For most of the running time Safe House is a pretty exciting action movie. Things blow up, Denzel is a wicked cool bad guy, but when the movie slows down to try and provide some back story it loses some of its explosive power.
Ryan Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a rookie CIA agent stationed at an underused safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. When agents bring in Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), an ex-agent wanted for espionage, Weston is thrust into a wild escape plan, high level intrigue and must learn who to trust.
The underlying sense of tension in “Safe House” originates with Washington. If this was a Tom Cruise or Will Smith vehicle you know that even though they might do dastardly things occasionally, they only ever play heroes. Washington is different. He’s not afraid to explore the dark side of his characters and it is not a guarantee that he will be alive by the time the end credits roll. That’s not a spoiler, it’s a comment on an actor who brings some much welcome moral ambiguity to the role. Want to find out if he lives or dies? Buy a ticket. The movie is mostly worth the ride.
It slows down when it show amp up in its last quarter. The knee-deep intrigue slows down the movie’s momentum, clichés pile up and Denzel’s uncanny ability to walk between the hundreds of bullets fired his way begins to wear thin. But up until it starts trying to tie up loose ends it has some good action and a wall of tension so high it sometimes feels like you’ll never be able to see over it.
The loser here is Ryan Reynolds who is blown off screen by Washington’s effortless cool and never rises above the clichés that make up his new-guy-thrown-into-a- fracas-of-unparalleled-danger-and-intrigue. Too bad the “Green Lantern” didn’t have action half as good as “Safe House.” If it did there might have been a sequel and we’d all be talking about Reynolds in his green tights instead of how here he is mainly a pile of clichés who barely registers when placed next to the more complex Washington character.
As if riding the New York subway wasn’t nerve racking enough, with its express trains that don’t stop until Rockaway Beach, rats the size of Chihuahuas and mystery smells, along comes The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 about a domestic terrorist holding a subway train full of people hostage. This remake of the 1974 Walter Matthau urban terror movie from visual stylist Tony Scott—simply calling him a director doesn’t do justice to his frenetic technique—is a tense subterranean thriller that makes Manhattan’s legendarily hectic above ground traffic seem safe and secure by comparison.
In this update a band of bad guys lead by John Travolta, in full blown psycho mode with a goatee and a bad attitude, launches an elaborate hijacking of the Pelham 1 2 3 train (so named because it leaves Pelham Station at 1:23 pm). Following the train’s capture Ryder (Travolta) makes contact with dispatcher Denzel Washington, a veteran MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) employee who knows the system inside and out. Ryder demands 10 million dollars in exchange for the lives of the 19 people aboard the train. If the money doesn’t arrive in one hour, he promises hostages will suffer.
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is the talkiest action movie of the year. More words than bullets fly, but Scott keeps things moving at a clip with his trademarked feverish visual and sound design. In creating the look of Pelham Scott seems to have pushed his Final Cut Pro program to the max. Images blur, jump and freeze elegantly, backed by a soundtrack heavy on industrial sounds used as punctuation. It’s an interesting palate that could easily have overwhelmed the film—as it has in past Scott works like the wild Domino—but luckily Scott has cast two charismatic and interesting actors in the lead roles.
It’s been years since Travolta played such an all out foul-mouthed baddie. He relishes the role, bringing a fun unpredictability to the psychopathic Ryder. He’s nuts and dangerous, but Travolta doesn’t play him as a slobbering madman, but an unhinged sociopath who is playing an elaborate game with people’s lives—including his own. Lately Travolta has been dressing in drag (Hairspray) and playing up to the kids (Bolt) but Pelham proves he hasn’t forgotten how to access the dark side.
On the other end of the scale is Denzel Washington who hands in a natural, modulated performance, full of charm and wit. It’s not as showy a role as Travolta’s and it is ground he has tread before—think Inside Man—but he is so comfortable a presence on screen that he is the focus of every scene he’s in.
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is more psychological drama than action movie and doesn’t necessarily improve on its source material but its intense visual style and the acting chops of Travolta and Washington (along with supporting cast members Luis Guzmán, John Turturro and James Gandolfini) make it a good summer diversion.
“Unstoppable,” the new true-life drama from Denzel Washington and “Star Trek” star Chris Pine is a heavy metal movie. It’s a story about 10,000,000 pounds of screeching, screaming metal careening out of control through the Pennsylvania countryside. No, it’s not the Mötley Crüe northeastern reunion tour, it’s about a runaway train and two brave men who bring the beast to a stop.
Story wise “Unstoppable” is pretty high concept. Due to human error (or perhaps just plain laziness) an unmanned half-a-mile long string of trains loaded with hazardous materials is let loose, barreling along the main rail track toward Stanton, Pennsylvania. It is, essentially, a missile the size of the Chrysler Building. Along the way it plays chicken with a trainload of kids and Denzel. Can they stop it before it causes a huge environmental catastrophe? Only Denzel knows… and he’s only half-way sure.
It doesn’t take long to identify “Unstoppable” as a Tony Scott movie. There’s his favorite star, Denzel, endlessly swirling cameras and about 75 edits per minute.
With the exception of Denzel, his trademarks have occasionally overwhelmed his movies. His high sense of style has frequently come before good old solid storytelling but with “Unstoppable” there isn’t much story to overpower so his wild flourishes really carry the day. The giant set pieces involving the train and the various attempts to stop it are exciting, edge-of-your-seat sequences. Add in Denzel playing a riff on his now patented old pro on the job / hero role (the one he’s been perfecting in movies like “Inside Man” and “The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3) and some good charismatic work from Chris Pine and you have a fun Saturday afternoon matinee movie.
Déjà vu isn’t so much a whodunit as it is a howdunnit. At the center of this New Orleans murder mystery is a government computer program that allows scientists to recreate the past, traveling back in time four days and six hours. This journey into the heart psychics is fleeting, however. The g-men brainiacs can recreate a perfect image of the past, complete with different camera angles and perfect sound, but because of the great amount of energy needed to generate the image they can’t rewind or pause. This ghostly likeness of the past plays in real time and then, like real life, is gone forever.
How do they do it? Good question. The movie takes pains to explain the science in a long protracted scene and they shouldn’t have bothered. It’s all mumbo jumbo that slows the picture’s momentum to a crawl, but fortunately, that’s the only time the police procedural aspects of the movie take second place to the scientific claptrap. The rest of the film is straight out action and suspense. It a metaphysical story with the onus on the physical.
Denzel Washington is an ATF investigator whose analysis of an alleged terrorist bombing of a New Orleans ferry carrying hundreds of U.S. sailors leads him not to an Al-Qaeda cell but to a homegrown terror plot and a beautiful girl who may have been an unwitting victim. So far it’s like a really elaborate episode of CSI, (which like the movie is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer), but the wrinkle comes in the form of a wrinkle in time. The above-mentioned time machine bends not only time but also the movie, transforming it from a standard run-of-the-mill police drama into a metaphysical thrill ride.
Director Tony Scott, brother of Ridley and maker of such frenetically edited films as Domino and (and two others with Denzel including Man on Fire and Crimson Tide) infuses every frame of the film with beautifully composed shots and intricately choreographed action sequences. Time travel has never looked this good. In one spectacular scene Denzel engages in a car chase set in two time zones simultaneously. It’s exciting and unlike anything you’ve seen before.
The science in Déjà vu doesn’t add up and, frankly, the movie doesn’t have much to do with déjà vu, but Scott and Washington are a reliable team and deliver enough wham-bam action and eye candy to earn a recommendation.
Denzel Washington is a famous guy. Since his 1974 film debut — he played the uncredited part of Alleyway mugger in Death Wish — he’s won two Academy Awards and a Tony, directed two films and been voted one of the most handsome people in the world.
This weekend, he teams with Ryan Reynolds in what will certainly be the handsomest film of the month, Safe House. The story of a young CIA agent guarding a fugitive turns ugly when their safe house is attacked, is bound to break the box office, but not all of Denzel’s movies have been huge hits.
Though he’s had great success with films like Training Day, let’s have a look at some of his overlooked films.
The 1991 crime-thriller Ricochet starred Washington as a Los Angeles cop-turned-attorney going head-to-head with a bitter escaped criminal (John Lithgow) he put behind bars. Solid action and a great villain from Lithgow’s psycho period — before he did 3rd Rock from the Sun and went soft — it never found the audience it deserved.
Years later in Training Day, Washington’s character flashes a picture of himself as a young LAPD officer. The photo is a still from Ricochet.
Washington has played his share of attorneys and policemen over the years, but he has never been afraid to try new things, as he did in 1993’s Much Ado About Nothing. In this all-star adaptation of Shakespeare’s most famous romantic comedy, he plays the powerful Don Pedro of Aragon.
The movie took hits for its miscasting of Keanu Reeves and Michael Keaton in key roles, but Washington was praised for his work. He has performed Richard III and Julius Caesar on stage, but this movie remains his only filmed Shakespearean role.
From the light comedy of the 17th century we next look at the post-apocalyptic The Book of Eli, set just a few years from today. It’s a strange movie. Denzel plays a coiled spring of righteous power in this timely movie about how religion can be used for both good and evil.
Finally, a movie that should have spawned an ongoing franchise but dried up after just one film was Devil in a Blue Dress. Rolling Stone called Washington’s take on private investigator Ezekiel ‘Easy’ Rawlins a “richly detailed portrayal,” adding that you leave the movie hoping the other books in the Rawlins series will be turned into films. Sadly, that didn’t happen.
Whether it’s Denzel Washington dining on a meal of hairless cat in this weekend’s The Book of Eli or Knowing’s Nicolas Cage screeching, “How can I stop the end of the world?” grisly images of post apocalyptic lifestyle have recently been dominating movie screens.
Perhaps it’s the recession or the result of the anxious times we live in, but end-of-the-world stories are all the rage, but they are not new. Whether it’s nuclear fallout, an unexpected ice age or a zombie holocaust that brings about the end, filmmakers have peddled post apocalyptica for years.
In 1959 Gregory Peck headlined a dystopian drama that set the date for the end of the world just after World War III in 1964. In On the Beach nuclear war has destroyed all life on the planet save for a small enclave in Australia, but even they will succumb once the radiation clouds drift by. “We’re all doomed,” says Julian Osborne (Fred Astaire). “Doomed by the air we’re about to breathe.” As doomsday dramas go this one is particularly depressing—for example people gobble up “suicide pills”—but its Cold War commentary led one contemporary writer to label it “the most important film of our time.”
Several years later the post-atomic war film Panic in Year Zero! opened with one of filmdom’s great understatements. While on a fishing trip Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland) and his family see a mushroom cloud over Los Angeles. “We’ve had it; haven’t we dad?” says son Rick (Frankie Avalon). Well, not quite Rick, but the world as you know it is over. Made on a shoe-string, Panic in Year Zero! is notable not for its special effects—there aren’t any—but for its take on the difficult decisions Milland’s character must make to ensure his family’s survival in a world where old principles of humanity are obsolete.
Finally, to end the end-of-the-world list, fans of post apocalyptic fantasy will find a payday in the form of Rock & Rule, an animated film featuring Deborah Harry and Lou Reed’s voice work. In it the world has been destroyed and “legendary super-rocker” Mok—whose record went “gold, platinum, and plutonium in one day”—tries to use a demonic code to rule what’s left of the world.
With such a range of dystopian stories to mine it seems filmmakers could make post apocalyptic movies until the end of the world comes for real.
This weekend Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg co-star as a DEA agent and an undercover Naval Intelligence officer who are investigating one another in 2 Guns. Each think the other is on the take from the mob, but eventually must work together to get to the truth.
This action-comedy was directed by Contraband helmer Baltasar Kormakur the movie promises more action than comedy, putting it at odds with the original plan for the film.
Conceived as a vehicle for Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn after the success of Wedding Crashers, the movie was originally meant to take advantage of the comedic chemistry between the two, but slowly morphed into something else as it made its way to Wahlberg and Washington.
It joins a long list of movies to change tone as they swap casts.
We think of Beverly Hills Cop as the hilarious Eddie Murphy movie about a streetwise Detroit cop displaced to hoity-toity Los Angeles. Initially however, the movie was meant to star Sylvester Stallone, who, aside from Oscar or Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, is better known for breaking jaws than busting guts. Comedy not being his thing, Stallone tried to rewrite the script to emphasize the action, which raised the budget and he was replaced.
Stallone also turned down the part of Jack Colton in the romantic action-adventure Romancing the Stone and was replaced by Michael Douglas
Unlike Stallone, Bill Murray can flit back-and-forth between drama and comedy with ease, still it would have seemed odd to see him as Dr. Wren in Alien: Resurrection. The part was written for him, but when he passed it went to J.E. Freeman.
Stranger still was the casting for the crime comedy Legal Eagles. In the version we know Debra Winger plays defense lawyer Laura Kelly who becomes romantically involved with District Attorney Tom Logan, played by Robert Redford. Originally Winger’s character was written for Murray, who dropped out and forced massive rewrites.
Taxi Driver made Cybill Shepherd a star, but the part almost went to Farah Fawcett Majors because, producer Julia Phillips claims, director Martin Scorsese preferred Majors’ “shapely bottom.”
Finally, Daniel Day Lewis is an acting legend with five Oscar nominations and three wins to his credit, but imagine if he hadn’t turned down the roles of Zod in the recent Superman epic Man of Steel or Shakespeare in Love’s love interest, a part that went to Joseph Fiennes.
Eli (Denzel Washington) is a regular post apocalyptic man. He walks the Earth, heading west, stopping only occasionally to read his book, dine on a meal of hairless cat, try on some dead man’s shoes and reign bloody carnage down on anyone who tries to stop him from enjoying his simple pleasures.
Like “The Road,” another film about a man making his way through a dystopian world, in “The Book of Eli,” we never find out how the world ended. We’re told it’s been thirty years since “the flash” and since then everything has pretty much fallen apart. Rogue gangs roam the desolate landscape, cannibalism is rampant—you can tell the cannibals because their hands shake from eating too much human flesh—and there are only small pockets of life left. One such pocket is a town run by Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a despot desperate to lay his hands on Eli’s prize possession—a book.
As the title would suggest “The Book of Eli” is V-E-R-Y Old Testament. Call it Neo Christian Post Apocalyptic if you like, but like the good book that lies at the center of the story, the movie is full of prophets, morals and righteous smiting. This is a metaphysical story with a few action scenes (but only a few, the trailer implies this is an all-out action flick and that is simply not the case) about the power of religion to both inspire and control people’s hearts.
Eli uses the book (SPOILER: it’s the last copy of the bible) as comfort and a reason to stay alive. Perhaps he’s a prophet, perhaps not, but he is the keeper of the book and it is a responsibility he takes very seriously even if he doesn’t realize why.
Carnegie, on the other hand, understands the power of the book’s words to, as he says, strike fear into the “heart of the weak and desperate.” For him it is the key to the complete control of the citizens of his town. He is, very likely, a Republican.
Bringing this world to, well, if not exactly vivid life—it is shot with a color palette that includes grey and various other shades of grey—is Washington and Oldman. Denzel is a bit too subdued to really sell the idea that he is a coiled spring of righteous power but that’s OK because Gary Oldman keeps things lively, chewing the scenery every time he is on screen. He’s a Jim Jones character, equal parts charisma and menace and the film benefits from his presence.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the female leads. As mother and daughter Jennifer Beals and Mila Kunis are the film’s acting Achilles heel. Kunis, in particular is miscast. Despite providing some visual interest, she is out of her depth here and brings little of the charm or magnetism she displayed in last year’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshal.”
Better is Tom Waits in an awesome cameo as a shop keeper who trades in contraband, like KFC wetnaps and old Zippo lighters. These items take on an increased value in this bleak world and Waits, with his craggily face and scorched vocal chords, brings increased value to his brief scenes.
“The Book of Eli” is a strange movie. It’s being sold as an actioner, but is actually a timely movie about how religion can be used for both good and evil. It may have been more effective with a bit more action and a tad less philosophy and without its series of false endings and while it may be filled with thought provoking ideas it doesn’t feel well enough thought out to work as a whole.
On paper American Gangster sounds like a home run. It stars two charismatic Oscar winners, re-teams Russell Crowe with his Gladiator director Ridley Scott and is written by the Oscar winning screenwriter behind Schindler’s List. That‘s all good right? Well, not exactly. Based on a true story—just like recent big winners Walk the Line, Ray and Capote—it is the kind of late-year release that seems almost guaranteed to garner Academy attention, but in reality American Gangster is less than the sum of its parts.
Denzel Washington plays Frank Lucas, the one-time driver for a Harlem mob boss who rises to the top of the drug world by flooding the streets of Manhattan with cheap, high grade heroin smuggled into the United States in the coffins of dead soldiers returning from Vietnam. He’s a dichotomy, bloodthirsty and ruthless, he also attends church every Sunday with his Mother.
On the other side of the street is Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), a cop whose honesty makes him an outcast in his corrupt precinct. When his former partner dies from a drug overdose Roberts relentlessly devotes himself to ridding the streets of Lucas’s heroin.
Inevitably their paths cross as their worlds become intertwined.
Scott takes his time with the story, laying it out over the course of 157 minutes. Length is not necessarily a bad thing as Roger Ebert once pointed out—“No good movie is too long,”—and many other crime dramas have epic running times—The Godfather is 175 minutes long, Goodfellas just slightly shorter at 145 minutes—and remained compelling right through to the end credits, but American Gangster feels like it is 157 minutes.
The difference between Scott’s movie and The Godfather or Goodfellas is that they were masterfully paced, blending the crime elements of the plot with carefully tailored stories of family life and the importance of loyalty. American Gangster tries for the same richness of story, but succeeds only in presenting a rambling first hour, cluttered with subplots and meaningless, although beautifully shot, scenes that add little to the overall story.
For instance, a fair amount of time is spent on Roberts’s troubled personal life and a drawn out custody battle. It struck me that the whole family drama aspect of Roberts’s life belonged in another movie. Excising that story thread from American Gangster could easily save half-an-hour and some wear and tear on our already strained backsides and bladders.
Sir Ridley puts some lipstick on this pig, tarting it up with great cinematography, nice attention to the 1970s period detail and well cast, although underused actors like Cuba Gooding Jr and Chiwetel Ejiofor, in supporting roles. For all its angels, however, American Gangster is simply too ambitious for its own good and is in need of a talented editor to bring out the important aspects of the story and snip the rest.
