Month: February 2012

Hard as it is to believe, offscreen Woody Harrelson purveys an image of a loose, nearly slacker vibe, while onscreen he lays down a sense that he clearly knows how to get down to business. In the dark yet highly perceptive Rampart, Harrelson portrays the rogue cop Dave Brown, a misogynist, racist, intensely self-contained and hardheaded throwback to the times when police got things done without much regard for the rule of law or political correctness. The milieu is Los Angeles, 1990s, post-Rodney King. (Rampart is the police division in central Los Angeles.) After Brown is caught on video pursuing and beating an Hispanic ruffian who plowed into his police car, he’s asked to resign by assistant D. A. Sigourney Weaver.  It seems there’s a backdrop of an underway massive investigation against the Rampart unit and Brown senses he’s being targeted as the perfect fall guy to take the heat off the police department at large. So he resists.

His meetings with police higher ups and Weaver will crack you up. They perfectly present Harrelson with the chance to show acting chops as the underdog par excellence, a reprise of his playing Hustler magazine’s Larry Flynt in the 1996 film, The People Versus Larry Flynt. Spouting hyper-articulate, yet non sequiter-filled monologues, the resilient Brown continually frustrates his superiors with mouthy insults, tone-deaf legal threats, and often accurate if grandiose assessments of their own motives. Then he retreats to his police car to commit yet another over-the-top blunder or two. Eventually this starts to wear on him. There’s only so much solace in booze and promiscuous sex (here Robin Wright among others) when the pressure is on.

Home leaves little room for refuge. His teenage daughters live in adjoining apartments with their Moms (Cynthia Nixon and the always talented Anne Heche), who are incidentally sisters. Brown crashes with them eenie-meanie-miney-mo-style until he wears out his welcome. Given his personality, that isn’t too long. Then, when his luck runs low and he needs a place to stay, he merely shakes down a hotel employee. When he needs pain killers, he blackmails a pharmacist. When he needs money, he contacts a retired cop ( an excellent Ned Beatty), who was a pal of his Dad, also a cop on the force. Looking for a scheme from Beatty, Brown starts his skid into paranoia. It’ll eventually include Wright as well. While he’s got every reason to be paranoid in the first place, Brown’s defensive instincts are brought up several notches. He begins to show the stress, yet he still retains a tenacity that is ironically intoxicating. Harrelson, who also portrayed an equally nerves-of-steel military man in the excellent The Messenger, for which he garnered a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominaton, somehow makes you like Brown despite his being such a total scumbag. He’s curiously like the kid in high school we knew we shouldn’t hang around but couldn’t help ourselves.

Director Oren Moverman (also The Messenger and also an Oscar nomination, for screenwriting) works in an often impressionistic, artsy vein, which further brings into relief the harshness of Brown’s predicament and his fascinating, compelling, yet also tragic response. Co-written by the novelist James Ellroy (L. A. Confidential), the film zings with a plausibility for time and place and, above all, character. Humor rears its head, often married with squeamishness. Moverman and Ellroy serve as perfect catalysts to bring Harrelson’s best to the fore. Physically he’s all pumped-up bluster. Emotionally, an unfettered yet hapless “piece of work.” The film gives one the inescapable sense of honesty in its portrayal of Brown. Not judging him or explaining his motives, it’s an unqualified triumph in getting us under his skin. Besides Harrelson, the rest of the acting (especially Wright) dazzles as well, including Ice Cube as an Internal Affairs investigator and Steve Buscemi, as a hamstrung top cop. Plot is secondary to the central experience, visually heightened by cinematographer Bobby Bonkowski, who shot in digital.

Harrelson, the openly pot-smoking, raw food eating, laid back dude who would ostensibly seem more at home in the new hippie commune comedy, Wanderlust, continues to surprise and enchant. Working totally against type for the second film running, he’s a biting actor on the rise and one of our best. In Ramparts he holds in reserve enough of himself to seem to be outside his character looking in, enjoying the view. Can’t blame him.

8 Pernicious, Lovable Dudes (out of 10)

One thing you quickly realize when you sit down to watch a Denzel Washington movie is he nearly always give the pleasurable illusion that whoever he is portraying, he is playing exactly himself. Whatever the scripted setup the spotlight is always on Denzel, the ultra-cool, can-do-it-in-his-sleep, nonpareil hero for all occasions. We’ve come accustomed to his responses to normally stress-filled situations–often comedic always command, not a little eager to showboat.

If his characters can do no wrong even in villainy, his choice of vehicles may be getting bit stale. Washington could stand a change-the-grain role similar to another great actor who always seems to play himself–Jack Nicholson when he took on About Schmidt, for instance. Denzel’s own “going against type” shouldn’t just be reserved for his occasional roles on the Broadway stage.

Safe House, full of all the gimmicks and doodads of a first-time screenwriter (David Guggenheim), explores the psycho world of 21st-century espionage. No, not like Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy, which while occasionally too tame for its own good (it was after all so explicitly 20th century) created a thinking man’s mystery with style and panache to burn. Leave your thinking cap in the lobby for this one.

For all the Sam Shepards, Vera Farmigas, and Brendan Gleeson in this cast, Safe House should have been a lot more than plot holes stitched together with dull action movie drones and only occasional jolts of adrenaline. Enough of car chases where guys going 80 miles per hour crash into an immovable object and walk out with a small cut on their face. Doesn’t anybody do a BELIEVABLE car chase scene (a la Bullit or The French Connection) anymore? Safe House’s cranked up treachery via interminable grade-B Bourne-style fight scenes (the film shares the Bourne franchise’s cinematographer, Oliver Wood) and those way too elongated car chase scenes strides at every turn to outdo both all other CIA movies and, well, itself.

Stand back to make room for all comparisons of Ryan Reynolds/Denzel versus Ethan Hawke/Denzel in Washington’s Oscar-winning Training Day, which also shared the wily mentor/innocent young buck theme. Unfortunately, it’s arena football here compared to Training Day’s NFL-playoff level filmmaking. A scene where Matt Weston (Reynolds) loses his legendary bad-boy fallen agent and now handcuffed hostage Tobin Frost (Denzel) inside a crowded soccer stadium begs the questions of why his bosses sent the untested CIA man there to get a key in a locker that could have been left anywhere? Or why after a harried Frost turns himself into the American Embassy in Capetown, the same crazed assassins pursuing Frost before his surrender also show up at the safe house that Weston has been caretaking. Someone doesn’t want him interrogated, maybe? Duh.

The assassins show up yet again when a freed Frost finds Ruben Blades in the middle of nowhere South African shantytown to help him forge some new documents. Eventually Weston, portrayed as a Yale grad and fluent in Afrikaans, catches on. There’s a mole in the CIA. By now Reynolds has to ditch his French girlfriend (Nora Arnezeder) because he doesn’t want her caught up in this stuff. Lucky her. She gets to leave the movie early.

The rest of us could never walk out on a Denzel Washington movie. He’s far too ingrained in our inner movie hero radar. Can’t wait for the next chance to watch him play himself again.

4 Spys Gone to Hell (out of 10)

In a brief but tone-changing scene in The Vow, Jessica Lange plays things out with an attitude of “OK-I’ve-had-enough-of-this-fluff//pay-attention-now-if-you’d-like-to-see-some-real-acting.” In the scene the award-winning actress gives her daughter (Rachel McAdams) a passionate explanation for Lange’s ostensible weakness in her relationship with her alpha lawyer husband (Sam Neill). In this Romcom, specially served for Valentine’s Day, Lange’s character stands out for the self-awareness of her motivations. In the case of forgetful McAdams and husband Channing Tatum, they mostly go around clueless and lighthearted. In McAdams’ case, she’s got a good reason.

A car accident rendered her semi-amnesiac. She remembers everything up until Tatum (which honestly is probably the best thing that could ever happen to someone), everything until she ran off from law school and doting parents to the big city (Chicago) to do art. When she first comes to she thinks Tatum is her doctor rather than her husband and she doesn’remember being a sculpturess either. Her and Tatum’s time together after the accident reeks of what seems countless other movies with this setup. So what we have here is not only a portrait of a person trapped in amnesia but a movie itself trapped in amnesia.

In the film’s favor McAdams (Midnight in Paris) can be infectiously quirky in a pretty decent way and Tatum actually surprises here amidst not the highest of expectations. What bears scrutiny, however, is the somewhat peachy, high on froth screenplay. Not feeling real is one thing. Verging on gasbag garrulousness is quite another.

Romantic?

Come on….. Only to the extent The Vow, certainly not by anything it actually deals with head-on, does get one to think about some heady issues. After the accident McAdams is totally different from the bohemian carefree spirit depicted in flashbacks of marital bliss with Tatum. Regressing back to the lulling pull of her parents, she not only looks and acts a hundred times straighter, she even confesses to a James Patterson novel (gasp) when asked her favorite book. She’s nothing like the person Tatum knew and loved, yet his affection is unmoved by the changes. McAdams ex-boyfriend is suddenly back in her life and since the end of her memories extend to just before their breakup she’s not only smitten with him, but he with her despite a nasty breakup she apparently brought on. Neither of these guys is moved by McAdams going through changes to rival Jekyll and Hyde. Love is all you need (and McAdams’ rosy good looks.)

So we’ll wait for another movie for anything more complex on the relative natures of identity, affection and radical personality change. Myself, I think the last scene in Almodovar’s The Skin I Live comes pretty close come to think of it.

Tatum owns a recording studio which he never bothers to check up on while waiting an interminable amount of time for McAdams to come out of her coma. His female sidekick there gives him advice on getting his wife to fall in love with him again….”What does she like in bed?” she asks.”Tickling,” he reluctantly admits. “Try that” she says. He does. It doesn’t work.

Neither does the film much of the time. But, hey, it’s Valentine’s Day. Can’t exactly rush out and see A Separation or Carnage just to avoid broad sentimentality pulled out of equally broad plot holes, right? Well, wait. If you did you’d get relationships authentic to the point that you’ll at least know any truths to be gained will give substantial insight instead of a brief sugar rush.

5 sugar rushes (out of 10)