It’s Los Angeles, 1949. Ruthless gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn in over-the-top-mode) has taken over the city—there’s brothels, booze and bad news all over. “I’m building a new city out of the ruins of Los Angeles,” says Cohen.
Corruption is the name of the game for everyone except Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin), a honest cop in a crooked town. When LAPD Chief William Henry Parker (Nick Nolte) asks him to create a special undercover team to bring Cohen and his thugs to justice, O’Mara assembles the Gangster Squad, a group of cops who don’t mind getting their hands dirty.
“The Gangster Squad” will likely suffer from the inevitable comparisons to “The Untouchables” and “LA Confidential.” It grabs the atmosphere of post war LA from the latter and the storyline, almost beat for beat, from the former. There’s even a shoot out on a stairway, but this is a far more blunt object than either of it’s forbearers. In the first twenty minutes people are drawn and quartered, incinerated—apparently Cohen prefers medieval techniques—and there’s a vicious fistfight. Then it gets violent.
The film is possibly best known, not for its cast, which also includes Ryan Gostling, Emma Stone, Michael Peña and Giovanni Ribisi, but as the movie pulled from release following the Aurora, Colorado Century 13 massacre. Originally featuring a scene of gangsters randomly firing into a movie theatre, it was deemed inappropriate for release at the time. I’m not sure what they have replaced that scene with, but trust me, its removal hasn’t made the film any less violent in tone.
It’s a gorgeous looking film, with a pretty picture of LA’s glamorous nightlife and features dialogue by Will Beall who has clearly spent some time watching Raymond Chandler movies like “The Big Sleep.” Lines like “The whole city is underwater and you’re grabbing a bucket when you should be grabbing a bathing suit,” have more finesse than the story as a whole.
“The gangster Squad” is a period piece that spends a bit too much time exploring the down-and-dirty side of the story, but is an stylish look at a violent time.
Anyone who thinks that history does not repeat itself need look no further than the new Gus Van Sant film Milk for proof to the contrary. As the recent vote on California’s Proposition 8 proposal to “change the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry,” hangs in the air the movie’s story of San Francisco Board of Supervisors Harvey Milk’s 1978 battle against Proposition 6 brings into focus how little has changed in the fight for gay rights. Dubbed the Briggs Initiative, Milk defeated the law which would have banned gays and lesbians from working in California’s public schools.
Sean Penn plays the real-life Harvey Milk, a native New Yorker who, just after his fortieth birthday left behind his conservative, closeted life on the East coast for the more freewheeling San Francisco. “I’m forty years old,” he says, “and I haven’t done a thing I’m proud of.” When he and his lover Scott Smith (James Franco) bump up against the Eureka Valley Business Association’s “no gays allowed” policy Milk is pushed toward political activism. After several failed attempts at running for office, (and adopting the unofficial title of The Mayor of Castro Street), he becomes America’s first openly gay man to be elected to public office after winning a seat on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 1977. His meteoric rise, though, is cut short the following year when he and Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) are assassinated by former city supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin).
In this politically aware time Gus Van Sant has made a biopic about a an important political figure that pays less attention to the biography aspect and more to the issues that came to define Harvey Milk’s life. We don’t meet Harvey until the eve of his fortieth birthday, just as his political awareness was starting to blossom. Eight years later he was dead, so, unlike the recent W., Oliver Stone’s look at George W. Bush’s life, which dug into the president’s past, Milk focuses its energy on the bigger picture of gay rights and how Milk became an icon and martyr for gay pride. Van Sant sets the stage for Harvey’s rise to prominence, effectively creating a sense of time and place with the liberal use of archival news footage and careful attention to 1970s period details. Van Sant’s use of grainy film stock completes the illusion, making this look like an artifact from the 1970s.
Penn fully embraces Milk, from the thick New York accent that characterized his speech to the goofy grin that endeared the real-life activist to his supporters, both gay and straight. (“I know I’m not what you expected,” he would say, grinning, to straight audiences, “I left my high heels at home…”) It’s a strong Oscar worthy performance, but this isn’t a movie about the performances and people as much as it is about ideas. Harvey Milk has already been the subject of several books and the Academy Award-winning documentary feature, The Times of Harvey Milk, so there is no mystery left to the story, but by focusing on the issues and Milk’s galvanizing fight for equality Milk achieves much more than a run-of-the-mill biopic could ever hope for. It’s about passion; it’s about when the ordinary man could bring about change with personal conviction, a bullhorn and no money. It’s about a man who didn’t consider himself to be a candidate, but part of a movement. It’s about a time when a community organizer could make a difference. On that last point, at least, it seems that history does indeed repeat itself.
“This Must be the Place,” a new film about a rock star on a family mission, is a rare thing. Rarer even than a mint condition copy of Amazing Spider-Man #1 or an honest politician. So rare it only comes around once every decade or so. I speak of that elusive beast Pennigma Seanun comoedia—the Sean Penn comedy.
Penn plays Cheyenne, a retired and world weary American rock star living with his firefighter wife Jane (Frances McDormand) in Ireland. “I wrote dreary songs because they were all the rage,” he says. “They made tons of money. Depressed songs for depressed kids.”
Still clinging to the goth look that made his famous in the 1980s—imagine a cross between The Cure’s Robert Smith and Bozo the Clown—he leads a quiet, reclusive life until his father passes away. His father tried and failed to find and get revenge on the Nazi guard who humiliated him at Auschwitz. In light of his father’s death Cheyenne takes up the search, embarking on a road trip that brings him closer to his father and gives his life new meaning.
This is Sean Penn like we’ve never seen him before. With poufy hair, black toenail polish and affected vocal cadence—like Andy Warhol on Quaaludes—he creates an intriguing, strange character.
Once Cheyenne hits the road the movie is episodic and surreal in its storytelling and becomes more of a character study than a traditional narrative. We learn more why Cheyenne is so damaged and yet so compelling. He may be one a mission of revenge of sorts, but he is an innocent, completely free of hate and guile and it is that childlike quality that drives the film.
Couple that with beautiful cinematography and a great score by Talking Head David Byrne (who also makes a cameo appearance) and you have an occasionally self-indulgent art house flick that will win you over with the childlike charm of its main character.
This year may go down in the history books as the year politics became hip again. Barack Obama’s “Yes we can!” vigor reignited America’s political passion, helping to break a forty-year-old Election Day turn-out record and actually get people under the age of seventy to tune into Meet the Press.
That excitement has infected Hollywood as well. This year sees three high profile political biographies hit theatres: W., about the life and wild times of George W. Bush; the soon-to-be released Frost/Nixon; and this week’s limited release Milk, starring Sean Penn as the first openly gay man elected to public office in the USA.
Hollywood has often looked to politics for inspiration. Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of rubber-cheeked Tricky Dicky in Nixon was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, as was Raymond Massey’s take on the 16th president in Abe Lincoln in Illinois, and James Whitmore as Harry Truman in Give ’em Hell, Harry.
Wild in the Streets, a 1968 counter-culture cult film about Max Frost, a multi-millionaire rock star with plans to take over the government, is one of the wilder political “what-if” films.
Frost’s scheme begins with staged riots on the Sunset Strip. Next he spikes Washington’s drinking water supply with LSD and while D.C.’s powerbrokers are hallucinating he gets them to pass a law lowering the age limit for all elected offices to 14. Soon he wins the Oval Office, immediately imprisoning everyone over 30 in concentration camps where they wear dark robes and are perpetually stoned on LSD.
Max’s plan just might land him in trouble, however, when the next generation adopts the new slogan: “We’re gonna put everybody over 10 out of business.”
Seen through today’s eyes the film is little more than a fun, druggy artifact from the freewheeling sixties, but at the time its message was taken seriously by some in the establishment. At 1968’s Presidential Convention the Mayor of Chicago hired security to protect the city’s water supply from being laced with LSD.
Other unconventional political films include Whoops Apocalypse which sees America’s first female president, played by M*A*S*H’s Loretta Swit, try to avoid World War III and 1964s Kisses for My President which focuses on the tough job of First Husband as he puts a masculine spin on the role of First Lady, hosting women’s groups and garden parties.
The release of All the King’s Men is the kick-off to awards season. When the weather cools and the leaves start to turn the blockbusters and popcorn movies that clogged up the multiplexes in the summer make way for more serious-minded movies, the kind of movies that win awards.
All the King’s Men is perfect Oscar-bait. It’s based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Robert Penn Warren, which was turned into Oscar’s Best Picture of 1949. The new version features a cast with no less than a dozen Oscar nominations and a few wins between them. That’s quite a pedigree. Too bad the movie doesn’t live up to its legacy.
Sean Penn plays Willie Stark, loosely based on Louisiana governor Huey P. Long. When we meet Willie he is a hick-town county treasurer who risks his job to fight corruption at Town Hall. When he reveals that a construction firm used bribery to land a contract to build a school, a school with a faulty fire escape that collapsed, killing three children, he becomes something of a folk hero. When he is approached to run for governor, he accepts, running on a “man of the people” platform that wins him favor with a large constituency that had never been considered before—rural farmers and landowners. His fiery speeches and populist politics win him the election, but his flamboyant style earns him many enemies in high places. It soon becomes clear that Willie is as corrupt and power hungry as the men he replaced.
The first hint that All the King’s Men is being positioned as an important movie with a capital “I” is the overwrought score by James Horner. This is big, orchestral film music in which violins swell as if heralding the second coming. It seems out of place, considering much of the film takes place in rural Louisiana. Perhaps a score that utilized Cajun and blues music might have been more appropriate. A few accordions, an old washboard and a swampy guitar would have created a sense of place and atmosphere that booming violins cannot.
But the music isn’t the only thing that seems overwrought. Sean Penn is a fine actor, but here he is so over-the-top it is as if he is acting in a different movie than the rest of the cast. He gives us Willie Stark in a vein-popping, arm-waving performance that suggests that maybe he should lay-off the Red Bull.
Next to his eye-popping performance the rest of the cast kind of disappears. Jude Law is serviceable as Stark’s right-hand man; Anthony Hopkins turns in one of his patented old codger performances, but Kate Winslet and Mark Ruffalo are both wasted in small roles that require little from either of them.
It pains me to thrash All the King’s Men because I think it is a movie that aspired to greatness, that tried to have something important to say, and Hollywood could really use more movies that aim high. But in the end All the King’s Men’s lofty aspirations simply make its failure so much more acute.
