Out in Theaters: DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

November 6, 2013 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto, Jean-Marc Vallee, Martin Pensa, Matthew McConaughey, Out in Theaters, Reviews

“Dallas Buyers Club”
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Garner, Dallas Roberts, Denis O’Hare, Steve Zahn, Kevin Rankin, Jane McNeill
Drama
117 Mins
R

Imagine being sat down and told that you’ve just tested positive for HIV. Now imagine that you’ve only ever been told that this is a “gay disease” – an impossible horror reserved only for the darkest corner of “queerness.” Then picture this whopper: you’ve got six weeks to live. Six weeks. 42 days. 1000 hours…and that’s not accounting for time spent sleeping. The rest of your life needs to fit within the confines of a 1000-hour window. Welcome to AIDS in the 80s.

This true life horror story is a too commonly known in 2013, a time when we have a semi-solution to the problem – even though the living stigma attached to the HIV-positive is as lecherous and potent as ever – but in the live-free-die-young time of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), doctors couldn’t finger transmission causes, barely knew the symptoms, and failed to charter a road to recovery just as they failed to grasp the desperation of those afflicted.

It was a time of widespread panic, a near-modernization of the Black Plague that ripped apart communities and savaged its victims. If there was anything that HIV wasn’t, it was good. That is, except for Woodroof. His disease catalyzed him to become a man of action, a fighter with a rock-solid purpose, and most of all, a business juggernaut who built a small empire.

For a small town electrician with a seventh grade education, Woodroof essentially transformed himself into an amateur scientist and one of the leading experts on HIV/AIDS treatments. While hanging on for his life in Mexico after blasting his body with an unregulated trial version of AZT, Ron becomes a champion of the “cocktail” – a pill regiment that has become a regular staple of modern HIV treatment. Transfixed with saving his own life while making a few bucks, he soon starts smuggling boxes of the non-FDA approved medicine into the US for sale.

Never a man seeking a Nobel Prize, Woodroof was in drug business for himself and himself alone. He saw demand and a gross lack of supply and tactfully worked out a marketplace in the periphery of the drug administration’s reach. His actions couldn’t have been further from philanthropy and this is what makes the tale so entirely captivating. This is no hero’s story, this is the ballad of a charismatic anti-hero; a man profiteering off of his deadly disease, who just so happens to have made a positive mark in his community.

Amazingly, this is not the sob story that it so easily could have been. The absolute restraint on full display elevates Dallas Buyers Club from a powerful biopic into an elegant stunner. On many occasions, director Jean-Marc Vallée brings you to the brink of tears and quickly yanks away, allowing the melodramatic teat to go un-milked. In such, Dallas is the anti Nick Sparks. While this tragedy could have easily been swaddled in a waterfall of tears, Vallée and McConaughey harvest the comic aspects while maintaining a strong foothold in respectful execution. Like any true story, there is no black-and-white, just various shades of gray.

For the past two years, Matthew McConaughey has pushed against his former image – a shiftless Southerner, the heartthrob focal point of many a failed rom-com – and embraced his career like a man reborn. His work in Dallas Buyers Club is entirely stunning – unquestionably the greatest work of his career – the final stage of a prodigious transformation. Bubbling behind his eyes is a well of emotion, a characteristic that gives layers of depth to what he says, inferring that the true meaning of his homophobic, brash choice of words are always hidden behind a few layers of his callous former self. For as much of a strong-headed bastard as he is, Ron is as scared as a kid at a clown convention. But he’d rather die than ever say it.

Coming out of a semi-retirement, Jared Leto offers strong evidence that he should have never been allowed to step out of the spotlight. As Ron’s transvestite business partner, also stricken with HIV, Leto is gold and nearly threatens in upstage McConaughey in a number of scenes. Brimming with heart, Rayon offers a softer-edge to balance out Ron’s calculated apathy. Underneath the layers of overindulgent makeup, fire-red wig, and shabby drag garb, there is a real person – one who has suffered being the butt of countless gay jokes and has crawled nail-by-manicured-nail out of the disapproval of a conservative, waspy family. He isn’t some wacky transvestite; he is a human of hardship whose only reward for free expression is a case of full-blown AIDS. Ron may be the centerpiece of the film but Rayon is the timely beating heart.

As a piece of cultural import, Dallas Buyers Club works so well because it is just as poignant look at drug administration as corporate bully and the monumental failings of the U.S. health care system today as it was then. Just look at the similar origin story of Walter White in Breaking Bad – another tale of a man with a clinical death sentence forced to function outside the law to pay for treatment – to upend parallels between the 80s and now. We may have waged unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and yet the U.S. government continues to wage an invisible war on the sick with their defunct health care policies. Canadian Vallée wrangles the issue close and holds it up to the camera. “Is this acceptable America?” he asks. Of course not. And yet, around and around we go.

For the swing-for-the-fences success, major credit is due to the editing department under Vallée and Martin Pensa‘s guidance, making the most difficult calls of all – not overstaying. Debunking the belief that over-dramatization leads to more emotional impact, Vallée guides Dallas into near-perfect territory with the craft of someone who’s been doing this his whole life. Lingering long after the lights draw up, Dallas passes on an invaluable lesson: everything we have can be taken from us in an instant and, as life deteriorates around you, you can be footed with the bill. As an American living without health care, what can be more terrifying than that?

A+

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Out in Theaters: 12 YEARS A SLAVE

November 2, 2013 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged 2014 Oscars, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Paul Dano, Steve McQueen

“12 Years a Slave”
Directed by Steve McQueen
Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’o, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Quvenzhane Wallis, Sarah Paulson
Biography, Drama, History
132 Mins
R

12 Years a Slave opens somewhere around a decade into Solomon Northup’s enslavement. He’s mushing blackberries to a paste, attempting to write a letter home using a whittled mulberry stick. Scribbling like a fugitive to the crackle of candlelight, this is the first time he’s put pen to paper in years, and must do so under the cover of night. For all the horrors he’s suffered and witnessed, the most impossible task is keeping his true identity, and intelligence, under wraps. For a learned slave is a troubling slave and a troubling slave is a marked man – a truth he’s seen manifested many times before.

More than a decade gone for something as simple as not being allowed to produce his “free papers,” Solomon’s journey draws empathy from the audience like water from a well. More than just a story of the horrors of slavery, this is the story of a man who knew a better life – he abided the law, owned a house, had a family, and was a respected part of his Saratoga, New York community – and yet, down in the bowels of the hellish South, was stripped of his humanity like tattered clothes from his back.

Director Steve McQueen is a particular type of dark visionary. Employing patience and human degradation as a litmus test of how much we can emotionally bear, McQueen peels back all the curtains of our collective American history, revealing the inky black turmoil stirring in the human soul. But torture is no new game for McQueen.

In his first film, Hunger, McQueen explored a prison-bound hunger strike but his craft was not yet refined, too raw, cold, and indulgent to raise the welt he was hoping for. In Shame, he arm wrestled sex addiction out of romanticized glamor and into a pit of emptiness and human despair. Although fantastic acting and gruesome body horror prevailed, it continued the same dour tendencies that make his films so hard to sit through. In his third go around, he’s perfected his art, making a film that’s both impossible to watch and impossible to look away from.

However difficult 12 Years a Slave may be to watch, it’s absolutely necessary watching. It’s long been positioned that it’s our American duty to process, or at least understand, slavery. As a means to sift the political hand of slavery from those participating in it, McQueen demands you to think long and hard about what you would do in a similar situation. Even the good men in this film, such as Benedict Cumberbatch‘s Ford are stained by the cultural pollution manifest in slavery. It may just be impossible to be a moral man in a land drained of morality, McQueen’s film says.

As Solomon adopts his new name and role as Platt, he holds onto hope – however tucked away in a dark corner it must remain; hope that someday he’ll be reunited with his family, hope that one day he’ll meet a white man who wants more for his than a closed mouth and fast working hands, hope for freedom. In a Kafkaesque metamorphosis, Solomon becomes Platt, his days transformed from living to surviving.

Despite the barbarity of Solomon’s unlawful enslavement, the mentality intact in the age is a scourge most difficult to stomach. Packaged in caravans like sardines, sold stripped nude, and man handled at every turn, there is little to distinguish slaves from live stock.

Chiwetel Ejiofor leads a sensational cast that brings Solomon’s true story to the screen with deadly seriousness. As our guardian through this hellish descent, Ejiofor is stunning from start to finish. His decision to play Solomon as a stone gradually pared by the tide of slavery rather than a thistle bending at the first breeze will cement an Oscar nomination. His final heart-rending scene will secure the win. Michael Fassbender is similarly committed to his role as devilish plantation fiend Edwin Epps. Despite his character’s despicable traits, he’s an equally complex man, torn by his own sinful passion for Lupita Nyong’o‘s Patsey. Expect Oscar nominations, if not wins, all around.

Wowing cinematography from Sean Bobbitt (Shame, The Place Beyond the Pines) is haunting yet beautiful. Gorgeous waterfront properties impose their menacing statue – demonic in their association with America’s great shame. Captured under Bobbitt’s lens, the land itself takes on a stifling quality. No matter how scenic the willows peppering the plantation are, they always seem to weep – graves of the crushed souls haunting the confederate flag-totting South.

12 Years a Slave will make you want to run the retributive justice of Django Unchained but the sad truth is, this is more fact than fiction. Even when freed, American blacks were paid the respect of subhumans. You want Solomon to strap dynamite to his prison, to rip it down to the studs and burn it but you know that it’s not that type of movie. No, it’s too gravely serious for that, for this is an epitaph to American slaves, penned centuries late.

A+

Playing locally at the Regal Meridian 16 and Guild 45th Landmark Theater

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Out in Theaters: ABOUT TIME

November 1, 2013 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged About Time, Bill Nighy, Out in Theaters, Rachel McAdams, Reviews, Richard Curtis

“About Time”
Directed by Richard Curtis
Starring Domhnall Gleeson, Bill Nighy, Rachel McAdams, Lydia Wilson, Lindsay Duncan, Richard Cordery, Tom Hollander, Margo Robbie
Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi
123 Mins
R

A truly good-natured movie is almost impossible to find nowadays. Every major studio release hot off the production line comes caked in ice-packed grit, each romance more a thing of cool-blooded calculation than the starry-eyed butterfly-tummied trances of acoustic guitar ballads. Even the biggest name in romance, the haughty Nicholas Sparks, tends towards conclusions of masturbatory tragedy. Someone has to either die or get laid out with a terminal case of cancer. It’s as if audiences can’t handle the sweet without the sour – all must end in woe or, at the very least, a shade of woe. Look at the great romantic saga of the past ten year; I’m referring of course to Twilight. Even if you strip away the Mormon patriarchal underpinning and grade-A beastly acting, this “great romance” involves a stoic vampire and an even steelier teen. There’s no beaded passion here – nothing beneath the carnal urges and “hot and bothered” eye-banging – just angsty stirrings in the nether regions mislabeled as “love.”

Examining a real relationship, or at least any that I’ve seen, under the context of this brand of ironclad romance, there’s very little overlap of note. And yet, the lukewarm romance soldiers on: the bastion of 21^st century detachment and bone-deep aversion to commitment. This template of 21^st century romance has become centered on a singular quest for detached self-satisfaction that it’s turned against everything that love stands for. And then comes About Time, an earnest well-meaning love story amongst a pack of wolves. It’s quite simply, a breath of fresh air.

Released amongst a rash of hefty dramas and mindless actioners, this purely delightful romance wears its heart on its sleeve in bold, sincere patches. While many romantic competitors keep an emotional distance from the audience through the use of sarcasm and a predictable three act meet-up-break-up-make-up formula, About Time is unafraid to alter the formula, scraping foreseeable twists and turns for the emotional heft of real family dynamics and all the baggage that comes with that…oh and time travel.

Yes, time travel plays a significant part of the narrative as on the eve of his 21^st birthday, Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) is let in on a little family secret by his Dad (Bill Nighy): the men in the family have a peculiar ability to ball their fists and leap through time. In fact, the ability to time travel goes back as far in the family tree as the rascally orange hair which runs rampant in this English family. It takes no great stretch of the imagination to fantasize about how we would use these life-altering powers, but in About Time any ideas of grandiose heroics are by and large shelved. Meek and ginger Tim wants to use his powers for one thing and one thing only: to snag a girlfriend.

When it comes time to procure the finest vixen in the land, the “traveling” bits are entirely effects free. There are no bright neon lights or pin wheeled wormholes, a directorial decision of “less is more” that works wonders within the foundation of the story. Unlike many plots involving time travel, About Time doesn’t spend too much time establishing the guidelines for the time travel sandbox, but it does play by its own set of rules. But rather than getting convoluted in the details of time travel’s idiosyncrasies, the rules here are simple: your actions can change the events of the past so 1) You can only travel to points and places in time that you’ve already been to before (i.e. no peeking into the future and no going back and killing Hitler) 2) Don’t alter any event before the birth of your child (different sperm, different baby) 3) Realize that there’s some things that time travel can’t fix. Some things just need to be accepted or learned through the arduous journey that is life.

As much as nitpicky drones love their plot-hole-seeking pastime, any attempt to dissect and discredit the functionality of the time travel here is moot because, well, its pretty rock solid. However hokey a time-jumping premise sounds in the midst of a love story, it’s used to surprisingly compelling effect and is far more nuanced and well-mannered than you might otherwise expect. And even though it’s there, time travel really isn’t what About Time is about. Rather, it uses the fantasy to tap into emotional reality.

Rather than use his time-traveling talent for typical teenage debauchery, Tim saves his ability as a last ditch effort of sorts, only used to better the circumstances of those around him, to avoid the unpleasantries that tend to pop their head up when least expected, and most importantly, to revisit the best days of his life. About Time ponders the idea that we can live life to the fullest not because of magical abilities but, perhaps, in spite of them.

As for the romance at the center of the film, Rachel McAdams flirts with a new kind of woman- a mousey brunette, steadfast in her bookwormery and emotional reservations. It’s perhaps the least showy role she’s done and for once, she is entirely tolerable if not completely adorable. Newcomer Gleeson is equally charming, although not nearly in the traditional sense we’ve come to expect from a romantic male lead.

Bumbling, awkward and entirely orange-haired, his Tim makes up for his lack of suave with the good decision-making skills rare in a rom-com male. But the story is larger than the affable romance at its core, it’s about family; how families come together, depend on each other, and, ultimately, how parents pass the torch to their offspring. Like a good-natured Butterfly Effect, the most emotionally pungent material is unearthed in Gleeson and Nighy’s father-son relationship, so much so that, it might earn a sniffle, maybe even a tear or two from those apt to be touched by emotional films.

Regardless of its breezy premise and total lack of a bad bone in its body, this is the sparse romantic drama that totally works. Brushing off the sleazy staples of modern day rom-coms – the hunky leads, reheated man-wrong-woman, woman-wrong-man clichés, and snarky, obnoxious best friends – Richard Curtis has found something far more earnest, good intentioned and true. With an archer’s marksmanship, he manages to land a bullseye in our emotional main vein on a number of occasions. However coated with a healthy layer of rose-colored glaze, About Time is bold enough to be a nice guy amongst an army of grit and cavalier cool. This time though, nice guys don’t finish last.

B

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Out in Theaters: LAST VEGAS

November 1, 2013 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Dan Fogelman, Jon Turteltaub, Kevin Kline, Last Vegas, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Robert De Niro

“Last Vegas”
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
Starring Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen, Jerry Ferrara, Romany Malco
Comedy
105 Mins
PG-13

A kind of Expendables for Viagra-popping retirees, Last Vegas throws Hollywood golden boys Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, and, to a lesser extent, Kevin Kline at the screen amongst a scourge of dilapidated “We’re old now” jokes. But instead of slipping in old catchphrases and nods to their former glory, the narrative hones in on a periodic nostalgia existing outside of the collective careers of these (re)tired bunch of 70-odds.

Arguably better than it has any right to be, Last Vegas dodges expectations of “phoning it in”with half-heartfelt performances from these behemoths of the silver screen. But try as hard as Douglas and crew do to make something with surface-level sincerity, cheese-ball direction from Jon Turteltaub preaches to the lowest common denominator of moviegoers as the ill-conceived script from Dan Fogelman begs for laughs like a dog for scraps. Like a spritz of water to your furry friend’s face or aged bowels spontaneously releasing themselves, it’s often embarrassing to behold.

Dressing death up as a catalyst for living while you can, we meet Douglas’s Billy – a man with the orange-tinted tan of an Oompa Loompa – at his business partner and close friend’s funeral where, in the heat of the moment, he proposes to his 30-something girlfriend – a woman far too young to be marrying him for anything other than the inevitable life insurance payout. However much you expect this generation-gap relationship to be a goldmine for gravedigger jokes, this comedy-rich quarry isn’t touched with a ten-foot pole. It’s as if the producers all glanced at their own wives and nixed all wily commentary on marrying young. Instead, the movie uses this marriage-to-be as a window into the psychology of an older man trying to escape into his more formidable years. What follows is not unlike a plausible synopsis for American Reunion: We’re Retired Now.

Life long friends Archie (Freeman), Sam (Kline), and the ever-reluctant Paddy (De Niro) join Billy for one last stint in Vegas as a formal send off to the man about to seal his fate in his first marriage. It’s strange to think that these four performers have never shared the screen before as they actually have an ample amount of chemistry together, even though their relationships are built on a thin foundation of lazy writing.

Along the way to the alter, Paddy and Billy feud over past betrayals. A growing rift in their friendship, begat by Billy skipping out on Paddy’s wife’s funeral, promises to tear up the group before the “I do’s” have a chance to be spoken. They bicker like old crows until Diana (Mary Steenburgen) – a lounge singer who becomes the recipient of both of their affections – takes the stage and their hostility turns to competition.

As it turns out, their tug-of-war over the same woman is par for the course of their friendship, as both had eyes for the same sweetheart back in their youthful days, a malted milkshake lass named Sophie. Sophie is the same woman that Paddy eventually married, the same woman whose funeral Billy stood up. In a revamped version of Sophie’s choice, her decision to saddle up with Paddy has always left an unspoken dent in their friendship. Just as these more meaningful ideas of love and friendship begin to be explored, they’re quickly abandoned. Anything worthy of thoughtful consideration is ultimately left examined with the finesse of a kid with a magnifying glass toasting ants. In such, nothing genuine survives the scorching melodrama of Turteltaub’s touch.

Much like a granny that confuses a nickel for something of actual worth, Turteltaub fails to understand Last Vegas‘s value. Rather than treat his audience to a pat on the head, he could have left us with something weighty, or at least a lump in our throats – something worthy of dealing with friendships that end in funerals. But his fundamental misunderstanding of the film’s purpose quickly becomes his own downfall. Crafting a story around the framework of coping with age has proved successful in the past – just take a look at the resounding success of last year’s admittedly grim Amour. The success of that film, like this one, depends on a sense of stakes and what higher stakes are there than dying slowly, alone and isolated?

In Last Vegas though, these ideas are mentioned but never actually experience. Consequently, there are no solid ramifications for anything that takes place. It’s all just an act in front of a curtain. Every issue becomes a performance of reaction, a cookie-cutter replica of tropes of past aging journeys. As it goes, everything feels like a carbon copy of a copy of a copy – three layers removed from any real feeling.

But judging Last Vegas on the terms of a serious drama isn’t quite grading it on a fair rubric because it was never intended to be a serious drama. Through and through, this is a fluffy star-laden romp intended to steal laughs rather than tears. Never masquerading as something of deeper intent, Last Vegas is happy to churn along and snag a smile here and there. Still, giving it a pass for having low ambition is an equally miscalculated way to sum up the film.

Regardless of its intention, any film with staying power hopes to tap into something universal; a reaction typically gleamed from a true emotional response. But with Last Vegas, any real emotional response is second-tier to sigh-inducing knee-slappers.

Following suit, Last Vegas is fast food entertainment for the elderly. Lacking anything of substance, this is an easily digestible stencil of a comedy that flushes right through your system, causing little more than a fading smile, all the while making you a little worse for the wear. The host of talent may look pretty being passed through the filter of a camera lens and crammed into a trailer’s two minute time frame but once Last Vegas has trudged through its entire arsenal of hardy hars, you’re unlikely to remember anything about the experience and would surely flush it out of your mind to make room for something better.

But Last Vegas‘s greatest crime comes with its relentless pursuit to pitch to a younger crowd, the most egregious of which involves mixing a wiener-shaking AWOL Nation gag amongst a torrent of ED jokes. Even though the film clearly skews towards the majorly slim 70-plus demographic, disingenuous attempts to win laughs from the younger crowd come across as misguided. The two generations irreparably clash, stripping the film down to its uninspired core and revealing the mess underneath. Like getting a pair of socks for Christmas, it’s not really a gift at all.

D+

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Out in Theaters: MAN OF TAI CHI

October 30, 2013 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Keanu Reeves, Man of Tai Chi, Tiger Hu Chen

“Man of Tai Chi”
Directed by Keanu Reeves
Starring Tiger Hu Chen, Keanu Reeves, Karen Mok, Simon Yam, Silvio Simac, Qing Ye
Action
105 Mins
R

Without exception, every time that Keanu Reeves‘s opens his mouth in Man of Tai Chi, I chuckled. And I wasn’t alone. Every member of the audience was stifling giggles as Reeves stumbled his way through brief chunks of unwieldy dialogue. We burst into laughter when Reeves breaks the third-wall with a roar – teeth-bared and thrashing at the camera like a lion ripping at hunks of sirloin. It’s as if the fog has lifted and Reeves recognizes just how awful an actor he truly is. Seeing Man of Tai Chi is like watching Reeve’s B-list baptism, as the man onscreen embraces his goofy robotic persona to the fullest extent, milking all he can with self-deprecating automockery.

For how applaudably terrible Reeves the actor is, his directorial debut is a bit of a mixed bag that actually tilts more towards success end of the dial, making it hardly the piping failure I fully expected. As a cross-cultural production split between the U.S. and China, the film employs Chinese actors, speaking mostly Chinese, with Reeves as the only whitewashed American with any spoken lines. The decisions Reeves makes – first to film in China with exclusively Chinese actors and to put himself into his own film – are head scratchers, but somehow they kind of end up working – operative word being: “kind of”.

The Chinese actors are mostly fine when they’re speaking Chinese – fine being the only description that really sums up the inoffensive but uninspiring nature of their work – but when they transition into the occasional English phrase, their lack of formal acting training shines through, blinding as a Tuscon afternoon. It’s as if Reeves recited the line to his cast right before the take and they quickly spit it out with the grasp of an ESL crash course student. It’s not intentional racism but some performers do sound like the xenophobia re-dubs on Kung Fu films of the 1970s.

But as a martial arts film, Man of Tai Chi shines. Even though some camera framing issues render certain shots inconsequential, the acrobatic mastery of star Tiger Hu Chen and his many opponents are feats to be marveled. As Chen swings his limbs like thunderous hams, we forget the wires that help float these artists of combat through the air in the most unnatural of ways. At any rate, our focus is zeroed in on the n^th degree of precision with which each blow and each block is delivered.

Chen plays Chen (and no, that’s not a typo), a delivery boy who moonlights as a prize fighter. He’s deeply attached to his family and his master, a man who has taught him the ways of Tai Chi since he was a young boy. Traditionally considered a non-violent martial art, Chen surprises all when he uses an aggravated style of “hard” Tai Chi to usurp the reigning martial arts champion, winning him the attention of a shady security empire’s ring leader, Donaka Mark (Reeves).

Mark pulls some strings to all but guarantee that Chen will agree to be his personal prize fighter and the race is on. As Chen gets more and more involved in a circuit of privately broadcast beat downs, he begins to turn towards the dark side, transforming from the innocent boy he was into a barbarous warrior. We later learn: this transformation is the point.

In many ways, Chen’s journey mimics the descent of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. There’s even some unspoken mysticism to “unleashing your chi” that comes across a lot like “the force”. But as Skywalker became Vader through an eroded sense of hubris, Chen’s descent is forged for him. Like a Chinese Truman Show, those watching invite the moral corrosion, paying top dollar to see a good man turned.

Made on a tight budget of $25 million, Man of Tai Chi spends money in the right place: choreography. Even though the sparse CGI couldn’t convince your grandma that some of the larger set effects are real, carefully rehearsed hand-to-hand combat is executed with meticulous precision. It may look like a film on a budget at times but when the flurry of fists starts rumbling, it no longer matters.

As a director, Keanu has made a valiant effort but his minimalist approach and hoodwinked character direction still keep him pegged as a mostly unknown talent. Meanwhile, the script from Resident Evil 6‘s Michael G. Cooney is as amateur as they come and makes you wonder how many tapes of old martial arts movies he watched for research.

For American audiences unfamiliar with the chest of international martial arts film, outside of the late success of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, Man of Tai Chi hopes to be a revival for the genre in the U.S. and an ushering in of a new talent in the hawk-faced Chen. The introduction to Chen alone legitimizes the film, even through its abundance of puerility. Even for someone not typically interested in martial arts, Man of Tai Chi does a great job at convincing us that we don’t need fast cars, massive shoot outs, and large breasted vixens to make an exciting action movie – just two dudes willing to beat the living snot out of each other.

C+

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Out in Theaters: ENDER'S GAME

October 30, 2013 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Abigail Breslin, Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Ender's Game, Gavin Hood, Hailee Steinfeld, Harrison Ford, Moises Arias, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Viola Davis

“Ender’s Game”
Directed by Gavin Hood
Starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, Ben Kingsley, Moises Arias, Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin
Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
114 Mins
PG-13

Ender, a natural born strategist, waxes philosophy like he’s Sun Tzu. Taking “The Art of War” to its next logical step, Ender believes it’s not enough to understand his enemy. For him, truly understanding your enemy comes hand-in-hand with loving them. When you know someone well enough to predict their moves militarily, you glimpse into their soul. All at once, this zen of inter-connectivity gives Ender an upper hand in battle but also puts him in a constantly state of moral dread. He knows he can be a mighty conqueror the likes of Caesar but doesn’t know if he should be.

Based on the popular young adult novels by Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game is built on a foundation of tough philosophical questions like these. Tackling ethical issues that date back to the dawn of fighting with sticks and stone and span to our current climate of piloted drone warfare, moral quandaries are given precedence in the film, but often come across as heavy-handed and poorly thought through.

For a movie entirely about tactics, it’s lacking in tactical approach to philosophy as process. Socrates, famous for breaking down prejudices in order to reach universal truths championed the dissection of established beliefs through reasoning alone. To discover truth, he used critical analysis to better understand the world around him and the many false beliefs that dominated society at large. Here, Ender’s Game is philosophy as a means to an end, an “I told you so” of childish rashness rather than a contemplative, almost meditative, study. Rather than a thought process, here philosophy is a bat. Like Bonzo, you’ll want to be sure to cover your head from the beat downs to come.

Philosophical dissection of Ender’s Game aside, the film floats by on the freckled charm of Asa Butterfield (Hugo). Unlike his peers, Ender has a preternatural tact for foreseeing the consequences, good and bad, of his physical actions and a pension for using violence to prevent future violence. Butterfield does a fine job at conveying the dueling nature of Ender’s innocence and incessant scheming. At once aggressive and acutely aware of his dangerous aggression, Ender is a morally complex character – a suiting trait for the morally complex world he inhabits.

On Earth, 50 years have passed since a devastating alien attack almost wiped out the planet’s population. Like a post-9/11 America, tapestries hang in offices and homes alike, wallpapering sentiments of “Never Forget.” At the hands of the bug-like Formics, Earthlings faced their demise but managed a narrow victory in a play of much-celebrated battlefield bravado. One man, we are told, single-handedly chased the enemy off and ever since, Earth has awaited the return of their ruthless enemy, all the while training legions of child soldiers.

Picked as the last hope for humanity, children are utilized for their fast processing skills, unfaltering obedience, and gullible code of honor. Ender is chosen to lead not because of his tendency towards violence but because of his thought process within said violence. Never the one to start a fight but always the one to finish it, he’s not a sadist, but a tactician. For these qualities, Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) sees Ender as the ideal candidate to lead Earth’s troops into the final battle with the Formic.

Joining Butterfield is a legion of youth actors that act little more than their age. Moises Arias as Bonzo and Hailee Steinfeld as Petra both do caricatures of the seething bully and flirty love interest but Abigail Breslin as Ender’s sister Valentine is really the most reined in of these child performers. Her character is harmony, her performance refined, a nice counterpoint to the violent lifestyle that Ender’s profession has surrounded him by. She and bullying older brother Peter are the fulcrum points around which Ender measures himself. As Colonel Graff says, he needs to fall somewhere between them. He must harness both violence and peace – he must become a cocktail of serenity and rage.

As Ender trains to become a commander, he must undergo physical challenges that hone his motor skills and mental games meant to whet his battlefield acuity. In a turn of revamped Quidditch – except without brooms, magic, or gravity – the “launchies” spent most of their days training in an arena-based game of space dodge-bullet, where they earn points for blasting each other with stunners. Like Quidditch, the game can be won, regardless of points accumulated, if one team member passes through their opponents’ gate unscathed. Unlike Quidditch, this tournament has bearing outside the arena as the victor will go on to lead Earth’s army against the evil bug aliens. Perhaps this convoluted plot point is more an issue with the source material than the movie, but I’ve never heard of a Superbowl winning team captain going on to lead an army.

Why the young launchies must spend so much time pushing their bodies to the limit when all eventual warfare is exclusively done through drone command is never addressed. Nor is the fact that regardless of the grueling training, none of the launchies – all of whom are on one side or the other of the scrawny-to-chubby spectrum – seem to put on any bulk or shed any pounds. They’re all in the same physical shape as day one. Surely this has to do with the fact that the film employs underage performers, and you can’t quite push a 12-year old to shed pounds like Christian Bale, but oversights like this are noticeable throughout and work to diminish the sense of reality director Gavin Hood is working so hard to create.

As the film pushes towards a close, the inevitable last act twist is somewhat foreseeable but nevertheless cements the relative worth of the film. Barking out commands with the crackly voice of a teen in metamorphosis, Ender leads his troops to video-simulated victory after victory until a crushing reality is revealed: maybe it’s not a game after all.

In blurring the lines between video game violence and real world violence, Hood explores the hefty moral consequences of drone warfare, even when he’s being too clunky for his own good. While I admit to not having read the book, the ending comes out of left field, begging for a sequel and an impending franchise. There’s a delicate art to franchise building that used to revolve around worth but nowadays is left at the behest of the filmmaker. It’s as if a “what comes next?” cliffhanger is a necessity for any movie that costs over $100 million dollars. The question is: if you build it, will they come?

While the communist undertones, expressed here as the “hive mentality,” may be outdated now, many of the issues seen in Ender’s Game are even more relevant today than they were when it was written (i.e. drone warfare, bullying, surveillance, video game violence, child soldiers, etc.) However, Hood can’t help himself but to let them fly in your face, like the drilling of drones in the film’s finale, never really developing the ever-important why? behind it all.

C

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Out in Theaters: BAD GRANDPA

October 25, 2013 by Jill Landon Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Bad Grandpa, Comedy, Irving Zissman, Jackass, Jackson Nicoll, Johnny Knoxville, Review, Spike Jonze 2 Comments

“Bad Grandpa”
Directed by Jeff Tremaine
Starring Johnny Knoxville, Jackson Nicoll, Greg Harris, Georgina Cates, Kamber Hejlik, and Spike Jonze.
Comedy
92 Mins
R

Oh Jackass, your combination of filthy jokes, raunchy slapstick, and hidden-camera non-sequiturs are as amusing as they are tasteless. This mixture is the defining factor and key draw for Jackass fans since the days of the TV show that gave the franchise it’s start. Bad Grandpa has this sophomoric concoction in spades, and for those who are willing to suspend their seriousness and not scrutinize the themes to closely, it’s great entertainment. Unlike previous Jackass incarnations though, Bad Grandpa is not a jumbled collection of skits: it has a plot line and defined characters, and dare I say, more depth than any of its predecessors.

The characters of Bad Grandpa aren’t (completely) unique. Johnny Knoxville reprises his persona as Irving Zissman, foul-tempered and lecherous grandfather who’s penchant for horrible pickup lines, over-the-top geriatric foibles, and deviant public sexuality has proved over and over again to be genuinely disturbing to average bystanders and hilarious to the franchise’s fans. Across from him is Jackson Nicoll who plays Billy, an impressionable youth with tragic prospects and an unchecked mouth, an enfant terrible whose one-liners and crude banter come off as innocent and misguided to anyone not in the joke. With the exception of scattered actors and jackass co-conspirators who help the pair set up their jokes, the true stars are the odd-couple and the confused, sometimes-disgruntled, and always unsuspecting public who get to watch them up close.

The story, although modeled after the sincere and heartbreaking comedy Paper Moon in ’73, starts at first as a vehicle for Zissman and Billy’s raucous stunts and gags. Zissman’s wife Gloria, a frequently raunchy co-conspirator in the other Jackass films played by Spike Jonze, has just died, leaving Zissman finally free to spread his aging oats. Simultaneously Zissman’s daughter, who it is established by Billy in the opening scenes is going to jail for being a crack addict, drops Billy on Zissman in the middle of Gloria’s funeral with instructions to take the boy to his irresponsible father to be taken care of. Although Zissman initially resists, the two eventually form a bond through constant public japery at bystander’s expense and frequent back-and-forths revolving around their unlikely comradely.

What distinguishes this from other Jackass films is it’s very conceit of being plot driven. Typically, the lewd pranks Zissman pulls give fans comfortable distance because of their temporary nature: Knoxville does the Zissman bit, the Jackass boys get a good laugh in, and then they cut to a totally unrelated skit. In Bad Grandpa, Knoxville has committed to his role. Zissman, although crude and obtuse, is a character, has a personality, a history, and a future in this film. For all of his vulgarity, he has moments that seem altogether sincere and as his journey with his grandson Billy progresses, you can feel a real connection. It sheaths the normally unconnected jokes in the duo’s inner life and provides a level of depth that, although not enough to constitute character growth or definition, is not nearly as shallow as other Jackass conceits.

The hidden camera jokes in this framework are both the reasons that the film was made and the situational action that moves the internal relationship between Billy and Zissman forward. As such, the real people and their reactions have real impact on the arcs of the scripted characters. These bystanders, comedic “marks”, typically fall into categories: the gullible mark, the disgruntled mark, the apathetic, and the laughing co-conspirator who, although not completely aware of what’s going on, is still in on the joke. They instigate, they get angry, they play along, and their jaws drop in disbelief, and in many ways they steal the gag. The line between pranker and comic victim becomes blurry in several scenes, and these add a level of enjoyment that suggests the incredible work involved in producing these scenes.

All of this – the responsive characters, chemistry, and the wonderful cross-section of American life that Knoxville, Jeff Tremaine and co. were able to film – make for nimble comedy. They have not lost any of their spirit or their awful taste, but the movie feels more mature somehow than the wolf pack that Jackass typically focuses on. The gleeful defiance against the mundane day-to-day that their pranks rely upon feels more refined and the moments of bonding and feeling between Zissman and Billy feel very honest and genuine. From golf courses to junior beauty pageants, the two fail social convention and blunder through any event they find themselves in. Yet, the self-deprecating drama Knoxville and Nicoll embark on seems earnest and heartfelt, and that makes the regular Jackass tropes shine brighter in Bad Grandpa.

Jackass has never pretended seriousness. They consistently play the buffoon and perform painful and self-deprecating stunts to shock bystanders and get belly laughs from audiences. Bad Grandpa is an evolution on the Jackass formula that is quite welcome – almost needed. Knoxville and Nicoll play their roles wonderfully and the gags, the writing, and the concepts didn’t miss a beat. It’s flinch-worthy in plenty of ways, and it has some jokes that don’t fall as well as others. The majority of the jokes are polished and without imperfection, and it feels like Knoxville is coming into a second wind. What it offers is generously entertaining and an hour well spent, and despite it flaws, it is a fun with something really worthwhile to give.

B+

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Out in Theaters: THE COUNSELOR

October 23, 2013 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Dean Norris, Javier Bardem, Michael Fassbender, Out in Theaters, Penélope Cruz, Reviews, Ridley Scott, The Counselor

“The Counselor”
Directed by Ridley Scott
Starring Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Dean Norris, Sam Spruell, Natalie Dormer, Goran Visnjic
Crime, Drama, Thriller
117 Mins
R

When we think Ridley Scott, typically big, lavish spectacles pop up in our minds, which is why The Counselor comes as such an admirable surprise. Much more interested in cautionary talks than fits of physical violence, The Counselor plays mind games with its audience, toying with us intellectually and emotionally. One long con bleeds into a slow climb towards a heady climax of inescapable comeuppances, and we have front row seats to the scramble. If Scott’s former films are a series of taxing somatic workouts, The Counselor is the glistening sweat beading from his forehead once the Western dust has settled. Like a man with an agenda tucked up his sleeve, Scott wields an unblinkingly grim look at the allure of the international drug enterprise and the heartless abandon of cartel justice. As a piece of purely adult entertainment, it’s fearlessly mature and irreverent – the antithesis of studio expectation.

The narrative structure in which this ill-mannered tale of thoughtless vengeance unfolds is laid out like an eight-course table settings. A series of foreboding set-ups piece together a pilgrimage through the stages of greed, wealth, and power, all bonded by prosaic speeches. Various supporting characters all leaning against the post of lawlessness forewarn our hero, a man trying to dip his toe into the drug business, known only as the counselor (Michael Fassbender), of the potential gravity of the situation he’ll be marrying his money and his mouth to. No matter the caution tape they place, telling him to settle with hamburger while he can, the counselor’s taste can’t be satiated with anything less than Kobe beef. As it is, each rehearsed soliloquy is a trap set to spring later in play.

Stepping into a new role as a screenwriter, author Cormac McCarthy is a maestro at establishing these simmering ideas that later erupt in bright bursts of bloodshed. Doling out a class of ironic justice, McCarthy defies civil expectations of “fair,” parsing romanticized ideas of criminal proceedings from the stark actuality of border politics. Standing on some dusty line in the sand and glancing into the sun, there is no line, no limit, no “fair” – only gory messes and dutiful cleanups.

In revealing this harsh reality, McCarthy and Scott know exactly how and when to play their cards. As the adage goes, if you show a gun in the first act, it better go off by the time the credits roll. Throughout The Counselor, McCarthy and Scott show an arsenal of guns and give each a moment in the sun to pop off in the film’s home stretch. Though some may feel taxed by the grueling nature of Scott and McCarthy building this house of cards, the payoff is well worth the wait.

Although McCarthy’s talky script flirts with being overly showy, like the teachers pet showing off, his larger-than-life dialogue works to convert this tale of untold tragedy into a thing of grit-toothed folklore, transporting it like smuggled heroin from the blood-in-the-sand shoot-em-up it might have been to a more uncharted territory. But make no mistake; this is entirely McCarthy’s intention – entirely his rodeo. His fingerprints smother the dialogue, fueling the jet black tone and unrelenting bleakness dripping from the screen. Dangling characters at the end of his puppet strings, using them as mouthpieces for his prosaic tact for conversation, McCarthy’s pithy word play is the star of the show.

To the chagrin of those expecting a guns blazing actioner, The Counselor is only violent in rare fits, so for those going for a bloodbath – beware. When it does shift to the grisly side, it’s more of the full-stop violence of Refn’s films than anything this side of Kill Bill. This is violence as reality; violence as horror; not some glamorized Hollywood spectacle. But the elements that will really haunt you are the ones that slink into the shadows, the ones that are suggested, talked about in whispers, but never shown.

With a screenplay that exchanges high-octane thrills for moments of stressful self-reflection and one-on-one character conversations, Scott keeps the proceedings lively by punctuating them with anecdotal scenes that offer some of the lighter and more engaging moments. Between the gasps, the laughs, and the many talks, there’s not too much room for adrenaline. Much more a mentally stressful film than one that will have your blood pumping in thirsty gushes, all may be quiet on the western front, but it’s not in the minds of those living there.

For a movie that depends so much on the weight of these character chats, a rock solid cast is an absolute necessity. To the benefit of all, the top-tier cast lined up fully rises to the occasion. As the titular counselor, Fassbender continues to flex his thespian muscles, showcasing a spectrum of trade tricks that really makes his performance pop. Although still unconvinced of her true talent, at least in the English language, Penélope Cruz manages to be more than just eye candy and displays a woman who humanizes beauty and love requited. Brad Pitt continues to hit his mark in a solid streak of winning performances, although his Southern drawl may have started to wear a little thin. Cloaked in gaudy clothes and rings the size of dinner party costume jewelry, Cameron Diaz puts in the role of a lifetime. Sadly, that’s a low bar to hit and her performance fails to become the true stunner that it could have been.

As the gold-toothed Malkina, a sexual minx of any sinner’s fantasy, Diaz is on the precipice of something great but never trusts herself enough to take a true risk. In many ways, Malkina is a feminine ode to McCarthy’s Anton Chigurh. Though lacking the brute force of Chigurh, they share comparable devilishly savvy elements. It’s as if they are long separated siblings or lovers who will never be. Ironically, Malkina’s love interest here is played by Chigurh actor Javier Bardem, although his role here is more a thing of kooky-clothed comic relief than the stuff of day terrors. While Chigurh was driven by a distorted cosmic sense of justice, Malkina is ruled by authoritative greed. Too secure in her old image to take a blind leap of faith into the mysterious recesses of something fresh though, Diaz flirts with being great but doesn’t commit. Although I originally had her as a potential Oscar nominee, those chances are all but slashed.

As is becoming a trend for him, Scott throttles the line of brilliance but allows himself to get bogged down in the execution of it. Illustrating his potential for staggeringly intelligent storytelling, there are explosions of excellence scattered throughout The Counselor and a surgeon-steady backbone of thoughtful inspiration, it still gets a little muddled along the way. The wealth of intriguing ideas are there but I’m not convinced that they are fully realized.

Stepped in the tradition of the Old West, The Counselor leaves you wanting to know more, curious if you’d missed anything, and thirsty for another viewing. With the magic of a red pen and another few months spent on pre-production, this could have been an astonishing product, as it is, it’s Prometheus in the desert – brilliance pocked with gaping holes. With a little more polish and another couple edits, this could have been as solid gold as the cap on Cameron Diaz’s canine.

B

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Out in Theaters: WADJDA

October 18, 2013 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters

“Wajdja”
Directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour
Starring Waad Mohammed, Reem Abdullah, Abdullrahman Al Gohani, Ahd, Sultan Al Assaf
Drama, Foreign
98 Mins
PG

Wadjda is first and foremost an important film. More than just the first movie ever filmed in Saudi Arabia – where cinema has been illegal under censorship laws since the 1980s – and the first feature film ever from a female Saudi Arabian director, Wadjda is actually quite a good film. Director Haifaa Al-Mansour braves the rocky shoals of creating a slyly counterculture work in a totalitarian epoch that bans women from driving, voting, and dressing as they like, crossing the finish line with saintly courage. With material on display that, like its central character, is consciously subversively and takes careful aim at the many forms of culturally approved misogyny, Al-Mansour boldly broadcasts material that defiantly flies in the face of the normative Saudi lifestyle and, for it, she deserves celebration.

Our heroine Wadjda – inspired both by Al-Mansour’s niece and her own childhood experiences – is a headstrong young girl, seemingly not aware of the vast limitations placed on her by society. She’s as spunky as a young Saudi girl can get, secretly rocking Chuck Taylors under the secrecy of her burka and jamming out to American Top 40 on Beats headphones. Her heart set on a buying a bicycle to race with her male friend, Wadjda turns to a Quran recitation contest to win the money to buy her prized possession.

However innocent her quest to obtain a bike may seem, roadblocks surround her. Even her loving family and schoolteachers tell her that bicycles are strictly forbidden for girls. For something as simple as riding a bicycle, Wajdja could face lifelong consequences, they warn. Blind to the “ought to’s” of gender, Wajdja either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care. To Wajdja, that bike is all the freedom a girl could want, and she wants what she wants so no silly cultural norm is going to stop her. Proving that little is more beautiful than the arrogant ignorance of a child; Wajdja sees gender walls as something she can conquer. We allow ourselves to root for her, suppressing our adult understanding of slim odds. As it goes, the house always wins.

Wadjda’s ensuing journey throughout her Saudi Arabian landscape is hopeful and yet deeply tragic. As a harbinger of a new generation of progressive youth, Waad Mohammed is magnetic as Wadjda. Shuffling to strip the invisible weights societal expectations have saddled on her – omnipresent reminders of her lower status within a male-dominated society – Wadjda proceeds with a smile.

While playing outside the schoolyard gates, a female teacher scolds Wadjda, “Women’s voices shouldn’t be heard by men outside.” I almost gagged. Cultural sensitivity be damned, that kind of senseless, patriarchal censorship is sickening and Al-Mansour begs you to agree. No young girl should be muzzled like a criminal, simply because of her gender. A culture steeped in tradition, promoting uniformity and encouraging submission is a culture at standstill, and Al-Mansour does a masterful job at conveying this pejorative truth.

Moving into the third act, Wajdja faces its biggest problem: colliding with a glass ceiling of touchiness. En route to a whopping defamation of culture, Al-Mansour veers. Admitting that her original vision was much bleaker, Al-Mansour has skirted around some of the goriest details and settles with a bit of a storybook version. Grey skies are painted bright blue as heartbreaking circumstances are touched up with happy endings. We get a sample of the true injustices but we never experience the full flavor. As grim circumstances turn towards a brighter tomorrow, Al-Mansour gently raps, leaving the true lambasting for another time, another place, and another artist.

This is the issue of being part and parcel of the society you’re examining, you don’t have the degree of separation to allow for unwavering freedom in storytelling. Still deeply ingrained within it, perhaps to the point of being a hostage, Al-Mansour escapes into Wadjda, feeling the perpetual pain of a woman suffocated by medieval beliefs that still rain supreme. But Wadjda doesn’t quite play like the cry for help, as it easily could have. It’s more of a gentle nudge towards feminism – a reminder of its ever-increasing importance in progressive society.

Sure to be a healthy contender at this year’s Oscars for Best Foreign Language film, Wajdja earns its place on the roster with strong storytelling and historical significance. Giving us a peek at discrimination through the eyes of a child, Wajdja tenderly plays at our heartstrings, reinforcing the magnificent blessing of our unadulterated freedom.

B

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Out in Theaters: ESCAPE PLAN

October 18, 2013 by Jill Landon Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged 50 Cent, Action, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Escape Plan, Jim Caviezel, Mikael Hafstrom, Mystery, Review, Sylvester Stalone, Thriller, Vincent D'Onofrio 1 Comment

“Escape Plan”
Directed by Mikael Håfström
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel, Faran Tahir, Amy Ryan, Sam Neill, Vincent D’Onofrio and 50 Cent.
Action, Mystery, Thriller
116 Mins
R

There’s a lot to be said for how entertaining a shoot-em up picture can be if handled with tact and the right people. Escape Plan dispenses with tact and focuses entirely on the “right” people, serving as a vehicle for the film’s stars to get into fights and be brooding, tough-guy stereotypes over a page-one rewrite of Escape from Alcatraz. Crass in all the wrong places, Escape Plan is a superficial viewing experience that takes the prison break formula to its extreme, both in plot elements and in believability. Where it should soar in scope, it exploits its star power, avoiding “setting the scene” or providing any action sequences that are even on par with the films that Escape Plan tries to emulate.

The film stars Sylvester Stallone as a prison break-out expert who literally wrote the book on reinforcing prisons alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger as his later accomplice, Jim Caviezel as their diabolical warden, and Vincent D’Onofrio as Stallone’s business partner. D’Onofrio and fellow cast members Faran Tahir, Amy Ryan, Sam Neill, and 50 Cent barely get a couple one-liners each on screen in a film focused entirely on Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s conflict with Caviezel, which isn’t terribly surprising. It’s obvious this is a B-movie, one that seems to exist entirely so that Schwarzenegger and Stallone can remind fans that they’re tough action heroes, even though both are in their sixties. The casting is rife with stereotypical roles that are never fleshed out, and even for a pulp film the portrayals are pretty shallow.

Stallone, we’re told, has made a living for the better part of the last decade breaking out of prisons and writing about prison security as part of his partnership with D’Onofrio at the security firm they jointly own. When a job comes Stallone’s way from the CIA to break out of a private prison where the “worst of the worse” are held, Stallone signs up after about a minute’s hesitation, only to discover that he’s been set up. He meets Schwarzenegger in this supposedly state-of-the-art successor to the black box prisons America utilizes and the rest of the movie is them using ingenuity, their muscles, and all the guns they can find to get out of the place alive. No elaborate stage-setting here, just Schwarzenegger and Stallone as they face the worst excesses of American imperialism. Their back stories and even names pale in importance in comparison to their stoicism and prison beat down skills.

The film deals with a number of surprisingly dark topics – private prisons, prison brutality, lack of transparency and accountability, American imperial overreach – with cavalier and fascicle levity, the themes serving as shallow reasons for the two aging stars to get themselves into a hard spot they have to punch and shoot their way out of. The formula of a prison break has been given much higher stakes here than in many previous iterations – Stallone is an expert on prison breakouts and the prison he’s at is the best private prison for the worst (read: mass-murdering, insane, anti-American) prisoners. While this would tow the line for a lot of B-movie criteria if it were more tongue-in-cheek or even slightly more visually descriptive, instead we’re left with a simple treatment of extraordinary problems without the assurance of a campy joke or at least some amusing action thrills.

The problem that this film has as its core is that it pretends to take itself seriously and then fails to deliver on its gravitas. Instead of embracing it’s camp and going over the top, the fight scenes and prison breakouts are remarkably commonplace to the genre and feel muted. The strongman act that both Stallone and Schwarzenegger have made wonderful and storied careers out of needs to be balanced by overwhelming action – typically violent – that these silent-types end up employing in the pursuit of their goal. Escape Plan falls short in this regard, making you wait instead for the one shot that reminds you of Rambo or whatever film you’d rather be seeing these stars in. There are a lot of problematic depictions of Islamic inmates and of gender dynamics that are a little too phobic and regressive for discerning tastes, and if they’d only made the action more intense and the setting a little better, it might have started to compensate for these foul-breathed shortcomings.

The prison, pitched as an ultra hi-tech Panopticon, is aesthetically unimpressive. With block names like Babylon and an aspiration to present the best prison ever built, you’d think they’d have spent a little more effort on the spectacle. Instead, you get Plexiglas boxes on stilts and prison guards who, despite their black face masks, look more like mall cops then deadly security contractors. The visuals and set pieces don’t have the kind of hellish quality you’d expect from a place where the most dangerous international figures are housed. Even the other inmates barely looked like they belonged in Oz, much less in the Alcatraz of the War on Terror era. The styling of the place wouldn’t cut in in the 80’s films that Escape Plan wants to be like, and that apparently no effort was made to bridge that gap is disappointing.

Even when those moments come up, the moments that the film was made for – Schwarzenegger machine-guns a bunch of goons, the villains gets their comeuppances, and Stallone delivers the beat down of the movie to the head guard – aren’t as satisfying when taking the movie in as a whole. The explosions aren’t as big as they should be, the final lines aren’t catchy enough, and the fighting scenes are so poorly executed that you never really feel like the heroes are in any danger. Sure, they may have had torture to put up with, but they were never so broken down that they didn’t have the upper hand against their over-maniacal and wonderfully incompetent jailers. That the film shortchanges audiences in those smaller, establishing scenes lessens the glory of the moments that were the most visceral, leaving all but the most ardent Stallone/Schwarzenegger devotees feeling stiffed.

You want to like a film like Escape Plan if you’re into low-budget action films, but they didn’t put in enough effort to sell the premise and they didn’t make the action scenes extravagant enough to compensate for that lack of scene-setting. It lacks enough camp to B-movie homage and is not bold or funny enough, unintentional or otherwise, to be a regular B-movie. This is the kind of film that would go straight to DVD if it had other stars then the ones it has, making the many missed opportunities for action or spectacle hurt even more. If you have to see everything that Schwarzenegger or Stallone has been in, you’ll see this anyways. If not, do yourself a favor and rent Predator or First Blood instead.

D

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