Month: March 2011

Danny Green, a Cleveland 1970’s union boss turned mobster, doesn’t drink and has the emotional range of a Secret Service bodyguard. Allegedly book smart, the Irishman (Ray Stevenson) can’t even come up with an anti-Italian ethnic joke better than you’d hear in a remedial reading class.

“Kill The Irishman,” beset with a cliched script written by director Jonathan Hensleigh that’s practically a spoof on its own highly recognizable organized-crime supporting cast (Paul Sorvino, Tony LoBianco, Vincent d’Onofrio), provides minimal movie mob thrills given that cast’s acting chops.

Telling the true-story (it must be–there’s real newsreel footaage thrown in) of Danny’s rise from grunt worker to union boss to mob enforcer to mob target, the film has its moments but staggers too often.

When none other than Christopher Walken enters the scene as Shandor Birns, a fastidiouly prudent Jewish operative, the film’s problem becomes clear. Walken is only in a few scenes. Shame. His presence and that of Sorvino, as mob bigwheel Tony Salerno, who’s in even fewer scenes, kick the film up several notches. Green is a stoic character who rarely expresses anything unless it’s a platitude about his “Irish warrior” tenacity, He speaks so seldom in the film when he does we’re startled into a “What got into you?” response. The charisma gap in
his pivotal scenes with Walken and Sorvino gives the film an uneven, off-kilter vibe. Then there’s the film’s two women characters, his wife, and later, his girlfriend, who are written even more cardboard than Danny is. I know, I know. Women of that time period and culture were docile by nature. Well there’s docile, and then there’s inert. The charisma gap here is similar to what happened in the Oscar telecast. After enduring our young, out-of-their-league or just-victims-of-poor-writing hosts, in walks Billy Crystal and we’re suddenly in a different program.

Unless you’re a huge fan of Walken, save the time and stream “Mean Streets” instead. If you’ve never seen it, you’re in for quite a thrill.

6 cliches out of 10

Danny Green, a Cleveland 1970’s union boss turned mobster, doesn’t drink and has the emotional range of a Secret Service bodyguard. Allegedly book smart, the Irishman (Ray Stevenson) can’t even come up with an anti-Italian ethnic joke better than you’d hear in a remedial reading class.

“Kill The Irishman,” beset with a cliched script written by director Jonathan Hensleigh that’s practically a spoof on its own highly recognizable organized-crime supporting cast (Paul Sorvino, Tony LoBianco, Vincent d’Onofrio), provides minimal movie mob thrills given that cast’s acting chops.

Telling the true-story (it must be–there’s real newsreel footaage thrown in) of Danny’s rise from grunt worker to union boss to mob enforcer to mob target, the film has its moments but staggers too often.

When none other than Christopher Walken enters the scene as Shandor Birns, a fastidiouly prudent Jewish operative, the film’s problem becomes clear. Walken is only in a few scenes. Shame. His presence and that of Sorvino, as mob bigwheel Tony Salerno, who’s in even fewer scenes, kick the film up several notches. Green is a stoic character who rarely expresses anything unless it’s a platitude about his “Irish warrior” tenacity, He speaks so seldom in the film when he does we’re startled into a “What got into you?” response. The charisma gap in
his pivotal scenes with Walken and Sorvino gives the film an uneven, off-kilter vibe. Then there’s the film’s two women characters, his wife, and later, his girlfriend, who are written even more cardboard than Danny is. I know, I know. Women of that time period and culture were docile by nature. Well there’s docile, and then there’s inert. The charisma gap here is similar to what happened in the Oscar telecast. After enduring our young, out-of-their-league or just-victims-of-poor-writing hosts, in walks Billy Crystal and we’re suddenly in a different program.

Unless you’re a huge fan of Walken, save the time and stream “Mean Streets” instead. If you’ve never seen it, you’re in for quite a thrill.

6 cliches out of 10

Okay, so nobody likes Matthew McConaughey. Never heard so many declare the man is at best annoying, at worst a dimwit full of bombast. Having mostlty avoided his films for no other reason than they sounded uninteresting (liked him in Tropic Thunder, though), I came into The Lincoln Lawyer without an ax to grind.

Playing Mick Haller, streetwise lawyer for “scumbags” (sez a fellow attorney to his face), the guy pulls off the role and the film. Helps to have William H. Macy, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, Michael Pena, John Leguizamo, and (brilliant as a jailhouse snitch) Josh Whigham on your supporting cast. Favorite scenes involve Mick telling off cops and fellow lawers who look down upon his defense of the downtrodden, or his head-on direct laying down protocol to a client, or his jostlng with his investigator Macy over maneuvering a case through extralegal means.

I have no idea whether the legal stuff in the film holds water, or whether it adopted the Michael Connolly novel faithfully. I do know it’s a gripping, often amusing legal drama with refreshingly not a lot of courtroom yet more than a little sense of reality. Matthew (yea, HIM) told Jay Leno he was surprised in hanging out with lawyers in his research for the film on just how much criminal law work was informal, slang-full, slambang, near constant negotiation rather than anything more crusty. This film way brings it.

8 of 10

Okay, so nobody likes Matthew McConaughey. Never heard so many declare the man is at best annoying, at worst a dimwit full of bombast. Having mostlty avoided his films for no other reason than they sounded uninteresting (liked him in Tropic Thunder, though), I came into The Lincoln Lawyer without an ax to grind.

Playing Mick Haller, streetwise lawyer for “scumbags” (sez a fellow attorney to his face), the guy pulls off the role and the film. Helps to have William H. Macy, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, Michael Pena, John Leguizamo, and (brilliant as a jailhouse snitch) Josh Whigham on your supporting cast. Favorite scenes involve Mick telling off cops and fellow lawers who look down upon his defense of the downtrodden, or his head-on direct laying down protocol to a client, or his jostlng with his investigator Macy over maneuvering a case through extralegal means.

I have no idea whether the legal stuff in the film holds water, or whether it adopted the Michael Connolly novel faithfully. I do know it’s a gripping, often amusing legal drama with refreshingly not a lot of courtroom yet more than a little sense of reality. Matthew (yea, HIM) told Jay Leno he was surprised in hanging out with lawyers in his research for the film on just how much criminal law work was informal, slang-full, slambang, near constant negotiation rather than anything more crusty. This film way brings it.

8 of 10

Assessing a sci-fi thriller with a premise as outlandish as that of “Limitless” is a tricky business. It’s especially tricky when the flick in question is so damn much fun that to convey its worth in order to rise it above secondary status one needs to ignore plotholes large enough to drive a truck through.

Ignore them.

When a guy can pop a pill (here the fictitious NZT) that will morph him from a slacker depressive into an uber-intelligent, extrasensory superman who can do nearly everything, logic’s going to take a backseat somewhere along the line. Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro and Abby Cornish play our lovable main character, his heavy-duty tycoon challenger, and his cautious girlfriend turned moll. DeNiro’s actually acting (superbly) again, and Cooper handles the”dual role” deftly.

Throw in a Russian villain (Andre Howard) who’s so crazy he’s funny, and enough filmed-in-Philadelphia stuff to keep us guessing. The film’s payoff is you never know what’s coming next as Cooper learns whole disciplines and languages overnight, finishes writing a novel in a few days, seduces women effortlessly, gets his once-fed up girlfriend back, makes millions on the stock market, and, oh yes–gets involved with mean dudes who also want the rare supply of the wonder drug, and others (DeNiro) who want his extraordinary skills to manipulate a Wall Street merger. Hijinks insue. Some are silly, others highly suspenseful. Director Neil Burger’s no slouch. His The Illusionist with Edward Norton was top-shelf enough you should stream it today if you haven’t seen it. Here he throws a few Danny Boyle visual moves our way with a sleek, rollicking ride that turns enough hairpin curves to thrill us into the realization we’ve just had one of the finest fastfood film experiences in some time.

8 Plot holes out of 10

Assessing a sci-fi thriller with a premise as outlandish as that of “Limitless” is a tricky business. It’s especially tricky when the flick in question is so damn much fun that to convey its worth in order to rise it above secondary status one needs to ignore plotholes large enough to drive a truck through.

Ignore them.

When a guy can pop a pill (here the fictitious NZT) that will morph him from a slacker depressive into an uber-intelligent, extrasensory superman who can do nearly everything, logic’s going to take a backseat somewhere along the line. Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro and Abby Cornish play our lovable main character, his heavy-duty tycoon challenger, and his cautious girlfriend turned moll. DeNiro’s actually acting (superbly) again, and Cooper handles the”dual role” deftly.

Throw in a Russian villain (Andre Howard) who’s so crazy he’s funny, and enough filmed-in-Philadelphia stuff to keep us guessing. The film’s payoff is you never know what’s coming next as Cooper learns whole disciplines and languages overnight, finishes writing a novel in a few days, seduces women effortlessly, gets his once-fed up girlfriend back, makes millions on the stock market, and, oh yes–gets involved with mean dudes who also want the rare supply of the wonder drug, and others (DeNiro) who want his extraordinary skills to manipulate a Wall Street merger. Hijinks insue. Some are silly, others highly suspenseful. Director Neil Burger’s no slouch. His The Illusionist with Edward Norton was top-shelf enough you should stream it today if you haven’t seen it. Here he throws a few Danny Boyle visual moves our way with a sleek, rollicking ride that turns enough hairpin curves to thrill us into the realization we’ve just had one of the finest fastfood film experiences in some time.

8 Plot holes out of 10