The synopsis of “The Guard” reads like a standard police procedural. Renegade cop finds dead body, the FBI gets involved. Throw in some deadly drug smugglers and you have a Steven Seagal movie. Except this time you don’t. This time you have one of the most unexpectedly delightful movies of the year.
Brendan Gleeson (probably best known as Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody in the Harry Potter series) is Sergeant Gerry Boyle, a small town West Ireland cop. He’s the opposite of a by-the-book policeman. In fact he’s more interested in escorts, pilfering LSD from traffic victims and drinking beer at the local pub than he is in the drug ring that has landed in his village. Or at least that’s how it seems to FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) who comes to town to bring down the drug cartel.
Despite having all the earmarks of a cop fish-out-of-water picture “The Guard,” by virtue of its setting and Gleeson’s central performance, is anything but. The bucolic Irish countryside location gives the movie a chance to establish a fresh setting, unfamiliar to most viewers, far from the city streets where most cop dramas are placed.
Then there is Gleeson, the real reason to see the movie. He’s an Irish Columbo, under estimated by everyone around him until the chips are down. It’s a complex performance, amusing on the surface, but rich with pathos as Boyle’s life is slowly revealed. He’s brilliant but unhappy, a man mired in existentialist muck as only someone who has read all the Russian classics can be. (Did I mention he and his cancer ridden mom, played by the amazing Fionnula Flanagan, quote the Russian masters?)
“The Guard” is 100% Gleeson’s movie. The open-ended story leaves room for the possibility of a sequel, and for once I hope they continue the story. Boyle is a character I’d like to see more of.
Iron Man, the heaviest of the heavy metal Marvel superheroes, undergoes a transformation in the latest installment of the popular franchise. He’s less self-assured, anxiety ridden, but at least he still looks good in a suit—the giant iron suit that turns him from mortal to immortal hero.
In this installment the sins of Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr) past come back to haunt him. In a flashback to 1999 we meet a biochemist (Rebecca Hall) turned Stark one-night-stand and a meek scientist (Guy Pearce) who both feel the sting of the billionaire arms designer’s arrogance. Cut to years later. Stark is troubled by the recent battle in New York (see “The Avengers” movie) and is having trouble sleeping.
Meanwhile an Osama bin Laden wannabe named The Mandarin (Sir Ben Kingsley) is terrorizing the planet, promising a violent finale on Christmas Day. With just days to go the situation becomes personal for Stark when his girlfriend, Pepper (Gwenyth Paltrow), and longtime bodyguard Happy (Jon Favreau) are endangered by the madman.
This is a darker, talkier “Iron Man” than we’ve seen before. The thing that was so appealing in the first movie—RDJs quick wit and way with a line—had, over the course of a disappointing second movie, become tired and predictable, so writer-director Shane Black modified Stark’s behavior, stripping away some of (but not all) of Stark’s arrogance in favor of a dark character study that sees him on the verge of a breakdown.
“Iron Man 3” is still a huge action movie but between the big blow ‘em up scenes there’s more sturm and drang than usual for a big summer blockbuster. Downey handles Stark’s ups and downs well enough, although you get the feeling that the limitations of the form—tentpole summer flick—prevent him from pushing the envelope performance wise into as dark a place as he might have liked. Really exploring Stark’s turmoil might not sell as many tickets as Marvel needs to break even, but it would have been interesting to see Downey stretch his wings a bit more.
Stark is a troubled guy. Always has been in the comics, but he’s a troubled guy with a cool suit and that’s why we pay to see the “Iron Man” movies. So it’s a little hard to understand why he’s not in the suit more of the time. Imagine a Hulk movie where Bruce Banner doesn’t get angry and you get the idea. “Iron Man 1 & 2” took every opportunity to put Stark in the iron suit, while this movie takes every opportunity to take him out of the suit.
The hodge podge of hot button topics—terrorism, computer hacking, disabled war vets, ecological issues and even a “Downton Abbey” gag—push the story forward, but the core of the thing that makes these movies fun seems to have been pushed to the background.
Of course there are iron suits in the film, lots of them, they just don’t seem to fit as well as they once did.
When we last saw Iron Man he had a perfectly functioning palladium mechanical heart and a best friend who looked a lot like Terrence Howard. How times have changed. In “Iron Man 2” a mysterious malady is threatening to sideline his success and Jim Rhodes, his BFF, now looks like Don Cheadle.
In the time since the previous “Iron Man” movie, (two years in real time, six months in the story) oddball weapons inventor Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) has become a national hero. He’s one part Bono, two parts George Patton. His technologies, including the famous heavy metal suit, are keeping America safe, but not everyone are fans. The US Senate—in particular Senator Stern (Garry Shandling)—sees the egomaniacal inventor as a threat and wants him to hand over his secrets. Then there is his rival, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell, the best actor out there who isn’t a major movie star), an unctuous arms dealer working for the government. He can best be described as a Stark wannabe whose technology is nowhere near as advanced as Stark’s. Even worse is Ivan Vanko aka Whiplash (Mickey Rourke), a Russia engineer whose father used to work with Stark’s old man. The weathered looking Vanko Jr. has built his own suit, this one equipped with whip-like attachments that harness electrical energy. As if that weren’t enough bad guys, even Bill O’Reilly makes a cameo.
Worst of all, though, Stark’s own technology may be working against him. It appears he is slowly being poisoned by the palladium that powers the miniature arc reactor in his chest.
On the plus side there’s loyal old Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) Stark’s Louboutin-sporting confidant who is now CEO of Stark Industries and Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) Stark’s new assistant. She’s also a S.H.I.E.L.D. (if you sat through the credits of the first film you’ll remember S.H.I.E.L.D. as the fictional espionage and law-enforcement agency run by Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson) undercover agent named Black Widow who wears tight leather outfits and shows an until now unseen capacity for gymnastics.
There’s more plot and characters, but I’m almost out of space and haven’t gotten to the review yet and that is part of the problem with the movie. The first “Iron Man” was as clean and concise as a huge summer comic book blockbuster can be—solid characters, not too many of them, and a clear cut story. This time around the director Jon Favreau has thrown simplicity out the window, opting instead for Michael Bay style bombast. Where the first “Iron Man” was an idiosyncratic character study with cool action sprinkled throughout, the new one reverses that formula, relying on action to carry the day.
The characters are still fairly strong, but Downey’s charm seems to have faded a bit since he last wore the iron suit. Maybe we got to know him too well two years ago, but here the character doesn’t have the same kind of fresh appeal he had the first time around.
Perhaps it’s because the overall tone of the film is darker, but “Iron Man 2” isn’t as much fun as the original. It should please comic fans familiar with the storyline and characters, and it certainly has its moments—things go boom and Rourke is a convincing, if underused villain—but like the “Spider Man” movies, which got bigger, but not necessarily better as time went on, “Iron Man 2” feels a bit leaden. Leaden or not, though, this will be the biggest hit this summer NOT in 3D.
It seems that every comedian really wants to be taken seriously. Everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Jim Carrey has tried to put the clown face in storage from time to time in favor of something more dramatic. I’m sure even The Three Stooges would have liked to have had a go at The Three Musketeers instead of The Three Sew and Sews if only typecasting hadn’t had it’s cruel way with them.
In Reign Over Me Adam Sandler leaves goofballs Happy Gilmour and Billy Madison behind, instead choosing to take on a serious role as a heartbroken man having trouble dealing with tragedy.
As Charlie Fineman Sandler (who is looking more like Bob Dylan every day) convincingly plays a man who developed post-traumatic stress syndrome after he lost his wife and three daughters in 9/11. He spends his days and nights in a fog, trying desperately to bury the memories of his lost family. A chance encounter with his old college roommate (Don Cheadle) begins his painful trip back to the real world.
The Wedding Singer this isn’t. This is Sandler’s first real adult role. As Fineman he displays the kind of mood swings and anger that is part of his comedic book of tricks, but here there is more depth than he’s ever offered up before. The way he slowly re-enters the normal world is subtle and effective.
Also effective is the relationship between Cheadle and Sandler. Cheadle’s character is also at a cross roads, although for exactly the opposite reasons that Sandler has withdrawn from life. The two actors play off one another with an unforced intimacy that really sells the idea that they have a history and therefore have a reason to be invested in one another.
Reign Over Me loses some of its momentum in its final moments. Director and writer Mike Binder seems intent in wrapping up all loose ends, making the third act seem a bit too pat. It’s a shame because up until the last ten minutes Reign Over Me doesn’t take the easy route. Tacking on a happy (or at least an implied happy) ending mars what up until then is one of the best films of the year.
In Traitor Academy Award winner Don Cheadle plays Samir Horn, the titular traitor of the title. The provocative question the movie asks is, “Who exactly is he betraying, the United States or the terrorists?”
The international story of terror and intrigue begins in 1978 in Sudan. Samir is a youngster who witnesses his father’s brutal murder. Fast forward thirty years to Yemen. Samir is now an arms dealer trying to sell a truck load of detonators to a group of extremists. When the FBI, headed by agent Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce), burst in on the deal, Samir and co-conspirator Omar (The Kite Runner’s Saïd Taghmaoui) land in prison. Soon, the devoutly Muslim Samir and Omar escape from the jail and embark on an international conspiracy to spread terror. Following hot on their heels is Clayton, who can’t quite make sense of the evidence regarding Horn. Where, exactly, do Samir’s loyalties lie?
Regarded simply as a thriller Traitor has a credible story that will keep the viewer guessing until the final moments. After a slow start it builds in suspense and tension until reaching an exciting climax in Halifax of all places.
Keeping everything on course is Cheadle who hands in a fine performance as the double-crosser who keeps us guessing which side of the fence he falls on right up until the end.
Unfortunately director Jeffrey Nachmanoff, who did a good job in seamlessly blending together the film’s many locations and story-lines, felt the need to tag on a cheesy coda that doesn’t do the rest of the film justice. I can’t say what it is without giving away a major plot point or two, but the last five minutes feel tacked on.
Traitor is a smart and exciting thriller but you may want to avoid the after screening rush at the bathrooms and leave the theatre a couple minutes before the credits roll.
First of all I need to say that I think Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor are two of the best actors working today. Cheadle, the more famous of the two, was recently nominated for an Academy Award for his work in Hotel Rwanda and Ejiofor can do everything from playing the cross dressing muse for a shoe designer in Kinky Boots to being the bad guy in one of last year’s best films, Children of Men. So it is with some sadness that I have to report that neither actor’s talent is supported in the new film Talk to Me.
Not that they’re helped by the script, which never misses an opportunity to insert a cliché where a meaningful scene should have been, or the direction, which strives to be big and important, but settles for merely adequate.
Even the title is average. A quick check on IMBD reveals that no fewer than 11 exact matches for the title, most of which date from the last six or seven years.
The troubling thing about Talk to Me is that I’m sure it didn’t have to be this way. There is a good story in the life and hard times of Ralph ‘Petey’ Greene, the ex-convict turned popular 1960s Washington D.C. radio personality and community activist, this just isn’t it.
As directed by Kasi Lemmons, a veteran actress of television shows like Walker, Texas Ranger and Murder She Wrote, and director of the fine Eve’s Bayou, the story is boiled down to a series of cliché ridden vignettes which never fail to telegraph where the story is headed.
The movie does manage to create a fairly convincing portrait of a time of social change in America, but that is thanks to Cheadle and Ejiofor rather than the script. In the film’s best handled sequence, the announcement of the death of Martin Luther King, it’s Cheadle’s performance and not the script that packs a punch.
Occasionally a strong performance can elevate a so-so film. The Last King of Scotland, for example, is an average movie made better by the central performance of Forest Whittaker. Unfortunately, as hard as Cheadle and Ejiofor try the problems with Talk to Me are insurmountable.
As soon as I saw the name of director Antoine Fuqua in the opening credits I sensed that “Brooklyn’s Finest” probably wasn’t going to celebrate the up side of policing in the NY borough. The “Training Day” director is a specialist when it comes to portraying dirty cops on screen, and here he showcases the “finest” policemen in Brooklyn’s 65th precinct, that is, if by “finest” you mean alcoholic, angsty, murderous and suicidal.
Mixing three stories Fuqua introduces Sal (Ethan Hawke), Eddie (Richard Gere) and Tango (Don Cheadle), three cops at different stages of their careers. The only thing that connects them is a station house in the 65th Precinct and severe dysfunction. Sal is a narco cop, tormented by the things he must do to support his growing family. Eddie is a burn out who clearly hasn’t taken his own advice of “not taking the job home” after work and Tango is an undercover cop who is close to being consumed by the job. The three struggle both personally and professionally until a fateful night when they end up in the same apartment block.
The bad cop drama became popular in the seventies and with only a few tweaks story wise has persevered to this day. Fuqua focuses on three characters straight out of Central Casting—the cop with nothing to live for, who is just days away from retirement, the policeman who turns bad to make extra money to help his family and the undercover officer who gets too close to the criminals he is supposed to arrest.
Clichés one and all, but the bad cop genre is one big gun toting cliché, and like romantic comedies, another formula based species, the trick is to make the characters as interesting as possible to disguise the banalities of their story arcs. On this score “Brooklyn’s Finest” is two thirds successful.
First, the good. Don Cheadle takes a hackneyed character—the angry street cop—and gives him some fire; a cliché, yes, but an unpredictable one. Cheadle deserves better material than this but he makes the best of it.
Ditto Ethan Hawke who can do desperate on-screen as well as any actor working today.
The weakest of the three is Gere’s Eddie. Gere isn’t an exactly magnetic actor at the best of times but here he simply isn’t believable as a man who wakes up, has a shot of scotch with a gun barrel chaser. The early morning drinking and pseudo suicide attempts are meant to give us insight into the character but come off as tired images recycled from better movies.
“Brooklyn’s Finest” is not a return to form for Fuqua after the career high of “Training Day” nine years ago and the professional sink hole he’s been in ever since.
