Thursday, January 20, 2011
Bullets fly in Beantown
By Edward Copeland
As an actor, Ben Affleck has proved very inconsistent throughout his career, but as a director, he's proving to be much more reliable as he shows in his second feature, The Town. While Affleck also casts himself as the lead and does have some weak moments in the emoting department, fortunately he's surrounded himself with an excellent ensemble to make up for his deficiencies.
The Town doesn't come off as well as Affleck's directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, starring his more talented (in terms of acting) brother Casey did, but it's still a highly involving crime drama, even if parts of it seem as if they were boosted in a heist from other movies.
Ben Affleck also took part in the writing, sharing screenwriting duties with Aaron Stockard and Peter Craig in adapting the novel Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan. (Affleck does have an Oscar for writing, if you recall, with Matt Damon the script for Good Will Hunting, though Damon acts better than he writes. I digress.)
The title refers to the Charlestown section of Boston, which has gained a reputation as the bank robbery capital of America, thanks to breeding generation after generation of gun-wielding thieves. Affleck plays Doug MacRay, the leader of a small but effective crew that has thwarted authorities for quite some time, getting under the skin of one particular FBI special agent, Adam Frawley, (Jon Hamm, who looks so out of place in a modern story).
As the film opens, Doug and his crew, including his borderline psychotic friend James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner, who gives a performance even better than his fine work in The Hurt Locker) are pulling off a bank job and because of the circumstances, end up having to take the bank manager (Rebecca Hall) hostage.
They later release the woman unharmed but some time later, Doug encounters her by chance in a laundromat. The crooks were all wearing masks and after some vague but probing questions, he realizes there's no way that she could recognize him. Unfortunately, Doug also find himself attracted to the woman, whose name he learns is Claire Keesey and she lives within blocks of him and the other robbers.
Needless to say, this presents problems for just about everyone involved, but in a film such as The Town, it really isn't fair to go into much plot detail for those who haven't seen it. Don't worry: It has plenty of other aspects worth discussing.
Affleck's direction keeps things taut when they need to be and moving when that's required. His staging of the climactic action scene plays like it's a smaller-scale version of the crooks versus cops gun battle in Michael Mann's Heat, but he does manage some nice touches elsewhere. It's hard to say who contributed what to the screenplay, but it's mostly good, though the dialogue does have some clunkers.
In his role as Doug, Affleck places himself as the center of the movie and while he doesn't give a bad performance he has surrounded himself with so many performers who deliver great ones, that he stands out, especially since he has the majority of the screen time. It's not as if he's incapable of delivering the goods, as he's shown in films such as State of Play and Hollywoodland, but I can't help but wonder if he spread himself too thin here and if he'd just wrote and directed The Town and someone else played Doug, it would be even better.
The more I see of Rebecca Hall, the more I like her. I thought that after Penélope Cruz, she was the best thing in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but she's really good here, though she gave her best 2010 performance in the too-little-seen Please Give.
As I mentioned earlier, the film's standout is Jeremy Renner's James. It's easy to overdo a psycho, especially when you are trying to throw a Boston accent on top of it, but he manages to avoid both traps and score on both counts. When he's on screen, you can't take your eyes off him and he gets most of the film's best speeches.
Jon Hamm does fine, though at times it does seem as if you are watching Don Draper, FBI Agent. It is good to see him paired with Titus Welliver though.
Chris Cooper turns in a great single scene as Doug's father who is languishing behind bars for crimes he has committed.
The other truly standout performance comes with a tinge of sadness. The late Pete Postlethwaite really brings it on as Fergie, the crime boss who the crew works for but hides behind his work at his flower shop at a cover. He's truly menacing and though Postlethwaite still has another film that will be his final screen appearance, this would have been a great swan song, especially after Inception which creepily seems now as if we were watching him on his real-life deathbed and he barely said anything audible.
The Town could have been tightened, but the great acting and solid action makes it enjoyable enough.
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Labels: 10s, B. Affleck, C. Affleck, Chris Cooper, Matt Damon, Michael Mann, Penélope Cruz, Woody
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Friday, December 03, 2010
Spending time in a psychopath's head
By Edward Copeland
With two anniversaries of adaptations of Jim Thompson novels and a new film based on another of his books released this year, I've spent a lot of time in the crime author's milieu, reading the three novels the films were based on this year. Michael Winterbottom's 2010 version of The Killer Inside Me (a 1976 version starred Stacy Keach) came and went this year without much notice despite some good reviews and the fact it might be the most faithful Thompson adaptation put on screen.
Given that the title itself serves as a spoiler or sorts, readers can expect that plot points will be given away freely from this point on. Casey Affleck stars as Lou Ford, deputy sheriff in a small west Texas town, who has managed to lived there for most of his life hiding the uncontrollable sociopath within himself.
Now, this isn't another serial killer story. When Lou strikes, he always has a reason, at least within his own warped mind, but when the town's powerful construction magnate Chester Conway (Ned Beatty) asks Lou to run what he considers to be a loose woman (Jessica Alba) out of town because of her involvement with Conway's son Elmer (Jay R. Ferguson), it sets in motion a course of events that unleashes all the demons living inside Lou that he'd more or less successfully kept hidden from his friends and neighbors. Unfortunately for Lou, the chain reaction proves too long and messy for him to hide his true self from them any longer.
As I mentioned, this has been a Jim Thompson kind of year for me. Earlier this year, I revisited After Dark, My Sweet on its 20th anniversary and in two days I will do the same for The Grifters on its 20th. On one of the DVD extras of The Grifters, its late screenwriter and a crime novelist in his own right, Donald Westlake, mentioned that Thompson was the most nihilistic of America's second generation of crime novelists. Based on the small sampling of Thompson I've read or seen, Lou Ford may be his darkest creation.
The first inkling viewers get of Lou's "darkness," other than his inner narration, comes when he encounters a bum (Brent Briscoe) on the street and instead of offering him some change or even a smoke or some booze, Lou takes his cigar and, grinning widely, burns it into the flesh of the man's hand. He also fails in his mission for Chester Conway when he goes to the woman, Joyce Lakeland (Alba), who turns out to be a prostitute, starts to get rough with her, but instead ends up falling into bed with her and beginning a fling, despite his long involvement with the sweet Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson).
Both the book and the movie take an unusual tact because it isn't often that you hear a story from the point-of-view of a killer. The book provides a few more details as to what made Lou that way, but I'm always one who prefers it when the cause behind a psychotic's spree remains mostly a mystery. It's really unnecessary to know the motive when the violence occurs as suddenly and brutally as it does here. In fact, some of Lou's acts seem to come out of nowhere with so much force, even when you've read the book, that it still shocks.
What separates this Jim Thompson adaptation from After Dark, My Sweet and The Grifters is that it keeps it firmly set in the time period in which the book was set. It also boasts a fine cast. In addition to Affleck's superlative work, there's solid support from Beatty, Hudson, Briscoe, Elias Koteas as a suspicious reporter, Tom Bower as the unsuspecting sheriff, Simon Baker as the district attorney and Bill Pullman in a single scene as a defense attorney.
The Killer Inside Me also held extra interest for me since a great deal of it was filmed near where I live, so I recognized many of the sites. Winterbottom moves John Curran's sparse and faithful adaptation at just the right pace and really knows how to give the viewer a kick. It's one of the better efforts from such an eclectic director. It's a shame it didn't gain more notice when released.
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Labels: 10s, Books, C. Affleck, Fiction, Jim Thompson, N. Beatty, Remakes
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Saturday, September 04, 2010
From the Vault: To Die For
During the long, arduous O.J. Simpson saga, broadcaster Bob Costas made one of the most salient points of all. Costas said we've reached a point where being famous has become a virtue in and of itself and people no longer achieve celebrity for actual notable accomplishments.
This desire for celebrity drives Suzanne Stone, a would-be TV journalist played by Nicole Kidman in Gus Van Sant's solid satire To Die For.
The movie, based on Joyce Maynard's novel and featuring a brilliantly biting script by Buck Henry, turns out to be everything Natural Born Killers should have been and wasn't.
To Die For begins with one of the best title sequences in recent memory (created by Pablo Ferro and aided by Danny Elfman's kinetic score) that instantly tells the audience all it needs to know before the film dives into its subject matter. The novel was loosely based on Pamela Smart, the New Hampshire high school teacher who was convicted of seducing a teen in order to get him to murder her husband.
In To Die For, Suzanne is naive and ambitious, happily in love with her husband Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon). Suzanne bullies her way with charm into a weathercasting job at a local cable station. Eager to compile an impressive video resume, Suzanne starts a documentary on local teens, a project that brings her into contact with a trio of ne'er-do-wells: Lydia, an insecure 15-year-old (Alison Folland) and her classmates, troublemaking Russell (Casey Affleck) and dim bulb Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix).
As Suzanne begins to feel that Larry impedes her electronic dreams (he wants a family), she coerces the already lovestruck Jimmy into her bed and her sinister plot to off Larry. With the points-of-view darting from person to person, Van Sant moves the action along briskly, resulting in a headlong rush through today's tabloid media, making its points without giving the audience a concussion (as in Natural Born Killers).
The actors form a terrific ensemble: newcomer Folland, bringing life to the typical role of the awkward teen; Illeana Douglas as Larry's suspicious, ice-skating sister; and Dillon as the dull but decent Larry. Phoenix also is fine, though he pushes his characters low IQ a bit too hard at times. Kidman, like Suzanne wants to be, provides the sun all the other characters revolve around. For those who dismissed her as merely superstar Tom Cruise's wife, be prepared for a shock: her performance as Suzanne Stone can't be ignored.
In perhaps the most illustrative example of Kidman's work here, and of the movie itself, watch the sequence where Suzanne receives the news of her husband's murder and welcomes the reporters to her front lawn. Aside from the fact that it's a swift, funny, well-acted film, To Die For reassures the audience that, even though the subject matter can hardly be called new, a good movie can still be made about it. This movie proves that talent can get you anywhere, even at the same time it shows that lack of it might not hurt you either.
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Labels: 90s, Buck Henry, C. Affleck, Nicole Kidman, Van Sant
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Friday, February 22, 2008
The best Malick film Malick never made
By Edward Copeland
I've never made it a secret that the films of Terrence Malick aren't my cup of tea. So when many reviews of Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford compared the film to Malick last fall, it dampened my enthusiasm for rushing out to see this 160 minute movie. That was a mistake, because now that I've caught up with it on DVD, I wish I could have seen it in a theater, not only because it is as beautiful as most Malick films, but because it's a near-great film with solid writing and acting that wears its length spectacularly well, something Malick films haven't done for me.
First and foremost, I have to cite the greatest asset of Jesse James: Roger Deakins' remarkable cinematography, for which he received an Oscar nomination alongside his separate nomination for No Country for Old Men.
This year's crop of cinematography nominees may be the strongest in the category I've seen in a long time. In addition to Deakins' nominations, there also is great work by Janusz Kaminski for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Seamus McGarvey for Atonement and Robert Elswit's magnificent work in the otherwise blah There Will Be Blood.
I think Elswit likely will win Sunday, but Deakins' work on Jesse James really deserves the prize, especially since Deakins now holds seven Oscar nominations without a win. I hope I'm wrong Sunday, because his work on The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford stands heads and shoulders above the others in this brutally strong field.
However, unlike your typical Malick feature, there is more than meets the eye in Jesse James. Director Dominik adapted the script from the novel by Ron Hansen, and he uses a free-flowing narrative, punctuated frequently by an omniscient yet unidentified narrator, to tell the story of the man who killed the famous outlaw.
As the first title character, Brad Pitt gives one of his best performances, an alternately charming and chilling turn that is as tightly coiled as Joe Pesci as Tommy in Goodfellas.
Casey Affleck does well as the title's other name as well, though the Academy's decision to place him in supporting is questionable at best, though not nearly one of its worst lead/supporting categorization mistakes. Affleck nicely mixes the naive and calculating parts of the young Robert Ford, who, as Jesse points out, is either a lot like James or merely wants to be the legend.
The rest of the ensemble does equally well, including Paul Schneider, Jeremy Renner and Sam Rockwell as various members of the James gang and Sam Shepard as Jesse's older brother Frank.
What makes The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford so compelling is its entire construction. For a film that runs 2 hours and 40 minutes, it never lags and its stylistic flourishes only enhance the tale, never distracting from the narrative itself.
Also, unlike most Westerns of the past few decades, the film's mission doesn't seem to include deconstructing the myths to say something larger about the genre. Instead, it just dazzles the eye, entrances the viewer and tells a fine, oft-told tale.
One final note about a great aspect of the film: In a time where more often than not, musical scores tend to stomp on the movies they serve, the music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is subtle, evocative and one of the finest movie scores I've heard in some time.
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Labels: 00s, B. Affleck, Brad Pitt, C. Affleck, Malick, Pesci, Sam Rockwell, Shepard, Zemeckis
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Everyone looks out his own window
By Edward Copeland
When Amy Ryan began her near clean sweep of the supporting actress awards for Gone Baby Gone, I was a little puzzled, since she is hardly a household name and the film itself seemed to have garnered little notice. Now that I've finally seen the film, I can see that Ryan's awards were more than justified and Ben Affleck's directing debut really hasn't been given the praise it richly deserves.
I feel ashamed of myself for not recognizing Ryan by name when she first started getting attention, since she plays Officer Beatrice Russell on the great HBO series The Wire (which I'm missing greatly, given that my evil cable company took HBO away from me and sent it to the digital ghetto). However, you won't find any trace of the hardworking single mom Beadie within the drug-addicted single mother of a kidnapping victim in Gone Baby Gone.
It's easy to see how Ryan's powerhouse work got notice, but the rest of her film and fellow actors deserve kudos as well. Adapted from the novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote the book Mystic River and is a writer on The Wire, Gone Baby Gone plays in some ways as if it's a sequel to Clint Eastwood's film, only Gone Baby Gone is much better.
Gone Baby Gone doesn't go on past the point where it shouldn't and, by and large, the Boston accents in Gone Baby Gone are done much better than in Mystic River.
Affleck taps his younger brother Casey as the lead here and it's not a case of nepotism run amok. Casey Affleck is quite good as Patrick Kenzie, a private investigator hired by the missing girl's aunt (Amy Madigan) (along with his girlfriend, played by Michele Monaghan) to help the police with their investigation.
Leading the investigation on the police side are too veteran detectives (Ed Harris and John Ashton) under the supervision of the police chief (Morgan Freeman), whose own child was lost long ago.
While it's hardly noteworthy to expect good work from Freeman, this is by far the best performance Harris has given in ages.
As a director, Ben Affleck moves the film along nicely, even though its complicated story would have been easy to muck up and end up confusing the viewer. Still, there is a reason Ryan has burst into the consciousness with her work here. She is superb.
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When Amy Ryan began her near clean sweep of the supporting actress awards for Gone Baby Gone, I was a little puzzled, since she is hardly a household name and the film itself seemed to have garnered little notice. Now that I've finally seen the film, I can see that Ryan's awards were more than justified and Ben Affleck's directing debut really hasn't been given the praise it richly deserves.
I feel ashamed of myself for not recognizing Ryan by name when she first started getting attention, since she plays Officer Beatrice Russell on the great HBO series The Wire (which I'm missing greatly, given that my evil cable company took HBO away from me and sent it to the digital ghetto). However, you won't find any trace of the hardworking single mom Beadie within the drug-addicted single mother of a kidnapping victim in Gone Baby Gone.
It's easy to see how Ryan's powerhouse work got notice, but the rest of her film and fellow actors deserve kudos as well. Adapted from the novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote the book Mystic River and is a writer on The Wire, Gone Baby Gone plays in some ways as if it's a sequel to Clint Eastwood's film, only Gone Baby Gone is much better.
Gone Baby Gone doesn't go on past the point where it shouldn't and, by and large, the Boston accents in Gone Baby Gone are done much better than in Mystic River.
Affleck taps his younger brother Casey as the lead here and it's not a case of nepotism run amok. Casey Affleck is quite good as Patrick Kenzie, a private investigator hired by the missing girl's aunt (Amy Madigan) (along with his girlfriend, played by Michele Monaghan) to help the police with their investigation.
Leading the investigation on the police side are too veteran detectives (Ed Harris and John Ashton) under the supervision of the police chief (Morgan Freeman), whose own child was lost long ago.
While it's hardly noteworthy to expect good work from Freeman, this is by far the best performance Harris has given in ages.
As a director, Ben Affleck moves the film along nicely, even though its complicated story would have been easy to muck up and end up confusing the viewer. Still, there is a reason Ryan has burst into the consciousness with her work here. She is superb.
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Labels: 00s, Amy Ryan, B. Affleck, C. Affleck, Eastwood, HBO, Morgan Freeman, The Wire
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