Another slew of trailers: Tim Olyphant goes Wild Bill (to the strains of “Ave Maria”) in the teaser for Hitman (which I appropriately saw before Live Free or Die Hard yesterday — review on the way), Jason Bourne wants answers from Stiles, Allen, and Straitharn in the full trailer for Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum, and astronauts Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh and others attempt to reignite the sun in a spoileriffic “synopsis” trailer for Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (I’m linking to it ’cause it’s there, but if you have any interest in this flick, I probably wouldn’t watch it.)
Tag: Matt Damon
Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Simply put and for better or worse, Steven Soderbergh’s breezy Ocean’s Thirteen is two hours of sheer froth. The film attempts to dial back some of the in-jokes and meta-ness that marked the slack, sprawling Eurotrip of Ocean’s Twelve (which I actually enjoyed the most of the three) and tries to fuse it with the narratively leaner Vegas-centric heist flick that was Ocean’s Eleven (which I enjoyed the least.) The resulting film, like its gaggle of leading men (no women here, basically — Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones are written out in the first five minutes of dialogue), is cool, unruffled, occasionally razzle-dazzle, and, frankly, beginning to show its age. If you liked either of the first two or enjoy watching this collection of actors suavely goof around on camera, Ocean’s Thirteen is good for a mindless, moderately engaging two hours. But, even with Soderbergh’s considerable expertise on display, there’s really not much here. All in all, I was entertained during the film and forgot about it almost immediately afterward.
Ocean’s Thirteen wisely foregoes much of the “let’s get the band back together again” grandstanding of the last film to dive right in to the problem: Avuncular team member and scion of Old Vegas Reuben Tishkoff (Elliot Gould) has been screwed out of his partnership in a towering new casino on the Strip by the Wynn-like impresario Willie Bank (Al Pacino), despite them both being among the rarified elite who once shook Sinatra’s hand. To avenge this slight, Danny Ocean (Clooney) and Rusty Ryan (Pitt) reassemble their team of con-men, scoundrels, n’er-do-wells, roustabouts, and acrobats to take down the new hotel (The Bank) via a “Reverse Big Store,” i.e. break The Bank by having every guest win big on the casino’s (soft) opening night.
Unfortunately for them, Bernie Lootz is not on hand, and The Bank boasts many formidable defenses, from the world’s greatest Artificial Intelligence (“The Greco,” devised by Julian Sands, no less) in the basement looking for gambling anomalies to the well-preserved Ellen Barkin as Pacino’s sexy, take-no-guff majordomo Abigail Sponder. And thus the Ocean team’s foolproof plan instead involves, among other things, myriad disguises, lots of cybernetic and electronic doodads, more than a few random accomplices and compatriots, moles in Mexican factories, simulated natural disasters, making David Paymer’s life a living hell, and multimillion-dollar underground drills, at least one of which may force the team to involve their old nemesis, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) in the takedown. (Oh, and, to constrain Barkin’s Dragon Lady, they resort to some drug that amounts to a cross between Axe Body Spray and Roofies, which seems like sort of a nasty turn for our otherwise gentlemanly near-dozen to take in their quest for revenge, I thought.)
All of which is to say, the heist makes very little sense, which is part of the problem here. I confess, while I really enjoy a caper flick like Spike Lee’s Inside Man, I get irritated with films that show criminals spending $29 million in order to steal $30 million, even if, as it is here, the motive is revenge. In Ocean’s Twelve, of course, the heist didn’t much matter — it was clearly just a flimsy excuse for Soderbergh & co. to fool around in Amsterdam and act like movie stars on vacation. Everything from Shaobo Qin getting lost in the luggage (“He’s the Modern Man, disconnected, frightened, paranoid for good reason“) to Pitt referencing Miller’s Crossing to Topher Grace “totally phoning in that Dennis Quaid movie” to all the breaking-the-fourth-wall shenanigans with Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis made that clear.
But by focusing so relentlessly on the plot contrivances here in Thirteen, we’re forced to recognize several times over that, frankly, the plot makes very little sense. There’s no danger here at all (with the possible exception of Vincent Cassel’s return as the Night Fox from the last film, but even he turns out to be a dud of an X-factor.) Even in Vegas, that veritable boulevard of broken dreams most of the time, we know this gang of Hollywood high-rollers are all going to come up aces…so why focus so relentlessly on the mechanics of a totally implausible scheme? Given this problem, my favorite moments of Ocean’s Thirteen were the ones where, as in Twelve, the gang just dropped the tired old rules of the caper flick and let their freak flag fly: Casey Affleck and Scott Caan unionizing a Mexican dice factory, Pitt channeling a hippie seismologist, Cheadle liberated, however briefly, from that godawful British accent, Matt Damon (for awhile) in that goofy Soderberghian nose. The nose, and its ilk, play — the actual heist here doesn’t.
Bourne v. Murrow.
In case you had technical issues with the international trailer a few weeks back, a very similar domestic trailer for Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Ultimatum (now with David Straithairn in the Chris Cooper role, basically) has been put up at Yahoo. I’ll go see it.
Thirteenth!
Too much Cusack? Well, neither John nor Joan are part of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Thirteen crew…yet. The new trailer for Clooney & co. is here. Perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea, but this looks to me like more fun than you can shake a stick at…I’m even sold on the putty nose gag.
Bourne Again, Dead Again.
In this week’s trailer bin: Like Frankenstein’s monster, supersleuth Jason Bourne returns once again to avenge his creation in the trailer for Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum (if that doesn’t work, try here); and The Wire‘s Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) tries and fails to rein in the flesheating zombies of London in this look at 28 Weeks Later, the probably unnecessary sequel to Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later.
2006 (Finally) in Film.
Well, there are still a number of flicks I haven’t yet seen — David Lynch’s Inland Empire, for example, which I hope to hit up this weekend. But as the Oscar nods were announced today, and as the few remaining forlorn Christmas trees are finally being picked up off the sidewalk, now seems the last appropriate time to crank out my much belated end-of-2006 film list (originally put off to give me time to make up for my New Zealand sojourn.) To be honest, I might’ve written this list a few weeks earlier, had it not happened that I ended up seeing the best film of 2005 in mid-January of last year, thus rendering the 2005 list almost immediately obsolescent. But, we’ll get to that — As it stands, 2006 was a decent year in movies (in fact a better year in film than it was in life, the midterms notwithstanding), with a crop of memorable genre flicks and a few surprisingly worthy comebacks. And, for what it’s worth, I thought the best film released in 2006 was…
[2000/2001/2002/2003/2004/2005]
1. United 93: A movie I originally had no interest in seeing, Paul Greengrass’s harrowing docudrama of the fourth flight on September 11 captured the visceral shock of that dark day without once veering into exploitation or sentimentality (the latter the curse of Oliver Stone’s much inferior World Trade Center.) While 9/11 films of the future might offer more perspective on the origins and politics of those horrible hours, it’s hard to imagine a more gripping or humane film emerging anytime soon about the day’s immediate events. A tragic triumph, United 93 is an unforgettable piece of filmmaking.
[1.] The New World (2005): A movie which seemed to divide audiences strongly, Terence Malick’s The New World was, to my mind, a masterpiece. I found it transporting in ways films seldom are these days, and Jamestown a much richer canvas for Malick’s unique gifts than, say, Guadalcanal. As the director’s best reimagining yet of the fall of Eden, The New World marvelously captured the stark beauty and sublime strangeness of two worlds — be they empires, enemies, or lovers — colliding, before any middle ground can be established. For its languid images of Virginia woodlands as much as moments like Wes Studi awestruck by the rigid dominion over nature inherent in English gardens, The New World goes down as a much-overlooked cinematic marvel, and (sorry, Syriana) the best film of 2005.
2. Letters from Iwo Jima: Having thought less of Flags of our Fathers and the woeful Million Dollar Baby than most people, I was almost completely thrown by the dismal grandeur and relentless gloom of Eastwood’s work here. To some extent the Unforgiven of war movies, Iwo Jima is a bleakly rendered siege film that trafficks in few of the usual tropes of the genre. (Don’t worry — I suspect we’ll get those in spades in two months in 300.) Instead of glorious Alamo-style platitudes, we’re left only with the sight of young men — all avowed enemies of America, no less — swallowed up and crushed in the maelstrom of modern combat. From Ken Watanabe’s commanding performance as a captain going down with the ship to Eastwood’s melancholy score, Letters works to reveal one fundamental, haunting truth: Tyrants may be toppled, nations may be liberated, and Pvt. Ryans may be saved, but even “good wars” are ultimately Hell on earth for those expected to do the fighting.
3. Children of Men: In the weeks since I first saw this film, my irritation with the last fifteen minutes or so has diminished, and Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men has emerged for what it is — one of the most resonant “near-future” dystopias to come down the pike in a very long while, perhaps since (the still significantly better) Brazil. Crammed with excellent performances by Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor and others, Children is perhaps a loosely-connected grab bag of contemporary anxieties and afflictions (terrorism, detainment camps, pharmaceutical ads, celebrity culture). But it’s assuredly an effective one, with some of the most memorable and naturalistic combat footage seen in several years to boot. I just wished they’d called that ship something else…
4. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan: True, the frighteningly talented Sasha Baron Cohen spends a lot of time in this movie shooting fish in a barrel, and I wish he’d spent a little more time eviscerating subtler flaws in the American character than just knuckle-dragging racists and fratboy sexists. Still, the journeys of Borat Sagdiyev through the Bible Buckle and beyond made for far and away the funniest movie of the year. Verry nice.
5. The Prestige: I originally had this in Children of Men‘s spot, as there are few films I enjoyed as much this year as Christopher Nolan’s sinister sleight-of hand. But, even after bouncing Children up for degree of difficulty, that should take nothing away from The Prestige, a seamlessly made genre film about the rivalries and perils of turn-of-the-century prestidigitation. (There seems to be a back-and-forth between fans of this film and The Illusionist, which I sorta saw on a plane in December. Without sound (which, obviously, is no way to see a movie), Illusionist seemed like an implausible love story set to a tempo of anguished Paul Giamatti reaction shots. In any case, I prefer my magic shows dark and with a twist.) Throw in extended cameos by David Bowie and Andy Serkis — both of which help to mitigate the Johansson factor — and The Prestige was the purest cinematic treat this year for the fanboy nation. Christian Bale in particular does top-notch work here, and I’m very much looking forward to he and Nolan’s run-in with Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight.
6. The Fountain: Darren Aronofsky’s elegiac ode to mortality and devotion was perhaps the most unfairly maligned movie of the year. (In a perfect world, roughly half of the extravagant praise going to Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth would have been lavished on this film.) Clearly a heartfelt and deeply personal labor of love, The Fountain — admittedly clunky in his first half hour — was a visually memorable tone poem that reminds us that all things — perhaps especially the most beautiful — are finite, so treasure them while you can.
7. The Queen: A movie I shied away from when it first came out, The Queen is a canny look at contemporary politics anchored by Helen Mirren’s sterling performance as the fastidious, reserved, and ever-so-slightly downcast monarch in question. (Michael Sheen’s Tony Blair is no slouch either.) In fact, The Queen is the type of movie I wish we saw more often: a small, tightly focused film about a very specific moment in recent history. Indeed, between this and United 93, 2006 proved to be a good year for smart and affecting depictions of the very recent past — let’s hope the trend continues through the rest of the oughts.
8. Inside Man: The needless Jodie Foster subplot notwithstanding, Spike Lee’s Inside Man was a fun, expertly-made crime procedural, as good in its own way as the much more heavily-touted Departed. It was also, without wearing it on its sleeve, the film Crash should have been — a savvy look at contemporary race relations that showed there are many more varied and interesting interactions between people of different ethnicities than simply “crashing” into each other. (But perhaps that’s how y’all roll over in car-culture LA.) At any rate, Inside Man is a rousing New York-centric cops-and-robbers pic in the manner of Dog Day Afternoon or The Taking of the Pelham One Two Three, and it’s definitely one of the more enjoyable movie experiences of the year.
9. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party: Speaking of enjoyable New York-centric movie experiences, Dave Chappelle and Michel Gondry’s block party last year felt like a breath of pure spring air after a long, cold, lonely winter — time to kick off the sweaters and parkas and get to groovin’ with your neighbors. With performances by some of the most innovative and inspired players in current hip-hop (Kanye, Mos Def, The Roots, The Fugees, Erykah Badu), and presided over by the impish, unsinkable Chappelle, Block Party was one of the best concert films in recent memory, and simply more fun than you can shake a stick at.
10. Casino Royale: Bond is back! Thanks to Daniel Craig’s portrayal of 007 as a blunt, glitched-up human being rather than a Casanova Superspy, and a script that eschewed the UV laser pens and time-release exploding cufflinks of Bonds past for more hard-boiled and gritty fodder, Casino Royale felt straight from the pen of Ian Fleming, and newer and more exciting than any 007 movie in decades.
11. The Departed: A very good movie brimming over with quality acting (notably Damon and Di Caprio) and support work — from Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, Vera Farmiga, Ray Winstone, and others — Scorsese’s The Departed also felt a bit too derivative of its splendid source material, Infernal Affairs, to merit the top ten. And then there’s the Jack problem: An egregiously over-the-top Nicholson chews so much scenery here that it’s a wonder there’s any of downtown Boston left standing. But, despite these flaws, The Departed is well worth seeing, and if it finally gets Scorsese his Best Director Oscar (despite Greengrass deserving it), it won’t be too much of an outrage.
[11.] Toto The Hero (1991): Also sidelined out of this top twenty on account of its release date, Jaco Von Dormael’s Toto the Hero — Terry Gilliam’s choice of screening for an IFC Movie Night early in October — is definitely one for the Netflix queue, particularly if you’re a fan of Gilliam’s oeuvre. It’s a bizarre coming-of-age/going-of-age tale that includes thoughts of envy, murder, incest, and despair, all the while remaining somehow whimsical and fantastical at its core. (And, trust me: As with Ary Borroso’s “Brazil“, you’ll be left humming Charles Trenet’s “Boum” to yourself long after the movie is over.)
12. Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story: I guess this is where I should be writing something brief and scintillating about Michael Winterbottom’s metanarrative version of Laurence Sterne’s famous novel, one which gives Steve Coogan — and the less well-known Rob Brydon — a superlative chance to work their unique brand of comedic mojo. But I’m growing distracted and Berk has that pleading “I-want-to-go-out, are-you-done-yet” look and Kevin’s still only on Number 12 of a list that, for all intent and purposes, is three weeks late and will be read by all of eight people anyway. (But don’t tell him that — In fact, I shouldn’t even talk about him behind his back.) So, perhaps we’ll come back to this later…it’s definitely a review worth writing (again), if I could just figure out how to start.
13. Miami Vice: Michael Mann’s moody reimagining of the TV show that made him famous isn’t necessarily his best work, but it was one of the more unique and absorbing movies of the summer, and one that lingers in the memory long after much of the year’s fluffier and more traditional films have evaporated. Dr. Johnson (and Hunter Thompson) once wrote that “He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” I guess that’s what Crockett and Tubbs are going for with the nightclubs and needle boats.
14. CSA: The Confederate States of America: I wish I were in the land of cotton…or have we been there all along? Kevin Wilmott’s alternate history of a victorious Confederate America is a savvy and hilarious send-up of history documentaries and a sharp-witted, sharp-elbowed piece of satire with truths to tell about the shadow of slavery in our past. With any luck, CSA will rise again on the DVD circuit.
15. The Science of Sleep: Not as good or as universally applicable as his Eternal Sunshine (the best film of 2004), Michel Gondry’s dreamlike, unabashedly romantic The Science of Sleep is still a worthy inquiry into matters of the (broken) heart. What is it about new love that is so intoxicating? And why do the significant others in our mind continue to haunt us so, even when they bear such little relation to the people they initially represented? Science doesn’t answer these crucial questions (how can it?), but it does acutely diagnose the condition. When it comes to relationships, Sleep suggests, all we have to do — sometimes all we can do, despite ourselves — is dream.
16. Rocky Balboa: Rocky! Rocky! Rocky! I’m as surprised as anyone that Sly’s sixth outing as Philadelphia’s prized pugilist made the top twenty. But, as formulaic as it is, Rocky Balboa delivered the goods like a Ivan Drago right cross. Ultimately not quite as enjoyable as Bond’s return to the service, Rocky Balboa still made for a commendable final round for the Italian Stallion. And, if nothing else, he went down fighting.
17. Pan’s Labyrinth: A fantasy-horror flick occurring simultaneously within a Spanish Civil War film, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth ultimately felt to me like less than the sum of its parts. But if the plaudits it’s receiving help to mainstream other genre movies in critics’ eyes in the future, I’m all for it. It’s an ok movie, no doubt, but if you’re looking for to see one quality supernatural-historical tale of twentieth-century Spain, rent del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone instead.
18. Little Miss Sunshine: Another film which I think is being way overpraised, Little Miss Sunshine is still a moderately enjoyable evening at the movies. It felt overscripted and television-ish to me, and I wish it was as way over yonder in the minor key as it pretends to be, but Sunshine is nevertheless a cute little IFC-style family film, and one that does have a pretty funny payoff at the end.
19. The Last King of Scotland: I just wrote on this one yesterday, so my impressions haven’t changed much. Still, Forrest Whitaker’s jovial and fearsome Idi Amin, and an almost-equally-good performance by James McAvoy as the dissolute young Scot who unwittingly becomes his minion, makes The Last King of Scotland worth seeing, if you can bear its grisly third act.
20. Thank You for Smoking: It showed flashes of promise, and it was all there on paper, in the form of Chris Buckley’s book. But Smoking, alas, never really lives up to its potential. What Smoking needed was the misanthropic jolt and sense of purpose of 2005’s Lord of War, a much more successful muckraking satire, to my mind. But Smoking, like its protagonist, just wants to be liked, and never truly commits to its agenda. Still, pleasant enough, if you don’t consider the opportunity cost.
Most Disappointing: All the King’s Men, X3: The Last Stand — Both, unfortunately, terrible.
Worth a Rental: A Scanner Darkly, Brick, Cache, Cars, Curse of the Golden Flower, Glory Road, The History Boys, Marie Antoinette, Match Point (2005), V for Vendetta, Why We Fight
Don’t Bother: Bobby, Crash (2005), The Da Vinci Code, Flags of our Fathers, The Good German, The Good Shepherd, Mission: Impossible: III, Night Watch (2004), Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Men’s Chest, Poseidon, Scoop, Superman Returns, The Wicker Man, World Trade Center
Best Actor: Clive Owen, Children of Men; Forrest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland; Ken Watanabe, Letters from Iwo Jima
Best Actress: Helen Mirren, The Queen; Q’Orianka Kilcher, The New World
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Wahlberg, The Departed; Michael Caine, Children of Men/The Prestige
Best Supporting Actress: Pam Farris, Children of Men; Vera Farmiga, The Departed; Maribel Verdu, Pan’s Labyrinth
Unseen: Apocalypto, Babel, Blood Diamond, Catch a Fire, Clerks II, The Descent, The Devil Wears Prada, Dreamgirls, Fast Food Nation, Hollywoodland, An Inconvenient Truth, Infamous, Inland Empire, Jackass Number Two, Jet Li’s Fearless, Lassie, Little Children, Notes from a Scandal, The Notorious Betty Page, A Prairie Home Companion, The Pursuit of Happyness, Running With Scissors, Sherrybaby, Shortbus, Stranger than Fiction, Tideland, Venus, Volver, Wordplay
2007: The list isn’t looking all that great, to be honest. But, perhaps we’ll find some gems in here…: 300, 3:10 To Yuma, Beowulf, Black Snake Moan, The Bourne Ultimatum, FF2, The Golden Age: Elizabeth II, The Golden Compass, Grindhouse, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Hot Fuzz, I Am Legend, Live Free or Die Hard, Ocean’s Thirteen, PotC3, The Simpsons Movie, Smokin’ Aces, Spiderman 3, Stardust, The Transformers, Zodiac.
Secrets of the Hive.
Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd, the first entrant in my ongoing end-of-2006 movie marathon this week, makes no secret of its Oscar-bait aspirations. Basically the WASP version of The Godfather, as told against the creation and Cold War consolidation of the CIA, Shepherd boasts a crisp look, a grand historical sweep, high-quality production values, and a stellar cast (including Best Supporting Actor-type turns strewn all over the place, like the wreckage from a better, more interesting movie.) But it’s also a film that never lets you forget how serious and sober-minded it aims to be. As such — however well-meaning and nice to look at, with all its chiaroscuro fedoras on hand — it’s also sadly a bit of a bore. Throw in an occasionally clunky script (note the particularly egregious God/CIA line near the end, for example) and some considerable miscasting issues (Matt Damon is a good actor, but is thoroughly implausible as a middle-aged man, and Angelina Jolie is too much of a star presence to be wholly believable as the ignored wife) and you have a respectable but ultimately somewhat pedestrian night at the movies. Shepherd gets the job done, I suppose, but it takes no pleasure in it.
When we first meet intelligence analyst Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), the bespectacled Everyman and titular shepherd of the film, it’s the spring of 1961, the Bay of Pigs invasion has just gone FUBAR, and America’s new president is looking for a few heads to roll over at Langley. In this middle of this spate of job anxiety, Wilson is mysteriously sent a photo and audioreel of a couple in the throes of passion, seemingly somewhere in the Third World. As he sets to work on deciphering this arcane message, Wilson’s thoughts wander all the way back to 1939, when he — a young, idealistic student of poetry at Yale — was recruited first by the infamous Order of Skull and Bones (a.k.a. preppy fratboys gone wild) and then, after war breaks out in Europe, by the OSS. Along the way, he takes on a number of varied mentors, ranging from a Nazi-sympathizing poetry professor with then-shocking proclivities (Michael Gambon) to a congenial if hobbled general and spymaster (De Niro, playing a variation on Wild Bill Donovan) to a gaggle of fellow scions of the WASP Old Boy Network (representing the Eli’s, William Hurt and Lee Pace; representing the Oxford-Cambridge crowd, Billy Crudup with a slipping accent.) He also falls in love, with a (note the symbolism!) kindly, open-hearted deaf co-ed (Tammy Blanchard), and falls, in lust, with a needy, easy, and borderline-psycho socialite (Angelina Jolie, verging on typecasting in a terribly written role, but still quite good.) As the years drag on and the world freezes into Cold War, Wilson finds himself not only engaged in high-stakes cloak-and-dagger gamesmanship against his Soviet counterpart, codenamed Ulysses (Oleg Stefan), but inexorably ceding more of his dreams, his morality, his family, and his very soul to that hungering bastion of the Eastern Establishment mafia, the Central Intelligence Agency. And every time he tries to get out, they keep pulling him back in…
Comparisons to The Godfather are probably as unfair as they are inescapable. Still, for all the striving and sweating on display here, Edward Wilson is ultimately no Michael Corleone. In fact, Damon, while trying admirably, can’t plausibly sustain the second “middle-aged” half of the film, and portrays Wilson as too much of a blank (clearly De Niro’s decision) to garner much in the way of sympathy or empathy. More resonant in The Good Shepherd are many of the supporting turns, particularly Gambon, John Turturro as Wilson’s tough-talking (non-WASP) #2, and Alec Baldwin in a minor role as a hard-living G-man. But they’re not enough to put Shepherd over the top, and for every vignette in the film that contains real emotional power — most notably the interrogation of defector “Valentin Mironov” (Mark Ivanir) — there are two that, through a combination of directorial straining and an overly intrusive score, spill over into overcooked blandness. (See for example, the plane and letter-burning sequences at the end of the film, both of which are carried for several beats too long and which suffer from paint-by-numbers swelling strings on the soundtrack.) The Good Shepherd is by no means a bad film, but, alas, it’s not particularly a good one either. Like a veteran CIA hand, it fades effortlessly into the background, and offers little that might be considered truly memorable.
Thirteen Hosts.
Another preview I haven’t seen: This time, it’s the new trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Thirteen, starring Clooney, Roberts, Pitt, Damon, and the usual assortment of Hollywood cads and roustabouts. I quite liked Twelve (and thought Eleven was so-so), so I’m up for another go.
Bumpy Departure.
As far as remakes go, The Departed, Martin Scorsese’s sprawling, overstuffed Boston-area reinterpretation of Andy Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs, is by no means an embarrassment. Packed with likable actors delivering quality performances (another hambone turn by Jack Nicholson notwithstanding), it’s a breezy and enjoyable two and a half hours of cinema, and it hits most of the beats of the original decently well. (Maybe too well. A little more deviation from IA might’ve helped in the suspense department.) Still, I left the theater somewhat disappointed, and am a bit surprised by the critical acclaim Departed is getting. For all the sleek direction, actorly firepower, and Mamet-ish wit on display here can’t disguise the fact that Infernal Affairs was a clearly better film — leaner and more nuanced, more elegiac and resonant. Lacking the emotional power of the original, The Departed basically just feels like a well-crafted but hollow genre exercise (that is, when it doesn’t feel like a Nicholson stunt.) And, as far as well-crafted genre exercises go, I think I might’ve preferred Inside Man.
The central plot of both films is at once delightfully simple — cop plays robber, robber plays cop — and devilishly complicated. Here, two Southie graduates of the Massachusetts State Police Academy go to work for opposite sides of the law: Bright young overachiever Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) takes a gig in a top police investigation unit aimed at taking down nefarious crime kingpin Frank Costello (a.k.a. Whitey Bulger a.k.a. The Joker), while troubled screw-up Billy Costigan (Leonardo di Caprio) finds himself, after a stint in the joint, hired muscle in Costello’s organization. But all is not as it seems: As it turns out, Sullivan the cop — bought off by a bag of groceries a few decades earlier — actually works for Costello as a mole on the force, while Costigan the robber has gone deep undercover at the behest of BPD detectives Queenan (Martin Sheen, avuncular and presidential) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg, aggro and amusing). As it becomes patently clear to both sides of the game that each has a rat in the house, Sullivan and Costello work to flush out their opposite before they get busted (or, in Costello’s case, dismembered.) And, complicating the situation even further (and in a departure from Infernal Affairs), these two nemeses also unknowingly share the love of the same woman, an alluring police shrink (Vera Farmiga) who tends to make really poor life decisions.
All of this is executed competently enough. Scorsese keeps the wheels turning and the tension up throughout, and The Departed benefits from many excellent performances around the margins: Both Wahlberg (easily the most comfortable with the Boston accent, for obvious reasons) and particularly Alec Baldwin (as a grizzled police detective, one-half his character in Glengarry Glen Ross, one-half Sgt. Jay Landsman) are laugh-out loud funny at times, while David O’Hara and Sexy Beast‘s Ray Winstone add sinister depths to Costello’s criminal outfit. And, while most of Mystic River felt more plausible to me, the Boston locale gives The Departed some strong local color that feels fresh and different from the Hong Kong of Internal Affairs. (I particularly liked some of the Irish witticisms. I’d never heard the Freud quote: “This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.” And I enjoyed Sullivan’s warning to his psychiatrist girlfriend late in the film, something along the lines of “If this isn’t working, you need to get out. I’m Irish. Something could be wrong, and I’d spend the rest of my life just dealing with it.“)
Both Leonardo di Caprio and Matt Damon do high-quality work too, but here some of my issues with the film emerge. As played by the charismatic Tony Leung of Hero, In the Mood for Love, and 2046, the undercover cop character in Internal Affairs is a resigned, world-weary sort, a guy who seems to carry reservoirs of inexpressible sorrow with him everywhere he goes. But, here, di Caprio is basically a pill-popping panic attack for two hours, cringing and sweating his way through every scene. Fine, that’s a stylistic choice: More problematic is Damon’s character, who’s become considerably less interesting than the conflicted cop played by Andy Lau (of House of Flying Daggers) in the original. For some reason, he’s been stripped down and rendered a much more conventional villain. Damon does what he can, but I preferred the subtler, more pained motivations of Lau’s mole than I do the unctuous, take-no-prisoners careerism they’ve saddled Damon with here.
And then there’s Jack. Nicholson has put in some extraordinary performances in his time, but, as someone put it in another comment thread, he’s been coasting like Pacino for a couple of decades now. And, for some ungodly reason, Scorsese gave Nicholson free rein here to act as crazy as he wants. (Yep, the dildo idea was his.) As a result, Nicholson can’t stop leering and preening to the point of distraction. Whether it be making rat faces, covering his arms in splatterhouse gore, coking out with two prostitutes in the Red Room from Twin Peaks, or generally just acting like he’s seated courtside at the Staples Center rather than running a crime operation, Nicholson just doesn’t work here. Wildly over the top throughout, he’s like a refugee from a sillier, stupider film, and he too often makes The Departed feel little more than a Marty-directs-Jack! casting stunt.
Secret Agent Man.
Angelina Jolie feels neglected while Matt Damon looks to a long future of waterboarding and cherry-picking intelligence for political reasons in the new trailer for Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd, also starring De Niro, John Turturro, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Joe Pesci, and Michael Gambon.