FFVP - Hits and Misses

3 HITS - 5 MISSES - 2 GUILTY PLEASURES

As of this writing, a few of these movies have been out for awhile. “Batman Begins” is still going strong at the box office. At least one, “Layer Cake,” should have reached a wider audience. Each film - good or bad - has some particular aspect worth noting.

The ones that HIT their mark

BAT MAN BEGINS - In 1989, Tim Burton jumpstarted a “Batman” franchise that gave birth to three sequels. The first half of that first “Batman” had the inkling of a first class detective thriller but Burton dropped it like a hot potato once Jack Nicholson was allowed to dominate the screen as The Joker. “Batman Begins” re-imagines the origins of Batman by diving headfirst into the wounded psyche of Bruce Wayne from the time he witnesses the murder of his parents to the cleansing of his demons and his emergence as a crime fighter. Director Christopher Nolan (“Incomnia” & “Memento”) brings a psychological insight to his characters that is light years ahead of its predecessors. This is a Batman for adults. Christian Bale (“American Psycho”) is a Bruce Wayne you haven’t seen before - troubled - brooding - introspective, and - in the beginning - self destructive. He owns the role. Remembrance of Batman(s) past is a fading memory. Except for the garish “Batman Returns,” the other “Batman” movies had the feel of a modern day Grimms fairytale in day-glow colors. The villains in this movie feel more real and therefore more threatening. Liam Neeson plays a mysterious savior - of sorts -who plucks Wayne from an Asian prison and rehabilitates him - sort of. Tom Wilkinson is a top level gangster who rules the city of Gotham like a feudal warlord. Gillian Murphy (“Girl with the Pearl Earring”) is the most villainous of all as a criminal shrink who uses his skills to drive people crazy so he can use them as guinea pigs for something even more devious. “Batman Begins” has a love interest (Katie Holmes), drug dealers, dirty cops, one good cop - an unrecognizable Gary Oldman as Lieut. Gordon (who you know will become the Commissioner Gordon), a secret ninja society, and the unofficial guardian of the philanthropic Wayne legacy - Alfred - played with great aplomb by Michael Caine. Morgan Freeman has the pivotal role of a research engineer who makes all the cool gadgets that help transport Batman through the caverns and crevices of Gotham’s urban landscape. This Batman earns the right to keep his place in the pantheon of Super Heroes.

LAYER CAKE - “Layer Cake” is an unfortunate title for a gangster movie. What’s the first thing you thing of when you hear the words, ‘Layer Cake’? Chocolate? Birthdays? Weddings? Certainly not gangsters. The title is symbolic of the multi-layered hierarchy of London’s criminal world. The kingpin sits at the top. Those nearest to him run his legitimate businesses. Underlings do all the dirty work. The more layers, the more the top man is protected. This is explained succinctly by Michael Gambon as a ruthless businessman who crawled his way to the top one layer at a time. The movie’s ‘hero,’ played by Daniel Craig, doesn’t seem to have a name but everybody knows who he is. He’s a coke dealer, suave and confident. He has two golden rules: make a lot of money, then quit. He is honest to a fault and respected by his peers. He’s a lover, not a fighter. He is also a great front man who is too good at what he does. His boss won’t let him quit. If he leaves, every body else loses: Big Time! He must do what he’s told if he wants to live. His once fatherly advisor is now his lord and master. He (Craig) is asked - told - to broker one last deal and to find the missing daughter of a well connected businessman. Craig is fingered as the contact for a stolen shipment of drugs he knows nothing about. What starts out as two seemingly simple tasks escalates into a drug war between three competitors with Craig caught in the crossfire. He is forced to do something he’s never done before. He has to think and act like a thug. The smooth operator must outwit the two top players in a game without rules. He also has to return the stolen goods he never had to their rightful owner who is represented by mysterious executioner who will settle for nothing less than a severed head in a box as a sign of good faith.

“Layer Cake” could have easily derailed with all its twists and turns, but first time director Matthew Vaughn (producer of “Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels,” “Snatch”) keeps everything on track from one double cross to the next. The dialogue is crisp, the action fast paced and the characters - unforgettable! Daniel Carig’s dealer is not perfect. He makes mistakes. He never makes the same mistake twice. He learns - adapts. He becomes more and more like the men at the top with each new situation. The one thing that might do him in is his vanity. After walking in Tom Hanks’s shadows as Paul Newman’s errant son in “Road to Perdition” and playing second fiddle to Gwyneth Paltrow as poetess Sylvia Plath’s husband in the poorly received “Syvia,” “Layer Cake” is the movie that should have made Craig a star. Hopefully video will give “Layer Cake” and Craig a second chance to find its audience.

CRASH* - There is a point at which Paul Haggis, the screenwriter for last year’s Oscar winner “Million Dollar Baby,” doesn’t seem to trust his first instinct. A scene where a Black TV director (Terence Howard) is flailing his arms in the air after a wild car chase though the streets is a case in point. A young cop (Ryan Philippe) convinces his partner lets him go. It’s overly melodramatic where less would have been more. I don’t think any cop in his right mind in any circumstances would let someone go under the circumstances depicted in Haggis’s debut as a director. Police procedure was not the point of the scene. It was about one cop trying to alleviate his guilt over an incident with the same man earlier in the film. It sticks out like a saw thumb in an otherwise compelling movie. Except for this moment, the social dynamics are grounded in the reality of every day life. An ethnically diverse group of people crisscross each other’s path over the course of a few days. Bits of character and plot are revealed piecemeal until the mosaic of their common experience falls miraculously into place. “Crash” deals with every strata of urban society from low level thieves to the halls of City Government. The way Paul Haggis ties it all together left me spellbound. People literally and figuratively crash into each other, physically and emotionally. He covers a whole spectrum of human experience without discrimination. But discrimination between different ethnic groups is front and center from one scene to the next. A cop (Matt Dillon) abuses his authority by humiliating a Black couple (Terence Howard and Thandie Newton) in the dead of night. Two cops (Don Cheadle and Jennifer Esposito) - partners - have an interracial affair. Two thieves (Larenz Tate and an alternately funny and frightening Ludacris - the Rapper) riff on whites. The D.A. (Brendan Fraser) is not immune to crime. His high strung wife (Sandra Bullock) has her own racial issues to deal with. Paul Haggis ends “Crash” with a funny twist concerning illegal aliens and a tragedy that will leave two cops devastated for different reasons for the rest of their lives, but it is not the movie’s most affecting scene. Paul Haggis creates one of the most heart stopping moments I’ve ever experienced in a movie after an Asian shopkeeper accuses a locksmith of vandalism because he’s Spanish. The old man wants revenge and goes hunting for him. The suspense is unrelenting. The payoff has the effect of a soul cleansing, like coming out of a confessional after receiving absolution for your sins.

* “Crash” has been revised since its original posting. Memory can sometimes play tricks on the mind, as it did here. I was convinced the TV producer brandished a hidden gun but my perception (a visual dyslexia?) transposed the image of a cop taking aim. However, my original feeling about the scene remains the same.

The MISSes

STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH

I’ll probably take a lot of flak for saying this, but I’m glad the “Star Wars” saga has finally come to an end. George Lucas ties all the loose ends together showing who, what, when, where and how everything comes together to finish off the pre-history of the first “Star Wars” movie which was actually Part IV of his, at that time, intended saga. Finally we get to find out how Anakin got to be Darth Vader, and how Luke Skywalker ended up at his uncle’s house. The first “Star Wars” was inspired by many things. First and foremost were the “Flash Gordon” serials (3 in all) from the thirties; secondly, R2D2 and C3PO and the basic outline for “Star Wars” were borrowed, if you will, from Akira Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress” (1958). A Japanese General in feudal Japan is out to save the kingdom with a princess and two misfits. The rest of the influences came from a variety of genres. Fighter pilots from old war movies became space jockeys; gangsters were turned into alien beings like Jabba the Hutt; and western marshals became Jedi Knights. Episode 1 “The Phantom Menace” had a racing scene right out of “Ben Hur” and the big battle scene on the Plains of Naboo in Episode II “Attack of the Clones” had combat formations like the Roman Legions in “Spartacus.” Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much inspiration in “Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith” except to please the demand by the “Star Wars” fans to wrap things up. Anakin can’t decide whether to be a good Jedi like Obi-Wan or a Sith. Hayden Christensen doesn’t have the acting chops to make me care one way or the other about Anakin’s inner conflict. Natalie Portman picks up the slack as his main squeeze - the future Luke Skywalker’s mother. Ewan McGregor as Obi Kenobi and Ian McDiarmid as Chancellor Palpatine (a secret Sith) are excellent. They keep the movie going with their tug of war over Anakin’s fate. It’s here that the movie resonates with the harsh realities of a real world where good and evil exist side by side each vying for the soul of the inexperienced the uninitiated. The bottom line? The first “Star Wars” movie reflected the exuberance of youth. “The Revenge of the Sith” reflects the experience of a filmmaker who has lived long enough to really know the dark side outside the realm of fantasy. P.S. The special effects are really awesome.

UNLEASHED - Jet Li is a star. He has a magnetic presence that makes you want to watch him. It’s his eyes. They go right through you. Here he plays the unlikely role of a man raised as a dog, taught to obey his criminal master (Bob Hoskins at his nastiest) on command. He can be docile or a killing machine. He escapes after an ambush and is taken in by a kindly blind Morgan Freeman. Under his tutelage, Li learns the meaning of family. There is a strong parallel to the Frankenstein story where the monster gets away from his creator. Violent scenes in a modern day gladiatorial ring are vicious and unsettling. When Hoskins goes after his quarry, and Li must defend himself, you wonder where all the cops are when the bodies go flying out the window. “Unleashed” is worth a look for its unusual premise but it’s definitely not for the squeamish.

Some well intentioned MISSes

KICKING AND SCREAMING - Will Ferrel becomes a kid’s soccer coach on a dare from his father, Robert Duvall. He finds himself becoming more like his father when he neglects his son’s needs. Admittedly, there’s some funny stuff in this movie, especially Ferrel’s newfound obsession with caffeine; but what should have been a soccer version of “The Bad News Bears” lite is ruined by an off color joke told one too many times in a TV commercial for a sporting good store. It’s about getting kicked in the male genitals. Otherwise, “Kicking and Screaming” could have been a solid family film. Still, Farrell fans won’t be disappointed.

MR. & MRS. SMITH - “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” is a movie that can’t make up its mind what it wants to be. It’s a high tech screwball comedy with more than a passing resemblance to “Prizzi’s Honor” and a dose of director James Cameron’s “True Lies.” There are a few laughs but the movie is not that funny. The leads, Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie, are assassins for hire who are contracted to kill each other by their respective employers. Neither knows about the other until the shooting starts. At first, each thought the other was just having a tough day at the office, like Arnold Schwarzeneger’s wife in James Cameron’s over the top spy spoof. For a movie that blows up everything in sight with everyone running for their lives, it feels downright slow. Pitt and Jolie work awfully hard but the few sparks they create is not enough to sustain the movie. The movie’s two best moments bookend the film without a gun in sight. The Smiths, sitting with a marriage counselor in a before and after session, are more funny with their sexual banter than anything in between. It’s a surprise MISS from Doug Liman, the man behind “Go” and “The Bourne Identity.”

HEIGHTS - This roundelay of emotions hinges on a young lawyer’s misgivings about his engagement to an up and coming photographer, who is willing to pass on the assignment of her life because it would interfere with the marriage. Provocative pictures of his male model days in England find there way to a party given by his fiance’s mother. Should she show her daughter the pictures and possibly ruin her happiness? Should he tell his fiance about his ‘other’ life before he became a promising lawyer? Does anybody care? The acting is good. Glenn Close is excellent as always as a one time theatrical diva but as a whole the film smacks of being a ‘New York’ movie intended for a niche audience.

Guilty Pleasures

MINDHUNTERS - Forgive me. This is a God awful movie but it was fun just to see someone resurrect the tried and true premise that Agatha Christie created with “And Then There None” (redone several times as “Ten Little Indians”). Ten FBI trainees are secreted away to an island where they are to go through a rigorous profiler’s test. They start dying off one by one and they have to figure out which one of them is the killer. Like “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” the movie suffers from overkill, but the actors give it their best shot. Directed by Renny Harlin. With LL Cool J and Val Kilmer.

XXX:STATE OF THE UNION

The first “XXX” with Vin Diesel was directed by Rob Cohen who is no stranger to high octane action pictures (“Daylight” w/Sylvester Stallone; producer of “The Running Man” w/Arnold Schwarzenege). This time the reins are turned over to Lee Tamahori (“Once Were Warriors” and the James Bond film “Die Another Day”) and uses rapper Ice Cube to fill Vin Diesel’s shoes. If you were expecting an intellectually stimulating movie, you’ve stepped into the wrong theater. “XXX” is apparently any hard ass who tries to buck the system and ends up as a ghost agent doing Uncle Sam’s business. No one is supposed to know who XXX is except Samuel L. Jackson, a not too humble recruiter. This time Willem Daffoe is looking to take over the country with the help of a cadre of ex commandos. Ice Cube recruits chop-shop guys from his old hood, to wreak havoc and save the President. So, if you like no-nonsense over the top action that is totally unbelievable - yet credible by a stunt man’s standards, try “XXX: State of the Union.” You’ll like it.