The Men Who Stare at Goats

We taxpayers and citizens of this country who depend upon the armed services to protect us, like to think of the branches of the military as efficient, no nonsense organizations.  Of course decades of news reports about wasteful defense contracts and endless military comedies in movies and on TV have put the lie to this myth. The military is the best funded item in our national budget and the most likely organization to be motivated by irrational impulses, namely fear of what the other guy is doing. If the Soviets are experimenting with psychic research then we’d better too, in case there’s anything to it.

The idea for The Men Who Stare at Goats was inspired by the unlikely reality of the First Earth Battalion.  I encourage you to look up the “reality” on Wikipedia. Grant Heslov, the director and Peter Straughan, the screenwriter have changed some names, added a few characters and tacked on a whisker thin plot, but otherwise they have the details right. There was a First Earth Battalion that trained its men in psychic techniques like remote viewing, teleportation, and telekinesis.  They did call themselves Jedi Warriors, and de-bleated goats were sneaked into Fort Bragg in the late 70’s, as well as other details.

The plot of the movie concerns reporter Bob Wilton played by Ewan McGregor stumbling onto to the story of this strange unit, when he interviews Gus Lacey, played by the always entertaining Stephen Root, who claims to have the power to stop the hearts of guinea pigs. Wilton thinks he’s crazy until he is shown a videotape of a guinea pig keeling over for a second and then recovering. Gus’s mother didn’t want him to kill the animal. Shortly after this encounter, Wilton’s wife leaves him for his boss and Wilton goes to Iraq to prove himself as a real reporter. While in Kuwait, waiting for a chance to get into Iraq, he meets Lyn Cassady, played by George Clooney and recognizes his name as one dropped by Lacey in his interview. Wilton latches on to Cassady and together they drive across the border on a bumbling adventure that can only be described as a comedic new age Apocalypse Now. Along the way, Cassady relates the history of the First Earth Battalion.

That structure is the film’s main flaw. The plot as I mentioned is perilously thin and the back story is the main purpose of the film. It’s almost a documentary, and I gather that there is a BBC documentary.

But it works because the great cast is able to pull off the eccentric performances required. Clooney’s comic chops are well documented and he captures Cassady’s contradictions and makes them work. He is a trained special forces warrior who happens to believe that if he hands his enemy a baby lamb or some other animal of peace, that will cause a transformation of his enemy’s intentions. It’s hilarious. Jeff Bridges, as Bill Django, the leader and founder of the First Earth Battalion, basically reprises his role as the Dude in The Big Lebowski, but he does it well and it’s funny. Kevin Spacey plays Larry Hooper, the villain, who wants to use these questionable practices to make money as a military consultant.

There is a dark side to this story too. A lot of the mental torture techniques used in the second Iraq emerged from ideas originated in this movement, namely the idea of playing loud music and noises to prisoners in order to break them. This provides the central conflict of the plot.

In that sense the script probably needed a few more drafts to massage all that into a coherent whole.  But even if it isn’t perfect, The Men Who Stare at Goats gets the job done.

Kind of like the military.

Where the Wild Things Are

Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are gets the feature film treatment from Spike Jonze.  I looked up Jonze in IMDB and discovered that the bulk of his directorial work has been in music videos and short documentaries about skateboarding, and of course Being John Malkovich which is a classic.  He is also listed as a screenwriter and producer Jackass.  For those who don’t remember, Jackass was a TV series on MTV, where a crew of stupid 20 somethings would perform idiotic stunts.  They made two movie, neither of which got very good reviews.  This surprised me because Jonze has such a good reputation in the Indie world.  Why would he get involved with such a dubious enterprise?

Thinking about it though, it is actually an apt pairing. Sendak has always been one of those children’s authors who reflects rather than teaches. This has gotten him in a lot of trouble with censors over the years. Where the Wild Things Are is a tribute to the anarchic energy of childhood. Max, dressed in a wolf suit and on a rampage of misbehavior is sent to his room without supper. From there he goes to a magic island inhabited by monsters, who make him their king. He leads them on a wild rumpus and everything is great for awhile. Soon, however, things start falling apart and Max sees that there are reasons for rules, so he returns to his family. Okay, so maybe Sendak teaches a little bit. But there is definitely a parallel between Max and the men-children in Jackass, who apparently never learned the lessons that Max absorbed in a little over 300 words.

To flesh out the spare story, Jonze turns to the monsters, giving them names, personalities and motivation. There is conflict in the group, KW, voiced by Lauren Ambrose has left and Carol, voiced by James Gandolfini is angry because KW was his best friend.  When Max, played by Max Records, enters the situation, he instantly identifies with the sulking and defiant Carol. At first the other monsters want to eat Max, but he talks his way out of it, promising to protect them and and make them happy. So they make him their king. But of course, he can’t do any of the things he promised and soon the groups internal dissension starts tearing them apart again.

One of the things that make me unsure about this film is it’s look. For a film based on a book with such lush and stylized illustrations, they chose to go with very mundane looking sets and locations. The monsters look great and their island, with it’s jungles and deserts is beautiful but hardly magical. Also the cinematography is dark and somewhat grainy. The colors are muted and the lighting is unimaginative. Since this is not an indie film made by amateurs, I assume this look was Jonze’s choice and part of his message. The monster part of the story is the fevered imagining of a fertile but undisciplined imagination. So maybe it would make sense to include these fantastic characters in a mundane setting. And yet Sendak didn’t do that in the book, so I’m not sure Jonze made the right choice. To me, it jolted.

There’s also the problem of intended audience. Wild Things is a picture book, intended for the youngest of readers. This movie will scare those tots to death. They should not see it. For example Carol, Max’s best friend among the monsters has a temper and one point chases Max across the island with murderous intent. A four year old isn’t going to react well to the cute and cuddly monster trying to kill the kid hero of the story. And yet they are going to want to see it because of the title.  I can see problems here.

On the other hand, Where the Wild Things Are is better than the awful Dr. Seuss adaptations that have cropped up recently, and I think Sendak, who is listed as a producer on the film, would scoff at my worries about terrifying young kids. Life is dangerous and scary and you can’t always shield kids from it. And that line between safety and freedom is what the book and movie are all about. So maybe I shouldn’t complain.

Bright Star

In 1818, the poet John Keats, here played by Ben Whishaw, moves in with his best friend Charles Armitage Brown, played by Paul Schneider. The two occupy a house in Hampstead London near the residence of the Brawnes, a widowed mother and her three children. The oldest, Fanny, played by Abbie Cornish, could be a heroine straight out of a Jane Austen novel. She’s opinionated, outspoken and sure that she knows what’s best for everyone. Keats, on the other hand is our archetype for the romantic era poet, dressed in dark colors, obsessed with death and indigent, dependent on Brown and others who recognize his talent, even though most of the world doesn’t.

In the romantic tradition, these two bicker at first. He thinks she is shallow, since she is always talking about fashion and knows nothing about poetry or literature. She thinks he is condescending and cold. When she sees him with his dying brother, however, she begins to come around and eventually they fall in love. The problem is that he has no income and can’t support her. Fanny’s mother is against any union for that reason. Brown opposes it because he fears that Fanny will distract John from his poetry. The couple persists and carry on a chaste, formal and distant love affair for three years. She serves as his muse.

John Keats died in 1821 in Rome of tuberculosis. He was 25.

All the performances in this film are excellent, but the leads stand out. Abbie Cornish has done a few of these costume dramas and excels at them, but I have to believe that this is her best work yet. She portrays Fanny as a solid sensible middle class oldest child, willing to take on responsibility. But there is also a playful romantic streak in her that causes her to fall for a poet with no prospects. Cornish captures that. And at the climax where she hears of Keats’ death, she is devastating.

Likewise Ben Whishaw doesn’t play Keats as gloomily as he might have. He throws a rugby ball around with Fanny’s brother and sister and is considerate and kind enough that eventually, Fanny’s mother agrees to the marriage, although it is on the eve of his departure for Rome and therefore too late. Keats doesn’t force his genius and sensitivity on others, although you can see it. He is humble and human, although in a very awkward way. Fanny teaches him a lot about the main topic of his verse, namely love.

Jane Campion writes and directs with the steady hand of a costume drama veteran. The film unwinds at a stately pace and is beautifully photographed. She uses Keats’ own words extensively and this sometimes drags the story to a halt but that is a cavil. The worst thing that can be said of Bright Star is that it’s not as good as The Piano, but she may not make a better movie than that.

Bright Star is a well made and touching romantic film.

The Informant

In one summer we go from Public Enemies, a film that suffered from too much fidelity to its true story, to The Informant which plays fast and loose with the facts of its equally true inspiration for comic effect. The latter approach works brilliantly this time.

The Informant is based on a huge price fixing scandal that rocked agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland in the early nineties. The key figure in the scandal was Mark Whitacre, played by Matt Damon, an up and coming executive with the firm. It’s not exactly clear why Whitacre decides to turn informant. He is a rising star in ADM with a huge salary and some dirty secrets of his own that don’t come out until later, so he has a lot to lose. This ambiguity is part of the character.  Whitacre, as played in the film–an important distinction here– is an habitual liar, who craves attention and can’t even be honest to himself. He spins a web that starts with a lie to his boss about a saboteur in the company. This brings in the FBI in the form of Special Agent Brian Shepard, played by Scott Bakula. Shepard does his best to follow the convolutions thrown at him by Whitacre, especially when the price fixing conspiracy is revealed.

The main draw here is Matt Damon’s excellent performance. He subsumes himself completely into the role, putting on weight and wearing heavy make up to make him look like a pudgy executive. More important is the performance. Whitacre is a smart man but also an easily distracted one, especially when his attention is caught by something that appeals to his vanity. This is caught best in a series of voice-overs, which start out as almost non sequitors.  In one example he’s just informed the FBI about the price fixing, a moment that changes his life and he’s thinking about what a great listener Special Agent Shepard is and how he could see them going fishing. As things get more serious for Whitacre, the voice-overs get more self serving and self-pitying as he blames everyone but himself for his troubles.

Scott Bakula is terrific as Shepard, humanizing the corporate gloss of the FBI agent stereotype to show the frustration of man whose career depends on this increasingly unreliable source. The rest of the cast is wonderful too.

Soderbergh and his screenwriter, Scott Z. Burns used Kurt Eichenwald’s book by the same name as a starting point for this entertaining movie.  My understanding is that the book is very different in  tone. So if you want to have a good time, see the movie. If you want to find out what really happened, read that book.

9

In a weird post-apocalyptic world, a troop of rag dolls fight roving mechanical toys for survival.  It’s Toy Story meets Terminator.  The result is an atmospheric, beautifully animated film that leaves me more excited about first time director Shane Acker’s promise than his actual execution in this case.

9 is based on Acker’s Academy Award nominated short, of the same name, which was 11 minutes long and completely without dialog.  Not only did it snag him a nomination and a Master’s degree in animation from UCLA, it also brought him to the attention of Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov who are listed as producers on the feature length version of the film. Acker’s aesthetic seems to resonate with Burton’s so it’s a good match.

The story centers around 9, voiced by Elijah Wood, who wakes up in this grim world and quickly falls in with a group of similar rag dolls who are hiding in a church from a cat-like mechanical creature. 2, voiced by Martin Landau, the first rag doll 9 meets, is carried away by this creature. 9 mounts a rescue with 5 voiced by John C. Reilly over the objections of 1, voiced by Christopher Plummer. The mission goes wrong and they wind up waking a robot that can manufacture more of the deadly machines that plague them, as well as suck their souls out of their bodies.

There’s nothing to complain about from a technical standpoint. The animation is smooth; the design is beautiful. There is a mood to it that makes if mysterious and foreboding. The problem is that there really isn’t a clear audience for this film. The plot is dark and along with some of the images could be disturbing for younger kids. At the same time, the allegory is a little too obvious for adults and young adults. Also there’s no characterization. The dolls are as bland as the numbers they use for names.

What it all means is that I’m looking forward to Shane Acker’s next film.

Inglourius Basterds

Quentin Tarantino has a simple formula for drama: put some characters with weapons together and see how many ways they can find to kill each other, after they have some great conversations about pop culture first, of course. In Kill Bill the weapons were Samurai swords; in Inglourious Basterds they use machine guns, Bowie knives, baseball bats and burning movie theaters. Yes that’s right. It’s time for another gab and gore fest from Quentin Tarantino, a master of both those things.

Here’s the set up. Lieutenant Aldo Raine, played with a thick Tennessee accent by Brad Pitt, is assigned the task of assembling a commando squad, made up primarily of Jewish Americans, men who would be motivated for the task ahead of them, which is mainly to be dropped into occupied France for the very simple purpose of killing Nazis. Raine sets the head count at 100 per squad member. But you get the impression that’s just a nice round number. He’ll take more.

Most of the previews give the impression that Raine’s mission is the entire movie. Actually there are two other plots that weave in and out of the Basterd’s story. One concerns Shosannah Dreyfus, played by Melanie Laurent, who has primarily worked in French film up til now. Shosannah’s family is betrayed and killed at the beginning of the war. She escapes to Paris and somehow winds up running a movie theater. When a Nazi war hero named Fredrick Zoller takes a liking to her and convinces Goebbels, played by Sylvester Groth to move the premiere of the film based on Zoller’s exploits and starring the young man himself, to her theater, she is presented with an opportunity for revenge.

The third plot line is similar. The British get word of the premiere and recruit cinephile commando Lt. Archie Hicox, played by Michael Fassbender to attend the showing and bomb the theater, killing Goebbels and a lot of other Nazis as well. He is to be helped in this scheme, dubbed Operation Kino by the Basterds and German movie star Bridget von Hammersmark, played by Diane Kruger, who is a double agent.

There are so many cool things happening in this movie that it’s hard to pin down. Like every Tarantino movie, it’s about language, in this case, how hard it is to infiltrate another culture even if you know the language. In one scene Lt. Hicox is exposed as a spy by his accent. Lt. Raine is, of course, completely unable to mask his thick mountain accent and is caught within minutes of his arrival at the premiere. There’s also something about reputations and how they help or hinder someone. In almost every scene, someone asks, “Have you heard of me?” I have to admit that I haven’t quite figured out what it means yet.

Inglourius Basterds is a long film, but you don’t mind. Most of the length is Tarantino’s brilliant dialog, so while it does bog down the plot, you are entertained, and as I’ve said language is a large part of what the film is about, so it fits. Besides this films crackles with energy and most of it comes from the performances. Brad Pitt’s comic acting chops are underrated. His delivery of the classic Tarantino lines will be running through my head for a long time. Melanie Laurent captures the coolness of a French aesthete and combines it with the rage of a vengeful Jewish woman. But stealing every scene he’s in is Christoph Walz, who plays Colonel Hans Landa, a frighteningly smart SS officer, who can be charming but deadly. That performance is worth the price of admission alone.

Of course every Tarantino film is also about movies. Here he is constantly referencing war movies, especially cheesy men on a mission movies like The Dirty Dozen or the Italian film from the seventies with the same name as this one only spelled correctly. In the end it is film itself that completes the mission. I won’t tell you how. But I can say that it doesn’t conform to the accepted history of the war. That may raise an eyebrow or two but in the end it’s all part of the fun. Movie stars have been winning World War II for over fifty years now. It’s only fair that Brad Pitt gets his turn.

District 9

There is a long history in science fiction of using the central conceit of the setup as an extended metaphor. Alien invasion, time travel and all the other major tropes that we’re used to can stand in for whatever theme the author or filmmaker can make work. Neill Blomkamp, the writer and director of District 9 was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and sets his story there. You don’t even need two guesses to get what this first contact story is standing in for.

Twenty years before the story starts, a giant alien ship appeared in the air above Johannesburg. It just hung there like a storm cloud, not communicating, not moving. Eventually, the government got up the nerve to send helicopters up there to cut through the hull. They found thousands of starving aliens, large tentacled beings with tremendous strength. They brought them all down in what was seen as a humanitarian move. It quickly turned sour and over the two intervening decades, the aliens or prawns as they are pejoratively called, because they kind of look like giant shrimp, are confined to a ghetto, where they pick through garbage and steal computer equipment.

After two decades of this the government has decided that it has had enough and is ready to move the prawns into large camps outside of the city limits. To lead the eviction process, they choose a mid level bureaucrat named Wikas Van De Merwe, played by Sharlto Copely. Wikas is a bit of a milquetoast who got the job because he’s married to the daughter of the head of the private company that handles alien affairs and that is secretly trying to unlock the puzzle of the alien weapons, which appear to be keyed to the prawns’ DNA. No humans can use them.

From a technical standpoint, this is a pretty good film. Blomkamp’s background is in computer animation and it shows. The CG aliens are flawlessly integraged into the live action film. The performances, especially Copely’s are pretty good. The camera jumps around in handheld, battlefield documentary type shots. This creates some very intense moments.

But there is something about District 9 that is off putting. It goes beyond the in your face violence and gore and the unremittingly bleak view of human nature. For one thing the film jumps among several styles. There are the handheld sections, where the lens frequently gets splattered with blood that looks like it was made to look like footage for a documentary. A lot of the backstory is given in face to face interviews with “experts” on the situation, most of whom don’t play any other part in the story. And then most of it, especially after the first third of the film is told in traditional narrative style. That jumping around is confusing and it pulls you out of the story. What’s more, for a film that presents itself as so realistic, there are a couple of very unlikely escapes.

District 9 is in the end an interesting failure. It takes more than attitude and gallons of fake blood to make a metaphor work.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

When we last left Harry, he and Dumbledore had just defeated Voldemort in a difficult and costly battle in the lobby of the Ministry of Magic.  There were witnesses and Voldemort’s return was proven to the wizarding world at large, thus vindicating Harry. Whatever relief or joy Harry feels at that is overshadowed by the knowledge that the most powerful dark wizard in history is alive and after him.

Half Blood Prince is pretty much prelude. Harry, Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix are marshaling their forces, forging alliances and making their final moves before the epic throwdown in Deathly Hallows, knowing that the enemy is doing the same. Dumbledore guides Harry through a special research project. Using the pensieve, a device for reading memories stored in glass vials or pulled directly from someone’s brain, Harry searches through Dumbledore’s collection of memories concerning Tom Riddle, the Hogwart’s student who would become Voldemort. They search for clues as to his strategy and also for weaknesses.

In the meantime a new school year is starting and as usual there have been changes in Hogwort’s faculty. Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) has been moved over to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, a move that he has been wanting for some time. Taking his old Potions position is Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) who Dumbledore has lured out of retirement. Slughorn is an inveterate name dropper, proud of all the famous wizards he’s taught over the years. One of those former students of whom he is not so proud is Voldemort. Harry’s task is to pump the reluctant Slughorn for information about the young dark lord, more opposition research.

And of course, at the same time, Harry has to grow up himself. His interest in girls is rapidly overcoming his natural reticence and the self esteem issues pounded into him by the Dursleys. Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright) is looking better to him all the time, but she’s dating someone and Ron, Harry’s best friend isn’t too keen on the idea of anyone dating his little sister. Ron is involved with the cloying Lavender Brown (Jessie Cave) much to the consternation of Hermione, who has liked Ron for a few years now. This soap opera provides almost all of the humor in the film.

If I apply my usual standards to this film, I might point out that the plot is weak and the pacing is uneven at best. But of course this is a middle installment in a multipart series. It is in fact the beginning of the end of the story so allowances can be made.  I can’t imagine anybody who’s watched all these films griping about Harry and Ginny’s first kiss even if it does bring the plot to a grinding halt, or seeing Ron gooned on a love potion. Rupert Grint has developed excellent comic timing, by the way, and has a wide array of funny faces.

This of course is a testament to J.K. Rowling’s universe, which is deep and detailed. We are seeing the next generation in this world come into it’s own, even as the older one wanes. Dumbledore seems frail, as does Arthur Weasley. Remus Lupin is beaten down by the loses that have been inflicted on him by the other side. Harry, Hermione, Ron and the rest of their classmates need to step up, so all this stuff about growing up is germane to the theme.

It’s also a tribute to the actors that breathe life into Rowling’s creation. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Emma Watson as Hermione, Micheal Gambon as Dumbledore and the rest of the regular cast are by now old friends. Their comfort with the roles precludes anyone else from playing them and they do a great job. Newcomer, Jim Broadbent adds to the excellence. He brings Slughorn’s fawning affability to the fore. Tom Felton deserves mention for making us feel a little sorry for the bully Draco Malfoy.

Director Peter Yates gives this film a suitable atmosphere of dread. Steve Kloves’ script captures the book without slavishly following it. Bruno Delbonnel takes over the Director of Photography duties and the results are sumptuous. As the situations in the movies get more and more dire, the photography gets more muted. Parts of this fim are almost in black and white

In my review of Order of the Phoenix, I mentioned that Half Blood Prince would probably be the toughest of the books to translate into film. I suspected that the team that has gathered around this project could pull it off and I was right.

Now I can’t wait to see how they end it.

Public Enemies

There is a reason that movies based on true events never get it right. Reality rarely organizes itself into a coherent narrative with a streamlined plot, compelling characters and a clear theme. So filmmakers tinker. They move events to different locations; they combine characters, compress timelines, and engage in a million other tricks that I’m probably not aware of, in order to get a story as opposed to an event.

There’s probably a better word for it than event but my vocabulary isn’t up to finding it, so let me try and explain. Stories are aimed. They are carefully crafted to make you draw the conclusions and experience the emotions that the storyteller wants. Events are random. They have no inherent moral lessons and rarely any kind of structure that we would recognize as a plot.  Say a person slips on a banana peel in front of two witnesses. Witness A may find this event hilarious. She’ll tell her friends later about flailing arms and lost dignity. Witness B, however, may see it as a near tragedy. The man could have broken his tailbone or even his back. He might have had a concussion. People should properly dispose of banana peels. They are a safety hazard.

Even a simple event can spawn very different stories. Witness A is not going to mention the five minutes that the victim spent laying on the sidewalk with a stunned look on his face, trying to determine if he’s unhurt. Witness B won’t relate the victim’s pretentious manner before his accident, how his nose was stuck in the air, which is why he didn’t see the banana peel in the first place. Such details would have muddled the stories. Thus the very act of storytelling distorts reality.

Michael Mann is a meticulous filmmaker. Every aspect of his work, every word in the script, every scrap of costume, every shadow in the picture frame is considered and judged. In the case of Public Enemies, Mann took this tremendous capacity for detail and tried to stay true to the event. He used all the original locations where he could. The jails Dillinger escaped from, the Little Bohemia Lodge where Melvin Purvis almost caught him are all where the actual events occurred. It’s amazing that so many of them still exist.  The script, likewise, tries to preserve the sequence and tenor of the events as much as possible.

And therein lies the problem. Public Enemies is a jumble of happenings that occur one after the other. They are not processed or commented on. I’d say it was documentary-like but documentaries usually have themes or slants. There were several threads of themes that I picked up on. Dillinger, played by Johnny Depp is an expert at manipulating the press as is J. Edgar Hoover, played by Billy Crudup. They wage a PR battle for the hearts and minds of America. But there’s also stuff in there about the mafia, which is changing into a more corporate entity, and loose cannon bank robbers like Dillinger are deemed likely to bring the heat down on some very profitable operations by their flamboyant crimes and personalities. None of these threads ever coalesce into anything and I left the theater somewhat confused as to what it all meant.

In addition to the script problems, I had some technical quibbles. A lot of this was shot at night, using natural lighting, which gave rise to some depth of field problems. For non-photographers out there that mean that a lot the film was out of focus, which made it distracting. I also found the soundtrack to be muddy. There were times when I couldn’t hear the dialog clearly.

On the positive side is the cast. Do I really have to mention that Johnny Depp gives a fantastic performance as Dillinger? He manages to resolve the contradictions in Dillinger’s character. Here you have the consummate professional, a meticulous planner, who can rob a bank in less than two minutes. He doesn’t go out of his way to kill people, but won’t hesitate to do it if he needs to. He pays attention to his tools; he knows how guns work, why they jam and what to do about it, likewise a getaway car. He’s also a natural born leader. His men follow him not because he terrorizes them but because he’s loyal to them and fair. On the other hand, he’s a romantic. When he sees Billie Frenchette, played by Marion Cotillard, across a dance floor, he falls hard. But his way of sweeping her off her feet is to go up to her and simply ask for what he wants. He doesn’t sugarcoat it either, telling her exactly what it will be like traveling with a bank robber.

Cotillard captures Billie’s vulnerable innocence at first and then her growth into a willing and daring accomplice. It’s made all the more amazing when you consider that she’s not acting in her native tongue. Christian Bale is stoic and professional as Melvin Purvis and Billy Crudup is suitably creepy as J. Edgar Hoover.

But these positive elements can’t overcome Public Enemies’ main flaw, that it’s just too diffuse to make a good story.

The Taking of Pelham 123

It’s been a slow summer moviewise. We’ve had a mediocre superhero movie, one great revival of a science fiction series and one disappointing one, a Pixar masterpiece and a few decent thrillers. Here we are in mid June and it appears to be over. I’m not really thrilled about a new Transformers movie, since the first one stunk so bad. Harry Potter is about the only reason to look forward at this point. Compared to last year when we had great films every week well into July, this summer is definitely sub par. Or else it could be that last year’s blockbuster season was exceptional. In either case nothing that opened this week really appealed  to the fanboy in me, so I went old school and saw The Taking of Pelham 123, a remake of a gritty 70’s crime film.

I know I saw the original version, maybe in the theater, but probably on TV. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much about it, except that it had a lot of natural lighting and grainy film stock. It was very much in the same vein as Dog Day Afternoon and The French Connection, depicting a New York that reeled from one crisis to the next. The nightmare of urban life was a major theme in those days, when everything seemed to be falling apart.

Tony Scott, the director and Brian Helgaland, the screenwriter try and recapture that vibe. They break out the grainy film stock and put away the tripods to duplicate the feel of the first version. However, we may not be far enough into this recession to enable Hollywood to make a real statement about hopelessness and anarchy, at least not in the summer. There are glimmers of hope at the end of this film.

The premise is simple. A disgruntled ex-con, who calls himself Ryder, played by John Travolta, leads a team of guys he met in prison in a scheme to hijack a subway train. When he has control of the train, he gets on the radio to the Rail Control Center. Manning the radio at that point is Walter Garber, played by Denzel Washington. As events play out the two develop a relationship.

Both Travolta and Washington turn in sharp and entertaining performances, although neither of them are really stretching their ranges. Travolta’s Ryder is smart, articulate and a little defensive. He’s quick to blame his misdeeds on others. He’s hoping to get away at the end, but he’s also ready to die. Washington plays a family man who’s made a mistake and taken a bribe in the past. He’s under investigation. But he’s not really a bad guy (he used the money to pay for his children’s college tuition) and he has a lot of compassion for the people in the train.

The supporting performances are good too. John Turturro plays Camonetti, the city’s hostage negotiator. In lessor hands this role could have become a caricature of an inflexible arrogant bureaucrat who adds to the problem. Turturro plays him as a solid professional who’s rules of thumb and experience actually help Washington’s character. James Gandolfini plays the disgraced Mayor of the city, who has been caught in an affair and knows his political career is over. He’s just finishing out his time and looking forward to returning to real life. Gandolfini gives a nuanced performance that evokes a little sympathy.

Rather than being about hopelessness and anarchy this film is about redemption. Walter Garber gets it. Ryder refuses it. Given the premise of the script, there really isn’t a lot of pontificating about it but there is some, mostly from Travolta. What the filmmakers are saying is obvious but they don’t beat you over the head with it.

There are some problems. What Garber does at the end is a little unbelievable. At one point, the Mayor and his staff figure out who Ryder really is but nothing is done with that particular plot point. These are minor quibbles, however.

The Taking of Pelham 123 is a decent summer movie.