True West

Jeff Bridges shoots, drinks and snarls as The Coens stay reverent to the novel’s sparked up lingo

by Morgan P Salvo

Opening with a dead body, drizzling snow and a quote from the Old Testament ("The wicked flee when none pursueth"), it is clear that this True Grit is more than just a remake of the ingrained Western icon John Wayne vehicle. The Coen Brothers were more interested in staying reverent to the Charles Portis' original novel, telling the story from the young girl's perspective, and re-teaming with their No Country for Old Men producer Scott Rudin. This is the story of young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) who enlists the services of "Rooster" Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) a man with “true grit” to help her capture her father’s killer. Accompanied by Texas Ranger Le Beouf (Matt Damon) they all journey onward to bring her father's murderer (Josh Brolin) to justice or kill him, whichever comes first.

Although True Grit will not leave the lasting impression Fargo did, it does deliver on a grand scale. The Coen’s undeniable gift for words shines throughout. The Elizabethan theater chatter set forth here is totally reminiscent of HBO’S series Deadwood. The absolutely excellent dialogue evokes the same kind of weird speak that rings hilarious when deadpanned as in Raising Arizona and The Man Who Wasn’t There.
Casting Bridges in the Rooster Cogburn role was another stroke of the Coens’ ongoing genius. Move over Duke, the Dude is taking over. Bridges is an amazing treat to watch as the cantankerous drunken old one-eyed windbag. Dropping octaves and basically growling the whole movie, Bridges tops every performance of his to date. Brolin is hilarious as a kind of blundering murderous/mutant/retarded/outlaw. Damon’s LaBoeuf (humorously pronounced “luh-beef”) is probably the most unconvincing but that might be the directors’ take on the stiff semi-good guy/hero role or the curse of Glen Campbell (who stammered through the original role). Steinfeld is a force to be reckoned with; rattling off her dialogue proficiently (you can see why she was picked from 15,000 audition tapes).
There was a glaring error onscreen that I was not familiar with in Coen Country.
Mattie swims across a river on her horse totally drenched and arrives on the other side bone dry. Was this a conscious effort from these perfectionists to make a mistake as in older flicks to see if someone catches it? Are they messing with us in a new way here?
True Grit might rank somewhere with films like Assassination of Jesse James, Dead Man and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but what I left thinking was that this would make a great double bill paired with an early Bridges film called Bad Company as Cogburn could be easily his character Jake Rumsey “all growed up”.
With exec producer Spielberg onboard and a safe bet for X-mas family audiences, Grit plays out happy and nice, overall merely adequate, falling short of the high standards the brothers have set for themselves. Still Joel and Ethan deliver some of their iconic weirdness (like the guy in the skinned–bear suit) and for a PG-13 rating, actually manage to include some decent blood splattering. Everything looks great: the cinematography is deep-toned, the landscape beautiful, the characters colorful, but in the end it lacks the spunk it started with--- maybe that’s the essence of the novel. Straightforward yet disconcerting the Coens have made a Western, nothing more nothing less.
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True Grit
Starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, Hailee Steinfeld
Written & Directed By Joel and Ethan Coen
Rated PG-13
3 ½ stars

Move Aside Rocky there’s a New Kid in Town

Palookaville definitely has a contender
By Morgan P Salvo
What’s that you say? David O. Russell, the guy who directed Spanking the Monkey, Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees made a boxing movie? Yes it’s true the king of quirky has made a straight forward boxing pic based on a true story, fueled by performances of compelling grit and layered intensities, simply entitled The Fighter.
It’s a drama about boxer "Irish" Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), an up-and-coming welterweight who is being groomed to become the next ''pride of Lowell Mass” by his older half brother, Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), a local boxing legend-turned-crack-addict and his overly imposing manager/mother, Alice (Melissa Leo).
Though it’s virtually impossible to make a boxing movie without drawing comparisons to Rocky, Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby and The Wrestler, this film more resembles On the Waterfront, as it focuses more on the psychological pain and connection to family than the actual boxing scenes.
Once again we have a tough and somber version of Massachusetts’ mean streets, this time centered in Lowell, the birthplace of America’s industrial revolution and Jack Kerouac. Showcasing the toxic interaction between families that are usually more dramatized by Eugene O'Neill, the filmmaking alone holds it own in originality
Russell’s cinematic style is the real star of this film. Following the characters with a moving camera/wandering eye and using different film stock for scenes, he creates the feel of an intriguing documentary. Shooting with straight video to depict the boxing scenes with all its inherent lines and fuzziness, the camera visuals never let you down. Ironically the sub plot is the making of a documentary on Dicky’s life that he touts as his comeback film for HBO, but is in actuality a documentary on crack addiction, allowing us see the seedier side of life and all its deadly ramifications.
As we follow the career of Micky and the downfall of Dicky, we also get to see all the raging dysfunctions of their family reminiscent of a reality show, their domestic drama played out in full view of innocent bystanders. There are seven sisters who never seem to leave the house, mean and nasty hags all bitchy and hairdos. Across town lies the den of drug addicts that seem to just wallow in crack smoke. Russell’s use of non-actors in these roles proves to be a stroke of genius as their scenes have that uncomfortable reality of people who mean well but get directly under your skin. Plus you wonder where the hell did they come from?
There’s something inherently authentic about the story and performances. Bale overdoes it from the get-go but after you get over his thespian showboating you lock into his character. Wahlberg plays it solid and laidback only to explode when necessary. In their defense, real footage of Dicky and Micky at the ending credits makes it clear they were on the mark. Leo rules as the chain-smoking self-absorbed queen of manipulation, right down to the lacquered platinum blond hair, hovering like a vulture over her one son's boxing career while pampering and enabling her other son’s wasted life. Amy Adams as Micky’s girlfriend Charlene sheds her nice girl image (Leap Year, Doubt) in a finely hewn performance of a feisty college dropout/ bartender with high hopes. Alice’s husband George (Jack Magee) is a puffy Irish drunk who gets to shoulder the burden of a wacked out family gone turbo and he looks it. Mickey O'Keefe (in a surprisingly astonishing performance) plays himself, a sergeant for the Lowell Police Department in Massachusetts (as of 2010). In real life, he was Micky’s mentor during his prolific boxing career.
Fighter quickly moves past the corny formulaic mush. The requisite tension is achieved leading up to the championship bout and the Rocky-esque training montages are kept short. The rivalries between promoters and trainers that could’ve been handled as good vs. evil instead played out as almost pure dysfunction. Shot with intimacy all the little intricacies of human emotion resonate as the drunken aspirations from Looserville rise and fall like the tide.
Good music is used throughout (Breeders, Rolling Stones, Whitesnake to name a few) and there’s even an a cappella version of the Bee Gees’ “I Started A Joke” that is sure to make you wince.
Overall The Fighter is yet another slug-fest drama but rings true establishing heartfelt sentiment that real life goes on and even drugged out hopes and dreams can come true.

The Fighter
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo
Directed by David O. Russell
Rated R
 3 stars

Far From the Extolling Crowd

Intellectuals, infidelity and teen infatuation run amok
by
Morgan P Salvo

Tamara Drewe, the newest installment from director Stephen Frears, has both great moments and glaring faults. A black comedy, TD is adapted from a comic-strip-turned-graphic novel by Posy Simmonds, which itself is based on Thomas Hardy's novel Far From the Maddening Crowd. In the countryside of a writer’s retreat, the once the ugly duckling Tamara Drewe, now a glamorous-yet-confused journalist with a life-changing nose job returns to sell her house. This Tamara is not to be confused with Tamara, the ax-wielding cheerleader-killing-machine, although that might have been the gimmick this flick needed.

Director Frears has delivered on romantic sappiness before with The Snapper and The Van that play out like catchy tunes without all the sweetness.He even makes movies I liked (Prick up Your Ears and The Grifters) but most recognizable are Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity and The Queen. But here his stylish filmmaking is all slick substance, the timing of the humor hitting the mark only occasionally. By the time we get to the heavy stuff it’s way too late. Tamara could’ve used a dose of dark interposed with humor instead of light until the bitter end.The performances were great to mediocre. Questionable were the American dweeb (Bill Camp), name dropping Thomas Hardy or the drummer from the band Swipe (Dominic Cooper), who couldn’t make up his mind if he was Robert Smith from The Cure or Prince. Gemma Arterton (Clash of Titans/Prince of Persia) takes some getting used to but at least she’s not playing a princess this time. Roger Allan (Speed Racer/V for Vendetta) and Tamsin Greig (Shaun of the Dead) kick it up a notch, flawlessly handling messy infidelity and all its emotional intricacies. The bored, fanatical, band-worshipping girls (Jessica Barden, Charlotte Christie) steal the show, their immature meddling being the impetus behind the farce that ensues. Swipe’s song “Corporate Domestic Dispute” could be right out of Spinal Tap.

The use of superimposing flashbacks in the background or split-screen adds a nice touch but what is really boiling under the surface here never seems to explode.There are snippets of very funny dialogue but the quirkiness is dissociated with the seriousness of it all. The seductive mind games aren’t really all intact here. For all the time spent developing each character the scenarios fall through the cracks. Some liaisons aren’t explained believably. Even with all the jealousy, unrequited love, sex, vandalism, intellectual posturing, small town gossip and full circle revelations, in the end all the little ironies get ironed out. From the previews it seemed Tamara would come back and wreak havoc on those who abused her when she was ugly through seduction and a sea of witty banter, but she turns out to be just as clueless as everyone else.
Tamara Drewe may be too clever for its own good. The bull’s-eye was right there but the arrow just took too many detours. At least Mo Tucker, drummer from The Velvet Underground, is mentioned.
Tamara Drewe

Starring Gemma Arterton, Roger Allan, Luke Evans, Tamsin Greig
Directed by Stephen Frears
Rated R
2 ½ stars

Cowboys and Ninjas

Town of the flying bullets is too cute for cult classic status
By Morgan P Salvo

Maybe it’s sign of the time, but I remember when the holiday season rolled around it was movie city . Oddly, the only movie opening last week was The Warrior’s Way…and what a disappointment.Now sneaking in with just a few weeks to go, this baby just might make my top ten worst of 2010.
Way is a wannabe visually-stunning modern martial arts Western, starring South Korean actor Dong-gun Jang as Yang, a Samurai warrior assassin who refuses to kill the last child of the enemy clan adopting the baby instead. He then hides in the untamed west near a stationary and very stagnant traveling circus.
With a great beginning as warriors fight in snow-covered ground with all that House of Flying Daggers cart-wheeling-samurais backward-motion floating-in-space stuff and computer-generated blood mist spraying from countless sliced necks, Way subsequently takes a dive and splats hard.
This flick strives to please just about every kind of audience, and is sure to repel them all. Overly cute and then sadistically brutal, Way has the sensibilities of Shrek meets A Fistful of Dollars. Knee-deep in stereotypes, the dialogue is ridiculously predictable, the acting awful and the special effects (with the exception of one cool grainy sepia toned killing spree) just so-so.
Despite all the A-list expensive production values, you would think none of these actors had been in front of the camera before. Geoffrey Rush’s cartoonish Southern drawl consists of hard r’s and Kate Bosworth’s accent was absolutely deplorable when she remembered to use it. Jang starred in one of the highest grossing Korean films (Friend) but here his blank stare and staged fight scenes reveal no acting chops. Attempting the American crossover, he’s no Chow Yun Fat. You know you’re in trouble when Danny Houston as the villain gets the juiciest role and hams it up so much that you want to throw in the towel and yell ‘I give!’ Then there’s Tony Cox (Bad Santa) decked out in a ringmaster getup playing it so darn cute you want to hug him and go ‘awww”!
The slew of kooky carnival characters could’ve been better developed, although it is hilarious to see clowns shoot guns and get knives chucked at them.

 Writer/director Sngmoo Lee strives hard to make this movie look good but has no idea how to put it all together. Even the Sergio Leone clone music was contrived. There are also a slew of disturbingly adorable cutaways of the baby, popping up like Pampers commercials, but don’t get me started on babies.

Warrior’s Way can’t decide if it’s a Disney film, Sanjuro, or a Spaghetti Western. Mainly it’s an over-drawn love story interspersed with blood drenched bodies. The synopsis sounds cool and that’s why this movie is so bad--- it has all the possibilities of a cult classic right up there with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo but it wimps out every chance it gets.
While Lynn (Bosworth) and Yang tend a garden one says, “It’s better to watch things grow than cutting them down.” Still, this movie sucked.

The Warrior’s Way
Starring Dong-gun Jang, Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush
Directed/written by Sngmoo Lee
Rated R
1 ½ stars

Faster Longer Deeper Harder

 Faster Rock Kill Kill!!
It’s all about the revenge in Faster
By Morgan P Salvo

You won’t have to work too hard to keep up with Faster, a bullet-headed, throwaway vengeance flick. Faster is stripped-down to the max and beefed up to the hilt; from title to characters to plot. It never strives to be more, concentrating on making the most of its wild-ass look and self-imposed restrictions.

Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson plays “Driver” an ex-con seeking revenge. The first scene you see is Rock’s pumped up chest heaving and glistening as he paces back and forthin his cell like a caged animal. Upon release, Driver literally sprints to his Chevelle, hidden in a junkyard. He lays some impressive rubber as heavy rock music blares, then like a predatory lizard, walks into an office and shoots a dude right in the head. Clearly Driver is on a mission. He plans to systematically kill anyone associated with his brother’s murder.
On the other side of the spectrum, destined to intertwine, is a drug-addled “Cop” (Billy Bob Thornton) investigating the murder, and “Killer” (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) a guy mysteriously hired to “hit” Driver. Oh, and Carl Gugino plays another cop, but she doesn’t get a cool nick name.

Joe and Tony Gayton’s screenplay fills in the motivations. Steeped in a series of flashbacks everyone has an unnecessary back story that tries to glue the film together and give it some literal heft alongside the relentless gun blazing. Redemption is the key theme. Every character is pathetic on some level. We’re supposed to be sucked in and have some sympathy for this bevy of losers. But once again the realm of soap opera squalor forces everyone to face their own personal hell while we’re left with “so what?”
Director George Tillman Jr. wastes no time. Faster is reminiscent of Michael Mann’s Thief and Dominic Sena’s Gone in 60 Seconds, while spattered and painted with an indie-flick smear. Tillman Jr lays on the ridiculous hyper-reality with reddish hued, earth-toned desert settings, insanely theatrical lighting and an undecipherable chase scene in reverse. Except every camera angle in the book, grainy exposures and changing hue color cannot camouflage Faster’s stumbling, blunt-force narrative style. What’s supremely overlooked and ignored is the fact that it’s virtually impossible for a huge tattooed man-thing looking dude to drive across half of California and Nevada killing guys left and right and not be the target of a massive dragnet, let alone go completely unnoticed when he marches into a hospital to kill a patient at point-blank range (one of the funniest scenes). Tillman Jr incorporates over-the–top sound effects and sound track while Clint Mansell’s heartbeat score is abnormally intense. There’s also a blatant rip-off and unoriginal use of Kenny Rogers and the First Edition’s “What Condition My Condition Is In” c’mon—that’s just flat out sacrilege to The Big Lebowski.
The acting is all over the map. The Rock utters few lines and is not adept at brooding, staying steely-eyed and devilishly stoic, although he’s much better than I’ve ever seen him. Billy Bob does his good-guy/bad-guy routine with a dose of perplexity as to his motives. But the real standout for bad ideas is not only the writing for the character of Killer but the actor who plays him. He’s a total cliché: a dashing, rich guy who drives a Ferrari and has a beautiful blonde girlfriend He may be a trained assassin or just might kill for amusement. Speaking with a strange British accent and flashing a weird smile, Jackson-Cohen lacks the magnitude to inhabit a role that essentially doesn’t fit with the rest of the movie. A more flamboyantly charged performance would’ve worked. Lost stars Maggie Grace and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje also make appearances.

There are some really hilarious lines like when the Killer exclaims “I beat yoga. What’s next?” or when Driver’s ex girlfriend exclaims “I know what you’re doing… I saw it on TV!” Faster is brutal, bloody, tough, gritty, violent and stupid. In other words it has all the elements of a male fantasy revenge flick with a moral code gone berserk. I thought Faster would make me want to bolt as fast as it started, turns out that was not the case. Once it was over though, I couldn’t get it out of my head fast enough.

FASTER
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Carla Gugino, Maggie Grace, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
Directed by George Tillman Jr

2 Stars