I call it "karaoke filmmaking", this strange business of remaking old movies (here's a site that's totally devoted to the phenomenon.)
For example,King Kong has been remade twice, and I wouldn't be surprised if at this very moment somewhere in Hollywood a proposal for a third kick at the can is simmering on a laptop's hard drive.
I mean, what exactly are we trying to do here? Will we remake King Kong until we get it right, until we come as close as humanly possible to the Platonic Ideal of King Kong? Or does every new generation of moviegoers insist on getting the King Kong it deserves?
Or maybe it's a case of insecure studio execs suffering from primate envy - "my King Kong is bigger than your King Kong!" (I'm going to stop saying "King Kong" now.)
Tony Scott is presently putting the finishing touches to a remake of the 1974 hostage/heist thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
Scott'sPelham is tentatively scheduled for a July 2009 release and stars Denzel Washington and John Travolta, and here's my prediction.
It will be unmistakably a Tony Scott movie. The director will use all the cutting-edge technical wizardry at his disposal. It will be visually stunning. Washington will bring his usual "A" game to the proceedings and give a powerful performance. Travolta will...well, Travolta will show up.
The soundtrack will be loud enough to kill small animals. Stuff will get blown up. It will do serious box office, much popcorn will be sold, and the exhibitors and the shareholders of Columbia Pictures will be very pleased.
But I'm also predicting that it won't be a memorable film, simply because thirty-four years ago director Joseph Sargent got it right the first time.
Sadly, Sargent's claim to cinematic fame is for getting it very, very wrong; in 1987 he directed what is acknowledged to be one of the worst movies ever made, Jaws: The Revenge. But if life were fair he would be remembered for Pelham, a film that finds it's strength in an intelligent screenplay, a clearly defined forward momentum and solid performances.
I sincerely hope that as the drumbeat for Scott's remake gets louder over the coming months, one of the unintentional but welcome consequences of the publicity will be that people will be motivated to see the original.
Youth Without Youth directed by Francis Ford Coppola starring Tim Roth, Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara Rating: F
"Unreined, unbound, he soared off to fulfil the destiny of his genius; or, if you prefer, he wrote to please himself."
The above quote is taken from an essay written by British novelist Martin Amis in which he discusses the work of Irish writer James Joyce. Just replace the word "wrote" with the phrase "made movies", and it's a sentiment that could be applied to Francis Ford Coppola.
Following his heart has worked out big time for Coppola in the past.
The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now - cinematic equivalents of the Pyramids of Giza and films that I could happily watch once a month for the rest of my life.
But Youth Without Youth, Coppola's return to feature filmmaking after a ten-year hiatus, is art house mumbo-jumbo of the highest order - a feast for the eye and ear, a technically innovative film, a personal achievement for the director - and utterly incomprehensible.
Financed in part with the proceeds from Coppola's Napa Valley winery (where you can purchase "Director's Cut" Cabernet Sauvignon and jars of Mama Coppola's organic spaghetti sauce), Youth Without Youth is nothing if not ambitious in scope.
The central character of our story is Dominic (Tim Roth), an elderly academic living out his final days in pre-World War II Romania.
One blustery afternoon while crossing a busy intersection Dominic is fried to a crisp by a bolt of lightning.
He awakens in a hospital bed and will soon discover that surviving his run-in with a million volts will turn out to be the least of the miracles he will eventually experience.
Inexplicably, the raw electricity has transformed the frail, gray-haired Dominic into a young and vigorous thirty-something and endowed him with god-like intelligence.
We then follow Dominic on a thirty year long odyssey where he will explore subjects as diverse as the porous nature of supposedly solid reality, the transmigration of souls, bizarre Nazi scientific experimentation with Tesla Coils, schizophrenia, Proto-Indo-European languages, past life regression, synchronicity, lucid dream states, Buddhism and ballroom dancing (okay, maybe not ballroom dancing).
And all of this will play out at a confused and glacial pace and be interpreted by an uninspired Tim Roth, a woefully miscast Alexandra Maria Lara who performs double duty as Dominic's love interest and the reincarnation of a Buddhist saint (or Janis Joplin, I'm not sure), and a slightly embarrassed Bruno Ganz (who gives a must-see performance as Hitler in Downfall).
One of the more exciting scenes in Youth Without Youth
Youth Without Youth is a truly weird effort by Coppola, as melancholy as any Bergman wrist-slasher and with an ending that even M. Night Shyamalan would dismiss as ridiculous. I recommend it only to serious students of Coppola's work and the perversely curious.
And if you do insist on watching Youth Without Youth, never has a director commentary track been more indispensable to a DVD. Coppola explains his motivations for making Youth Without Youth and throws welcome light on some of the plot points (and pay particular attention to how often Coppola acknowledges the contribution of his editor, the old pro Walter Murch. I suspect that Murch saved this movie from being even murkier than it already is).
Oh, and while I was writing this post, I just could not get this stupid scene out of my head!
I'm Not There directed by Todd Haynes starring Cate Blanchett, Ben Whishaw, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin, Heath Ledger Rating: A
If a movie director stubbornly insists on dragging us back to the well-trod hardpan known as The Sixties one more time, then he'd be wise to keep in mind that many of us know where the bodies are buried, and spare us from the wailing sitars, the love beads, the groovy platitudes and the fuzzy acid washed philosophies that droop like so many overripe Sweet Dream peaches.
In other words, surprise us.
You couldn't ask for a more imaginative and enjoyable trip in the way-back machine than Todd Haynes's I'm Not There.
Haynes shoplifts the dusty idol called Bob Dylan straight off the shelf and parades him past the fun house mirrors not once but six times. The resulting fractured images are marshaled and maneuvered through time and space, race and gender are blurred, identity and ego are Silly-Putty malleable. It's audacious and idiosyncratic and gleefully self-indulgent, and it's as close to a work of genius as anything that is worthy of the label.
Rare is the agnostic on the subject of Bob Dylan's cultural significance. We stake our ground in one of two extreme camps; Dylan is a musical prophet or whining poser (me, I'm an Old Cadre Dylanista patiently awaiting the end of the rainy season and the delivery of my marching orders).
But all the messy emotional baggage that comes along with any discussion of Dylan can be safely left in the vestibule and Haynes's film can be viewed by both the unbeliever and the pious for what it is - a celebration of the many incarnations of the mumbling Oracle of Hibbing, Minnesota, a good-natured mugging of bone-weary narrative techniques, a six-ring circus, and a cinematic equivalent of a physics thought experiment.
Haynes uses his avatars to explore various aspects of Dylan's life and legend, with special attention paid to the extraordinary fuss made when the heir apparent to Woody Guthrie plugged in his axe and kicked out the jams at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 (for many it was as if the Dalai Lama had suddenly decided to become an international arms dealer). The result is a kind of "many universes theory" of a man who has spent his entire life like a ragged Gypsy moth fighting any attempt to be pinned and mounted.
To single out one actor in I'm Not There as exceptional is both unfair and close to impossible.
Marcus Carl Franklin is an old soul in a youngster's body, Heath Ledger is (tragically) an intriguing amalgam of Steve McQueen cool and Laurence Olivier control - even our old pal Richard Gere takes a break from fussing with his hair long enough to give a sensitive and sincere performance.
But Cate Blanchett is the straw that stirs the drink. She plays Jude Quinn, the androgynous and reluctant superstar who amuses himself/herself by spewing pearls of coldly calculated Zen-like wisdom and enjoying the mad stampede that ensues to catch them. (To really appreciate just how amazing Blanchett is in this role, I highly recommend Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Homeas a companion piece to Haynes's film).
Todd Haynes has taken an unorthodox narrative structure, a Mulligan stew of visual and audio techniques, and enough brilliant performances to fill - well, six movies, and crafted a film that is partly an irreverent puppet show and partly a hymn of praise. He gives as much concrete form as possible to a subject who prides himself on being shadows and fog, and he does it with a light touch and great sensitivity.
The Savages directed by Tamara Jenkins starring Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman Philip Bosco Rating: B
It's a very neat trick to find humor in such a bleak subject as the disintegration of a parent; the magician's name is Tamara Jenkins, her sleight-of-hand is called The Savages.
Laura Linney is Wendy Savage - luckless Manhattan playwright, part-time office drone and occasional world-class fibber mired in a doomed relationship with a married jerk. Her life is miserable but manageable.
That all changes when Wendy gets a phone message telling her that her father Lenny (Philip Bosco) has slipped into the limbo known as dementia (it seems that dear old Dad has taken to creating imaginative graffiti with his poop).
In a book strewn Buffalo, New York bedroom Jon Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is roused from a troubled sleep by a 3 a.m. call from his sister informing him of Lenny's disturbing lapse into an artistic Brown Period.
Jon's life rates lower than his sister's on the Misery Scale, but not by much. He's a college theater professor teaching an arcane subject to bored students. He's working on a biography of Bertolt Brecht that is more or less guaranteed to wind up in the 99 cent bin. The love of his life is leaving him because he can't commit. And while his sister is nearly hysterical, Jon is morosely practical - he categorizes his father's acting out as a "Yellow Alert", proving once again that Homeland Security is not just for terrorists anymore.
But when his long-time girlfriend drops dead in a beauty salon, Lenny suddenly finds himself homeless.
Jon and Wendy make arrangements to move the increasingly frail and confused Lenny from an Arizona retirement community to a nursing home in Buffalo (Jenkins's use of the contrasting locations is noteworthy - they're almost supporting characters. Arizona is a surreal and sun-blasted View-Master Kodachrome landscape filled with impossibly perfect bungalows surrounded by massive Saguaro cacti. Buffalo in the dead of winter is cold and bleak and is about as inviting as a shoe full of icy slush).
With Lenny safely warehoused in what he mistakenly believes to be a hotel, Jon and Wendy can indulge in what siblings do best - dissecting each other's lives with laser-like precision and playing the blame game for all the marbles.
Now, some minor quibbling on my part.
The shift in director Jenkins's focus on the strong family triangle to an increasing preoccupation with Laura Linney's character mildly weakens the second half of The Savages - Jon and Lenny are slowly pushed to the margins and Wendy's story begins to dominate the film. Having said that, I have to emphasize that it's not a fatal flaw or a derailment of any sort - it's more of an unexpected but very satisfying side trip.
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, concludes the nit-picking portion of our review.
The Savages is that rare bird found pretty thin on the ground these days, an intelligent film that showcases three extraordinary performances and that has something profound to say about the human condition, and says it with unflinching honesty and heartfelt compassion.
Charlie Wilson's War directed by Mike Nichols starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts Philip Seymour Hoffman Rating: E
Welcome to the second installment in our ongoing series entitled "Brilliant veteran film directors who make okey-dokey movies late in their careers."
Tonight we'll be examining Charlie Wilson's War, a cotton candy confection spun by the great Mike Nichols and starring Hollywood royalty Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.
Wilson is without a doubt a red hot pistol - a whiskey guzzlin', coke tootin', booty jumpin' good ol' boy in a Men's USA double breasted suit and Larry Mahan gator tail boots. He's also an extremely effective and persuasive politician, and a genuinely decent man who balances his personal weaknesses with a heartfelt sense of right and wrong.
In 1980 Congressman Wilson is sitting in a Las Vegas hot tub earnestly polling the electorate (specifically a former Playboy Playmate of the month) when he happens to catch a televised report on the plight of the Afghan freedom fighters known as the Mujaheddin. Wilson is appalled at the scenes of brave insurgents doing battle against Soviet tanks with little more than museum piece rifles and large rocks.
He returns to Washington determined to use his considerable political clout to increase America's covert aid for the Afghan cause.
With the help of CIA operative Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and the formidable charm initiative of Joanne Herring, a Texas socialite played by Julia Roberts (we love you, Pretty Woman!), Wilson manages to increase funding for the Mujaheddin from a laughable $5 million dollars to a more respectable $1 billion.
By 1989 a bruised and bloodied Soviet Army finally cries uncle (in Cyrillic of course) and abandons its pigheaded attempts to introduce the Afghans to the obvious advantages of Communism (blindness-inducing vodka, steam-powered television sets, female athletes who look as if they could use a prostate exam).
Wilson is both delighted and disillusioned by the outcome of the war; delighted that the evil Soviet empire was one step closer to its inevitable destruction, disillusioned that the American Congress showed little enthusiasm for helping a war-ravaged Afghanistan to rebuild.
The movie ends on a bittersweet note with a deeply moved Charlie Wilson receiving a commendation for his pivotal role in bankrolling the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA. It's no surprise that Charlie Wilson's War has the overwhelming look and tone of an episode of The West Wing; Aaron Sorkin, the TV show's creator, is responsible for the film's screenplay. And Sorkin's DNA is all over this movie - the reams of endless exposition (most of it wickedly smart and funny, some of it mind-numbingly tedious), the "walk and talk" Steadicam shots, the intimate knowledge of the inner workings of Washington bureaucracy.
And while Sorkin is busy planting his artistic flag, director Mike Nichols appears to have taken his cue from the Hippocratic Oath - he's chosen to "Do no harm". His direction of Charlie Wilson's War is adequate at best and uninspired at worst - he gets the job done, but there is nothing to distinguish his effort from that of any talented journeyman director.
The real life Charlie Wilson could not ask for a better choice to portray him on screen. Tom Hanks plays Wilson as flawed but principled - folksy without being condescending, a good-natured booze hound, and an unapologetic womanizer who never forgets his East Texas manners even while discussing the finer points of American foreign policy with naked coke whores.
It's no surprise that Philip Seymour Hoffman is amazing as the disgruntled and razor-sharp Gust Avrakotos; no, the real shock is that an actor of Hoffman's talent and stature accepted to play what is essentially a minor supporting role. But he gives without question the edgiest and most memorable performance in the film.
And Julia Roberts? Well what can I say except...we love you, Pretty Woman!
Charlie Wilson's War is droll and well-mannered and enjoyable on a very superficial level, but ultimately it's an awkward affair that's never quite sure whether it wants to be an uncomplicated entertainment or a serious message film.
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead directed by Sidney Lumet starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney Rating: C
The film opens with a dimly-lit medium shot of what appears to be a sweaty, slack-jawed Midwestern Buddha admiring his naked acreage of flab in a full-length bedroom mirror while servicing a very enthusiastic brunette. It's a deliberately provocative scene, disturbing to watch and about as erotic as a Department of Agriculture documentary on bovine husbandry, and it puts us on notice that Before the Devil Knows You're Deadwill be a "feel bad" movie - no tidy resolutions, no prisoners taken, no quarter given or offered. You need a hug, go rent P.S. I Love You.
The lovely couple we've just been introduced to are Andy and Gina Hanson (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Marisa Tomei). They are on vacation in Brazil, and when they're not busy getting busy in Rio de Janeiro hotel rooms, Andy is an embezzling Manhattan real estate accountant, and the self-absorbed Gina spends her down time cheating on Andy with his alcoholic brother Hank (Ethan Hawke). It's a match made in Heaven.
Andy is a man unencumbered by middle class notions of right and wrong - his personal moral compass is just one more slick surface to chop a line of coke on. He's also seriously jammed up at work. He needs to replace stolen funds before a scheduled IRS audit reveals his talent for creative bookkeeping. And Gina is after him to somehow engineer a permanent relocation to Rio - something in the Brazilian tap water makes the already bed certified Gina extra frisky.
Andy's solution to his cash flow crunch is a plan that is quick and dirty and breathtaking in its callousness. He masterminds the robbery of a jewelry store that just happens to be owned by his parents (Albert Finney, Rosemary Harris), and ever mindful of all the angles, he coerces little brother Hank into doing all the heavy lifting.
While Andy safely waits in the charmless chrome and glass box that is his office, a frightened Hank commits the robbery and manages to transform what was supposed to be a victimless crime into a bloody screw-up of monumental proportions.
At this point in the proceedings director Sydney Lumet begins to explore Andy's slow march to oblivion , but not before examining the actual robbery in minute detail. Lumet revisits the scene of the crime using a mind numbing array of flashbacks and flashforwards and flashsideways and all manner of nifty time fracturing. It's all very hip and self-consciously stylistic and totally unnecessary - it's as if the 83 year old Lumet is determined to prove he can out-Tarantino Tarantino.
The robbery is merely a pivot point in a story that is ultimately about Andy Hanson's brazen acts of betrayal - of father, of brother, of self - and Hoffman gives the best performance of the movie and dominates every scene that he's in. He portrays Andy as a corrupted vessel poorly fired in the kiln, a slave to base appetites, a man endowed with a reptilian cleverness and capable of inflaming a festering decades old grudge towards his father into a murderous rage.
As for the other players in this ensemble. I can say with confidence that Ethan Hawke's turn as the bumbling Hank is...the least annoying performance of his career! And the superb Albert Finney is remarkably good in a role that essentially limits him to looking at once mournful and frustrated.
But Marisa Tomei is excruciatingly bad and oddly enough seems to be quite content to be exploited as eye candy - very embarrassing.
Sydney Lumet is a lion - one of the most prolific and talented filmmakers in the history of cinema. Devil is one of his minor works, more of an experiment in style than truly visionary filmmaking.
And on the subject of experimentation. I keep referring to Devil as a "film". I should explain that not one inch of celluloid was harmed during the making of this...presentation. Lumet shot Devil in its entirety using Hi Def video (I've included a clip of Lumet gleefully announcing the death of film).
Lastly, in 1975 Sydney Lumet brought to the screen a vastly superior film and what could be rightfully called the "Mother of Botched Robbery Movies", Dog Day Afternoon. I've thoughtfully included the trailer in this post.
If you've already seen Dog Day Afternoon, you might enjoy revisiting it.
And if you are going to watch Dog Day Afternoon for the first time - then I envy you.
Slipstream directed by Anthony Hopkins starring Anthony Hopkins, Christian Slater, Jeffrey Tambor, Camryn Manheim Rating: Z
In his DVD audio commentary for Slipstream, Anthony Hopkins states not once but several times that his goal was to make a movie that would "annoy people".
Mission accomplished.
Here's the question I've been asking myself - does the artist owe his audience anything? In other words, does the artist have any obligation to be coherent or understandable or accessible, or is it that his only responsibility is to be true to his vision?
My own take on this question is that the artist has to meet me at least half way - throw me a lifeline of some sort, give me a fighting chance to interpret and absorb and even enjoy his work. Some, like David Lynch, know instinctively how to accomplish this - he may offer up surrealistic images dripping with dream logic in films like Inland Empire, but the operative word here is "logic". As free-flowing and unstructured as jazz, Lynch's films still contain rhythms, pauses, beats and, for lack of a better description, a kind of subliminal intent that I can grasp at an unconscious level.
No such luck with Slipstream, a colossal mess written, directed by and starring a very bored guy who just happens to be one of the greatest actors of his generation.
Hopkins plays Felix Bonhoeffer, a Hollywood screenwriter who drifts aimlessly from a shaky reality built on quicksand to a dream continuum as solid as New Hampshire granite. His world is populated by characters spun out of his own imagination, along with 1950's B movie icons, celebrity lookalikes, insane studio execs, desert shamans, bad actors, totally hot blond angels, talking tarantulas and Death, who oddly enough looks a lot like Kyle MacLachlan.
For the understandably bewildered Felix, life is a VHS tape with bad tracking, cause and effect are not on speaking terms and Stephen Hawking has left the building.
To explain why this is happening to Felix would reveal the only remotely fascinating aspect of this movie (I don't want to spoil it for those of you determined to sit through this freak show). Sadly, Hopkins came up with an interesting central premise, but chose to smother it in primary colors, Max Headroom editing techniques, acid flashbacks, Philosophy 101 musings, film school gee-whizzery, bad dialogue delivered at jack-hammer decibel levels and a perverse determination to be as incoherent as possible.
At its core this movie is an attempt by Hopkins to mock two not totally unrelated subjects - the consensus of opinion that we as a species conveniently label "reality" and the ridiculous unreality of the movie business. But why he deliberately made a movie as inaccessible as Slipstream is the enduring mystery of it all.
Into the Wild directed by Sean Penn starring Emile Hirsch, Hal Holbrook Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker Vince Vaughn, Kristen Stewart Rating: B
Warning! This post contains one of them spoiler thingamajiggers.
I've heard it said that the world pretty much divides into two distinct camps: there are those people who think and there are those who feel. And I agree with that line of reasoning - at least I think that's the way I feel about it...
The deal is that the thinkers primarily view the world as a comedy worthy of our contempt.
Our trivial pursuits and childish scheming, our longing and lusting, our frustration and our pain - all fodder for belly laughs, with death always looming as the big fat punchline.
Now the feelers - wait, that doesn't sound quite right... the moreintuitive among us perceive the human condition as a bittersweet tragedy.
(Cue the violins.) Lost loves and lost kittens, anger's bitter aftertaste, the things we meant to say and do but failed to follow through, saying farewell on the station platform, saying farewell at the open grave... it's a sad world after all...
Some of you may be wondering right about now if there's a movie review anywhere in our future.
I promise, there is. It's just that considering the critical reception Into the Wild received, it's not too far a stretch to believe this thinking/feeling dichotomy may be a valid theory.
Most reviewers lavished director Sean Penn and his film with immodest, unequivocal praise. Others dismissed Into the Wild as sloppy sentimentalism, a movie with the slick visuals of a credit card commercial that features a thoughtless brat as its lead character.
Me, I say that Penn has written a flawed but eloquent love poem to freedom, or mortality, or the open road, or America - or all of the above. Into the Wild filled my eyes to brimming, and its characters broke my heart.
By the time the end credits rolled, I was rag-doll limp and done like dinner, and the lump in my throat was a burning coal.
Based on the bestseller written by John Krakauer, Into the Wild tells the "true" story of Christopher McCandless (Penn's screenplay is based on his own interpretation of a book which is based on the recollections of those who knew McCandless and the author's own speculation).
McCandless (played by Emile Hirsch) is a twenty-two year old university graduate, and while his classmates are eagerly embracing their future, Christopher is busy putting the torch to bridges before they're even crossed.
Determined to live life on his own terms, Christopher takes leave of his sourpuss father and his tightly wound mother (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Hardin). Carine (Jena Malone) is his devoted sister and blameless as a dove, and her brother's departure leaves her uncomprehending and inconsolable.
Christopher's goal is to live in the wilds of Alaska, which he will reach by a meandering route filled with many adventures.
He crosses paths with fellow travellers - the aging hippie couple struggling with a mid-life crisis (Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker), a likeable good ol' boy (Vince Vaughn, in a nice performance), blissed-out Danish tourists drunk on the big-sky beauty of the American Southwest, and Tracy (Kristen Stewart), doe-eyed and supple as a weeping willow, who tries unsuccessfully to convince Christopher that he doesn't need to trek to Alaska to find true happiness.
Kristen Stewart and Emile Hirsch
In a sun baked Southern California town Christopher makes the acquaintance of a retired army veteran by the name of Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook).
Franz's face is testament to a hard life, blue-veined and craggy, his eyes like watery opals, his voice a cracked instrument. He's a proud old man as parched in spirit as the desert is dry. He is also the last link in the long chain of people who've tried in vain to connect with Christopher.
True to form Christopher soon hits the road, but not before stirring in Franz memories long left undisturbed. And when the desperately lonely Franz tries to cut a last minute deal with Christopher to secure his legacy, it's a moment of razor-sharp poignancy.
Almost two years to the day he set out on his cross-country odyssey, Christopher finds himself very much alone in the pristine Alaskan wilderness. He is poorly prepared and poorly equipped, and he soon finds out that Mother Nature eats her young - she has zero tolerance for the weak or the foolish.
After surviving precariously on small game and plants for several months, Christopher accidentally poisons himself (or so his diary entries indicate), confusing a deadly wild seed with its edible look-alike. The toxins interfere with his body's ability to digest, and he is quickly reduced to an emaciated stick figure.
On or about the 18th of August 1992, Christopher, weighing an estimated 67 pounds, crawls into his sleeping bag and dies in the derelict Fairbanks Transit System bus that had served as shelter for the last three months of his life. He is twenty-four years old.
If I believe that a director is being honest with me, and the film being offered up to my scrutiny is a sincere effort, than I'm willing to cut him or her considerable slack. Such is the case with Sean Penn.
Earlier, I characterized Into the Wild as flawed, and I stand by that assessment. But it's flawed in the same way a diamond may be considered imperfect - it's still very much a thing of beauty.
We never really get to understand Christopher's motivations or to explore the shadow side of his personality (Hirsch plays McCandless as a wide-eyed innocent firmly on the path to some kind of secular sainthood).
And Penn is stubborn in his insistence that Christopher does eventually find wisdom and transcendence without once questioning the terrible price he paid for such enlightenment. (Christopher's death is presented as an ascension to the sun worthy of an Aztec warrior, and not the final moments of a hapless screw-up).
Still, I admire Penn's unwavering affection for his characters and his tenacious determination to tell his story his way.
The record shows that Christopher McCandless was wicked smart - a voracious reader familiar with such literary heavyweights as Jack London, Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau.
But I couldn't help wondering if Christopher was aware of the work of the 15th century English poet John Donne. Donne famously wrote the observation that "No man is an island". It's a thought that could have saved Christopher a tremendous amount of grief.
American Gangster directed by Ridley Scott starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe,
Josh Brolin, Lymari Nadal Rating: C
The first image we see is of a bound and blood-soaked man. He is being doused in gasoline and set aflame, and while he screams in agony he is shot several times with an automatic pistol at close range.
This is the opening scene of director Ridley Scott's American Gangster, and aside from getting our undivided attention, its violence serves a more practical purpose.
The execution we have just witnessed has been carried out by Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). We will get to know him quite well.
Lucas is dignified and charismatic, a man of uncommon intelligence and unfailing good manners. He is generous to friends and strangers alike and he is that rarest of individuals, a man of his word.
He is good to his mother.
But as the business-as-usual savagery we have just witnessed illustrates, Frank Lucas is also capable of cold-blooded murder.
With the graphic barbarism on display in the first thirty seconds of the film, Scott is using a brutal cinematic shorthand to say to the viewer, "Admire Frank Lucas if you are so inclined, and sympathize with him if you must - but don't say we didn't warn you".
I'm never quite sure what to make of those "based on a true story" advisories that appear at the beginning of many movies, including American Gangster. I don't especially care whether a screenplay is based on fact or a fever dream.
And it's been my experience that for every one person who will vouch for the veracity of the claims made in a particular film, there are a hundred others who are ready to vigorously refute whatever the director is offering up as the "truth". For a textbook example of what I'm talking about, you don't have to look any further than a previous Denzel Washington star vehicle, Norman Jewison's The Hurricane.
To a much lesser extant than The Hurricane, a certain amount of warm and fuzzy historical revisionism creeps into American Gangster: Frank Lucas is a man whose life was well documented by the media and by state and federal law agencies long before Ridley Scott's turn at bat.
But as Scott was quick to point out when he was accused of fudging the facts in his beautiful but bloated Kingdom of Heaven, he is most definitely not in the business of making documentaries.
The Frank Lucas that we are introduced to is less a man on the rise than he is a man on the cusp of greater things. Bumpy Johnson (Clarence Williams III), his mentor and the criminal kingpin of Harlem, has just died of natural causes - something that can't be said for many of Bumpy's rivals.
Johnson's passing has left a power vacuum that Lucas quickly fills after putting a bullet in the forehead of his only serious challenger.
While Lucas is going about consolidating his power base, a world away the Vietnam War is in full swing. To Lucas, Vietnam is nothing more than an abstraction, a struggle for turf that doesn't concern him. But one especially tragic consequence of the war does catch his entrepreneurial eye - every day, plane-loads of freshly minted heroin addicts are returning from their tours of duty in Southeast Asia.
Lucas sees an opportunity to kill two stoned birds; meet the burgeoning demand for heroin in Harlem, and at the same time break the stranglehold that The Mafia enjoys on the trade of illicit narcotics.
Using a cousin serving with the U.S. Army in Bangkok as a contact, Lucas travels to The Golden Triangle, the largest poppy growing region in Southeast Asia and the source for much of the world's heroin.
Once there he meets with a Chinese Nationalist Army general (a small role played by a very intriguing Ric Young. His character speaks English with the precision of an Oxford don and displays the discretion of a Swiss banker).
They strike a deal, and Lucas makes an initial purchase of one hundred kilos of pure heroin. He arranges to have his goods smuggled into the States on military aircraft, thus smoothly sidestepping those annoying "anything to declare" questions at airport customs.
In no time at all Lucas's heroin, sold under the catchy brand name "Blue Magic", has flooded the streets of New York City and is bringing in the tidy sum of one million dollars a day in sales.
Meanwhile, back at the police station...
New Jersey police detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) lives mere miles from Frank Lucas, but ethically to two men reside in different universes.
Roberts is in charge of a task force whose mandate is to bring to justice whoever is responsible for importing the cheap and potent Blue Magic.
His investigation is focused on what could be described as the usual suspects, primarily well established Mafia bosses like Dominic Cattano (Armand Assante, whose ridiculous Brando-like mumbling is unintelligible. I urge you to do as I did whenever he appears on screen - turn on the subtitles).
The low-profile Lucas is not on Roberts's radar until he makes a tactical error. He shows up at a boxing match wearing a one hundred thousand dollar fur coat and is photographed by Roberts shaking hands with Cattano. It is the event that sets the stage for Lucas's fall.
Almost overnight Lucas's well managed operation begins to unravel. He becomes the prime suspect in Roberts's investigation, The Mafia are "encouraging" him to share his heroin, and a dirty cop (Josh Brolin) has begun to systematically squeeze Lucas for large payoffs of cash and dope.
To make matters worse, the Vietnam War is winding down, threatening to thwart his most outrageous plan to date. Lucas has put into action a scheme to smuggle his product hidden in the false bottoms of deceased servicemen's caskets. With peace on the horizon, Lucas's supply of silent couriers will soon dry up.
With bulldog tenacity, Roberts gathers the evidence he needs to make his case stick against the increasingly hard-pressed Lucas.
The end comes for Lucas on the steps of a Baptist church. Flanked by his mother (Ruby Dee, the movie's designated scene stealer) and his wife Eva (Lymari Nadal), Lucas is arrested by a very self-satisfied Richie Roberts.
It is the first time that Lucas and Roberts have ever met, and although it can't be described as beautiful, it is the start of a friendship.
If the concept of truth in advertising was strictly applied to movie titles, then this effort by Ridley Scott would be obliged to call itself "American Gangster VS American Cop".
Instead of concentrating on Frank Lucas's story, Scott has elected to give almost equal weight to the Richie Roberts character. It's an approach that's understandable when you consider that an actor of Russell Crowe's stature would insist on an amount of screen time comparable to Denzel Washington's.
But it makes for an oddly schizophrenic movie - one moment we are comfortably immersed in the sights and sounds of Frank Lucas's world, only to be suddenly yanked away so we can attend Richie Roberts's child custody hearing. It's like trying to watch The Godfather and an episode of Starsky and Hutch at the same time.
Denzel Washington has reached iconic status as an actor and deservedly so. His Frank Lucas is as calm as the eye of a storm, which makes his occasional fits of deadly rage all the more effective. And Washington never allows us to forget that behind all his character's pontificating on the importance of family values, he is in the final analysis a sociopathic merchant of death.
Russell Crowe works very hard as the skirt-chasing, overgrown boy scout Richie Roberts, but ultimately he's miscast in a role that's been padded to accommodate him. It's clearly a case of the role being made to fit the actor, which is never as effective as choosing the right actor for the role.
As is to be expected from the director of Blade Runner, American Gangster is dense with detail and atmosphere from one edge of the screen to the other. But it is a curious choice of subject matter for Scott, and he doesn't quite pull it off. Aside from being hampered by the parallel story lines, Scott is famous for creating his own cinematic worlds right down to the minutest details - a trait that didn't serve him well in this instance. American Gangster was in need of a director with a looser grip on the reins, someone capable of being surprised as well as being surprising.
Having said that, American Gangster is an unqualified success in at least one respect; it stands head and shoulders above most of the formulaic dreck that Hollywood is churning out these days.
And while it pulls some of its punches, the ones that do land are sledgehammer solid.
God, it's starting to feel like the seventies again - I love it.
We Own the Night directed by James Gray starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Robert Duvall Rating: D
At one point during his informative and occasionally very funny audio commentary for his movie We Own the Night, director James Gray good-naturedly admits that he's "no Stanley Kubrick."
Well, after watching this movie I've got to say that Gray's self-assessment is right on the money. We Own the Night is not a film that will stand the test of time by any means, but it is a gritty, well-paced and visually stylish movie that gets a lot of things right.
At the heart of Gray's movie is the relationship between straight arrow cop Joe Grusinsky (Mark Wahlberg) and his flashier brother Bobby (Joaquin Phoenix).
The movie takes place during the 1980's (a time of great chaos. People were eating red meat, smoking indoors, wearing fur - just completely insane behavior).
Bobby's the popular manager of a huge and extravagantly gaudy New York dance club - imagine St.Peter's Basilica with a disco ball hanging from its fresco-covered ceiling.
Life is good for the ambitious Bobby - his club is a success, he's crazy in love with a gorgeous lady (Eva Mendes), and he's treated like a son by his generous employer.
So when his brother Joe asks him to get involved in a narcotics investigation, Bobby is less than enthusiastic. It seems that a Russian coke importer by the name of Vadim (Alex Veadov) has set up shop in the very club that Bobby manages. Bobby has taken great pains to distance himself from his cop family (even changing his family name from Grusinsky to Green) and is determined not to get involved in anything that would jeopardize the life he's created for himself.
Even a heartfelt plea from his father, the formidable Deputy Chief of Police Bert Grusinsky (Robert Duvall), cannot convince Bobby.
Frustrated by his brother's unwillingness to cooperate, Joe is left with no alternative but to raid Bobby's club, where he confronts Vadim. Lacking the evidence to arrest the Russian mobster, Joe nonetheless gives Vadim a clear message that the police are on to him.
Not less than twenty four hours later, the ruthless Vadim sends Joe a message of his own, equally unambiguous but far more drastic.
Joe is gunned down and severely wounded by one of Vadim's crew, and this attack on his brother galvanizes Bobby to take action.
With Joe now convalescing in the hospital, Gray uses the second half of his film to examine the consequences of Bobby's decision to cooperate with the police investigation. And at this point you could easily rename the movie "There will be Tears".
The comfortable life that Bobby has so carefully constructed begins to melt away even as the bonds with his family are strengthened. He is transformed from a carefree guy with simple aspirations to a numb victim of blind circumstances. No question that it's a noble cause that Bobby surrenders to, but as Gray makes clear, it's at the price of his happiness and individuality. No one has ever done the right thing, and looked as miserable doing it, than Bobby Green.
Joaquin Phoenix is a talented actor who's done some excellent work in the past (terrific in Walk the Line, but for my money even better as the whiny emperor who wants desperately to "date" his sister in Gladiator). But as sacrifice after unreasonable sacrifice is demanded of his character Bobby, he comes across as less heroic than hounded, as if all his long-ignored obligations to his family have come due like so many delinquent car payments.
Mark Wahlberg makes for a very believable cop and dutiful son. He underplays it as Joe - he's quiet and self-controlled, even as he struggles with his nagging suspicion that the rebellious Bobby may very well be his father's favorite.
And Robert Duvall is note perfect as the tough but loving family patriarch - his performance appears effortless, which is a compliment to his talent and craftsmanship.
James Gray did double duty on this movie, serving both as writer and director. He delivered an entertaining flick, but couldn't quite handle the complicated family dynamics that the story called for. I can state with some conviction that We Own the Night would have been far better served if Gray had concentrated on the nuts and bolts of shooting the picture, and left the writing chores to a more nimble screenwriter.
Then again, I could be wrong - I'm no Roger Ebert...
Sadly, Sargent's claim to cinematic fame is for getting it very, very wrong; in 1987 he directed what is acknowledged to be one of the worst movies ever made, Jaws: The Revenge. But if life were fair he would be remembered for Pelham, a film that finds it's strength in an intelligent screenplay, a clearly defined forward momentum and solid performances.
