“Wanted”: Bullet the Blue Sky

After the art-house buzz for his modern vampire fables “Night Watch” and “Day Watch,” Timur Bekmambetov became a hot property. Atmospheric and spooky, “Night Watch” was riveting entertainment. Providing a welcome twist to the oft-told subject, it contained tangible menace in an epic style as well as a fantastic animated sequence and wonderful set pieces — especially a finely constructed scene which followed the path of a single screw along its journey as it fell from a plane into the bowels of a building. The sequel “Day Watch” ratcheted up the intensity into an apocalyptic showdown replete with a soundtrack of thrash metal and haunting chorale choruses which was still nimble enough to successfully blend tenderness and acute comic touches into the mix.

In his Hollywood debut, “Wanted,“ Bekmambetov showcases absurdly badass moments but only in fits and starts in a film which feels comparatively restrained and incomplete to his earlier works.

Yet, the opening scenes of the film form the foundation for an interesting social satire of a downtrodden cubicle dweller recruited to become an assassin. There’s a Walter Mitty air to the character of Wesley Allan Gibson (James McAvoy).  And the rat race symbolism is unrelenting but effective. However the film veers away from this treatment and spends too much time in training-the-new-guy mode so that it loses this intriguing perspective and lurches towards becoming a  pedestrian affair.

Sadly for a talent as compelling as Bekmambetov, “Wanted” doesn’t really let go.  It lacks a certain sense of abandon, and even fun. When a film doesn‘t appear to embrace the joke of something as absurd as the “Loom of Fate“ you’d suspect that the director was a misanthrope, if you didn‘t know any better.  But both “Night Watch“ and “Day Watch“ revel in humorous moments, even if many of them are black. Perhaps because, unlike “Wanted,“ he co-wrote the screenplays for his two earlier hallmark films, he felt more comfortable finding the gradations of humor amidst the seriousness.  But it may be simply that in his first effort in the States working with Universal Pictures he felt impinged.  Even this film’s signature visual effect of bullets bent by mind control lacks the relish associated with Bekmambetov’s style.

So if you want a mind-blowing shoot ‘em up, then there’s none better this decade than the criminally unseen “Shoot ’Em Up.” Blessed with the marketing budget of, say, the national Green Party, “Shoot ‘Em Up” snuck into theaters last fall for a mere few weeks before being consigned to cult status: You can’t get more cult than a stupendous Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, and Paul Giamatti flick that due to its tepid American box office allegedly opened in a single Australian theater.  So only a few lucky Melburnians  got to see the Michael Davis film which was outlandish, inspired and breakneck. Conversely, while “Wanted” was bestowed with a gargantuan promotional campaign, it is comparably slight and underwhelming. 

The attraction for McAvoy to the role of Wesley Allan Gibson is apparent. He seems to revel in the forlorn Gibson, with his exhausted countenance, crumply dress shirts, and vigorously bitten fingernails. But the rest of the characters are completely unblinking, unfunny automatons. They are exceedingly cool but vacant.  As the master of the assassins, Morgan Freeman has perfected his chilled persona so expertly that it would be refreshing if we could describe one of his characters as “bat-shit crazy.“ Angelina Jolie traipses across the set likes it‘s a runway.  She apparently was paid a great deal to stretch, pout and smirk; not so much for acting. Terence Stamp brought along his startling blue eyes and sonorous voice for an absolute throwaway role which suggests he must have had a spare Bank Holiday weekend.

The ending to “Wanted” is well-crafted nonsense.  A major component of the conclusion is that characters have to make dramatic, ultimate choices but because there’s been no development for any role other than McAvoy’s, there’s no context and the decisions feels forced and vacuous. Sadly, for a filmmaker with as much vitality as Bekmambetov, it’s disappointing to meet this finale with a shrug.

Hopefully, with his next venture, reportedly the third installment in the “Watch” trilogy, he will revert to completing a film worthy of his audacious talent.  He is capable of making films simultaneously over-the-top and under control. Just maybe not in Hollywood, yet.

“Tropic Thunder”: Jack Black & White Minstrel Show

With “Tropic Thunder” triple-threat Ben Stiller is inching closer to a work befitting the eviscerating talent of “The Ben Stiller Show,” his scything skit show which Fox deigned to broadcast for a measly 12 episodes in the fall of 1992.   Filled with brutal parody and sharp yet sophomoric satire in sketches such as “Ask Manson,” Tito Gallegas, The Pig Latin Lover,” and “TJ O’Pootentoot,”  the show’s sensibility seems a far cy from Stiller’s recent resume where he has spent too much time playing the befuddled every guy in other folks’ half-hearted efforts such as  “Meet the Fockers.” “Along Came Polly,“ “Night at the Museum,“ and “The Heartbreak Kid.“ Even Stiller’s last directorial effort — “Zoolander”  — felt both as a film and performance like a bit of a sleepwalking exercise. So, it’s encouraging that as director and co-screenwriter he’s added a bit more nuance and bite to his comic creations in one of this year‘s more notoriously talked about films.  

At times discomfitingly funny, “Tropic Thunder” follows a troupe of self-obsessed actors filming a Vietnam War opus on location in Southeast Asia who anger their director and producer so thoroughly that they are unwittingly dropped into the jungle to teach them a quick lesson. Suddenly, events conspire to maroon the quintet led by Tugg Steadman (Stiller), a preening action hero grasping for greater depth in his career.  

Beginning with savagely clever and inspired parody trailers of each of the actor’s seminal work, “Tropic Thunder” is an equal opportunity offender. Almost every sector of society is mocked. (Don’t worry Kazakhstan, you’re spared this time.) But Hollywood is the bull’s-eye target, with the industry’s penchant for honoring actors for portraying people with disabilities earning particular scrutiny. You will swear you’ve seen Stiller in “Simple Jack.”

In the role of five-time Oscar winning Australian method actor, Kirk Lazarus, who undergoes skin pigmentation surgery to play African-American Sergeant Lincoln Osiris,  Robert Downey Jr.  delivers a performance for the ages. Forgetting the brazen courage to attempt the part, what about the chops? He exhibits immense dexterous talent by portraying a black man who is completely self realized and devoid of caricature. Somewhere C. Thomas Howell is bowing his head in shame.

Future editions of Eila Mell’s “Casting Might-Have-Beens” won’t be troubled by stories of the various actors Stiller would have had in mind for the role. It had to be Downey or bust. He’s so good you begin to wonder, “What can’t he tackle?”  The Michael Phelps Story?  A live-action Cartman, Kyle and Kenny? “The Queen”?  In 2008, Downey’s work has been so exemplary that perhaps next spring the Academy should bestow a best supporting nomination on his close friend, personal assistant and “sponsor,” Jimmy Rich.  There’s more to come from the iron man later this year as he costars with Jamie Foxx in Joe Wright’s anticipated drama, “The Soloist.” I wouldn’t bet against a trifecta. As to the future, he’ll appear on screens in 2010 as Sherlock Holmes in a Guy Ritchie project, thereby snatching the director’s career from oblivion.

Jack Black, so unselfconsciously demented in the under-the-radar and underappreciated “Be Kind Rewind,” leavens the outrageousness with a muted turn as Jeff Portnoy, a drug-addled comic actor who bears a faint resemblance to Chris Farley.  However, Black bursts out of this cocoon in a detox scene which is brutal, gut-busting and instantly quotable.

Aside for the main trio, the expansive cast  performs with varying degrees of success. Brandon T. Jackson, as rapper Alpa Chino, and Jay Baruchel, as earnest young actor Kevin Sandusky, are welcome additions to the cast-adrift actors. Matthew McConaughey as Tugg’s agent displays charm and comic timing with such aplomb that you hope he will fire his own, expand his repertoire and stop making foolish films with that Wasa of actresses, Kate Hudson.

As the author of the film’s war-time memoir, Nick Nolte is so grizzled you’d think he’d supped on a dinner of Sam Elliott and Eli Wallach. Danny McBride, the flavor of the month, doesn’t do much with his pyrotechnics wizard role and you ponder if the buzz about this dude might be bong induced. Similarly, Steve Coogan feels slightly underutilized as the film’s put-upon director. But Tom Cruise clearly revels in the raunchy role of the film’s megalomaniacal producer with a look suggesting a homicidal James Lipton. He also sports the gnarliest hand hair in recent screen memory.

In a bit of deflating news, according to reports, Stiller and Cruise are teaming up in “The Hardy Men,” updating the Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy pairing to adulthood. It sounds like a “Focker” nightmare so unless there’s an inspired twist to this scenario, I fear that in his career we will only see the comic best that Stiller can conjure in fleeting snippets. If true, he‘ll justifiably become “The Heartbreak Kid.”

“Sixty Six”: Betwixt & Between

“Sixty Six” is an overcooked Christmas cake. And director Paul Weiland allows his corpulent impulses to overwhelm what could have been a charming gem of a film. Coated in sticky-sweet icing but filled with darker themes,  the movie is so stuffed with competing ideas and tones that it regrettably collapses in on itself.

Bernie Rubens (Gregg Sulkin) is a North London lad in 1966 with the ignominious fate that his bar mitzvah could fall on the World Cup final day, which England, he hopes, won’t make. We first meet Bernie in a bittersweet scene as he’s picked last for his gym class football team. And if the film had been satisfied with this concise concept, a small but sincere story regarding a young man‘s anxious months-long journey towards his important day, “Sixty Six” had a chance to be special. But it throws in an obsessive compulsive, depressive dad (Eddie Marsan) who with his brother runs a fruit and veg shop which is under threat from a national competitor. And the drama keeps being heaped on, till the movie topples over from the weighty matters.  The project would have been well served by a more frugal Weiland tossing out several of the dramatic elements and reigning in writers Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan from their sweeping impulses. 

But Weiland suffers from a difficulty shifting between the serious and lightheaded.  Therefore, the switch between the joyful and sad moments just feels jumbled. It’s not as though people don’t wade through life with a plethora of tumultuous events but this film does it so jarringly that  the emotional see-saw feels exploitive.  At times, scenes seem plunked in for the sole reason that a very light moment must be followed quite suddenly by an intense one. The tragedy especially doesn’t feel connected to the basic story but instead tagged on to simply prompt an audience reaction.  It’s a scattershot approach which similarly bewitched a movie like “The Full Monty.”

The treatment of the father’s character is particularly perplexing  He’s more than simple quirky; he’s a troubled, damaged, and peculiar man. But the film treats his mental health like so many swings and roundabouts.  The father’s depressive malaise, which leads him to be hospitalized, can be brushed aside, the film appears to suggest, with a glorious extra time goal. Marsan does a commendable job with a character undermined by oversimplification.

In the final reel, the film dissolves into a scenario so soaked in fantasy it‘s laughable. Let’s just say that there’s not a chance in Hull City FC that the dad could have snagged tickets to that football match in the manner in which he does. The scene could have worked if Weiland had incorporated an airy, nostalgic mood throughout.  Plainly, it would have been a fitting resolution if the film had been steeped in a whimsical, fantastical tone from the onset. But, as presented in this film, the untenable ending is utter tosh.

The cast can’t be faulted for any of the film’s shortcomings.  Helen Bonham Carter is endearing against type as Bernie’s self-possessed mum.  Playing Bernie’s aunt, British comedienne Catherine Tate again proves that in roles outside of her own creation she is a genuine actress.  And Peter Serafinowicz, a tangential member of Simon Pegg’s comic entourage and a phenomenal mimic in his own right, provides a good natured turn as Bernie’s cheeky uncle. 

It’s disappointing to see a film like “Sixty Six” miss an opportunity, a sitter, really. Because along with the cast, there are highlights in the presentation as well.  Both the art and set direction by Lynne Huitson and Jille Azis are redolent with a Swinging London vibe. Rebecca Hale’s costume design is equally adept at capturing the more outrageous fashions of the time and the simplest of school uniforms.

There’s a better film here if Weiland had trimmed the excess.  Too bad there won’t be a second helping.

“Kung Fu Panda”: Haiku Fidelity

The grandest asset of “Kung Fu Panda” is its greatest pitfall. Jack Black dominates as the title character and he’s undeniably terrific but his presence is so overpowering that he suffocates the film. 

When a comedian becomes iconic like Black, the humor begins to emanate from familiarity. The rhythm of his voice, the cadence of his delivery, and his bountiful physical exuberance can lead an audience to laugh in anticipation even before Black has delivered a punch line.  In “High Fidelity” Black captivated with his manic energy and people became instant fans of the dynamo with the soulful pipes in one of the films of the 2000s.  Since then Black’s tenacious persona has become a distinctly beloved comic presence. “The School of Rock” could have been a cringe-worthy exercise with a lead who brought less commitment and belief to the role of Dewey Finn. A recent Sesame Street appearance made a lesson about octagons a winsome moment. And as illustrated in DreamWorks’ “Kung Fu Panda,“ no one says “Awesome” with the same joyous verve.  

So you can’t blame directors Mark Osborne and John Stevenson for making a film which is essentially a Jack Black vehicle. But it’s a glaring example where moderation would have been a wiser option, and a less-is-more approach may have ensured a more complete and resonating work. 

“Kung Fu Panda” opens on a vibrant, teeming Chinese city reminiscent of a scene from Richard Scarry’s “Busy, Busy World” but the film falters as the focus turns to Black‘s lovable yet hapless panda, Po.  The film feels smaller and less robust than several recent animated wonders, especially the studio’s own “Flushed Away.” The other characters lack true distinction and are lumped into a not-Jack Black pack. They simply aren’t given the personality or pizzazz of Po. Secondary characters feel, well, secondary. Furthermore, the script wavers in quality and relies all-too-often on trite aphorisms.  

The makers of “Kung Fu Panda” should have studied the efforts of those quality animated films and noticed they haven’t allowed a single vocal talent to dominate.  You would have to be well coached to know that Craig T. Nelson was the voice of Mr. Incredible.  And few would have recognized instantly that the lead actors in “Flushed Away” were Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslett.  And just last year “Ratatouille” utilized Patton Oswalt’s talents but the tremendous stand-up’s distinct comic persona doesn’t begin to overwhelm. It simply melds into a larger, luxurious tale.

 “Kung Fu Panda” is enjoyable and you’d have to be a surly curmudgeon to dismiss its charming moments.  But making Black the whole focus creates an unbalanced film that is something short of “Awesome.“

“Tell No One”: He Shoots? He Scores!

When France rose to their greatest footballing heights at turn of the century, Zinedine Zidane was the talismanic figure of infinite artistry.  But a crucial component of those World Cup and European Championship winning squads was an unassuming central midfield stalwart named Emmanuel Petit.  Blessed with matinee idol good looks and a blond d’Artagnan ponytail, Petit was a methodical talent who was capable of the moment of magic but mastered the simple rather than the sublime. He perfected the skills of completing short, sensible passes, defending doggedly, and soaking up the excesses of teammates. Petit was indispensable to his nation’s success and replicated this influence for his resurgent club side, Arsenal, as well.  In essence, he made the elemental an art form.   

So in the afterglow of seeing “Tell No One” it is only fitting that I thought of Petit as I contemplated this wholly satisfying work from the 35-year-old romantic heartthrob of French cinema, Guillaume Canet, who has stepped behind the camera to superbly craft a taut, swift and enthralling mystery thriller.

Based on a novel by American author Harlan Coben, it is a familiar tale: a wanted man seeks to prove his innocence against suspicion of a most heinous crime.  But Canet transcends this common device by delivering a thoroughly entertaining film surging with a griping plot, engaging characters and urgent suspense.  Opening quietly enough with a tranquil midnight swim, the film spirals suddenly into a frenetic quest for redemption. Refreshingly adult and smart, “Tell No One” possesses a vibe reminiscent of another redemptive tale, “Three Days of the Condor.”

Confidently photographed by Christophe Offenstein and expertly edited by Herve de Luze, it is 125-minutes long but skittles along like a pebble across a pond.  There are times during a film this engrossing I don’t try to think ahead or guess as to whodunit.  When they’re good, as good as “Tell No One,“ I don’t think of them as puzzle to be solved but instead as a clever story to savor.  

The film crackles with a superbly realistic and earthy chase scene. The chase is infused with elements of Parkour during a frenetic dash through Paris markets, shops and homes, though because our protagonist is a busy doctor venturing on middle age, it’s undignified, disjointed and panicked.

Francois Cluzet, a hunkier Dustin Hoffman, offers an impeccable axis performance as the doctor on the run. He discovers painful truths and personal transgressions which challenge the simplest notions he held of the people closest to him.  He displays a compelling breadth of ever-changing emotions, with moments of disbelief, terror, anger and even compassion all jumbled together during his steadfast quest for justice.

The diverse supporting cast is provided with roles both well written and substantial.  Even the eccentricities of a sympathetic detective are rounded off and muted.  A richly tanned and fluent Kristin Scott Thomas is a welcome presence.

Funnily enough, the final scene of the film feels a tad tacked on.  It’s like scoring a wonder goal and celebrating by running to the corner flag, dropping to all fours, and lifting a leg in a symbolic “taking the piss.”  But this is just a quibble because it surely doesn’t spoil the beauty of the goal.

So just as a supporter would have exited Highbury in the heady days of New Labour after seeing another assured Petit display musing, “If only every footballer…“, as the final credits of “Tell No One” roll, one will ponder “If only every crime movie…”