Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Lie
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Due Date
In his new film Due Date, director Todd Phillips (Old School, The Hangover) stages a rather audacious cinematic experiment, placing two enormously talented actors, Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis, on a mostly deserted island, handing them an assortment of blunt and broken tools, and charging them with constructing a free-standing, fully-functioning Hollywood comedy.
To his credit, Phillips was at least considerate enough to supply his comic Crusoes with a detailed blueprint. An odd-couple/road trip movie hybrid, Due Date unapologetically mimics Planes, Trains and Automobiles, one of the John Hughes' rare “grown-up” comedies, in which Steve Martin starred as a straightlaced family man forced to travel cross-country with a gratingly affable slob, played by John Candy, in order to make it home for Thanksgiving. (Surely there have been other such films before and since, but Hughes’ work is the one Due Date most vividly recalls.)
The film’s script, co-written by Phillips and Adam Sztykiel, adds a handful of 21st-century twists to the formula: A baggage snafu while boarding an airplane leads Peter Highman (Downey), a type-A architect with a history of anger-management issues, into a confrontation with a Federal Air Marshal that subsequently lands him on Homeland Security’s no-fly list. Stranded without reliable transport, lacking the means by which to procure any (he left his wallet on the plane), and desperate to be reunited in L.A. with his pregnant wife (Michelle Monaghan) in time for her scheduled c-section, he reluctantly agrees to hitch a ride with the same tubby schmuck, Ethan (Galifianakis), who moments earlier was the catalyst of his security debacle.
The unlikely travel companions embark on a calamitous road trip from Atlanta to L.A., during which Ethan proves to be something of a disaster magnet, with Peter bearing the brunt of the damage that occurs. Their navigator, Phillips, lazily guides them through an uneven obstacle course of comic scenarios, some of which are embarrassingly predictable (Ethan stores his beloved father’s ashes in a coffee can, and they’re later accidentally used to make coffee!), all of which are designed to showcase Downey’s caustic wit and Galifianakis’ sublime daffiness.
Few actors today deliver choice insults better than Downey, and even fewer absorb them better than Galifianakis. They make for a truly marvelous collision of opposites, and their interplay is what elevates Due Date above its often puzzlingly flat material. (That, along with Galifianakis’ gift for physical comedy; no actor outside of the Jackass crew can better sell a collision with a car door.) The film's supporting cast, meanwhile, criminally underachieves. Conspicuous cameos from the likes of Danny McBride, Juliette Lewis, and Jamie Foxx are either unfunny, unnecessary, or both. On this road trip, they’re little more than baggage. Thankfully, Downey and Galifianakis are more than capable of shouldering the burden.
Big Mommas : Like Father, Like Son
Hall Pass
Men and women, as every chick flick and buddy-slob comedy will tell you, don't just come from different galaxies — they're locked in a battle for supremacy. But Hall Pass, a light comedy of horny marital woe from directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly, makes a novel statement about the sex wars: It says that they're essentially over. And that the guys — in case there was any lingering suspense about it — have lost.
Rick (Owen Wilson), a real estate agent who dresses in amazingly dweebish plaid shirts, and Fred (Jason Sudeikis), a life-insurance salesman as genial and square as Howdy Doody, are suburban schlubs devoted to their wives and (in Rick's case) family. When Rick isn't taking out the trash or disciplining his children with textbook New Dad sensitivity, he, like Fred, has one topic on the brain: all the sexy, gorgeous women who, as faithful and loving husbands, they will never, ever get to sleep with.
All of which, I know, makes them sound like the most common and boorish of male movie characters. Except for one thing: These two, though they spend their hours fantasizing about straying, would never dream of actually doing it. They're like neutered dogs who carry their own leashes. When it comes to satisfying their libidos, they're whipped, defeated — by the demands of family life (who has time for sex when you're trying to get the kids to bed?) or just by their loyalty. The raunchy chatter spills out of them, and some of it is funny, but mostly because it's so pathetically vicarious.
Hall Pass presents these men as a new archetype: the frustrated middle-aged husband as randy adolescent virgin. Wilson, geeked out in super-square hair, knows how to use his gentleness to turn himself into a figure of soft desperation. And Saturday Night Live's Sudeikis, in his first major movie role, has an agreeably dorky, bootlicking officiousness. (Fred thinks that he's scored a victory if he figures out how to look at a woman's behind without his wife seeing him.) They are so domesticated, the joke is they don't even know their pent-up sexual frustration is driving them nuts.
It takes their wives, Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate), to figure that out, and, under the influence of a pop psychologist (Joy Behar), to propose a solution: They will give their husbands a ''hall pass,” a week off from marriage during which the two will be allowed to sow their wild oats — and, in theory, purge all those demons of roving-eyed desire. It's a kind of high-concept therapy for a high-concept comedy that views the hidden and buried lusts of married men in the age of Internet porn as a ticklishly normal state of affairs.
The Farrellys, working from a script they co-wrote with Pete Jones and Kevin Barnett, set all this up with an innocent dirty-minded aplomb. Still, if Rick and Fred's dilemma is the film's amusing appetizer, the main course ought to be what they actually do when they're let loose. And the punchline is: Out on their own, Rick and Fred are such hapless, inept womanizers that even when ''freed,” they're still trapped — imprisoned — in their overgrown-teenage heads. They treat Applebee's as a pickup joint and eat themselves into a food coma. They scarf pot brownies on a golf course, with even uglier results. And when they do try to hook up, they're so wild-and-crazy clueless about how seduction now works (''R-O-C-K in the USA!” says Rick, thinking that he's just said something cool, which makes you want to dive under your seat) that women look at them as if they were another species.
That, however, is a joke of diminishing returns. Hall Pass would like to be as dunked in reality as Judd Apatow's best comedies, but the movie is thin. The Farrellys can't quite nudge the characters from two dimensions to three. When Rick and Fred get lessons in humanity, the movie seems to be about two sketch-comedy characters learning they have souls. As one of the girls they keep approaching might say, Ewwww! It would have helped if the women on screen, from the wives to the ''perfect” Aussie coffee-bar babe (Nicky Whelan), were remotely interesting. But they're not. Which raises the question: How shrewdly can a comedy satirize the arrested male gaze when the movie itself is trapped in it?
127 Hours
Danny Boyle doesn't believe in doing the same thing twice. After the rousing success of the romantic fantasy Slumdog Millionaire, he has switched not only gears but continents to tell the true story of Aron Ralston in 127 Hours, an "action film with a guy who can't move." The film's similarities to Buried are striking in that both movies rely primarily on the performance of the lead actor and both challenge the audience's stamina to stay with a character under trying circumstances for 90 minutes. The level of tension in 127 Hours does not reach the intense level achieved by Buried, but it contains a scene so disturbing in its blistering, realistic gore that some will be forced to turn away. 127 Hours is unflinching in its depiction of what constitutes the "will to live."
The rest of this review assumes that the reader is at least cursorily familiar with the real life story of Aron Ralston, whose ordeal was the subject of numerous news stories in May 2003 (as well as subsequent network TV and cable documentaries). Those who don't recognize Ralston's name and/or don't recall the news reports may find my discussion of the film to be highly "spoiler-ish."
As is suggested by the title, 127 Hours covers a period slightly longer than five days lasting from the end of April to the beginning of May 2003. Maverick adventurer Aron Ralston (James Franco), 27 years old at the time, ventures into Utah's Blue John Canyon to do a little climbing and exploring. The film's first fifteen minutes, which are bright and colorful with glorious landscape shots accompanied by A. R. Rahman's throbbing score, serve the dual purpose of introducing us to the cocky main character and showing off the setting. Aron encounters a pair of lost female hikers (played by Amber Tamblin and Kate Mara, in what amount to cameos) and helps them find their way to their destination before he continues on his own. It's not long, however, before a mishap results in him tumbling down a shaft and becoming trapped at the bottom when a boulder crushes his arm against a tunnel wall and becomes lodged there. He tries everything within his power to free himself but the tools at his disposal are limited. As his supply of water dwindles, Aron realizes he may die here.
As with Buried, 127 Hours remains with the protagonist for the entire running time, never flashing to scenes of concerned friends or relatives wondering where their loved one is. There are a few brief flashbacks early during Aron's ordeal and, as dehydration and fatigue begin to take their toll on his mental state, he experiences dreams and hallucinations. The film, attempting to get into the character's mindset, represents these as parts of a half-crazed reality. Aron, who has a camcorder with him, records a video diary of some of his thoughts and experiences, with the hope that whoever finds his body will return it to his parents. (In real life, the videotape exists. Although it has never been shown publicly, Ralston allowed Boyle and Franco to view it as part of their preparation for making the movie. That, along with interviews and his autobiographical book about the experience, provides the narrative's basis.)
James Franco, who is on screen for nearly every frame of the film (often in close-up), gives the performance of a lifetime, overturning his reputation as a dramatic lightweight. He carries the movie. For more than an hour, we're down in a hole with Aron, and the tautness and intensity of Franco's performance keeps us engaged. It's his interpretation of the character that gets us to the point where we understand why Aron chose the path of self-amputation as the sole route of survival.
Needless to say, that scene is difficult to watch, and Boyle doesn't truncate it, turn the camera away, or do anything to lessen its impact. We see Aron break both bones of his forearm then use the dull penknife of a cheap multi-utility tool to saw away at the soft tissue. It's a bloody and unpleasant scene. There have been walkouts at some screenings and many have closed their eyes or turned away. Although less gruesome than the goriest images in some horror movies, the "reality" of this scene makes it more difficult to watch (in much the same way that it's almost impossible to view a fingernail be ripped off in a motion picture, even though it's a relatively simple special effect).
Although 127 Hours bears little resemblance to Slumdog Millionaire, it is made by largely the same crew. Boyle wrote the screenplay with Simon Beaufoy. Anthony Dod Mantle did some of the camerawork. And A.R. Rahman, the famous Indian composer, wrote the score. It's a testimony to the talents of these men that, if not revealed, one would not guess the connection between the films.
Boyle succeeds in documenting Aron's ordeal and in chronicling the difficulties he faced while in the hole: wild extremes in temperature, physical and mental fatigue, numerous failed attempts to free himself, and the anguish of waiting for death. His eventual act was part courage and part desperation, and many viewers will wonder (while hoping never to have to learn the answer) if they could do something equally extreme in a similar situation. The movie tosses in a little philosophy (about predestination) that doesn't resonate and some black comedy that does. One thing almost entirely absent (at least for those who know the basics of the story) is suspense. Not only do we know that Aron is going to survive but we're aware of how he's going to do it. So watching 127 Hours becomes not an exercise in finding out how things end but in studying the details of what went on during those five long days. Labeling the movie as a "thriller" or an "action" film could be deemed misleading because of this. Regardless, Boyle has made a singularly intense motion picture that tells in narrative form the same tale that has been related in TV documentaries. This is a fascinating story of determination and survival that deserves to be told. It is ultimately uplifting but it's tough going to get to that point.
Unknown
Biotech scientist Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) and his wife Lisa (January Jones) arrive in Berlin for an international conference. However, he accidentally leaves the briefcase containing his passport and other important papers at the airport. Letting his wife check him in at the posh hotel, Harris catches a cab to go back to the airport. But on the way, the cab is involved in an accident and plunges into a river. Martin is pulled from the water by Gina (Diane Kruger), the courageous driver. Since she is an illegal Bosnian immigrant, she leaves the scene after making sure he is taken care of by a medical team.
Harris falls into a four-day coma and wakes up with a mild case of amnesia. Without his passport, he has no way of proving who he really is. When he finds out his wife is at the hotel in Berlin, he is thrilled to be reunited with her. The only problem is that Lisa claims to have never seen him before and that she is at the scientific conference with her husband Martin Harris (Aidan Quinn). The hero's problems are multiplied by having assassins on his trail. He finds allies in Gina, in a nurse, and in Jurgen (a scene stealing Bruno Ganz), a detective who was once an East German secret police official.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra tries to pump up the action in this identity-loss thriller with too many car chases. Although the film doesn't add any fresh insights into the complexities of the brain and the mysteries of memory, Liam Neeson's imposing stature on the screen is enough to carry the thriller to its surprise ending where all the details are explained by the scientist's close friend (Frank Langella) who has a few secrets of his own.
I Am Number Four
