survives halos of bullets, multiple car accidents, fires, and explosions, often at the same time.  He’s death proof.  That fact that it does not die within seconds after child birth is startling in itself, but watching endless scenes involving Owen clutching the baby like a football while evading gunfire and leaping through windows grows considerably tiring.  Surely, the first few instances are kind of giggle inducing, seeing as there is no way a new born baby could survive the battlefield that he goes through with Smith (in one cute moment, DQ fits the baby with a bullet proof vest).  After awhile, you just really tune out.  It becomes so obvious that the baby is either a puppet or a CG creation that your investment is gone completely.

These action scenes are also never once thrilling or exciting: they’re all voyeuristic spectacle.   Now, it could be said that this is the point of a film called SHOOT ‘EM UP, which - according to wikipedia.org - “takes its name from the style of arcade game that involves a player controlling a vehicle or character that fights large numbers of enemies with shooting attacks, usually of a highly stylized nature.”  On that very basic level, SHOOT ‘EM UP unquestionably delivers and is true to form.  Beyond that, it has not one other redeeming quality.  It is purely exists to be indecent and nihilistically crude and vulgar.  The heartlessness and cruelty displayed in the film is nerve-wracking because of the way it thinks that reckless and irresponsible levels of brutality equals sophistication and refinement.  It’s smugness with the material is borderline sanctimonious.

The film’s rigid self-awareness is off-putting.  The director, Michael Davis, definitely thinks his material is a sly and smart send up of the action genre, but what is he really sending up?  Other tastelessly bad action films?  That’s like the coffee calling the kettle black.  There surely is ambition with his handling of the action material; he put together a 17 minute reel of animation consisting if 17,000 line drawings showcasing the film’s action scenes to help sell the movie to studio execs, but not one of them had the foresight to ask whether or not the film would have anything else to offer.   We get a hell of a lot of bang-bang, scenery chewing moments of sheer, video game influenced depravity, but not much else.  When the action is not Herculean in its incredulousness, then it is remorsefully punctuated by a slew of some of the worst dead panned lines of recent memory, the kind that hope to become pop culture catch phrases if they weren’t so drop-dead terrible.  Some of my personal favourites include “I’m lactose intolerant” (when Smith has an opportunity to suck on a woman’s breast) and “He just blew his load” (after a man got shot with his own gun) and “Talk about a hand job” (after Smith uses a severed hand to assist him with shooting a gun that requires that hand’s thumb print identification to use it). 

Hardy-har. 

For a film to receive my dreaded “zero star” rating, it usually has to follow one of two self-imposed guidelines: (1) It either is a complete an utter failure on an artistic level or  (2) it treats its content in a morally deplorable manner.  SHOOT ‘EM UP certainly is not a failure on an artistic level (the film has polish), but on the other criteria it almost certainly adheres to.  I don’t how else to sum up my feelings for it other than to say that I found it to be a tortuous and teeth grating experience at the movies…and that I hated it.  Really hated it. 

I hated it for is wasteful and reckless misuse of Oscar nominated talent like Giamatti and Owen.  I hated it for the way sacrifices good taste and subs in depravity and nauseating excess, which it thinks is cutting edge and really cool.  I hated it for the how smug and self-deprecating it was.  I hated it for the way it never allowed me to find joyous and uplifting escape in all of its set pieces.  I have enjoyed mindless violence before (COMMANDO, anyone?), but SHOOT ‘EM UP is not even good, sick entertainment.  As stated earlier, it’s a two-minute highlight reel of non-stop, bloodletting gun battles spread out over a needlessly long 86-minute running time.  On one positive, the film certainly offers up interesting ways to kill human beings with guns and carrots.  But, if you look beyond its maniacal overkill with its action scenes, then SHOOT ‘EM UP is a regrettably ugly film to sit through; it’s a dreary, depraved, and ludicrously sadistic video game crossed with a heavy metal video trapped in a movie’s body.   Yet, when I grow tired of a video game or disposable MTV videos, I can turn them off relatively easily. 

I couldn’t do that with SHOOT ‘EM UP.  It’s the type of film that should automatically come with a reset button.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

**1/2  out of  ****

3:10 TO YUMA is the type of western that wants to be introspective and complex with its characters, but instead it offers up more disillusionment in the end than genuine interest.  At the heart of the film is a notion that is not altogether new and fresh for the genre: Can a gunslinger outlaw and brutal killer also be held in high regard for folk hero worship? This can make for a compelling character study, especially for the western - one of the most evocative of all genres - but the problem with 3:10 TO YUMA is its focus and approach.

That is not to say that the film is a wasted effort. Director James Mangold (GIRL, INTERRUPTED, COPLAND and WALK THE LINE) certainly has the artistic chops to pull off this type of film.  The finest westerns, like UNFORGIVEN, have always been morality parables that try to make some sense out of the senselessness of frontier life.  In stark contrast to the depravity of and desolation of the landscape is the characters that operate in it, whom are often amoral and conflicted.  The most memorable westerns are ones that dealt with this odd relationship between humanistic values and the stark disorder of the times the characters live in.

Mangold certainly attempts to rehash many of these Western motifs.  On certain levels, the film works by looking at the nature of how one noble man and one lawless man grow to mutually respect and understand one another, despite the fact that they are separated by ethical and moral grounds.  Framed around them both is a society that does not particularly respect either them.  In this way, 3:10 TO YUMA revisits the cynicism and nihilism that has permeated the genre.  The uncertainty and decay around them is not what allows them to change as human beings; they both are mutually reciprocal entities that feed and change off of one another.

The film definitely is ambitious in terms of themes and approach, but there is an odd doubtfulness that Mangold has with the material, especially with the character of outlaw Ben Wade, as played by by the endlessly versatile Russell Crowe.  He is a bandit, murderer, and overall vicious and mean-spirited lout.  By his own admission, he is not above ruthlessly killing women and children, or shooting a man in the back just to get ahead in life.  He is a despicable creature, to be sure.

Yet, I am not sure whether Mangold is trying to say we should respect this man or despise him.  Crowe has a field day playing the duplicitous nature of this character.  At one time he is charming and irresistibly charismatic; at other times he’s a vengeful sociopath.  As a foil to this law-breaking marauder is Dan Evans (Christian Bale, in yet another thankless, vanity-free performance), who was a Civil War hero that lost part of his leg in battle.  Now crippled, he tries to engage in a noble profession, that of a rancher, but when he finds that that occupational choice is not working for him, he crosses paths with the notorious Wade and joins a caravan that will capture and escort him to the 3:10 train to Yuma prison, where he’ll most likely be hung for his crimes.

It is the relationship between these two diametrically opposed personalities that is the emotional epicenter of the film, and Crowe and Bale are in such universally fine form playing off of one another.  From a performance perspective, 3:10 TO YUMA is an absolute triumph.  On a narrative and thematic level, I left the theatre wondering whether or not logic was stripped out of this tale.  Predictably, the law abiding Evans becomes so frustrated by his own troubles that he makes getting Wade to Yuma an obsessive quest.   Wade is his cathartic release and escape from the thought of foreclosure and bankruptcy.   Wade, in turn, slowing appreciates Evans’ selfless courage and determination in bringing him to justice.  Of course, all of this boils over and culminates in a climatic, requisite gun battle standoff, and you know - you just know - that Ben will find himself valuing Dan so much that he will assist him with fighting off the marauders and getting on board the train because - dag-nammit - he respects his pluck and gutsy determination.

Huh?

It’s these disingenuous aspects of the film that undermines precisely what it’s trying to be.  Wade is such a cruel monster that I never once, at any time, believed that he would actually ally himself with Evans to ensure his own transportation to Yuma and to his certain death.  Now, I can certainly see the allure that Evans has with Wade.  Wade is a free spirit of sorts, who robs banks, overcomes stagecoaches, and has endless amounts of money and a uniformly loyal posse at his disposal.  Evans has no freedom.  His ranch is on the verge of foreclosure, his wife has doubts about their future, he’s a cripple and is penniless.  He’s a man that feels mistreated and victimized by society.  The attraction of apprehending a man that has an affluent lifestyle that he will never have is easily palpable.

I understand the dynamic with Evans, but not so much with Wade.  Are we really expected to believe that he would not kill Evans in a heartbeat to secure his freedom?  And moreover, why would he side himself with Evans against his own posse at one point?  Why would he do this? What motivation would guide his actions?  Is it because he simply begins to understand what Evans represents and that his courage and drive is what allows for him to have a complete change of heart about his own predicament?  This whole angle to Wade rings false.  He certainly is presented as being more than just a merciless killer; he is also smart, crafty, and oftentimes humorous, but it never seems plausible that he would risk his escape from a death sentence just to take a final stand and support the gutsy Evans.  This seems to be in direct opposition to Wade’s natural, inbred impulses.

3:10 TO YUMA is based on the 1957 original film starring Glen Ford and Van Heflin, which in turn was based on a short story by the then up-and-coming Elmore Leonard.  The basic premise is maintained from the 50-year-old film.  We are introduced to Evans who is trying to make a go of his new ranch with wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) and son Will (Logan Lerman).  Evans fears that he has lost his wife’s respect and love, mostly due to the failure of and lack of prosperity he hoped his ranch would secure them.

In order to escape this, he joins a motley crew of men and law enforcement officials to hunt down and capture Wade.  Along for the ride is Byron McElroy (played wonderfully by the grizzly Peter Fonda, giving the screen a lot of character atmosphere), who has a feud of sorts with Wade, and eventually Dan’s son Will joins up with the clan, which really upsets his father.  Being a typical teenage son that defies authority and respects rebelliousness, Dan fears that his son could become too attracted to Wade.  When they do finally capture him and begin to transport Wade to that town of Contention for the 3:10 train, the rest of the film develops a compelling emotional cat and mouse approach to the proceedings.

The trail leading the group of men to the station occupies some of the better scenes in the film, but Mangold films so much in tight close-ups and compositions; he never allows his camera  open up and capture the intimidating grandeur of the environment, which is really mandatory for these types of films (2006’s masterful western, THE PROPOSITION, impeccably understood this, as it created such an eerie and haunting realism to the Australian outback of yesteryear).  At least he gets considerable mileage from the actors and their interplay.  Bale and Crowe, as stated, are truly excellent in their respective parts.  Bale perhaps has the least appreciated performance in the sense that he plays the most wounded and marginalized part.  In stark contrast to the colorful and boisterous Wade, it would be easy to identify with the villain more.  I would say that Crowe has the easier of the two parts, seeing as it would be simpler to sink your teeth into an all-out villain role than that of the internally conflicted hero.  At least Crowe does not make Wade a one-dimensional antagonist.  He’s cunning, whimsical, indescribably smarter than any member of his gang, and he’s even refined and cultured (he is a gifted artists that draws and sketches things as he sees them).

Some of the other supporting performances are also strong.  Peter Fonda seems right back at home with his plump role of the gnarly, fist clenched bounty hunter that craves some serious comeuppance against Wade.  Perhaps the film’s most creepily effective work is by Ben Foster, who plays Wade’s right hand man, Charlie Prince, as a figure that has no problems turning the emotional dial from angry to utterly insane.  I have been impressed with Foster’s abilities at being such a chameleon when it comes to immersing himself into roles that require such a caged violence and bitterness.  He has played parts of such monstrous intensity, as demonstrated in ALPHA DOG and HOSTAGE.  His Charlie Fox is such a recklessly freakish man that he kills for the sake of getting a cheap thrill, not because he needs to when the situation presents itself.

There is so much to admire to Mangold’s western.  Bale, Crowe, Foster, and Fonda are fantastic, the character interplay is intermittently well nuanced and scripted, as is the case of the film’s best scene where Wade and Evans have a quiet conversation before all hell breaks loose at the train station.  The final gun battle is energetic and well choreographed.  However, the film takes an awfully long time to build to its climax, and the middle section of it has sluggish, watch-checking pacing.  And when we finally arrive at the conclusion where we see Wade and Evans take a final stand together, I think the film lost a momentary sense of reality.  For a western that prides itself of being intriguing for its dark themes and morally conflicted and shadowy characters, 3:10 TO YUMA cops out at the end with being far too flattering with its personas.  The climax sanitizes everything the plot that preceded it established.  Mangold’s choices are too telegraphed and conventional and lack credibility in the film’s conclusion.  That, unfortunately, is what did this western in at the end.  Considering all that it had going for it, that is a regrettable shame.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

*  out of  ****

You know a comedy is in trouble when the blooper reel that is put in its end credits suck.

Usually these outtakes are a pathetic attempt to keep viewers in their seats.  I have enjoyed blooper reels before, even in the worst screen comedies (the one from CANNONBALL RUN was arguably more funny that any five minutes of footage from the film).  In THE BROTHERS SOLOMON we essentially get not flubs and mistakes, but a series of what appears to be extended or deleted scenes and alternate takes of scenes from the movie.  This might be the first feature film that mournfully tries to have DVD bells and whistles in the actual theatrical feature that I can recall.

The painful desperation of this film does not end there.  THE BROTHERS SOLOMON makes two other fatalistic errors in judgment: It tries - and thinks - it’s side-splittingly funny and it attempts to resurrect the already dormant career of Lee “THE FALL GUY and SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN” Majors.  In the latter case, the star is thankfully reduced to playing his character in a coma throughout 99 per cent of the film, allowing him to essentially sleep through this monumentally unfunny farce.  The way THE BROTHERS SOLOMON has mercy on his soul is worth the one star rating alone.

There are several things that are remorsefully wrong with this film.  Perhaps its largest fault is that it creates such a unyielding level of silence in the theatre while watching it.  There is no worse sound in an audience while watching a comedy that a genuine lack of sound.  I sat in the cinema throughout all of THE BROTHERS SOLOMON and could count on half of the fingers on one hand how many times I heard laughter from the fellow patrons.  That is the ultimate kiss of death for a comedy.

As an exercise in teeth-grating, finger-nails on a chalkboard pratfalls and sight gags, THE BROTHERS SOLOMON is the ultimate endurance test.  Nothing is more head-shaking than when a comedy thinks it’s a lot funnier than it actually is.  While watching THE BROTHERS SOLOMON I perpetually felt like I was the exasperated victim of not being in on a joke.  The filmmakers and talent on board certainly seem to think that their film collaboration is uproarious, but what about the people that will eventually see the film?  Shouldn’t they also be in on the joke?  The movie is just one big build up without a punch line.

What in the world is wrong here? There is certainly talent aboard for the ride.  Will Forte - definitely not among the fine, A-grade SNL alumni - is certainly funny in his not-ready-for-prime time gig.  The same could also be said for fellow SOLOMON co-star and the film’s second SNLer, Kristin Wiig, who is the best female performer on the late night program, not to mention that she was so effortlessly droll in a small part of the shady, undermining E! Network stooge in this year’s best comedy, KNOCKED UP.  Then there is the criminally underrated comic talent of Will Arnett, who arguably gave the most hilarious supporting performance in recent sitcom memory in the great and short lived ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.  In that show he played a really, really bad magician, and I still bowl over with laughter every time I hear him utter the line, “I don’t do tricks, I do magic.  Tricks are something that whores do for money.”

Hee-hee.

Yet, there is not one ounce of charm, charisma, or apparent comic talent on parade in SOLOMON, which seems to have been infected by some sort of impenetrable virus that has stripped the stars of all of their acerbic wit and whimsicality.  Instead we get Wiig essentially wasted playing things straight against Forte and Arnett (this seems to exhaustively squander all of her comedic abilities). Then we get Forte and Arnett, who I think are trying to play their respective characters as dim-witted idiots with hearts of gold (kind of akin to those same dullards that occupied DUMB AND DUMBER), but here they undeniably fail to generate level of audience empathy for them.  They are so socially inexperienced and awkward that they come across more as creepy stalkers than they do noble-minded simpletons.  Arnett in particular - with his eerie and smug ear-to-ear grin and creepy vocalizations - gives us a character that is about as lovable and endearing as a child pedophile.

Forte and Arnett play the Solomon Brothers, Dean and John, who were never given the opportunity of a normal upbringing.  They were raised by a single father (played by Majors, who looks like he’s had too many bionic upgrades over the years) in - of all places - the Antarctic. They were home schooled and went on to even achieve PhD’s, which is astounding considering their implacable stupidity.  The had very little contact with people in general and their only real experience with members of the opposite sex were with some old Eskimo woman that lived 100 miles away.

They eventually moved to the big city, found an apartment together, and got jobs as scientific researchers…at least I think (the movie never makes it clear).  They are book smart, but have a kindergarten mentality when it comes to women.  Their attempts to score with chicks - as shown in the introductory scenes in the film - are horribly conceived.  John attempts to secure a one night stand at grocery store by paying for a woman’s groceries, whereas Dean makes on catastrophic lapse in judgment when he attempts to get close to his date’s father.  This is shown in the film’s only hilarious and well-timed gag.

Things go bad for the two hapless bros when dear old dad lapses into a coma.  They would have been able to see and speak to their dad before he slipped into it, but they feel the need to make a pit stop at a local video store to dispute a late fee (ho-ho).  They discover from the doctor that it appears that their dad made a comment about wanting a grandchild.  Then, lightning strikes and the two decide to “make a baby for daddy.”  Of course, the two are such hopeless swingers when it comes to the ladies.  One night shows John asking his date if she is ovulating, followed by a clumsy, impromptu proposal.  Dean manages to get close to an obese woman, and just as she’s about to go home with him, she is hit by a bus.  Attempts at adoption go no where when Dean asks the agent whether or not they have a return policy.

The two then realize that they will have to take more dire measures.  They turn to Craigslist on-line and manage to find an unmarried woman named Janine (Wiig).  She manages to take advantage of the two idiots by making them pay her for her services above what she initially asked for (they Brothers manage to pay her $12,000, but she only initially wanted $10,000).  The boys get really excited, thinking that they will get multiple chances to plant their seed in Janine, but she disappoints them by saying that they will use artificial means.  All of this does not sit well with her big, hulking boyfriend, James (Chi McBride, dreadfully unfunny), who does not want to see his main squeeze become a surrogate mother.

The rest of the film then careens pitifully out of control into a series of infantile skits that would never make the final cut on a bad SNL broadcast.  Full finger wag of shame needs to be given to Forte, who wrote the film’s lamentably wretched script.  There are a couple of big laughs in it (Dean’s altercation with his date’s father for starters, not to mention a cute scene in the doctor’s office where he asks whether or not his baby will be a cyclops, seeing as only one eye is developed on the fetus).  The film also gets a few smirks and giggles, but beyond that the film is a disagreeable, comic dead zone.

The real error of the film is how John and Dean are presented.  They have PhD’s, but they have the people skills of two mentally stunted children.  So many scenes involving their incredible naivety want to be cute and amusing, but they emerge as kind of vile and sick.  One moment shows them at a playground trying to get a five-year-old girl into their car for ice cream, to which her mother comes in and rushes her daughter to safety.  Of course, these guys are trying to learn what’s it like to be good daddies, but everyone else rightfully thinks that they’re child sex offenders.  Is this irony supposed to be funny?

Dean and John are never once likeable or sympathetic, and it never once feels genuine that Wiig’s character would ever, ever grow to love these doofuses.  The only character with any level of common sense is played by the drop-dead gorgeous Malin Akkerman, who plays the brothers’ drop dead gorgeous neighbor.  There is one excruciatingly false moment in the film where Janine tries to tell her that the boys are kind-hearted after she rightfully labels them as losers.  The film tries to paint her as a blond-bombshell bitch without any feelings, but considering the sickening attempts that John engages in to woe her, she’s has plausible disdain for him.

Then there is Chi McBride, playing offensively up to black stereotypes as a foul-mouthed brother with attitude.  The way he is brazenly forced to utter variations of everyone’s favourite f-bomb feels like a pathetic attempt for the film to secure a needlessly raunchy R-rating.  Note to all comedic filmmakers out there: Offensive language is not funny if it’s just used to be vulgar for the sake of being vulgar.  Foul words work better when they accentuate a joke, not when they are used to be the joke itself.

Inevitable comparisons of this film to KNOCKED UP seem logical.  The sup-plot with Wiig’s hesitant mother-to-be character draws some obvious correlations, but THE BROTHERS SOLOMON is in no way in the same comic stratosphere as that Judd Apatow laugh riot.  KNOCKED UP knew that the key to making an R-rated sex comedy was to balance the raunch with likeable and sympathetic personalities that viewers could relate to.  THE BROTHER SOLOMON has none of that; instead, we get a comedy of astonishing levels of low worth, filled with readily forgettable and unlikable characters, horribly conceived sight gags and pratfalls, and comic timing and pacing with jokes that borders on elephantine.  As far as excruciatingly unfunny comedies go, THE BROTHERS SOLOMON goes for broke and achieves that dubious honor with very little effort.  Oh, but the film has one incredibly funny dead panned line.  When a frustrated John tells Dean that they will have to find alternate means to get a woman pregnant, Dean thinks for a moment and then responds, “Do you mean anally?”

Hee-hee.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

**1/2  out of  ****

There is a fleeting moment in the new thriller THE BRAVE ONE where the character played by Jodie Foster is shown purchasing a black market gun from a dealer.  She holds the gun in her hands with idle curiosity at first and then she lifts it up, aims it, and points it at the camera.  This woman is emotionally damaged goods primarily enraged by the raw deal that she feels society has given her.  She then makes it her own obsessive and very personal vendetta to rid the streets of those that do harm to others.

There have been many critics that have drawn comparisons between THE BRAVE ONE and the original 1974 DEATH WISH, starring Charles Bronson in the role that made him famous.  I think that the correlations between the two films are superficial at best.  Clearly, the dark, gritty, urban revenge thriller was truly forged and initiated by that 1970’s film, which spawned countless imitators and launched a series of four increasingly awful sequels in its own right.  THE BRAVE ONE could easily be labeled as “DEATH WISH with a chick”, but I found more similarities with it and TAXI DRIVER, which also co-starred Foster in her unforgettable performance as a 14-year-old prostitute.  When Foster’s character in THE BRAVE ONE held that gun up and cocked and pointed it with a tenacity and vigor, I could not help but remember a similar chilling scene in TAXI DRIVER, where the mentally deranged Travis Bickle solemnly and coldly announced to the world that he would be “the rain to wash away all the filth in the streets.”

On many levels, THE BRAVE ONE takes great pains to not be a standard, paint-by-numbers revenge thriller, despite the fact that - at face value - it contains many of the stock elements of those genre films.  We get the innocent victim that has had an unalterable life changing event that has robbed her of a loved one.  Then, we see her disintegrate into an emotional tailspin of despair when she sees that the law will not give her justice and satisfaction.  Ultimately, she turns to vigilantism, which gives her an eerie disconnect from the world she lives in, but nevertheless allows her to develop some closure with her own deeply vented wounds.

Clearly, nothing in THE BRAVE ONE is cutting edge.  Yet, like TAXI DRIVER, this is a tale of urban decay that finds interest in the psychological underpinnings of the vigilante and has less of an appetite for action and violence.  There is violence in THE BRAVE ONE, but it rarely is seen as anything but depressingly vile and savage: It’s never glorified for the sake of generating cheap thrills.  The best thing that the film does is to dive into the tortured mindset of its character.  Bickle was a loose cannon who felt that the world he lived in failed to fulfill him, so he lashed out at it with wanton violence.  Foster’s character is a bit more relatable in the sense that she was once decent minded and upstanding, but was robbed of a a life with her fiance, which acts as a catalyst for her lust for vengeance. 

If only these two wounded souls could have hooked up in other circumstances.

THE BRAVE ONE certainly has a lot going for it, the first being another Oscar worthy turn by the chameleon-like Foster, who is able to categorically dial so efficiently into the frail and tormented psyche of her vigilante.  She is complimented by yet another great performance by Terrance Howard, who has shown with films like CRASH and HUSTLE AND FLOW why he is perhaps one of the finest actors working today.  The real treat of the film is to see the two play off of one another with such a perfect rhythm and modulation.  Supporting them is the stylish and evocative direction of Neil Jordan (INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE and THE CRYING GAME) who films THE BRAVE ONE with a bleak color palette and haunting visuals that helps to drum up the tension and disturbing atmosphere.

Yet, THE BRAVE ONE’s problems cannot be trumped by a solid directorial eye and universally rock steady performances by the two leads.  The film’s real detrimental quality is its definitive lack of coherence and thought with dealing with the underlining theme of vigilante street justice.  Revenge films are either designed for sleazy, exploitative thrills worthy of lurid pulp fiction or they deal thoroughly with the complex moral conundrums that vigilantism presents.  THE BRAVE ONE disapprovingly occupies a somewhat narrow-minded middle ground between the two entities.  At times, it’s gritty and serious with its issues, but a lot of the time it’s as crudely manipulative and gaudy as a DEATH WISH sequel.

Perhaps its biggest sin is that it never really develops any meaningful commentary about whether or not vigilante justice is right or wrong.  It’s failing is in trying to appease audience members that want blood and carnage and those that want an introspective and thoughtful examination of the issue.  Even worse is the film’s final act, which seems to throw logic completely out of the widow.  This is one of those rare films whose third act feels like one of those bad, alternate endings that occupies the special features section of a DVD.

Jodie Foster is at least in grand form as Erica, a forty-something New York radio talk show that is approaching marrying the love of her life, David (Naveen Andrews).  They have an idealized relationship that is destroyed one evening during a fateful stole through the park with their dog.  Both are savagely beaten, Erica within an inch of her life.  David dies within hours of making it to the hospital.  After walking up from a coma, Erica is a woman paralyzed by fear and uncertainty.  Her naive and idealized perception of a safe life as a New Yorker has been tarnished forever.  Neil Jordan does a superb job here during scenes where we see how traumatizing it is for Erica to try to take her life back by leaving the confines of her apartment.  Just as she tries to leave, the past creeps up on her and tightens its grip.

In pure pre-vigilante form, she finds little satisfaction from the police’s less-than-stellar handling of her case (to the film’s discredit, some of the police men are shown as one-dimensional stooges).  She then decides that she has had enough and decides to purchase a gun (which happens a bit too quickly in the film to be plausible).  When the legal wait times don’t sit well with her, she buys one illegally.  Like Travis Bickle, she uses her new gun in an all-night convenience store that was viscously robbed.  She kills the robber more or less to save her life, but some sort of sickening impulse starts to take over her: She develops a taste for killing wrongdoers, even when she knows she should not.

More and more victims are left in her wake; some are street punks trying to rob subway patrons, another is a cruel pimp that has not let his hooker leave his car in days, and so forth.  Meanwhile, two cunning and smart homicide detectives, Mercer (Howard) and Vitale (Nicky Katt, once again strutting confidently in a supporting role of subtle comic relief), try to put together clues from each murder scene as to the M.O. and identity of the killer.  Slowly but surely, Mercer starts to realize that the murderer may, in fact, be a woman, and he comes to this epiphany while he develops a friendship with Erica herself.

The interplay between Erica and Mercer is the best part of THE BRAVE ONE.  Many of their scenes are the film’s finest, especially in the way both Foster and Howard are able to smoothly ease into their performances and reveal themselves to each other through subtle dialogue.  Mercer grows to understand and like Erica, but he begins to deeply suspect her of the crimes in question.  Erica also has respect for Mercer - one of the few men of the law she does admire - and she too thinks that he knows that she is the wanted vigilante.  Yet, what’s really intriguing is how neither party admits that to the other, which is true during a moment in a diner where the two emotionally troubled characters bare their souls to one another by leaving each other the dots, but by not actually connecting them with straight lines.

As much as I admired the acting, the handing of the film’s themes are unreservedly bipolar and standoffish.  Throughout the film I was never clear on whether it was taking a stance for or against vigilante justice.  Furthermore, I was not sure whether it wanted to be a sharp indictment of the lethargic nature of the police investigative process.  Again, the film does not glamorize most of Erica’s killings (there are shown as shockingly immediate), but the moral ambiguity the film swims through is frustrating.  At times it tries to be a daring expose with some social commentary, and at other times - especially during its final scene - it becomes a crass escapist action spectacle.  The film has the ingredients during its buildup to be a meditative piece on vigilante justice, but the way it utterly cops out with both of its main characters in the end seems to be disingenuous to everything it tried to develop.  Instead of being sobering and chilling, the conclusion of the film reeks of schlocky sensationalism which I found abhorrent.

That’s too bad, because THE BRAVE ONE works so productively as a character piece with stellar performances by Jodie Foster and Terrance Howard.  When the two of them are on screen together, THE BRAVE ONE is uniquely captivating and compelling.  If there is a reason to see the film then it surely is to see two finely tuned actors at the top of the form.  Nonetheless, THE BRAVE ONE never capitalizes on its themes of vigilante justice, nor does it satisfactorily deal with the issue with any even handedness.  This is the type of revenge thriller that desperately yearns to rise above the level of paltry manipulation, but the way it’s conclusion was handled left me feeling that THE BRAVE ONE is a film that is lying to itself.  In the end, this thriller was initially thought-provoking and then became woefully unconvincing and wrong-headed.  Why profess to be a searing and serious drama about how violence affects people when you blatantly take the easiest possible exit off of that road?

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

****  out of  ****

Peter Berg’s magnificent THE KINGDOM is the kind of action-thriller that has the perseverance to actually be about something more than just explosions and bullets blazing.  It certainly has the latter elements, and Berg is at the top of his directorial form in handling of the film’s breathtaking and explosive set pieces. 

Yet, THE KINGDOM is an action thriller with its finger firmly placed on the geo-political pulse; it’s one of the rare post-911 films that works so efficiently as a sobering parable on the moral and ethical uncertainty that we have lived in since September 2001.  It’s also a meticulously mounted action film, which contains virtuoso moments of patriotic, gung-ho mayhem.

Loosely based on the FBI’s investigation of the 1996 bombings of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia’s Dhahran (which Berg read about in the memoir “My FBI” by former Bureau director Louis Freech), with a screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Michael Mann in the producer’s chair, THE KINGDOM seems less concerned with probing the underlining problems with post-9/11 political relations between nations and instead hones in on how two nations desperately battle in an effort to avoid more bloodshed. 

The film could have easily disintegrated in a sensationalistic action film that shamelessly used the memories of the terrorist attacks in New York for the sake of making a popcorn entertainment.  Wisely, Berg and company avoid long-winded and unnecessary political pontificating.  Religious themes are kept at an appropriate distance and there seems like there is little serious effort to chastise Saudi Arabia for harboring of terrorists.  Instead, THE KINGDOM works better as a visceral and emotional experience.  It deals with the hot-button issues of Arab/US relations and terrorism, but it uses those aspects as a launching pad for a thrilling and absorbing investigative procedural.

The film’s opening title credit sequence is ingenious in its simple effectiveness.  It chronicles - through images, news footage, maps, and graphics - the political and social history of Saudi Arabia from the 1930’s, through to 9/11 and to the present day.  The brilliance of this is how immediately it draws you into the film and establishes the particulars without really dwelling on needless exposition.  Through the sequence we see how the country rose to be one of the world’s biggest exporters of oil and how the US became one of the world’s largest importers of oil.  Evidently, this created a decided shift in the diplomatic relationship between the two nations.  The best part of this approach is how we are not left to linger on these historical facts: it allows Berg to shift quickly into the story.  It’s a perfect introduction because it immerses the viewer in the film’s reality, which only helps to make its opening moments so frightening in their verisimilitude.

The opening sequence after the credit montage also does not waste time, and Berg quickly dives head first into the narrative and begins the film with a massive and shocking suicide bomber explosion - two in fact - that manage to kill both Americans and Saudis.  The target was an American housing complex in Saudi Arabia and the casualties are high.  However, the carnage is not just perpetrated solely on Americas; in one quick glimpse, two Saudis are viscously murdered in a halo of gunfire.  The whole sequence is astoundingly realized and shot, and Berg employs a loose, cinema verite shooting style here and through the rest of the film, the same aesthetic style that separated his FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS miles apart from other football films.

We then are taken to Washington, where we see how hopelessly inert the American politicians are in handling the matter.  Predictably, instead of going in for retaliation and revenge, the bureaucrats opt for a soft-pedaled approach and handle it with the quiet hand of diplomacy.  Clearly, a group of FBI operatives sure don’t like Washington’s lenient handling of the terrorist massacre, and a group of them demand - not ask - that they be transferred immediately to the scene of the crime in order to find out how the attack was planned and to capture the terrorists.

The group is lead by FBI Special Agent Fleury (Jamie Foxx, nicely underplayed and quietly charismatic), who seems to be absolutely shocked that terrorists could bomb such a well guarded compound.  Being a father, he is also stunned by the deaths of so many women and children.  Perhaps even more significant was the fact that one of his personal colleagues at the Bureau was also murdered, so the notion of going into The Kingdom has a personal edge to it.

His elite team is an eclectic group and is made up a rugged and strong female forensic expert, Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner, who simultaneously plays rough and tough alongside subtle feminine sexuality and vulnerability better than anyone), Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper, once again easily immersing himself completely in his part), and Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman, whose acerbic and sly delivery provides the film some much needed comic relief).  After making a deal with a Saudi ambassador, Fleury and company are granted only five days on the compound for what would likely be a month long investigation.

Upon arriving, the investigative squad is treated a bit more like prisoners than collaborators in probing the crime scene.  They feel like they are on a goodwill mission, but the level of authority that they have is paltry.  Whereas they want to do a serious and through investigation of the area, others do not give them that luxury.  One American diplomat there (played by Jeremy Piven, who plays smug and pompous as good as anyone) simply tells Fleury’s group to lay low as long as possible, take a few pictures here and there, and then leave.  He also advises them to meet with the Prince in his palace for a great photo op, but Fleury grows increasingly bitter with the lack of an open hand in their investigation.

The crew’s living quarters is a gym with bunks, locked during the night.  They are also only allowed five minutes at the epicenter of the bombings and are not allowed to touch, take, or shoot photos of anything from the site.  They are also not allowed to interview witnesses, whom are in abundance seeing as the bombing took place in broad daylight in front of hundreds or people.  Fleury’s crew has their work cut out for them, and their investigative techniques have been blasted back to the stone age as a result of all of the restrictions they face.

The most fascinating aspect to THE KINGDOM is how it presents the difficulties of Fleury’s mission, which - because of all of the unnecessary regulations and strict rules - would have been impossible for even Ethan Hunt and his M:I-6 crew to crack.  Their daily grind is one of constant opposition.  They have terrible quarters, have very little food and rations, have unbearable heat to deal with, and are barely given instructions or directions to find their way around the city.  Their day does not even begin with a set time schedule (they will be woken up when their liaison opens the gym doors every morning).  There are also cultural obstacles that are intriguing, such as the Yankees’ colorful and ubiquitous use of foul words (which does not sit well in a staunchly religious land) and Janet’s subtle sexuality.  Of course, Saudi women are not accustomed to wearing form fitting tight shirts and pants that reveal their shapely bodies, so Janet’s physical appearance is a constant irritant to the locals.  It does not matter that, in the heat of combat, Janet can take care of business as well as the men, it’s primarily the fact that she seems like an equal within her group and that is a threat to the slanted gender-biases of the nation.

Thankfully, the group eventually gets some support in the form of Col. Al-Ghazi, played extremely well by Ashraf Barhom as a man sternly dedicated to justice at all costs.  Soon, both he and Fleury realize that they will have to disregard their cultural differences and pool their resources to find the culprits of the attack before it’s too late.  The nice dynamic of the film is the way it fleshes out the Al-Ghazi character to be much more than a one-dimensional police figure that constantly is a thorn in Fleury’s side.  Barhom’s performance is a delicate balance act between conveying sympathy and contempt.  He has to be the force of justice in the land and often has to remind Fleury about where he is and what he can and can’t do, but he’s ultimately a noble character in the way he is dedicated to preserving the peace, no matter what the cost.  The immerging friendship that he and Fleury develops is akin to those in a cop-buddy action flick, but the performances and interplay between Foxx and Barhom as so decent that you quickly forget such parallels.

On a technical level, THE KINGDOM is another undisputed triumph for Peter Berg, who has emerged as one of the finest actors-turned-directors of the last few years.  What he has shown in THE RUNDOWN and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS is his command for creating scintillating and tense action sequences.  The film was shot in Abu Dhabi (capital of the United Emirates) and amazingly in the Arizona desert (where many of the thrilling car chase scenes take place).  There is not one moment in THE KINGDOM where we doubt the integrity of its images.  The divergent locations are seamlessly integrated and Berg is able to brand in his film an incredible documentary vibe to the proceedings.  Much like Paul Greengrass, Berg’s improvisational style - filled with quick edits, shaky camera work, and lens distortion - greatly lends itself to the rich tapestry of the film’s environment.  Whether it be with simple establishing shots or grand and large scale action set pieces (as is the case with a remarkably gripping and exhilarating prolonged action scene in the film’s final act), Berg shows how competent he is at submerging the audience into the gritty, hot, and sand-drenched Saudi landscapes.  This is one of the best looking grungy films in a long while.

Again, its the film’s insistence to be an action film about something that is its most notable asset. As thrilling and intense that the action sequences are, the film’s underlining themes are rightfully sad and disheartening.  THE KINGDOM accurately encapsulates - without needlessly dwelling on them - the sort of moral ambiguity and pathos that grips out world today.  The film certainly will have its critics that say it, at its core, is just another propaganda film that chronicles and hero worships the type of macho, American vigor and patriotism that has dominated its manifest destiny inspired ideology throughout history.  Those pundits miss the film’s more subtle message.  Yes, the American military might, courage, resolve, and will is shown as unyielding in the film and Fluery and company do “win” in the conventional sense, but by the end of the story we get an undeniable sense that no country is the real winner.

That is what makes THE KINGDOM such a rare breed of action thriller: It’s not upbeat and uplifting with its content.  There is an undercurrent of utter hopelessness that permeates it.  One scene alone sums this up and it occurs as a juxtaposed montage: Both an American and a Saudi tell someone close to them that there is no need to worry about the future seeing as that they will “kill” all of their enemies.  In short, no one will win when we are involved in a war of such violent rhetoric.  Ultimately, the film is about a mass murder investigation, but in the end it’s pointless whether or not the crime is solved.  The larger issue is how two worlds will live with one another when there is so much distrust and hatred involved.  It’s these unresolved issues that stayed with me as I left THE KINGDOM and accompanying those memories are the film’s great performances, stirring and evocative locales, and technically dazzling action scenes.  This is one of 2007’s most smart, thoughtful, rousing, and distressing films.

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

**   out of  ****

It’s amazing what two men can do with a tax refund, a personal cash loan from a family member, and a hell of a lot of determination and positive energy. 

That’s exactly what Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird used to launch the phenomenon that is TMNT – aka: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  It’s interesting, in hindsight, to see the very modest origins of this very peculiar – and lucrative – super hero comic franchise that spawned a billion dollar empire that could be aptly compared to other profitable toy franchises, like The Transformers and GI Joe.

Back in 1984 Eastman - while during a casual evening out with friend Laird - drew a very humorous looking sketch that would become the basis of everyone’s favorite anthropomorphic mutants heroes.  Using the resources mentioned above, the young artists self published one single, black and white issue of TMNT.  Originally intended as a parody of four of the most popular comics of the 1980’s (Marvel Comics’ DAREDEVIL and THE NEW MUTANTS, Dave Sim’s CEREBUS, and Frank Miller’s RONIN), this somewhat crude independent comic became an overnight sensation.  Independent comics were growing in the mid-80’s, but the fast success of TMNT allowed for the format to explode into the mainstream.  It gave legitimacy to the art form and gave credence to a long list of starving, amateur talent that wanted to have a name in the industry.  If anything, this is probably the most noteworthy legacy of Eastman and Laird’s creation as a whole. 

If one considers where the TMNT franchise went, it’s astonishing to see how dark, gritty, violent, and adult themed those first few issues of the comic were.  In the early Mirage comic book pages, the four heroes in a half shell unleashed as much bloodletting carnage as The Bride did in KILL BILL.  However mature in themes those comics were, the Turtles would be forever changed when they were introduced into the mass market forum.  In 1988 Eastman and Laird met with licensing agent Mark Freedman, who sought to take advantage of their creation for merchandising possibilities.  What happened next is the stuff of legend, and the Ninjas were made more kid friendly and turned into one of the most profitable toy lines ever by Playmate Toys, and was accompanied by an equally popular animated series, which essentially cemented the comic book heroes in the pop culture vernacular.  Whether parents liked it or not, the likenesses of the Turtles were everywhere. 

The success of the Turtles merchandising empire eventually segued into the movie world.  Three low budget live action films were made of varying quality by New Line Cinema: 1990’s TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, 1991’s sequel, THE SECRET OF THE OOZE (which made the cataclysmic miscalculation of having a Vanilla Ice cameo), and the mostly forgotten 1993 entry, TURTLES IN TIME.  Regardless of the live action trilogy’s lack of worth, they remain a reminder of the overt popularity of these characters. 

All of this, if you’ve been willing to read thus far, leads me to the fourth cinematic incarnation, TMNT, which wisely chose not to create another live action sequel (which, quite honestly, did not lend to the credibility of the heroes) and instead makes the heroes purely in CGI form.  This is probably a smart move, if not a logical one, seeing as Eastman and Laird’s mutants were spawned in comic books and truly made a name for themselves in the animated series.  Chronologically occurring after the events of the live action series, albeit in a manner not altogether advertised, TMNT is able to help free up the characters and greatly expand on the past films in terms of action and scope. 

Granted, scope and action is not necessarily the best improvements that the Turtles could have received in their computer upgraded forms.  Surely, the Turtles have never looked finer, and the action and set pieces are bigger and broader and eclipse anything in the previous film outings, but TMNT seems oddly archaic and unnecessary for today’s film world.  Unlike other highly successful super hero reboots, like BATMAN BEGINS, the nearly 14-year wait since the last film has clearly not allowed the makers to invest in any new and intriguing material here.  These Turtles look the same, talk the same, act the same, and engage in the same sort of no-brainer story arcs, all punctuated by a lot of mindless martial arts mayhem.   

Was there not a better story to tell about four turtles that were dosed with radioactive goo, altered into humanoid form, and then taught the martial arts by their sensei, who happens to be a sewer rat?  For characters that live in the dark and dreary sewers, eat a subsistence diet of pizza, and have no other real emotional contact with anyone else, would they really be as positive and noble minded as they are?  Certainly, there are dramatic possibilities that could have accentuated these somewhat pathetic creatures (let’s be honest, they are creatures – mutants to be exact – and they’re teenagers, which is a troubling time for anyone), but the film never makes these Turtles into compelling freaks.  The only real distinguishing characteristics that they have that differentiate themselves are their weapons and the color of the masks (and why wear masks that only cover their eyes?  Do they think that’s necessary, seeing as they overwhelming look like monsters?).  Instead of infusing some genuine interest into these characters, TMNT seems like another redundant excuse to go back to a merchandise well that was sucked dry and left empty in the early 1990’s. 

Nothing really noteworthy or memorable happens in this film.  We get some hasty exposition, a lame and ill-conceived villain, weakly assembled supporting characters, and a sub plot commenting of the nature of family and bonding.  We are also dealt up a lot of kiddie hijinks; the Turtles still talk, for the most part, in sentences often punctuated by the words “dude” and “doofus”.  Also, the bad guys in this film are lamentable forgettable.  Now that their main baddie, Shredder, has been defeated in the earlier prequel, the Turtles, Leonardo (voiced by James Arnold Taylor), Donatello (Mitchell Whitfield), Raphael (Nolan North), Michelangelo (Mikey Kelley), along with their master, Splinter (Mako, regrettably in his last film role), now have to deal with another real bad ass, an immortal man. 

At the beginning of the film we see that Leo has been sent to Central America for training (how he managed to get a passport, board a plane, and fly over there in our highly protective post-9/11 airline security is beyond me).  While he’s away, the other Turtles do what they do best: Donatello likes to dabble in computers and everything gadget related (in a funny moment, he’s show working as an I.T. specialist, but as to how he got the job is also beyond me).  Michelangelo is the party dude and now works a 9-5 job hosting kid’s B-day parties (again, how a large, mutant turtle got a job like this is beyond me), and Raphael, the rebellious brute of the team, is now a nighttime vigilante wearing a mask and costume that in no way shape or form hides the fact that he is a monstrous, walking and talking turtle underneath.   

Yes, it appears that there is some friction in the group, seeing as they are separated from their leader in Leonardo, but they are also having family issues at the worst time.  It seems that an immortal being (played by Patrick Stewart, who obviously needed to repay a favor to agree to lend his talent to this) has gathered his immortal stone generals with the help of stars aligning and some sort of cosmic…thingy…happening.  Of course, this immortal is introduced as a corporate stooge at first, but it takes no one of unlimited intelligence to put two and two together and see that he is actually the main baddie.  He also manages to team up with what remains of Shredder’s foot clan, now lead by Karai (Zhang Ziyi).  The rest of the plot I will not dwell on, but I will say that it is a bit too convoluted and confusing for this type of film, not to mention that there never once appears to be any modest level of thrilling tension in it.  Of course, we get the standard, run-of-the-mill battle at the end with good against evil and…well…guess who comes out on top? 

If one disregards the lackluster storytelling, then there is something to admire in the glossy sheen that the film showcases the Turtles in.  Taking the modern advancements of CGI technology, the Turtles certainly emote better than their previous animatronic counterparts, and the action set pieces are also heavily amped up.  TMNT is certainly not the best animated film I’ve seen this year (that honor would go to RATATOUILLE), nor is it always pitch perfect in execution (some scenes, like a rain-soaked fight pitting two Turtles against each other – is beautifully rendered, whereas a few other sequences seem a bit less fluid and rhythmic).  Regardless of inconsistencies, TMNT is a solid and polished looking animated film that genuinely increases the artistic palette of Eastman and Laird’s comic creations. 

The voice talent is a mixed bag.  I like the nobility and tonality that Mako gives to Shredder, but the four voice leads playing the turtles do very little to distinguish each other.  Also, someone had the silly idea of casting Sarah Michelle Geller as Turtle friend April O’ Neil, not to mention FANTASTIC FOUR’s Chris Evans as street vigilante Casey Jones.  They’re generally stiff and disinteresting in terms of voice talent.  Patrick Stewart phones in his voice work, but at least the film saves us by having a very brief voice over narration by Lawrence Fishburne, who emotes with painfully stoic and mannered speech patterns; it’s almost as if Morpheus just left after giving his speech to the Zionists before the rave party in THE MATRIX RELOADED and ran to the recording session for this film 

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles certainly can take top honors as being the most odd comic book characters of the last 25 years, but the three live action films and its newest CGI animated entry do not play up to their peculiar nature.  Instead of going in a new and fresh direction with this landmark 1980’s trendsetter for more modern consumption, we are dealt with a whole lot of the same in TMNT, and by saying that I mean a considerable amount of surfer lingo, lots of pizza eating, lame dialogue, an even lamer story, and tons of gravity defying mutant martial arts mayhem that is never compelling or altogether exciting.  Yes, TMNT looks nice and fans of the Turtles will truly think that the CGI upgrades are an improvement for this series, but beyond its artifice there is not much for both the die hard fan and the agnostic Turtleholic to be entertained by in this movie.  Instead of being a nostalgic and successful re-launch of old material, we get a too much regurgitated material that we have been exposed to already.  I mean, why not take the Turtles in a whole new path that takes full advantage of their freakish nature?  Perhaps they all should have been on Dr. Phil discussing their battles with teen angst alongside their buried, introverted issues with being the product of a toxic, radioactive spill?   

Now that would have been cool…dude! 

www.craigerscinemacorner.com

***  out ot  ****

There should be no denying that Rowan Atkinson is a comic genius.  He has been listed in THE OBSERVER as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy history.  He also was recently rated as one of the top 50 comedy acts of all time as voted by fellow comedians.  He was also the star of the BLACKADDER TV series for the BBC, which is widely regarded as one of the finest situation comedies ever produced.  As far as British performers go, Atkinson will rightfully go down as one of the all-time greats. 

At least he is considered just that in his native UK…and perhaps here in Canada.  Yet, Atkinson has never really developed a following in the US as other landmark comic acts have, like Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  Perhaps the only short-term notoriety that he has received stateside was with his character of Mr. Bean, who saw the light of day in the cinemas way back in 1997 in BEAN: THE MOVIE. 

However, that was certainly not the first incarnation of that irreverent persona.  Atkinson, in collaboration with Richard Curtis, created Bean in 1990 as a series of 14 half hour episodes.  Broadcast first on January of 1990 and culminating in October of 1995, Mr. Bean became a comedy phenomenon in the UK.  It would eventually become syndicated in over 200 territories and Atkinson subsequently has became so immortalized in the role that he is often forgotten for his past comedy work.  Whether or not Great Britain wanted it, Mr. Bean became a sort of unwanted official ambassador of the country and would go on to become the face of the nation, that of a clueless and easily ridiculed moron. 

However, that is precisely why I have always had such a fondness for Bean: He’s not a mean-spirited and brutish lout that inflicts pain and misery on others because of his lack of poise and refinement.  I think the key to why I like Bean is that he is a lovable idiot.  Bean is not only stupid, but absurdly stupid, the type of innocuous halfwit that is more harmless than harmful.  Throughout his exploits on TV and in his first movie, Bean was presented as that rare type of disaster-prone nitwit that was impossible to hate.  Described by Atkinson as essentially a “an infant trapped in a man’s body,” the comic pleasure of Bean is watching him try to find solutions to seemingly common and simple everyday problems. 

The most hilarious aspect to Bean was that he seems unrelentingly unaware of the basic ways in which the world works, not to mention that he totally disregards others in the process.  One of the most riotous bits in BEAN: THE MOVIE showcased how he managed to correct a huge smear that occurred in the painting “Whistler’s Mother” after he sneezed on it.  What’s funny is (a) how he managed to fix it and (b) that he does not understand why normal people take offense to how he fixed it.

Perhaps ever more crucial to Bean’s overall comic effect is that he is a whimsical throwback to silent films, relying purely on physical slapstick comedy and the use of very sparse dialogue.  When Bean does, in fact, speak, it’s usually in vocal utterances and monosyllabic grunts that could hardly be classified as any language in particular.  Citing comparisons between Atkinson and Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton is not altogether unfair.  Like those two humorist geniuses,  Atkinson gets incredible comedic mileage more for what he does and less by what he says. 

There are a lot of moments just like that in his new – and reportedly last – Bean film entitled MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY, which could have found inspiration from inspired by the similar antics of Jacques Tati’s Mr. Hulot in MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY (1953).  In this film Bean says good-bye to his home nation and takes a trip through France and ends up crashing the Cannes Film Festival.  One moment in particular would have made Keaton proud, which involves Bean, with video camera in tow, exiting a movie theatre and walking from its rooftop onto various vehicles - some moving, some not - and then finally making his way to the streets and to the beaches of Cannes, all while completely being unaware that he could have seriously killed himself if he took one misstep.  That’s the Beanian touch: a normal human being would have gone down the stairs and exited through the door.  In his universe, that would have been too complicated. 

There are other scenes that inspire giggles.  At one point following a misunderstanding involving a taxi at the Gare du Nord railway station in Paris, Bean is forced to make his way rather unorthodoxly towards the station to board his next train towards Cannes (he essentially looks at his compass and proceeds to walk in one straight line for what seems like miles, never stopping for pedestrians, vehicles on the road, or even buildings for that matter).  Another sequence later shows Bean’s particular distaste for the fish cuisine at a posh French restaurant.  Realizing that he despises oysters, he manages to find a sneaky and sly way of disposing of them.  Let’s just say that if you’re eating at a luxurious restaurant and a simpleton sitting at a table next to you appears to dislike oysters, make sure you look at your handbag before you reach in it for your cell phone. 

How did a fool like this manage to get a trip to France?  Well, he won the trip at a Church raffle when his number, 919, is picked (of course, Bean at first thinks he’s a loser, as he reads his ticket upside down as 616).  By the time he reaches Paris (a miracle in itself for this man), he starts taking shots of everything with his Sony camcorder.  At one point he becomes so fixated with having himself be in a shot walking into a train, he stumbles upon and asks Cannes jury member and Russian film critic Emil Dachevsky (Karel Roden) to take some shots of him.  After a series of shots, the train starts to move and Bean boards, but Dachevsky is unable to also get on board.  Bean, in the meantime, hooks up with the critic’s son Sam (Max Bauldry), who is also on board.

Of course, a series of disastrous mishaps follow that causes Bean and Sam to lose their wallets and passports.  As the two make their way through to the next station and miss the next train, the two see Sam’s father go by on another.  He tries to hold up his cell phone number against the window so Bean and the boy can immediately call him.  Unfortunately, Bean writes down every number correctly…except the last one.  So, being who he is, Bean decides to write down every permutation of the phone number that he can possibly think of without knowing the precise last digit.  Of course, his list is incredibly long, and the two run out of change for the phone.  So, Bean does what anyone else in his position would do when faced with having no money: he begs for money on the streets by miming Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro”.  Finding someone to wire him the money would have been too complicated. 

More bad Bean mishaps ensue.  He and Sam manage to secure buss tickets to Cannes, but Bean’s ticket gets caught on a chicken’s leg (don’t ask), and he manages to follow it all the way to the country in a high speed pursuit involving a pickup truck and a ten speed bike.  Of course, this leads Bean to stumble on to the set of a quaint French village, circa WWII.  It turns out to be a unreservedly pretentious TV commercial for yogurt, complete with German soldiers, and it is directed by control freak and the downright egomaniacal Carson Clay (played very humorously by Willem Dafoe).  Of course, the doofus in Bean all but destroys the set. 

Still desperate to get to Cannes, Bean hitchhikes and is picked up by unknown French film star named Sabine (the gorgeous Emma de Caunes), who is also on her way to Cannes, but for the 59th Film Festival.  She has a small part in Clay’s newest film and does not want to miss the premiere.  The film that is shown is one of the film’s comic high points, which highlights the height of vanity by its director (the title card reads “Carson Clay presents a Carson Clay film starring Carson Clay).  The film is such a sanctimonious bore that it puts half of the audience to sleep.  Unfortunately for Sabine, her major scene was cut by the obnoxious Clay.  However, Bean manages to sneak into the screening and you just know that some of his vacation footage that was shot on his camera will make its way to the screen at Clay’s premiere. 

MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY is not a laugh-out-loud riot, nor is a completely wasted comic vehicle for Atkinson’s agreeable talents.  Certainly, there are many scenes in the film that have a large set up for laughs and never really pay off in any hilarious manner (some of the jokes and sight gags are a bit too telegraphed).   Yet, at least with every failed joke there is one that works, and at least Atkinson and company have a sort of daring imagination and youthful spirit to some of the hijinks.  The film is also cute and warm hearted and not ill-tempered and crude with its comedy (it’s rated G and is refreshingly entertaining for both children and adults).  The film succeeds, more or less, by being a farce of sustained buffoonery and overt silliness.  As effective counter programming to the other R-rated raunch fests like SUPERBAD and KNOCKED UP (great in their own respects) MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY is breezy and inoffensively droll.  It does a decent job of showcasing Atkinson’s rubber faced and spidery-limbed imbecile to proper effect and Dafoe is spot-on funny in his tongue-in-cheek performance as the director with a vision that can barely hold up his own self-riotousness. 

For what it’s worth, I did not laugh hysterically throughout MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY,  but I sure smiled a lot.  The film definitely does not click into gears all of the time and its plot is just a silly excuse for a series of cobbled together comedic skits, but that should not bother those that have a taste for slapstick, and Atkinson is in fine form here.  This is reason enough to recommend the film, which professes to be nothing more than a pleasant and amusing diversion.  However, the film does have ambition.  It wisely ends with – you guessed it – Bean and all of the characters from the film miming a large musical finale, singing along with the famous song by Charles Trenet, “La Mer” (Beyond the Seas), with arms raised in the air.  For a man of his limited intellectual faculties, and his penchant for finding the craziest and most insipidly complicated solutions to problems, any other ending would have been a let down. 

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