Rio Rancho Film Reviews: Josh Brolin

W.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

To me, one of the most terrifying things in the world is the fact that a lot of Americans vote for their President based on whether they would like to have a beer with them or not. That certainly wouldn’t be my criteria. I want to vote for someone who’s far smarter than me, who has poise, who’s an excellent orator and who has lots of great ideas. I don’t want someone I could hang out with. I want a leader.

But still, in American politics, there persists this notion that the President should be an everyman (or everywoman). He or she should have the common touch. Fair enough, a President has to be able to connect with people, but with George W. Bush the notion has been taken too far. Yes, despite his persona, he’s far from a regular guy (coming from a wealthy family, having your daddy be a former President and going to Harvard will set you apart quite a bit from Joe Bloggs), but although he comes from a privileged background, he’s still a simple man. And that’s what makes his story both comic and frightening. In George W. Bush you can see the reflection of the ordinary citizen, the sort of person who while not mean-spirited or completely stupid, doesn’t understand subtlety or nuance. And as such, with Bush’s Presidency you see what happens when an empty shell of a person becomes the country’s leader. And what happens is chaos.

According to Oliver Stone’s enjoyable biopic, all George W. Bush wants is approval. He wants approval from his daddy and he wants approval from his voters. And that’s what’s so frightening about him. He doesn’t appear to be a wicked person. He just appears to be an opportunist, bouncing around a directionless life until he became President. And then when he gets there, he has nothing to do. Well, until 9/11 happens. Then he gets the chance to be a hero.

One of the recurring themes of the film is George W. standing in a baseball field raising his arms to an empty crowd. All he wants is applause and adulation. He wants the validation his father struggles to give him. So all the time, while in office, he’s trying to please the American voters. He’s trying to avenge 9/11 and he’s trying to protect its citizens. Therefore you have the Iraq war, Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. Bush thinks that these are all wonderful things that are going to secure his legacy as a great guy. Little does he know that these things are choking his country.

The real villains of the piece are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They’re Bush’s puppet masters. They’re the ones who really control his policies.

There’s a wonderful scene about halfway through the film where Bush’s cabinet are discussing a potential war with Iraq. Everyone has their own ideas but then Dick Cheney (played by Richard Dreyfuss) presents a plan to oust Saddam’s regime so that America can gain possession of the oil fields. He says that if they control the supply nobody will fuck with them anymore. The scene is rather chilling in the greed and selfishness that is displayed by Cheney, and in the naivety that Bush shows. I really do think that he believed that he was going to make the world safer rather than make it more chaotic.

Another scene that sent a shiver down my spine is the one where Bush and Cheney talk about using torture. Bush wolfs down a sandwich and drinks from a glass with a large Presidential seal on it as they discuss whether it’s okay to torture US citizens. They decide that it is, if they believe they’re terrorists. And then Cheney argues that if you have a one percent doubt that an unfriendly country has nukes, you should act. The recklessness displayed is pure insanity, a point not lost on Oliver Stone who, in one scene, frames Bush in such a way to make him look like General Ripper in Dr Strangelove. The lunatics really are running the asylum.

But while I was impressed with Richard Dreyfuss’ performance as Dick Cheney, other performances fell flat on faces. Jeffrey Wright, while not awful, doesn’t look anywhere near old enough to be Colin Powell and his performance comes over as something of a mediocre imitation of the man. Then you have Ioan Gruffudd in a brief cameo as Tony Blair. He just isn’t smarmy enough. But the worst performance by far is turned in by Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice. She plays her like a simpering retard. Newton is always doing this ridiculous face like she’s shitting her knickers and her voice is exaggerated so much that she becomes a caricature. It’s embarrassing.

Thankfully, though, at the centre you have a marvellous performance by Josh Brolin. When the production began, I thought the casting was ridiculous, but Brolin pulls everything off. He manages to make you recoil from the man yet feel sorry for him at the same time. His W. just wants to be liked. He wants to be patted on the back. And with Brolin in the role you get to see replays of famous speeches and incidents that never feel like they’re pure imitations. You really do feel like Brolin becomes George W. Therefore moments in time as shown in the film feel authentic. Just take the scene where George W. can’t give an answer for what he did wrong in Iraq. You really do feel his panic, as the man is briefly forced to deal with something that isn’t in the script.

And the script is what Bush desperately wants to follow. He wants an ending with a curtain call and with applause from everyone. I mean, at the end of Stone’s film we see Bush on a baseball field waiting to catch a ball that never comes back down to Earth. The man got us into a game he can’t finish and there’s no end in sight. Therefore W.’s neat ending is denied him. He won’t be the hero he desperately wants to be.

Coen Brothers

No Country For Old Men

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Llewelyn Moss can hardly believe his luck. One moment he’s a penniless nobody living in a trailer, the next he’s a millionaire. Life couldn’t get much better.

Unfortunately, though, good luck often has a price, and the price here is a psychopath by the name of Anton Chigurh. He’s the man who balances the accounts; the man who makes sure that good fortune doesn’t smile forever.

When Moss stumbles upon a massacre in the desert, all of his initial thoughts are self-serving. He doesn’t care about a dying man who asks for water. All he cares about is what he can get out of this. He knows he’s in danger, but he also knows that there might be some loot somewhere. And sure enough, he comes across a case full of money. The decision to take it seems simple enough. Walk off with this money and you’re a millionaire. But although Llewelyn Moss isn’t a mental giant, he isn’t stupid either. Taking this money could have grave consequences. Someone’s certainly going to come looking for it. But in a moment of moral weakness, Moss to decides to make himself rich. He figures he can deal with whatever comes his way.

Later on, after he’s safely back in his trailer, Moss is wracked with guilt about the dying man. It gets to him so much that he decides to go back and give him water. Moss’s first mistake is to give into thoughtless greed. His second mistake is his failure to commit to his selfishness. He’s made his decision. He needs to stick to it. But no, he goes back and some Mexican drug dealers turn up on the scene. They destroy Moss’s vehicle, meaning that anyone who recovers it can find out who the pick-up is registered to, and they later give chase to him. If he hadn’t gone back, he would have had a better chance at getting away scot-free. Or even better, if he hadn’t taken the money, he could have continued with living a normal life.

The action scene that takes place after Moss decides to go back to the dying man is a wonderful piece of filmmaking. The direction is simple but it’s assured. There are no visual pyrotechnics. The excitement is generated by the atmospheric photography and the mystery behind the attack – we never see the men who are chasing the protagonist. We just know that a hurricane is beginning to envelop Llewelyn Moss and he’ll be lucky if he comes out of it alive.

The best bit in the sequence is when Moss jumps into a river in a bid to escape his pursers. A pit bull leaps in after him. It gets closer and closer, and as Moss reaches the riverbank, and as he tries to get the water out of his gun, it’s right on him. But at the last second, Moss shoots it. It’s a heart-stopping bit of cinema. The tension is phenomenal.

And it’s a joy that the Coens’ sustain that tension throughout the course of the movie. There are few films that are as nerve racking.

One of the tensest scenes is when Chigurh talks to Carson Wells, the man who is given the responsibility of taking the loose canon out. Chigurh has the man held at the gunpoint, and we all know that Carson is going to die. The only question is when. And they talk a little bit and they insult one another, but it’s all very quiet. And then suddenly a phone begins ringing. The phone rings a couple of times and then Chigurh shoots the man. It’s a nail-biting scene.

And the scene’s also excellent in that it gives us a small insight into Chigurh’s twisted mindset. He calmly says that the money will be placed at his feet, showing that he has something of a god complex. He also mocks Carson, cryptically saying, ‘If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?’ Chigurh seems to think that he understands things better. He thinks he has more control. But as the ending shows, with his car getting hit, he’s not immune. Everyone’s luck runs out eventually.

But in other scenes we see Chigurh absolve himself of responsibility. He lets a coin toss make his decisions. He doesn’t do this out of compassion or indecision. Instead he seems to be putting his trust in a higher power. A force greater than him will decide whether this person deserves to live and he will be the executioner should the coin not fall in their favour.

And this leads me to another one of the film’s incredibly tense scenes. The scene where Chigurh talks to the storeowner. The man’s crime is to try and make small talk. However, Chigurh feels that he exists on a higher plane than everyone else. He doesn’t like having to answer other people’s questions, no matter how innocuous – he perceives it as a threat and as disrespect. Therefore he interrogates the man, evaluating his worthiness to live. Eventually, though, he lets the coin decide. If the man wins, he gets everything (his life). If he loses, he’s dead. Luckily for the man, lady luck smiles on him. He’s been blessed by a psychopath.

A notable little detail in the above scene is the wrapper than Chigurh leaves on the counter. Tightly scrunched up, it slowly unwinds. It’s a visual representation of the man himself. He’s tightly wound and it doesn’t take much for him to uncoil.

Another notable visual is when Chigurh is in Moss’s trailer. First he goes through his phone records and then he takes a bottle of milk so that he can refuel. He then sits down before a blank TV screen. We don’t see much of a reflection; Chigurh doesn’t shine much light. He’s something of a black hole.

This visual is repeated when Sheriff Bell and his Deputy also visit the trailer, a few minutes behind Chigurh. Bell is a man who is doomed to live in the shadows with the men he’s sworn to apprehend. He’s forced to walk in their footsteps, even though he struggles to understand them.

If the film has a hero, then Bell is it. He’s the only truly decent man out of the three main characters. But this being a wonderfully unorthodox thriller, Bell is doomed to failure. He can’t save Moss and he can’t catch Chigurh. He’s nearly powerless.

And in the end, he even retires. He just can’t deal with it any more. And his disappointment in himself is expressed in a dream he has. He says that he remembers his father, who was also a lawman, carrying some fire and going on ahead of him. He says that in his dream he knows that his father is waiting for him. Maybe this dream echoes his disappointment in himself. His father took the fire and set an example that Bell has never been able to live up to. He’s always been lagging behind.

And an earlier scene where Bell visits a friend of his father also highlights his disappointment. He laments the fact that god hasn’t come into his life like he expected. Maybe he thought that age would bring wisdom, but instead, if this film is anything to go by, it just brings pain and confusion. As much as the world changes, it doesn’t really change much. People still want money and people still kill for it. And although we might begin our adult lives full of hope and optimism, there a tendency for reality to wear us down. How much of a difference can we really make when we all face the same end: oblivion?

Maybe Moss, despite everything, kind of has the right idea. He sees an opportunity and goes for it. His biggest mistake was not committing to it fully. When you make your bed, you’ve got to lie in it.

Denzel Washington

American Gangster

Monday, July 14, 2008

On the brink of death an aged gangster bemoans the state of America. He sees that corporations are taking over and that the little man is being cut out. ‘Where’s the pride of ownership?’ he wails. Damn soulless, faceless McDonald’s are everywhere.

This might seem like quite an honourable concern. It sounds like the old man is grieving over the homogenisation of the modern world. But in reality the old man is only upset because it’s nearly impossible to shake down large corporations. Shop owners are meant to be vulnerable and powerless. They’re meant to pay him a cut of their earnings. But multinationals are far more powerful than the old man will ever be. It’s impossible for him to get a piece of the action.

When the old man dies, Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) decides to take over his operations. But while the old man had reached the limit of his ingenuity and had become a relic, Frank sees where the business has to go. He has to become like the large corporations. He can’t just sell random junk. That would earn him peanuts. Instead he decides to create a brand.

The heroin that Frank sells is called Blue Magic. It’s purer than anything that’s on the streets and it’s cheaper too. And Frank can do this because he cuts out the middleman. He’s both supplier and distributor. He’s taken a leaf out of the corporation’s book.

Another way that Frank is like the corporations is that he’s highly protective of his brand. One drug dealer takes Blue Magic and cuts it up in order to try and make more money. But this reflects badly on the brand. It’s no longer Blue Magic. It’s shit. Frank even says that his customers have a guarantee of quality when they buy his product. It’s like he’s talking about coffee rather than heroin.

What’s notable is that like a good businessman, Frank does his best to stay as anonymous as possible. Occasionally he has to lay down the law and make a scene to get everyone in line, but otherwise he doesn’t want to draw undue attention to himself. He just wants to blend in. However, he does have a moment of weakness. His wife buys him an expensive fur coat and hat. In a second he goes from anonymous-looking businessman to black gangster. And wearing this outlandish outfit to a boxing match, and getting the best seats in the house, he alerts himself to the cops – previously he flew under the radar. Suddenly he has the attention of both Detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) and some bent cops led by Detective Trupo (Josh Brolin). And then on his wedding day, Trupo tries to shake down Frank for money. Frank’s indulgence has cost him. It’s exposed him and made him vulnerable. Therefore he burns the hat and coat while his bride sobs.

All of these details and all of these parallels between gangsters and corporations make American Gangster an interesting film, but it never really takes flight. In fact, visually it’s surprisingly bland for a Ridley Scott film. He captures the grime and squalor of 70s Harlem well enough, but with his usual widescreen frame jettisoned, it feels more like television. The film is solid but unspectacular.

Of course, that’s probably intentional. The film doesn’t want to showboat. It wants to be a more gritty, realistic depiction of the drug trade. It doesn’t want to have the glamour of The Godfather or Goodfellas. But this is still cinema and there’s nothing that’s really going to take your breath away.

Instead the film’s pleasures are smaller. There’s a nice scene where the wealthy Lucas family are sitting down to a sumptuous Thanksgiving meal and thanking god for all they have while junkies shoot up – we even see a child crying over a parent who has overdosed. This is the product that Frank pedals: misery. He makes himself fat off other people’s weakness and stupidity.

But although this criticism is well made, you do occasionally feel that the film makes the mistake of liking Frank Lucas a little too much. Even though Scorsese’s gangster films are more cinematic and therefore more seductive, Scorsese always stays objective – he knows these people are scum; therefore he just turns on the camera and lets them hang themselves. Scott, though, seems a little seduced. At the end, as Lucas cooperates with Richie, we see him laughing and smiling. Is the film trying to show us that deep down he’s a decent guy? And there’s also a heavy focus on police corruption in the film. Don’t get me wrong. Corrupt police are just as bad as criminals such as Lucas. But you kind of get the feeling that the film is saying they’re worse. Fact is, they’re the same. The film shows that they all feed off one another. But although we get that one moment where we see junkies shooting up during Thanksgiving, the film soft pedals the misery Frank brought to the streets. He was a shitbag and instead he’s made to look like a ruthless businessman who really had a decent heart underneath it all.

Another weakness is the familiarity of Richie’s story – the cop who catches Lucas. His character has all the familiar beats – a failed marriage, a desire to be the one straight cop in the bad town, and the struggle to crack the ring. None of his scenes are bad, but you’re constantly reminded of better movies such as The French Connection. And that’s the problem with the whole film. As you watch it you’re constantly reminded of better movies. The Godfather, Goodfellas and The French Connection all pop in your head and you realise that American Gangster can’t hold a candle to any of them.

W.

No Country For Old Men

American Gangster

recent posts

Blog Archive

Blog Archive 2

Popular Posts