Given that the mansions of my mind are already wallpapered, carpeted, and furnished with Law & Order repeats, it’s a wonder I can stand to peek at movie crime dramas at all. But the current film crop — once various CGI-laden examples of Hollywood idiocy are removed — has been full of criminal activity so that’s what I’ve been watching. It is perhaps the last genre about people, usually in their darkest hours, and the only one where it seems violence has consequences.
The most befuddled (and befuddling) example of late is The Brave One, Jodie Foster’s movie offering from earlier this year. Why make this movie, as both actor and producer? (Another head-scratcher is why Neil Jordan would be interested in directing it.) Foster is so very smart that were she not a busy Hollywood actress she’d be teaching semiotics at Harvard — in French. The relationship between her character (NYC vigilante) and Terrence Howard’s (NYC cop) must have somehow appealed to her but in execution it’s so unconvincing that we are left guessing what in the hell she had in mind. Often touted as a female version of 1974’s Death Wish, a straightforward remake of that Charles Bronson vehicle would probably have had a better outcome. Instead of Bronson’s Paul Kersey moving from shattered crime victim to reluctant vigilante to a guy becoming all too comfortable in his new role, we get — I don’t know what.
Watched back to back with the Coen Brother’s unforgiving No Country for Old Men, it made a bizarre contrast in unrealistic color-saturated New York night shots on the one hand and, on the other, sun-bleached Texas expanses that just about leave sand in your shorts. It also pointed up the risk in finding an audience while confounding their expectations (Country) or making a movie that’s just plain silly (Brave One). Still, the Coens have given us one of the best movies of the year with much of the best acting. It’s a piece of work that will reward repeat viewings. When they veered off in an unexpected direction and left me wondering if I’d really been paying attention, I wasn’t put off. I figured there was more here than first meets the eye. I look forward to seeing the film again; then I may have more to say about it. In the meantime, I suggest you see it.
Sleuth was never a particular favorite movie of mine, though I remember enjoying it. Released in 1972, it starred Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine as a cuckold and the young rival for his wife’s affections. Some bright bulb had the idea of updating and remaking it; the bulb then immediately burnt out. The 2007 version, with Caine appearing in Olivier’s role and Jude Law taking Caine’s, is simply unwatchable. I couldn’t get through it. In addition to a ridiculous set — hugely important in a picture taking place in one location — the new version takes itself far, far, far too seriously for what is basically a light entertainment. It’s like a British drawing room comedy-mystery set in a prison. That the likes of Caine, Law, Harold Pinter, and Kenneth Branagh all had a hand in this and the results are null is the biggest mystery of all.
Gone Baby Gone marks Ben Affleck’s debut as a film director and though it’s a solid piece of work I can’t get over some problems I had. I found the resolution of the mystery not only unconvincing but protracted (which maybe is less Affleck’s fault than that of the novel and/or screen adaptation). It’s certainly worth seeing and I’ll stick by that even though I was far less impressed with Casey Affleck and most of the principals than the reviews led me to expect. (Nobody’s acting is bad but there’s less happening in many of the scenes than I think everybody concerned believed there was.) Still, in addition to the pleasure of seeing the character actor John Ashton for the first time in ages, the movie does have one of the best performances of the year, the linchpin of the film itself: Ed Harris as the cop assigned to the case of the missing girl that Casey Affleck’s PI character gets caught up in.
American Gangster isn’t quite the sum of its parts. Russell Crowe, in particular, seems almost uninterested in being there — maybe he’s just too much immersed in his schlub role. Denzil Washington dominates as a ruthless drug kingpin in 1970s Harlem, while Crowe plays the detective-turned-prosecutor looking to stop him. There’s the usual marital discord, the violent killings, the conflicts between straight and crooked members of families and loyal and traitorous members of gangs, and the set pieces (and music) that remind us of where and when we are. We’ve seen all of this before except here none of it feels organic and the ending seems clueless with regard to the moral issues the earlier scenes set up. They mount a big good-vs-evil story and then don’t bother to take a position either way. (Ridley Scott is no Martin Scorcese.) Though none too short the film is not a slog; all the same, I was aching for the kind of in-your-face, on-the-fly stuff we used to see in the films released at the same time this movie takes place. Back when film was grainy and we liked it that way. When you settle for just slapping a Bobby Womack selection on the film soundtrack, well, that just don’t cut it.
Actors and story are both solid in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Here’s another flick with all the usual elements of its type (in this case, the low-class, gone-wrong heist movie) but every bit of it is done about as well as it can be. Sidney Lumet, now about 141 years old, takes charge and sets up the scenes, cross cuts, time travels — anything to force your attention on matters that might otherwise seem a tad too familiar. As in the movies above, no one in the cast is bad but here the exceptions are not those who are somewhat lacking but those actors who are great. The scenes between Philip Seymour Hoffman and Albert Finney are alone worth the investment of two hours.
Pending further viewings of No Country for Old Men, George Clooney’s movie Michael Clayton is probably my favorite in this batch. (Who says white collar crime isn’t real crime?) It’s got two things going for it: Clooney (and, of course, the other actors, especially Tom Wilkinson) and the whole boardroom criminal enterprise storyline, presented here with soft echoes of 70s paranoid-conspiracy movies. For instance, there’s an ultra-efficient, completely antiseptic killing that is genuinely unnerving. This is not to say that Clayton is the same as, say, The Parallax View or The Conversation but if we allow for the elapse of 20 years we can see a connection with a world gone wrong, with amoral people holding the purse strings as well as claiming the moral high ground — while actually standing on sand. And it’s all presented in a damn fine movie.
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