Man on Film: Haywire

Looking at Steven Soderbergh's curriculum vitae, one thing is certain: He is not a director who can be pigeonholed. More so than most high-profile directors, Soderbergh is willing to do virtually anything that he feels compelled to do, be it cast a hard-core porn star (a very good one, at that), remake a Rat Pack bomb, or release a movie both theatrically and on DVD on the same day. While such a propensity for taking risks can be exhilarating, sometimes he does misfire.

While Haywire doesn't quite misfire, it is far from a perfect film.

Perhaps most importantly, Haywire is a bit light on action for an action film. Soderbergh went and got himself a real-life action star to be his heroine in the form of MMA star Gina Carano. When her very palpable skill set is put to the test, she passes with flying colors. Unfortunately, such an asset, such a legitimate ass-kicking lady had her primary skill-set underutilized. That's not to say she doesn't excel at these scenes. The culmination of the chase scene through Barcelona gives us a glimpse at her prowess. The magnificent fight scene with Michael Fassbender* is really a showstopper. It's visceral. It utilizes her Muay Thai background. It feels authentic.

*In retrospect, isn't it insane that Soderbergh had to fight the studio to let him cast Fassbender? Granted, this was two years ago, but still, if ever there were an instance in which a larger issue in Hollywood were  inarguably elucidated by a singular incident, it is here. This certainly gives one pause when thinking about how many projects have theoretically been derailed by studio/network casting tampering.

There are just too many long gaps in which she isn't getting to do her thing. In this regard, Haywire is a bit reminiscent of Faster, a hard-R action film in which there is this physical specimen [Dwayne Johnson in the case of Faster] that you want unleashed on the film yet the flashes are too few and too far between. Honestly, this is probably the first time the movie-going public has gotten a chance to see a female action star who can really kick ass. Perhaps it's greedy, but without knowing what the future holds, one can't help but want a balls-to-the-wall action flick starring the fetching Carano.

Normally, I'd probably cut Soderbergh a little slack here, as there is probably just enough action to quench one's thirst, but there are faults that run past this.

For starters, the score completely misses its mark. There are far too many scenes where the score accompanying the action recalls themes from the Ocean's movies. In what is essentially a film in which the protagonist is going up against a larger conspiracy against her, the score is more apropos of one for a caper flick.

The roll out of the development of the plot is a little plodding, and the plot is frankly not as labyrinthine as it probably should be since it is ultimately a conspiracy-driven action film. There is also the problem wherein the fact that she has been betrayed/wronged is given away at the very beginning, the betrayal is then elucidated via flashback for roughly half the film, and then the film picks up in the present and works its way to its conclusion. This construction of the narrative lends itself to much less suspense than simply allowing the events to take their course in their natural progression. I'm all for inventive/non-conventional narrative structure, but it needs to be implemented in a way that actually enhances the film, which does not happen here.

If one were gauging how I felt about the film by what has been written thus far, one would conclude that my reaction was a negative one. That wouldn't be entirely correct. There is a lot to like.

To start with, there is Gina Carano. While her acting was a bit raw, she was passable--especially for a non-actor--and going forward it isn't hard to imagine her becoming slightly more natural with the camera fixed on her. For every note that was just a bit off, there was a redeeming moment. Her presence in the action scenes separates her from everyone who has come before her. She also has this thing that she does when she bites the right side of her lower lip that is insanely alluring; and despite a scar on the underside of her chin, there is very little about her that screams former prize-fighter, at least in the unflattering sense.

While Soderbergh has made some questionable decisions with Haywire, it looks as good as one would expect, especially in Dublin, where the Irish gloom is captured vividly. The scenes in snow-covered Upstate New York with Michael Angarano and Channing Tatum* look great as well.

*Is it weird that I'm starting to dislike him less? I mean I still can't picture him as a Roman sentry or whatever the hell he was in The Eagle, but he might have been the only good non-Jennifer Connelly part of The Dilemma. 


The casting was pretty great as well, with the aforementioned slew of actors joining up with Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, Mathieu Kassovitz, Michael Douglas, and Ewan McGregor to flesh out a formidable cast, effectively picking up the slack that having a novice front and center can lead to.

Haywire is far from a perfect action film, but its imperfections are not so dire as to render the film less than enjoyable. It has enough going for it to have it be a net-plus even with its weaknesses.

Man on Film: Tower Heist

Clearly when one elects to go to Tower Heist, they are doing so because of the cast. This has to be the case as Brett Ratner is the director of the film. A quick perusal of his filmography sorted by IMDb user ratings shows that his highest rated feature-length 'film' was 2002's Red Dragon, which garnered an impressive 7.2. With his next highest showing being the atrocious X-Men: The Last Stand at 6.8, one should certainly temper his expectations regardless of other factors such as cast or screenplay. With Jeff Nathanson--one of the scribes responsible for IJ: KoCS and the second and third Rush Hour movies--as one of the two credited screenwriters, expectations get lowered once more.

The other credited screenwriter is Ted Griffin. If this means little to you, one of the films on his curriculum vitae proves especially meaningful when setting expectations for Tower Heist, and that is Ocean's Eleven. When I say that it proves especially meaningful when setting expectations, I mean that you can pretty much expect to see a working class, post-recession edition of Ocean's Eleven.

The problem with that statement lies with the credited directors of each respective film. Where Ocean's Eleven had Steven Soderbergh directing*, Tower Heist has Brett Ratner at the helm. No strength in casting is going to overcome that.

*While Soderbergh certainly has his detractors, I don't think many would put him in the same tier of directors as Ratner. For those keeping track at home, Soderbergh has directed 17 movies that have higher user ratings at IMDb than Ratner's second highest film. On a tangential note, the most disturbing aspect of these ratings, is that somehow Red Dragon's 7.2 rating is higher than The Limey, Out of Sight, and Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which all came in at a 7.1 rating. Now, when one looks at their Metascore, the stars realign and Red Dragon nets a 60 while The Limey (73), Out of Sight (85), and Sex, Lies, and Videotape (86) net ratings much more representative of their quality in relation to Ratner's oeuvre. I suppose all this proves is that IMDb user ratings are populist to a fault (albeit in an entirely anecdotal and incomplete fashion), but we all probably knew that.

So we find ourselves with a movie featuring the likes of Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck, Tea Leoni, Michael Pena, Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick, and Eddie Murphy, who in aggregate have more than enough comedic chops to carry a film. Stiller is not saddled with the role of the pensive and neurotic jew. Murphy, too, seems to have been freed from the shackles that have bound his funniness for the past 15 years. Yet, there are not enough laughs to go around in the screenplay. The only one who sticks out as being especially funny in Tower Heist is Michael Pena. This is sad.

There is a bevy of talent wasted here. Murphy had been given what everyone hoped was an edgier role--one that should have been an ideal vehicle from which to begin a comeback--but when all is said and done, the role has little in the way of comedic substance. Really, the same can be said for all the other roles. I'm not entirely sure that Pena's character had anything particularly funny written for him either. It could well be Pena breathing life into the movie on his own. This would make more sense than believing that somehow one role is funny as written in an ensemble film. It is easier to believe that we live in a world in which one character is funny because of how Michael Pena played him than the alternative in which two screenwriters and a much-maligned director combined to succeed in making one character amusing while the rest fell flat.

Needless to say, Tower Heist was not an impressive film. I suppose it wasn't awful, but a film in which the 99% try to get even with a member of the 1% who bilked them that fails to fully capitalize on a plot that has built-in goodwill cannot be classified as great either. This is essentially a middle-of-the-road caper comedy, which given this cast (yes, even with Ratner at the helm) is a disappointment.

Man on Film: Contagion

Contagion is a cautionary tale.

Succinctly, this movie is about what happens when Gwyneth Paltrow commits adultery. She cheats on Matt Damon, and the fucking world goes to hell in a hand basket.

Who would cheat on Matt Damon?

I know I wouldn't.

Thanks, Paltrow.

Thanks a bunch.

Oh, and wash your goddamn hands when you're handling meat, kitchen peeps. Even if you're shaking hands with a harlot. Your pork hands could kill the whole world.

And let me tell you, it was weird seeing my old hood torn apart by the new plague, and Kate Winslet was held in the old Armory at my alma mater.

She didn't need to die, Gwyneth.

You just had to get your rocks off, didn't you?

Man on Film: Extract and The Informant!

This (along with many other posts) is long overdue. It has been three weeks since I saw The Informant! It's been even longer since I went to Extract.

To me, they're linked by the fact that they're autumn comedies featuring my boys, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

More than that, though, they are both comedies about seemingly normal people with normal jobs (unlike just about every comedy that comes out these days in which the characters have no discernible debt of time owed to anything that resembles a job). Each film spends a considerable amount of time in the workplace. Each film's protagonist is largely defined by his job.

In Mike Judge's latest film, Extract, he returns from the realm of the farcical satire that his dystopic Idiocracy occupied and elects to mine the world of the regular day-to-day life for his laughs. Obviously, that territory has proven to yield his most successful work (King of the Hill and Office Space), and for the most part it bears fruit here.

As has been the case in all of his post-"Beavis and Butthead" fare, the protagonist in our tale is the straight man while the color is added in heavy doses by the supporting cast. While much of the cast is great, I can gladly say that it is Ben Affleck who stands head and shoulders above the rest. My having vocally stood by (ask just about anyone I know how I feel about Ben Affleck, and they can tell you without hesitation that I am an unabashed fan) as his career nearly ran off the tracks following a string of commercial and critical flops seems to have paid off in the past few years. Following his Golden Globe nominated turn as George Reeve in Hollywoodland, he adapted and directed the outstanding Dennis Lehane tale Gone Baby Gone. Moving on from the solid Kevin MacDonald film, State of Play, America is now being treated to a brilliant comedic turn as Joel's (Jason Bateman) best friend, Dean. As the oft-stoned bartender who is stuck in his early 20s, Affleck plays the amiable dim-bulb and more-often-than-not bad influence to the everyman. Picture a 21st-century Eddie Haskell, all grown up.

Affleck aside, Judge & Co. elect to take a more character-driven approach here. This is not a joke-propelled comedy. At no point is it really trying to be, and on the comedic landscape of recent years, that stands out as being a unique trait. So while Extract does not deliver a laugh-a-minute, that was never its intent.

If the film does have a shortcoming, it is that we find Jason Bateman once again playing the repressed husband--a role he seems* to play every time out. It's not that he doesn't do it well; it's just that he's done it before--often.

*I use the word 'seems' here because I do recognize that he has played roles out of that character mold. Unfortunately, those are in bit parts in ensemble pieces like Smokin' Aces or State of Play. Sure, he was great there, especially as the lecherous lawyer in Smokin' Aces, but they are roles that for the most part are forgotten, which is exactly what I did until I stopped to think about what movies Jason Bateman has been in recently.

That being said, the film works for the most part, and it can be refreshing to see a comedy that isn't going to sacrifice narrative elements such as nuance and character development for a set laugh-to-minute ratio.

Now, while the new autumnal comedy featuring Ben Affleck was good if not great, the Matt Damon star-vehicle The Informant! was outstanding. While Steven Soderbergh has certainly been willing to push filmic boundaries with projects like Bubble, The Girlfriend Experience, and his two-part Che bio-pics, one could certainly argue that he has been at his most enjoyable in films like Out of Sight or the Ocean's series. Sure, those films aren't what one would typify as weighty (read: they're not Solaris...), but I'll be damned if Out of Sight isn't one of the smartest and sexiest crime flicks in ages.

With The Informant!, Soderbergh has found potential drama that he can skew towards a comedic tone. Luckily for everyone, he cast the brilliant Matt Damon in the lead role of Mark Whitacre. The Informant! is a comedy of farcical corporate collusion, espionage, and intrigue with the larger-than-life Mark Whitacre at its center. With Whitacre as what we presume to be our hero, Damon is forced to inhabit the skin of a man who at various points is amiable and dislikeable, naive and cunning, confident and paranoid. The schizophrenia of Whitacre, while still occurring within the bounds of a comedy, call for an impressive range of emotion from its star, especially when that star is expected to maintain a tone that is conducive to a lighter comedy.

Damon delivers on all counts.

If the movie began and ended with Damon (and I suppose in certain regards it could), then no further words would need to be spent here. It doesn't, though.

From the onset of the film, there is another star: Marvin Hamlisch. Starting out underneath the brilliant titles, the score aptly sets the tone of a late-60s/early-70s political farce. Sure, the film is set a good 15 years later than that, but the setting isn't as important as what the subject matter recalls. It hearkens back to a film of an earlier era. Just like the film's throw-back protagonist*, the Hamlisch score does its part in setting the thematic elements of the film against the backdrop of what essentially boils down to a confidence film (albeit within the confines of an entirely different world, eschewing the standard setting of the insanely well-to-do for the contemporized corporate culture and the FBI), succeeding where its predecessor in genre exercise Catch Me If You Can falls short.

*We are, as the audience, rooting for him, aren't we?... While I may be stretching the bounds of what would generally fall under the umbrella of the protagonist, I think it's still applicable here.

As always, Soderbergh's direction is unassailable. The film looks great. I'd never expect anything less, especially after the visually arresting string of films he put together starting with Out of Sight and continuing on through The Limey, Erin Brockovich*, and Traffic.

*It is not without a generous share of begrudging (begrudgment? begrudgery?) that I allow for Erin Brockovich to stand as anything less than a bad film. It does look great--maybe I'm a whore for grainy, bleached-out films--but it is saddled with Julia Roberts as its star. Am I wrong or is she just a less attractive Helen Hunt**? Argh. I cannot stand the 'acting' of Julia Roberts.

**While at the Broken Lizard show at the Paramount Theater last week, they made a Helen Hunt joke and both Luke Perry's Very Distant Cousin and The Special Lady Friend were tickled pink because they somehow manage to end up complaining about Helen Hunt--usually about how she is always talking too loudly--every time they're together. The Helen Hunt knock did not go unappreciated, guys.

In supporting roles, Joel McHale, Clancy Brown, Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures), and Scott Bakula are great, The Bakula especially. But we all know how I feel about Bakula*... As the person who is perhaps most spurned by Whitacre's shenanigans, Bakula probably draws the most sympathy of all characters in the film. It is hard not to feel for him, however, because he is just so damn likeable.

*All right, is it just me, or does "Men of a Certain Age" look kind of good? I know it will be on TNT, and I am hard-pressed to think of a single TNT-show that has been even remotely enticing. Can The Bakula bring that network to the promised land? Only time will tell.

Now, I have not made mention of what probably makes the film stand out most: its voice-over narration from the standpoint of Mark Whitacre. With homespun observations like

Polar bears cover their noses before they pounce on a seal. How do polar bears know their noses are black? Did they look in the water one day, see their reflection and say, "Man, I'd be invisible if it wasn't for that thing."

the viewer gets a unique insight into the mental machinations of their slightly unhinged leading man. His voice-overs often approach a Larry Davidian (no relation to Branch) realm. Needless to say, this is a welcome ingredient.

In all, the film is great. It manages to be fun while continually revealing that a truth isn't quite what we thought it to be. It strikes a refreshing tone while detailing the uncovering of deeply disturbing corporate collusion and price-fixing. It is marked by spot-on performances and is lucky enough to be drawing from a too-good-to-be-true true story. Where its counterpart in this write-up may not deliver the laughs in droves, I found myself cracking up often in The Informant! It delivers on nearly every count and was one of the most pleasant surprises of this movie-going year.