Lawless (2012)

Somewhere I recall I read something vaguely positive about this movie, so I dropped it in my queue and forgot about it, and of course it came in the day after I sat through the disastrous Gangster Squad. This film is set slightly earlier, in the 30s, and follows the travails of three brothers who get themselves involved in the moonshine running business.

The Bondurant brothers are Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack (Shia LeBeouf). They enjoy their smuggling life until the gangsters in Chicago decide they want a piece of the action. When Forrest refuses to play ball, the gangsters send in a special deputy, Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce, in a weird haircut and sans eyebrows), though how the mob is able to dispatch a law enforcement officer is never explained. Rakes has a reputation for being all business, and so a tit-for-tat war ensues, which takes up a large part of the picture. There’s also a subplot where Jack, with the help of his mechanically-inclined friend Cricket (Dane DeHaan) tries to open his own still and come out from beneath Forrest’s shadow, love interests for Forrest and Jack that don’t really go anywhere, and an entire plot featuring Gary Oldman as a mobster, unaffiliated with the Chicago gangs, that never takes off either.

Lawless is a good deal more realistic than Gangster Squad, set in the hollows of Applachia and portraying the plight of the impoverished during the depression, at least at the start. Once the bootlegging business gets going, Jack indulges in the finer things (nice suits, a fancy car), to the disdain of both his brothers. While the high level of violence is there (Forrest gets his throat cut and barely survives; everyone gets beaten to a bloody pulp at some point), it’s handled fairly realistically. Here women are the objects of violence of well; Chastain has to suffer a rape later in the picture to provide motivation for the boys to finally go after Rakes, though in real bootlegging history it didn’t take much for the bullets to fly – usually it was all about money.

The serious tone and the sepia color palette broadcast that the movie takes its plot and setting seriously, and the casting is largely in line with that vision. Hardy is intriguing as Forrest; he says little about himself (though Jack’s constant narration provides us with more information than we need), and Hardy gives him an air of menace that’s both interesting and repellant. Chastian is on the rise, and does fine here, but isn’t called upon to do much more than be sassy and suffer; any moderately talented actress would have sufficed. I enjoyed Jason Clarke’s slightly off-kilter portrayal of the short-fused and generally drunken Howard, a nice contrast to Forrest, who is always in control. Pearce just plays it weird, which ends up being satisfactory until the end, where he must wax extra-villanous, and Oldman’s not in the movie enough to have much impact.

This just leaves us with LaBeouf, who for some reason is the center of the picture. Jack’s kind of an oaf next to Forrest, and after a time I began to resent him stealing the focus from the more interesting character. Jack’s a chatterbox, telling us everything we need to know about the movie, effortlessly dispensing with the wisdom that less is more. I grew tired of LaBeouf after a while, and I believe it was this fatigue that dragged down enjoyment of the movie for me. LaBeouf may be the biggest name in the cast (maybe), but he’s not an actor the way Hardy or Chastain are; he’s a movie star, more like Tom Cruise than, say, Matt Damon, and I’ll take an actor over a star any day. I know stars put butts in seats, but LaBeouf’s limits are quite obvious here as he struggles to keep up with more seasoned and talented cast members; setting him as the centerpiece was a mistake that renders a potentially interesting film merely watchable, and even then sometimes the thumb itches for the fast-forward button. Lawless isn’t a bad movie, but it obviously could have been a much better one. You won’t regret watching it, but I doubt you’ll treasure it either.

April 30, 2013

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)

It took me a week to review this because I was of a very divided mind about it. Generally I try to review a film as quickly as possible after seeing it so I can better capture my emotional reaction, but I kept flipping back and forth on this film. Now I want to get it out before I lose any connection with it and it becomes just another line on a to-do list, as this film deserves more than that.

Extremely concerns itself chiefly with young Oskar (Thomas Horn), who shares a close relationship with his father Thomas (Tom Hanks); the boy is bright, and the father stimulates his intelligence and critical thinking by creating games and quests for him. When Tom is killed in the 9/11 attacks, Oskar has difficulty dealing with his loss, and develops a number of personality tics to try to cope with the sudden and horrific loss. When he finds a key among his father’s belongings, he draws upon the skills his father imbued in him to try to find what it goes to, hoping it will reveal a secret that will bring him closer to the memory of his missing parent and perhaps provide some closure.

Horn is terrific as Oskar, and his confusion and terror are palpable, as is his determination; he remains steadfastly focused in only the way a child can even when the plan to find the lock the key fits seems hopeless. Along the way he dodges his well-meaning mother (Sandra Bullock) and encounters an old man who sublets a room from his grandmother, known only as The Renter (Max von Sydow). The Renter is mute perhaps by choice (it’s not fully explained), and has ‘yes’ and ‘no’ tattooed on his palms. He ends up befriending Oskar and eventually aids him in his search.

Everyone’s excellent here. Of course, all the adults are established actors, but Bullock moves nicely outside her comfort zone of well-meaning klutz to deliver a very subtle performance. Von Sydow never says a word and yet he captures the imagination almost from the get go. And it’s possible Hanks has never been as warm or likable as he is here, a nearly perfect father, so that we feel some of Oskar’s pain when suddenly he’s no longer there.

And yet there are some contrivances in the story that tugged at me. While The Renter is an intriguing character, he feels more like a character from a book than a real person (I kept waiting for him to speak, even a single word, but no). And the mystery of the key, which drives much of the story, wraps up with an almost Dickensian sense of familiarity, where you find out the chimney sweep is really the admiral’s long-lost sister’s son blah blah blah. The Renter plays a major role in the center of the film, yet he’s dropped toward the finale and only brought back as an afterthought; for a character so central to the proceedings he ends up not really haing that much to do with them. I liked many of the pieces of this film, and it is a tearjerker in spots, connecting powerfully in some scenes. But it doesn’t quite add up to a completely satisfactory whole, as if certain elements are forgotten or misplaced and then suddenly recalled to the center of the story.

Nonetheless there’s some powerful acting, and the movie reminds us (as if the events of Boston of late didn’t) that we aren’t still really over 9/11 in many ways, and I guess we never will be, at least not any time soon. There’s some fine acting in the film, and it’s probably worth a look for that alone; but be warned, the plot doesn’t always shake out.

April 28, 2013

11 Harrowhouse (1974)

It’s a little odd to me that I managed to find, within a week of each other, two movies I’ve been seeking out for more than two decades. I can’t recall if I actually saw this one in the theater or not, but I certainly saw it on TV when I was a kid, and then never since. So it’s been almost forty years (am I really that old? I suppose so) that I’ve been a fan of this movie, and only recently got to see it again.

It’s an unjustly forgotten gem. Charles Grodin stars and narrates (in some versions, more later) as Howard Chesser, a diamond seller who buys from ‘The System’ located at Number 11 Harrowhouse street (hence the title). He inherited his job from his father, and his contact at the System, Meecham (John Gielgud) never lets him forget it. Meecham continually slights and rips off Chesser, who has little recourse as he requires access to their diamonds. The lone ace Chesser has up his sleeve is his girlfriend, Maren (Candice Bergen, sigh), who is independently wealthy, intelligent, and frightfully skilled (think a blonde Emma Peel). Chesser is contacted by a very wealthy man, Massey (Trevor Howard), who wants him to purchase a 100 carat diamond which Massey intends to name after himself. All goes well for Chesser and Maren until they are drugged and relieved of the diamond, at which point Massey uses his leverage on them to force them to steal a cache of diamonds located underground at The System. To do this, Chesser enlists the aid of a longtime System employee, Charles Watts (James Mason), to provide him with information.

This could have been a normal caper pic, but what sets it apart is the wonderfully dry voiceover narration by Grodin (who apparently wrote that dialogue himself). While the film itself is entertaining and clever, the wry narration is what really makes it sing (at one point Chesser says, “These guys couldn’t be that much smarter than me. They were chasing a motor vehicle on horseback.”). The movie has been released to DVD sans narration, and while I’m sure that’s an engaging experience, you’re very definitely missing something without it (I watched a low-res TV rip of the movie rather to obtain a version with narration rather than watch DVD quality without it).

Grodin is terrific; he’s dry and ironic, almost an anti-hero spoof of the macho superspy. He’s completely comfortable with the fact that Maren is better at the caper stuff than he is (she teaches him how to shoot, and is the one that initially infiltrates the System’s security). Grodin brings an everyman quality to the role that makes Chesser appealing to the viewer, a mid-70s mensch who is the very opposite of a spy like James Bond. For all that he’s terribly engaging, and the voiceover work is brilliant. Bergen is even more appealing that usual; one suspects that Maren realizes she’s the better half of the pair, but she never lords it over him, content to be partner to a man she loves. She’s just as much fun as Grodin, and brings just the light touch to the proceedings. The other three leads – Howard, Mason, and Gielgud – are all uniformly excellent (one would expect no less of them), with Mason giving a touching performance and Gielgud being a real prick.

The film is a perfect example of mid-70s irony; Grodin is hardly the masculine leading man, yet his humor and intelligence render him instantly appealing. Bergen could have coasted on her ample good looks (which they take smart advantage of), but her Maren is confident, capable, and free-spirited, a perfect match for Chesser. At times almost leaning into spoof, 11 Harrowhouse is just the right blend of action, heist movie, and humor, the kind of film they really don’t make any more (think a drier Ocean’s 11, and don’t think about its sequels at all). Again, unjustly forgotten, this film is definitely worth your time to look up – but make sure you get a version including Grodin’s brilliant narration (available on iTunes). Certainly worth your time to look up. Hell, I waited almost four decades and I wasn’t disappointed.

April 28, 2013

Gangster Squad (2012)

Sometimes you just know. You can’t blame it on the trailer, you can’t defend your choice with any logic, you know you have chosen to watch a movie that is most likely going to stink. You do it anyway out of the vague hope that all evidence is in fact to the contrary, or maybe you will see something no one else saw, or maybe your gut is just wrong. I’ve been pleasantly surprised before, and sometimes I’ve stuck with movies that started out rough but got better, even enjoyable, as they went along.  Here, I knew.

Gangster Squad is a modern film set in the forties, which is not the same as a period piece; there’s no attention to 40s detail other than the costumes and ladies’ makeup. Haircuts are all absurdly long, though there’s at least an attempt to capture 40s movie dialogue; oh, and since we’re in pre-1980, characters are allowed to smoke everywhere, even though only some of them do. The cast is what pulls the unsuspecting viewer in: Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Robert Patrick, Michael Pena—all of these actors have been brilliant elsewhere, but sadly, none of them are here. In brief, Penn is gangster Mickey Cohen (looking more like Dick Tracy’s Flattop in inadvisable prosthetics), who is so evil and venal that regular law enforcement is powerless in the face of his greed and corruption, so Josh Brolin is chosen to head up a crew of men who will operate outside the law to take down Cohen and his gang. If this sounds familiar, and unless you’re semi-comatose, it should, it’s the plot of at least a dozen movies in the past few decades, the best of which was Untouchables, which I think the people behind this were envisioning in their heads as they ‘wrote’ this movie; but the worst of which was Band of the Hand, which this skews much closer to. Most of the rest of the cast are members of Brolin’s gang – Patrick is some kind of old cowboy stereotype, Mackie and Pena are the token non-whites required in an ensemble, Ribisi is the Scotty of the bunch (the same role he played in the equally forgettable Sky Captain and the World of Why in the Hell did I Pay Five Dollars to See This Crap?), and Gosling phones it in as the slick ladies’ man who doesn’t want any part of this renegade bruiser gang until holy Christ Cohen’s goons killed a kid, what is this world coming to? Emma Stone is there solely as a sop to those young men whose girlfriends dragged them to see this movie, and to give the smoking fetishists in the audience something to salivate over.

It goes pretty much by the numbers; they hit Cohen, he hits back, the chief disavows them, Gosling and Stone begin a dangerous romance, the guys basically traipse around Cohen until the final reel, when he sprouts horns, chews scenery, and then we have to sit through a ridiculous mano-a-mano as Penn and Brolin slug it out. In an attempt at ‘realism’ everyone’s banged up after a fight, but the levels of violence are so absurd in this movie they approach the cartoonish. At times it feels less like a movie than a videogame; as Gosling and Brolin shoot their way through a horde of baddies at one point, I thought bet that level of the game would be really hard without multiple save points.

It’s not a terrible surprise that Hollywood made a movie this mind-numbing, but that they were able to rope a cast this talented into making it is a bit of a head-scratcher, and even more disappointing is that no one took the opportunity to break out of the mold and do something weird or enjoyable (like, say, Johnny Depp’s fey approach to Captain Jack Sparrow) so at least we’d have something to watch. But sluggish acting, moronic dialogue, and a checklist approach to plotting (establish evilness of bad guy? Check. Event to pull in reluctant guy? Check. Romance to make the female viewers happy? Check) render this movie dead on arrival. If you want to see a skillfully made movie about the underworld of last century, check out Cotton Club; ten times the plot, twenty times the acting, a dangerous romance that actually has some heat, plus some terrific period music and Gregory Hines dancing. This? This isn’t even a good movie to watch while drunk.

April 27, 2013

Winchell (1998)

Though the name means little to my generation, and certainly less to those that follow, to those that grew up in the 30s and 40s, Walter Winchell was a household name. Starting as a newspaper gossip columnist, Winchell was willing to push the bar on what was acceptable to report in a time when studios controlled the media when it came to the private lives of their stars. His popularity and controversiality increased when he started ridiculing Hitler, and his radio show in the 40s was a huge hit. He didn’t transition well to TV, however, and his increasing sympathy with Joe McCarthy and staunchly anti-communist stance put an end to his career.

Or at least that’s the story the way HBO told it in 1998. Mostly interesting only to fans of classic Hollywood or those old enough to recall Winchell firsthand, HBO took the prudent steps of casting Stanley Tucci as Winchell, and Paul Giamatti as his main ghostwriter Herman Kurfeld. These two both deliver excellent performances – Giamatti is uncharacteristically low-key and restrained – and lift what could be mediocre material into an interesting biography/drama.

There are a few notes that chime sour, however. Christopher Plummer is badly miscast in a longish cameo as FDR; he gives it a go, but neither looks nor sounds like the patrician president. And this film shares in a Hollywood indulgence when filming a period piece; yes, people smoked more before the 1970s. But it’s as if the smokers in the movie industry want to get back at the legislation that increasingly shunts them to the curb; everyone smokes all the time, in every scene, whenever they can. After a while it gets distracting (and if we’re so hung up on that detail, why can’t we get something more important like, say, haircuts done correctly? Although to their credit Giamatti’s ‘do always fit the period).

But that’s a minor quibble. This is a typical HBO production – meaning lots of cuss words and boobs whenever they can slip them in – but it seems tame compared to what they broadcast these days. Winchell isn’t bad, but it’s not really worth checking out unless you’re a huge fan of Giamatti or Tucci. You won’t waste your time watching it, but you probably won’t miss much skipping it either.

April 25, 2013

Puss in Boots (2011)

So apparently (I never saw it), this character, voiced by Antonio Banderas, stole whichever the hell Shrek movie he was in, and proved popular enough that they gave him his own film. While I tired of the Shrek movies somewhere around the ten minute mark of number two, I try to watch most of the CGI kiddie movies because I like CGI, and the creators of these films usually try to make it at least tolerable for adults to watch.

Puss follows its eponymous feline, who lives among humans in a small town in Spain (I think? Maybe Mexico) and is treated just like a human being even though he’s a cat. It turns out that he had a falling out in the past with fellow orphan Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis), and the two are now at odds. Somehow Puss is drawn into Humpty’s plan to steal the magic beans (of Jack and the Beanstalk fame) from ornery, savage hillbillies Jack (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jill (Amy Sedaris). So about half the picture is trying to deal with Jack and Jill, and the other half is Puss working with Humpty and his accomplice, Kitty Softpaws (Selma Hayek). There’s a lot of backstory (Kitty even objects as Puss sits down to tell us the whole story, but we have ninety minutes to fill), and an adorable, if dopey, Golden Goose toward the end.

They do throw in enough jokes to keep the adults entertained, but the word that keeps coming to mind is cute. Puss is cute, Kitty is cute, even Humpty, though he’s kind of a dick, is cute in a design sense. Jack and Jill seem to represent the Hollywood idea of flyover states; they’re rude, crude, speak with a country twang and keep warthogs as pets. But the action keeps things moving, along with the jokes, though the dance sequence where Kitty is introduced goes on a bit long.

There’s nothing exceptional about this film, but it is light and fluffy and enjoyable. The kids will love its bold graphics and sense of movement (although it must have been 3D; I got tired of things flying at the screen), and the adults will chuckle at some of the slyer jokes. No one but an absolute hater of kid movies will leave unsatisfied.

April 23, 2013

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)

Despite reading a smattering of complimentary reviews, I have to admit in all shallowness that even considering a somewhat impressive cast, I was put off by the title of this movie. Silly, I know, and I finally overcame that ridiculous prejudice.

Best follows the story of a number of English retirees, most of whom are down on their luck either spiritually or financially, and decide to depart their homeland for the siren call of a retirement community in India (having helped my father find a retirement home, I can attest that older folks rarely get to spend their time where they’d truly like to, unless they are rich). When they arrive, however, they find it a dilapidated old shell, run by the enthusiastic but essentially hapless Sonny (Dev Patel, in a lively performance). The older folks all react differently to the hotel and to India in general, neither of which is what they expected. Sheltered housewife Evelyn (Judi Dench) stumbles her way into a job at a call center; mild Douglas (Bill Nighy) discovers that time away from his shrewish wife (Penelope Wilton), who hates everything about India, is rejuvenating; Muriel (Maggie Smith), who’s come to India for a less-expensive hip operation, never leaves the hotel; and retired judge Graham (Tom Wilkinson) spends his days in pursuit of an old lover he left years ago.

Naturally there’s all the clucking and English disdain you’d expect as the oldsters encounter India at the onset and find it brash, colorful, noisy, and above all alive. And it’s gratifying that they don’t all experience a Coccoon-like rebirth, although some of them do. For some the road here leads to happier lives, but for others the India trip is an ending of sorts. In any event they all have personal demons that they have to wrestle with, and what’s engaging is not that they do it, but the varied paths they choose to try – or in some cases, not to try – to find some sort of peace.

At this point it’s redundant to say something insipid like “Judi Dench was remarkable.” Of course she was; a low-key, subtle performance that’s both warm and fragile by turns, she’s the key attraction to the picture. Wilkinson gets some of the best scenes (and some of the best plotlines), and is also very good. They all are – from Maggie Smith’s shrewish guardedness to Nighy’s slightly daffy good nature, each actor brings a subtle power to the role that makes them all interesting to watch. Even Dev Patel, who’s a little outside his league with this gang, manages an excellent turn.

The movie sort of creeps up on you slowly, but the ending is quite powerful, emotionally moving. So often in these sorts of films there’s a grandiose set piece at the end where everyone reaffirms life or something equally manipulative so you can leave the theater with a smile on your face, and make no mistake, the ending here is largely a happy one. But the small, subtle ways in which life is approached, and celebrated – or mourned – imbue the film with an emotional resonance at the end that’s immensely satisfying. Come for the excellent cast, stay for the fine performances, but by all means do yourself a favor and see this film.

April 22, 2013

Defiance pilot episode (April 15, 2013)

A buddy of mine from my old fandom days tipped me off to this show. I’m frankly leery of getting involved with anything SyFy (I hate that spelling) produces after getting burned by Eureka, and most of the rest of their stuff isn’t so great either. But I trust Jack’s judgement, so I decided to give this a shot, and if it sucked, well, I was only out one episode (two, technically, as the pilot is 86 minutes, but you get the idea).

Defiance is set somewhere in the later part of this century; a bunch of alien races have come to Earth and have settled here, and there must have been some sort of cataclysmic war because everything’s been completely rearranged, with the only recognizable landmark in the pilot being the St. Louis arch. How the landscape gets so drastically rearranged is never explained, nor are any of the alien races, really, but they are visually different enough to be easily told apart.

The lead character is Nolan (Grant Bowler), an ex-soldier from the war against the aliens who’s still something of a bad ass. He travels with the taciturn but intriguing and deadly Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas), whose alien race is 90% human with a little bit of cat around the eyes. They are set upon by nomads of her race (one of them sporting one of those asinine top hats that steampunk fans like for some inexplicable reason) and stripped of most of their possessions; they make their way to Defiance, a walled frontier community brimming with intrigue. There’s rookie mayor Amanda Rosewater (the ever-welcome Julie Benz), unsure of herself after only a few weeks on the job; her sister Kenya (?, Mia Kirshner), who runs the local whorehouse, and filling in for the Montagues and Capulets (literally) are Datar Tarr (Tony Curran), of an alien race that looks like the villain elf from Hellboy II, and Rafe McCawley (Graham Greene, you’d recognize him if you saw him, he was the chief in Dances With Wolves), a human with a handsome brood of children. Datar’s wife Stahma (Jaime Murray, hmmmmm) is sort of a Lady MacBeth (although I kept thinking of Robin Wright from House of Cards), so, yeah, there’s a lot to keep track of, and to top all that off, one of the Tarr kids (a boy) has the hots for a McCawley girl, so you really do have a Romeo/Juliet thing, ugh. When they swiped a page from Eureka and had the sheriff die in a bar fight, I rolled my eyes a little, because come on, the writing on your average SyFy show is poor enough without openly plundering from other ones.

But Defiance isn’t that bad, despite an overly complicated set up. Tonally it’s a western with prosthetics, and yes, Nolan is a lot like, oh, say 90% of the other ‘wish I was Han Solo’ types out there (technically in the pilot he’s more like Max Rockatansky from Road Warrior, but I’m quibbling). But most of the female characters are strong in addition to being eye-candy, and I’m all about flinty women. Tony Curran also turns in an interesting performance, but that’s hardly a surprise. Julie Benz is better than expected, as is Kershner, and Leonidas, whom I’ve never heard of before, is simply riveting. One (this one, anyway) suspects Irisa belongs on a better show on a better network, but she’s mysterious and appealing and makes you want to see more.

Unfortunately, the writing’s kind of weak. The third act is especially lunk-headed, with these nasty aliens whom everyone fears attacking in a frontal assault at the bottom of a canyon against a heavily-defended entrenched position; anyone with a rudimentary (and I’m being generous there) knowledge of tactics knows this is suicide (they had to learn it the hard way in the Civil War), and it just gets worse from there; the villains act stupid because they need to, and they get wiped out by a deus ex machina that’s terribly obvious (they even say in the script, “Hmm, that looks dangerous, maybe we should wipe that out.”). Again, it’s a SyFy show, you’re not watching it for the writing, and if you are, you’re impressively forgiving or genre-blind, or possibly both.

The basic set-up has enough going for it, and enough of the characters hold enough potential, that this could turn into something worth watching. The pilot has some good moments and some embarrassing ones, and it’ll help when they explain a little more about the Harry and the Henderson aliens (one of the few utter failures of the otherwise engaging production design) and the rest of the offworld crew – why do the Elf dudes dress like Victorians (to lure in the steampunk fans?)? Why are the hairless eggshell-white aliens all impatient and snippy (they really reminded me of Nestor from Battle Beyond the Stars, a connection I’m sure no one else made)? I’m willing to give the show the half-season that’s been ordered, because while I’m not overly impressed by what I saw here, there’s enough potential that, explained and developed, this could be a really good show. But they really need to work on that writing.

And a nod to the casting director; SyFy really knows their audience. Just about every female character is strongly attractive. You always have a cutie or two on any sci-fi (or even SyFy) show, the predominantly male audience demands it, but here, they’re all hot. It’s been scientifically proven that a male’s IQ drops several points after seeing an attractive female, so maybe that was their thinking. Defiance has enough going for it to render it an interesting experiment for now; I hope they can sharpen it up into something I can actually wholeheartedly recommend.

April 21, 2013

The Hunting Party (1971)

Another western from the 70s with Gene Hackman and Candice Bergen, but for some reason this one also features Oliver Reed, and with a cast like that, you almost can’t miss. Almost.

Hackman plays a real bastard named Brandt Ruger, a rich cattle man gathering together a bunch of his wealthy friends to go on a lavishly catered hunting trip, replete with new rifles that have long scopes and double the range of any other weapon. I was inordinately pleased that one of his friends was long-time character actor Simon Oakland, who seems almost sympathetic next to Hackman here. Once the rich boys are underway, ne’er-do-well Frank Calder (Reed) sweeps in and kidnaps Ruger’s wife Melissa (Bergen), and the rest of the movie is Calder’s gang trying to outrun a bunch of rich gun nuts with hyper-accurate long range rifles. Oh, and along the way Calder somehow manages to charm Melissa, even though he doesn’t treat her all that much better than Ruger (i.e., he doesn’t slap her around). So the last hour or so follows the pattern of gunfight-flee, gunflight-flee, etc., until it’s down to just the three leads (a tip; don’t bet against Gene Hackman unless you’re in a capsized ship).

Since I enjoy all three leads, I enjoyed the picture, but neither the western scenery or the script are all that captivating. Hackman’s in his full-on bastard mode, so he’s not even that much fun in this film. Reed as always exudes a certain charisma, but I think this was the first time I’d heard him without an English accent, and it sounded odd to my ears. Bergen is mainly there to be pretty; she fulfills that role well, although she’d really blossom a few years later.

There isn’t all that much to recommend about this film even if you do like all three leads, as I do (and Simon Oakland!); you can see where the plot is going, and the romantic chemistry between Reed and Bergen is almost non-existent. It’s mostly a bunch of actors sweating it out in the desert, one half of them angry and vengeful, the others bitter and regretful and trying to play at being in love. Westerns were reportedly cheap to make, and as most of this film was shot on location I doubt it bankrupted the makers, but unless you’re just curious or absolutely besotted of one of the leads, you can safely skip this film and not miss a whole lot. Now if Reed had been an English outlaw hiding out in the old west or something, maybe, that might have been engrossing, but this really isn’t.

April 21, 2013

Silverado (1985)

Really? This movie is that old? I thought it was from the early 90s, but no, it came out the same year as Back to the Future. Incredible.

Silverado chiefly concerns itself with the story of hard-ass cowboy Emmett (Scott Glen), who is on his way to bust his kid brother Jake (Kevin Costner) out of jail. Along the way he rescues the stranded Paden (Kevin Kline) from certain death, and helps out the discriminated-against Mal (Danny Glover). It turns out the town of Silverado, where Emmett’s sister and her family lives, is run by the corrupt Cobb (Brian Dennehy), who knows Paden from the old days and sets him up with a cushy job, forcing Paden to make some hard choices when Cobb sets himself against Emmett.

Probably the first movie of the post-studio system era to be saddled with the headline “can {title of picture} save the western?”, Silverado is a straight-forward attempt to be nothing more than a very satisfying western. Paden’s laid-back California vibe and Jake’s boyish enthusiasm are about the only nods to a more modern outlook; the rest of the film is straight Hollywood western, which was exactly its aim. Rounding out the film a little is some stunt casting, including Linda Hunt as a worldly bar-maid, John Cleese in a terrific extended cameo as a sheriff, and Jeff Goldblum in a small role as a slimy gambler. But its principals are sketched straight from a John Ford film, and west as a glorious, untamed, open vista is certainly a carry-over from the glory days of the genre.

Silverado also adds an element of humor; Cleese’s droll wit, Costner’s infectious enthusiasm, and Kline’s wry understatement all bring a grin to the face. But the aim is black hats vs. white hats, and the movie hews to the formula gleefully. Danny Glover’s Mal touches on racism a little, but it also allows the modern audience to more easily identify the good guys by how they stand on the issue.

The performances are all sharp. Scott Glen is the least talented of the lead four, but he’s ideal for the role of a laconic gunfighter, and he’s perfectly physically suited for the role. Glover is fine as well, mixing weariness and anger with just the right tone. Costner comes close to stealing the film – Jake just really seems to enjoy life, or more importantly enjoy his life, and his brash gusto pulls the viewer in. Kline swipes the movie from Glen with his low-key humor and, most importantly here, his empathy; Paden is a good man, forced to make moral choices, and the movie keeps swinging back to him even though he’s the least flashy of the leads. It very much seems the writers like him the most and keep trying to hide it (it doesn’t hurt that Kline sports a glorious beard that covers half his face like a forest).

Silverado is a superbly made western. It hasn’t aged much, and is just as great a joy to watch now as it was almost thirty years ago (it’s still hard to believe it’s that old); it’s an old-fashioned western with a few modern touches, but it succeeds marvelously. It’s been a little forgotten, which is a shame, because it’s an excellently made film, even for those who are not big fans of the genre.

April 20, 2013