Arlington Road (1999) * * *

 

Directed by: Mark Pellington    

Starring:  Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins, Hope Davis, Joan Cusack, Mason Gamble

Arlington Road was made four years after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing with much of the same paranoia and unease intact from the public response to that terrorist act.  This is a thriller with some plot holes, but it still works on its intended level and it has some degree of courage to go where it must and not necessarily end happily with the hero saving the day.

The protagonist of Arlington Road is George Washington University professor Michael Faraday (Bridges), who lost his FBI agent wife in a botched raid many years ago.   His classes focus on terrorist activity and the theory that recent bombings were not the work of one man as the media purports and the official stories suggest.   Michael believes blaming one person for these attacks is a quick and digestible psychological fix for the American public to make it easier to move on.  "It gives us our security back," he tells his class.  Michael soon meets his new neighbors Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Robbins and Cusack), who are friendly enough, but Michael begins to notice strange things about them and suspects they are not who they seem.   

It turns out Oliver has a hidden past and may or may not be Oliver Lang.  This leads to a dangerous cat and mouse game in which Michael tries to figure out what the Langs are plotting before they can execute their plan to blow up a federal building.  Michael still has friends at the FBI, who think Michael may be paranoid.   If they didn't, then Michael would have no excuse to slink around trying to find evidence of a plot.   Bridges pulls this off earnestly, while Robbins has one of those smiles which suggests he not only may be up to something but can't wait to tell the world about it.   In this case, it may be part of his plan.  

Yes, Arlington Road doesn't always hold up under scrutiny.  Indeed, the Langs' plot leaves a lot up to chance in order to be pulled off, and the ending requires standard car chases and crashes, but up until then, Arlington Road carries a certain degree of suspense and dread which allows it to be successful. 

Inherit the Wind (1960) * * * *

 

Directed by:  Stanley Kramer

Starring:  Spencer Tracy, Frederic March, Harry Morgan, Dick York, Gene Kelly, Donna Anderson, Claude Akins

Inherit the Wind was written in the time of McCarthyism but it just as well be about today's political climate in which science is doubted and religious fervor takes over.   In the world of Inherit the Wind, promoting scientific fact is the same as spitting on the Bible.   Inherit the Wind stars Spencer Tracy and Frederic March (who had two Best Actor Oscars each) as dueling attorneys in the Scopes Monkey Trial, in which a schoolteacher was arrested and put on trial for teaching evolution.   The names here have all been changed, but make no mistake which trial the movie is focusing on.

Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow in real life) and Frederic March as Matthew Brady (William Jennings Bryan in real life) spar and spout their philosophies as friends turned adversaries who find themselves arguing in court over whether the Bible is to be taken literally.   Drummond eventually calls Brady to the stand, a moment Brady can't resist, and traps him with logic and reason.   Brady believes the Bible isn't to be interpreted, but taken at face value, which flies in the face of things we know to be true today that weren't true thousands of years ago.  "How long was a day?  Was it 24 hours?" Drummond asks Brady when reviewing the story of how God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.  It's a valid question, but in Brady's mind and the minds of the townsfolk in which the trial occurs, it's heresy to question the Bible. 

Inherit the Wind remains timely and riveting as it combines historical fact with tense drama in which the lives of the players are affected in mostly negative ways by the sensationalism of the trial with newspaper editor E.K. Hornbeck (Kelly) fanning those flames.   You can make an argument that Inherit the Wind is a precursor which saw ahead to the O.J. Simpson case in which the courtroom met the media and created an unprecedented blitz which started the 24-hour news cycle.  Inherit the Wind stokes passions within its characters and within us and the main event is Tracy vs. March, two acting giants who spellbind us with their showdown, no matter what side you're on. 

Without a Trace (1983) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Stanley Jaffe

Starring:  Kate Nelligan, Judd Hirsch, David Dukes, Stockard Channing, Danny Corkill

Six-year-old Alex Selky (Corkill) walks to school each morning and returns home each afternoon like clockwork.  One day, this is not the case.  Alex sets off for school and disappears.  His mother Susan (Nelligan) and her ex-husband Graham (Dukes) call the neighbors and friends with no luck.  The NYPD is assigned to the case and set up shop at Susan's apartment.   Detective Al Menetti (Hirsch) doggedly follows each lead, no matter how unlikely it may lead to anything, but as the hours turn into days which turn into weeks, Menetti has to explain why the police will no longer camp out at Susan's apartment due to budgetary restraints.  The NYPD has other cases to solve.  Menetti is sympathetic and determined, but he is also a realist who understands Susan's son may never come home. 

Without a Trace does not tell its story in a heavy-handed or melodramatic manner.  It doesn't turn its characters into superheroes, but it sees them as human and sometimes flawed.   Kate Nelligan's performance as Susan is all the more powerful because she tries to hold herself together in the wake of a devastating development.   She is not one to exhibit histrionics, but instead tries to be civil, understanding of others' points of view, and restrained under the circumstances.   Her ex-husband is more demonstrative with his emotions, which range from anger over his son's disappearance to guilt over his divorce from Susan.   Without a Trace treats its subjects with complexity and insight, seeing all sides of the issue.  

Because Without a Trace doesn't play every scene for an emotional payoff, the ending is that much more powerful and the emotions it stirs are earned.  Hirsch tries his best to be as honest and forthright as possible when dealing with the Selky family, but this requires telling them things they don't want to hear.  A subtle message to "move on" is delivered not just by Menetti but by Susan's friends and even her ex-husband.  Susan maintains her hope and resolve under the most trying of circumstances.  Without a Trace invites overdramatization and overacting, but the movie wonderfully exercises restraint while maintaining its passion.  

Breakdown (1997) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Jonathan Mostow

Starring:  Kurt Russell, Kathleen Quinlan, J.T. Walsh, M.C. Gainey, Jack Noseworthy, Rex Finn

Breakdown is a nightmarish thriller in which two normal people are swept up into a scheme bigger than anything they could imagine.   Jeff (Russell) and Amy (Quinlan) are driving cross country and stop in a seemingly innocuous New Mexico gas station in the middle of nowhere to fill up.   After leaving the gas station, Jeff's car breaks down a few miles up the road.  A helpful trucker named Red (Walsh) stops to assist and agrees to take Amy back to the station for help.  Jeff is able to restart the car, but when he travels back to the gas station to retrieve Amy, she isn't there.   Later, when Jeff calls the police and tracks down Red's truck, Red pretends he had never seen Jeff before and denies taking Amy anyplace.  A plot is underway, but we don't know how Jeff and Amy fit into it, though apparently it is one Red and his cohorts have executed numerous times before.

Many random things have to take place in order for Red's plans to succeed.   First of all, someone has to stop at the station in the middle of the desert.  The plotters may have to wait a long time for someone to drop in, but nonetheless Jeff and Amy show up and the plot is underway.   I won't divulge exactly what Red is up to, but again it leaves a lot up to the hopes that Jeff and Amy are fairly well off to make the scheme worthwhile.   Jeff is forced to comply with Red's terms or the kidnapped Amy will die.  Walsh projects the necessary menace, but unlike when he plays the heavy in other films, he doesn't feign any attempts at civility.  Kurt Russell is the everyman caught in an deadly situation, and true to Russell's style, he is convincing and sympathetic.  

Even if Breakdown doesn't necessarily stand up to scrutiny, we forgive it its trespasses because it is suspenseful and thrilling.  These are villains we want to see get their comeuppance.   I recall Roger Ebert's review of the film in which he disagreed with the fact that an incapacitated villain has a truck dropped on him for good measure.   If you take into account what the bad guy's actions throughout the film, it's hard to sympathize with him upon his demise.  

The Time Machine (2002) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Simon Wells

Starring:  Guy Pearce, Samantha Mumba, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Giullory, Mark Addy, Orlando Jones

Very few movies about time travel are dull.  Then there's The Time Machine, starring Guy Pearce as a time machine inventor who travels to the past to prevent his beloved fiancee's untimely death.  After that fails, he ultimately 800,000 years into the future to take part in war between the Elois and the Morlocks.  It's as if The Time Machine were spliced together out of two completely different movies and it's more difficult to determine which one is more depressing. 

Alexander Hartegen (Pearce) is a hard-working late 19th-century scientist with a lovely girlfriend named Emma (Guillory) who is murdered during a holdup moments after Alexander proposes to her.  A grieving Alexander manufactures a time machine four years later and whisks himself back to the moments before Emma is killed so he could prevent her death.  He manages to spare her from dying by gunshot, but soon after she is run over by a runaway horse and dies again.   Alexander is of course distraught and says "he can't find the answers here" and soon plunges the time machine forward at first to 22nd century New York City and then 8,000 centuries into the future.   

When he's in the future, it feels like a prehistoric age with nothing but forests around and the two races of beings at war.   The Morlocks more or less feed on Elois and Alexander helps Mara (Mumba), the Eloi with which he falls in love, and her tribe fight off the Morlocks.   Jeremy Irons shows up for a few minutes as the Uber Morlock, whose face is plastered with too much makeup and rambles on about time travel.  The one advantage Irons has over the other actors is that he only has one or two scenes while the rest of the poor actors have to be onscreen much more.  

Never Say Never Again (1983) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Irvin Kershner

Starring:  Sean Connery, Kim Basinger, Klaus Maria-Brandauer, Barbara Carrera, Rowan Atkinson, Max von Sydow, Bernie Casey

Sean Connery returned to the James Bond role for the first time in twelve years in Never Say Never Again, one of the superior Bond films which is technically not considered a "Bond" film because it wasn't produced by the Broccoli family, but it has Sean Connery as James Bond in his own inimitable style so that's enough for me.   Never Say Never Again gives us a more human Bond and more human villains.  This Bond has a way with words and women, but there's something grounded about him as well.   Roger Moore had the most fun with double entendres and puns, Timothy Dalton gave us a leaner, no-nonsense Bond, Pierce Brosnan was suave personified, and Daniel Craig brought world weariness to the role, but Connery was something extra special.  

In Never Say Never Again, Bond is brought out of retirement to thwart SPECTRE's latest plot to steal nuclear missiles and extort ransom money from the United Nations.   Does it really matter?  SPECTRE rarely ever succeeds at anything when it comes to James Bond, although if memory serves, they did manage to kill Bond's wife on his honeymoon in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  Bond is sent to a resort to dry out and get fit for his latest missions, but SPECTRE learns of this and tries to off him there.  This is the first and only time I've ever seen a henchman subdued in part by a vial of urine.  

Once Bond is on the case, he travels to the Bahamas and then France to find out what he can about billionaire Maximillian Largo (Brandauer), who was hired by SPECTRE to steal the warheads and who has a sultry blonde girlfriend named Domino (Basinger), who is unaware of Largo's actions and even more unaware that Largo had her brother killed after he performed a task for SPECTRE.  Also lurking is Fatima Blush (Carrera), an assassin who must first bed Bond before plotting to kill him, which Fatima does very, very willingly. 

Never Say Never Again contains the standard amount of Bond action and romance, but it never strays into the ridiculous while remaining fun.  It is good to see Sean Connery tackle the role once more, something at the time we never expected to see again. 

Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Chris Columbus

Starring:  Robin Williams, Sally Field, Pierce Brosnan, Harvey Fierstein, Mara Wilson, Lisa Jakub, Matthew Lawrence, Robert Prosky

As Robin Williams' one-of-a-kind talent has grown on me over the years, so has Mrs. Doubtfire, which serves as a showcase for the late actor's ability to perform impressions and create humor out of the clear blue.   Many years ago, I would've said Robin Williams was great when he wasn't playing Robin Williams.  Now, I see Williams as maybe not the funniest comedian I've ever seen, but surely the most inimitable and unique.  Is he my cup of tea?  Not always, but I appreciate his groundbreaking style.

In Mrs. Doubtfire, Williams plays Daniel Hillard, a voiceover actor whose wife Miranda (Field) can no longer abide being Mrs. Hillard after he throws one too many birthday bashes for the kids in which the police have to be called because of violation of noise ordinances.   Miranda and Daniel divorce, and Daniel has visitation on Saturdays only, which seems awfully harsh since he's obviously a loving father.  Daniel then learns Miranda is looking for an afternoon nanny to babysit the three children, and voila, Daniel's gay brother Jack (Fierstein), an experienced makeup artist, helps create Mrs. Doubtfire, which allows Daniel to see his children every day while of course pretending to be a British nanny.

Would the Mrs. Doubtfire costume fool Daniel's family?  Not likely, but we go along with the plot, and soon Daniel (while disguised as Mrs. Doubtfire) has to sit by and stew, while Miranda is romanced by a new beau (Brosnan-who plays a guy named Stu) and trying to keep up his facade.  I'm reminded of Tootsie, a better movie about a man forced to dress in drag, in which Dustin Hoffman tells his overwrought agent, "I didn't think I'd have to spend the rest of my life as a woman,"  Daniel knows just how he feels, especially when he has to fool his court-appointed social worker or anyone else in his life. 

Soon enough, Daniel, for plot-related reasons, is forced to dine at a posh restaurant for a birthday dinner with his family (as Mrs. Doubtfire) and with his boss (Prosky), who wants to hire Daniel for his afternoon children's show.   We are treated to the sight of Daniel running to the bathroom to take off his Mrs. Doubtfire outfit and then sit at a table across the restaurant with his boss.  Is this funny?  Not really.  Even with all of the rushing about, the scene moves slowly.   Mrs. Doubtfire is a sincere comedy which serves mostly as a Williams vehicle while the rest of the actors just try to edge their way in from the fringes. 

Bullets Over Broadway (1994) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Woody Allen

Starring:  John Cusack, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Tilly, Chazz Palminteri, Jack Warden, Jim Broadbent, Tracey Ullman, Joe Viterelli, Harvey Fierstein, Rob Reiner, Mary-Louise Parker

Bullets over Broadway is one of Woody Allen's breeziest and funniest comedies, while at the same time exploring dark themes about an artist's commitment to his art.  The artist in Bullets over Broadway is playwright David Shayne (Cusack), who is able to finance his latest play by agreeing to a Faustian deal with mobster Nick Valenti (Viterelli).  Valenti will provide the finance only if his girlfriend Olive Neal (Tilly) can play one of the featured roles.  This wouldn't be an issue if Olive had any sort of acting ability, which she does not.  After a brief bout with his conscience, David finds he can live with this concession.

The play, titled God of Our Fathers (whatever that means), is an overwritten, overwrought drama with its actors speaking lines they don't understand and a story they can't follow.   The lead is fading Broadway star Helen Sinclair (Wiest, in her second Oscar-winning role), who seduces a willing David into cheating on his live-in girlfriend (Parker).   While David and Helen do the rumpy-pumpy, Olive's bodyguard Cheech (Palminteri) sits in the darkened theater listening to this dreck on stage and one day, he makes suggestions which the cast agrees with even if David does not.   It turns out that Cheech isn't just hired muscle, but someone with creative instincts that will make the play better if David can see past his own ego.  Soon, David works with Cheech on daily rewrites in which David's unspeakable dialogue is rewritten into English.  David of course doesn't let anyone know that Cheech is helping him and Cheech doesn't tell anyone because he fears it may ruin his reputation as a hired gun for Valenti.

Allen populates Bullets over Broadway with eccentric characters such as Warner Purcell (Broadbent), the leading man who gives new meaning to the term "stress eater", Eden Brent (Ullman), the ingenue co-star who likes to carry her dog with her everywhere, and David's friend and fellow writer Sheldon Flender (Reiner-who directed Cusack in The Sure Thing and Stand by Me), who takes pride in being unpublished and mediocre who believes an artist creates his own moral universe.  The cast is a true standout ensemble, with each allowed their own shining moments.  My favorite character is Cheech, who carries himself with a no bullshit approach to life and who is, if Allen's definition is correct, the only true artist in the entire movie.  You'll see what I mean. Who woulda thunk it?  

Renfield (2023) * *

Directed by:  Chris McKay

Starring:  Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz, Brandon Scott-Jones, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Camille Chen

Those who pay to see Nicolas Cage sink his teeth into Dracula with heedless glee as he rolls his R's and promises to suck your blood will be satisfied with Renfield, which is otherwise a dull horror comedy with Dracula's overworked, unhappy servant as the main character.  Robert Montague Renfield (Hoult) is first seen in a co-dependency self-help group with a "Hello, my name is Renfield" sticker on his shirt.  He provides a synopsis of his servitude to Count Dracula, which began nearly a century ago and is seen in black and white flashbacks which summon the memory of the classic Dracula films.  

Renfield was at first a real estate broker looking to make a killing on the sale of Dracula's castle but was soon sucked into (pun kind of, sort of intended) a dreary life of serving up his master with fresh bodies and tending to his other needs of which there are many.   Now, Renfield has grown weary of Dracula and wants out, but he'll find his boss is not willing to let him go.  Renfield isn't exactly powerless.  He eats insects, which provides him superpowers and supreme fighting skills.  Yet, he quivers towards Dracula.  

A movie about this unusual relationship might have been intriguing.  But, Renfield bogs down with another subplot about drug dealers and an honest cop (Awkwafina) who wants revenge for her father's death at the hands of said dealers and enlists Renfield's help after he saves her from an ambush.  The fight scenes involve oodles of gore, buckets of blood, bodies exploding, and last slightly shorter than John Wick taking on a city full of assassins.   Even with all of this activity, Renfield clocks in at just over 93 minutes and thank goodness for small favors.  

The Birdcage (1996) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Mike Nichols

Starring:  Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Gene Hackman, Dan Futterman, Calista Flockhart, Dianne Wiest, Hank Azaria, Christine Baranski

The Birdcage is a comedy with a better buildup than payoff.   It contains a brilliant Robin Williams performance as a gay man pretending to be straight in order to dupe his son's fiancee's right-wing parents.  It has all of the potential to be one of the great movie comedies, but The Birdcage sputters when it should be revving up.   

Robin Williams plays Armand Goldman, owner of a popular Miami nightclub which features his life partner Albert (Lane) as his star drag act.  As Albert enters middle age, he is insecure and dramatic to the nth degree, believing Armand is tired of him and having an affair.   While histrionic, Lane is able to still be touching and this story arc pays off in a quiet, poignant manner which is the best scene in the movie.  The rest of the film is noisy slapstick with Armand's son Val (Futterman), the product of Armand's only time he had sex with a woman, announcing he is marrying the daughter of right-wing senator Kevin Keeley (Hackman), leader of a moral majority movement which takes a huge hit when the movement's co-founder dies while sleeping with a fourteen-year-old prostitute.

The senator and his wife (Wiest) escape from their Ohio home, which is besieged by the media to Miami, to meet Armand and his "wife".   Val has one tiny request of his supportive father:  Pretend to be a straight couple for one night so he could impress his future in-laws.  I question the wisdom of this ask, but we play along.  Keeley and his family arrive in Miami and meet Armand (who for the night has changed his last name to Coleman and says he's a cultural attache), Albert (who dresses as a woman and passes herself off successfully as Val's mother), and the Goldmans' houseboy Agador (Azaria), who can't walk in a regular pair of dress shoes and makes soup as the only course of the evening.  Oh, and the imprints on the bowls the soup is served in causes Keeley to pause.

All of this sounds potentially funnier than it is.  The final act doesn't achieve liftoff and what we're left is a feeling of a golden missed opportunity populated by actors who are infinitely better than the material. 

Spinning Gold (2023) * *

 

Directed by:  Timothy Scott Bogart

Starring:  Jeremy Jordan, Michelle Monagahan, Casey Likes, Tayla Parx, Winslow Fegley, Jason Isaacs, Jason Derulo, Wiz Khalifa, Sebastian Maniscalco, Jay Pharoah, Lyndsy Fonseca

Spinning Gold is a classic case of a movie knowing the words, but not the music.  It curiously doesn't match the energy level required to tell a story of a hustling record executive who founded Casablanca Records in the 1970's, which launched artists like Kiss, Donna Summer, Bill Withers, and other top artists.  That person is Neil Bogart (Jordan), a Brooklyn native who cut his teeth as a singer, songwriter, and an executive for other record companies before forming Casablanca.  Things are rough for many years as the movie tallies on screen how the company sinks to eight million dollars in debt before finally hitting it big.  

Neil works tirelessly to make something out of Casablanca.  He's part snake oil salesman, part huckster, and part politician, all of which is required to keep the talent from bolting to other labels and stick with Neil's vision.   There is an absorbing story to be made from this material, but Spinning Gold never quite reaches that level.   The movie makes a Herculean effort to present Neil as a likable guy with talent and a dream, but it collapses under its own weight.  When Casablanca finally finds itself in the black and Neil sells half of it to Polygram in 1980, we are happy for him although not much moved.  The saddest aspect of Neil Bogart's life was that in a mere two years following the height of his financial success, he died from cancer at age 39.   

Spinning Gold features wall-to-wall vocal performances from the actors playing the label's biggest acts.  The singing is passable enough and the actors do what they can to bolster the material, but since the movie was written and directed by Neil's son Timothy Scott Bogart, we wonder if some of the darker and edgier stuff was left out.  Spinning Gold plays as a love letter to Timothy's father, which is understandable, but because of that we never can gather a full picture of the man's rocky rise as an unsung hero in the music industry.  Everything, even Neil's eventual cocaine addiction, seems measured and pulls its punches.  This is something I suspect Neil Bogart wouldn't do.  

Air (2023) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Ben Affleck

Starring:  Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, Matthew Maher

It is a testament to director Ben Affleck's exceptional skill that he creates suspense with a story in which we know the outcome and also one in which the stakes aren't high for an average working person to care about.   In Air, we witness a tale of the rich becoming richer for both Michael Jordan and Nike.  What affects us most about Air is how we are drawn into the movie's energy and its efficient storytelling.   There is little fat here and the story whooshes along.   So what if the payoff is Nike became the top sports sneaker company on the planet and Michael Jordan has earned 400 million to date in "passive income" thanks to the deal he made which was unprecedented at the time? 

Air takes place in 1984 and the movie's definitive sense of time and place transplants us to that year.  The movie doesn't take potshots at the styles, clothes, hair, cars, or decor of the time.  There was a year 1984 and stories took place in that year.   The Los Angeles Summer Olympics of that year loom large.  The NBA draft has already taken place and Nike's sales meeting run by Rob Strasser (Bateman) is uninspired, mostly because Nike lags significantly behind rivals Converse and Adidas in terms of gobbling up top basketball names.   Rob writes off Michael Jordan as already the property of Adidas, but Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) has a brainstorm:  Bet the house and Nike's full annual budget allotment for the basketball division on Jordan, the North Carolina standout who had yet to play his first game for the Chicago Bulls.  

Nike co-founder Phil Knight (Affleck) is unsure about the risk of spending your whole budget on one unproven rookie, but Vaccaro talks Knight into allowing him to explore the possibility.  Sonny, who is determined and desperate, breaks some of the unwritten rules of signing a player, including making unannounced home visits to Jordan's family and pissing off Jordan's agent David Falk (Messina) in the process.  But Sonny has a way of connecting with Jordan's mother Deloris (Davis) and convinces her to meet with Nike after the meetings with Converse and Adidas go precisely as Sonny predicted they would. 

The bulk of Air deals with Sonny going all-in on Jordan and a sense that the future of Nike hangs in the balance, which ups the tension.   If Jordan doesn't sign, then Nike will fall back into irrelevance in the marketplace.  Air does a masterful job of making us care about its story, and this is due to the witty script by Alex Convery, the pace, the performances, and the movie's insider knowledge on the sports marketing landscape.  There is also a critical scene which paved the way for the future of sports marketing as argued by Deloris:  Why shouldn't the athletes, who make billions for schools, get a taste of the money themselves?   In the film's epilogue, we see how Sonny played a part in that development.   In those ways, Sonny Vaccaro was a trendsetter in more ways than one.  And he made a whole lot of people a whole lot of money.   Air understands that and because this is the case, Sonny's passions become ours.  

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) * *

 

Directed by:  Chad Stahelski

Starring:  Keanu Reeves, Bill Skarsgard, Donnie Yen, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Rina Sawayama, Laurence Fishburne, Shamier Anderson

Is John Wick a cyborg?  Was he created out of the same materials as The Terminator?  From my count, John is hit by a speeding car six times, shot, stabbed, and falls from high places only to hit the ground and then moments later shake it off and keep going.  Other than the occasional shot of alcohol, John Wick doesn't seem to drink, or eat for that matter.  He doesn't seem to sleep or suffer in any way from fatigue after blowing away forty people and fighting even more.  I was willing to suspend my disbelief and allow the first three films in the series to work for me in all of their ludicrous glory.   But now I'm pushing back.  John Wick: Chapter 4 is forty minutes longer than the last film in the series and it's chock full of looooong action sequences which pass into the realm of the absurd.   I find myself asking questions, which is deadly to a movie like John Wick: Chapter 4.  Questions such as:

*  How many clips does John carry in his suit?  

*  Does any airport security stop him or question why he has so many clips in his luggage?

*  How many frequent flier miles has he accrued over the years since he shows up in whatever city he's needed at a moment's notice?   And if he uses a private jet, then whose private jet, since he is supposed to be excommunicated from the underworld he inhabits and helping him would result in death? 

*  What substance are his bones made of?  

I could go on, but you get the point.  The first three movies in John Wick were outrageous, but fun, and the rules and traditions of the underworld from which John Wick can't escape created intrigue of their own.  The seemingly implacable rules, however, can be broken by technicalities or shortcuts whenever the plot requires them to be broken.  The ending of Chapter 3 promised us a battle with the "High Table", the organization which governs the world of John Wick.  Instead of that fight, we are treated to another showdown between John Wick and a representative of the High Table, the sadistic Marquese (Skarsgard), who has sent men like Caine (Yen) and the Tracker (Anderson) after John Wick.  Caine is blind, but still a fierce fighter, and Tracker, like the John Wick of old, is more vicious when you go after his dog companion.   The issue is, Caine and Tracker's allegiances and loyalties change with the wind.  One minutes they help John, the next they are trying to kill him.  

Keanu Reeves plays the role straight and of course is a top-flight action star.  He isn't given much dialogue, although it is my understanding many of his lines were cut from the script.  But he's no longer human, which could be said for the series.   John Wick: Chapter 4 looks and feels like a video game with its hero fighting through an endless parade of nameless, faceless villains he must destroy in order to proceed to the next round where he can do it all over again.   You have the sense that John Wick hung on for one movie too many.    

The Good Son (1993) * *

Directed by:  Joseph Ruben

Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Elijah Wood, Wendy Crewson, Daniel Hugh Kelly

Macaulay Culkin plays Henry, a ten-year old serial killer in The Good Son, which is your type of movie if you are interested in seeing Culkin play such a character.   Until The Good Son, Macaulay Culkin played lovable, inquisitive kids like the one in Home Alone, in which he tormented home invaders by laying booby traps made from household items.   In this movie, Culkin plays another child who ingeniously sets traps for others to fall into, but with much more malice aforethought.   He's not defending his home, he's simply homicidal. 

The hero of The Good Son is Mark (Wood), a child around Henry's age who recently lost his mother and now must stay with his cousin Henry's family in Maine while his father travels for business.  Henry's home is near cliffs, so you know darn well those cliffs will figure heavily into the plot later on.  Before that, Mark and Henry adventurously run around the island where they engage at first in playful mischief, but Mark soon notices that Henry's idea of pranks are on the deadly side, such as dropping a mannequin off an overpass into traffic causing a ten-car collision.  Mark tries to tell Henry's family, who of course tend to think Mark is overreacting.   Oh, and Henry's brother recently drowned and perhaps his sister is his next target unless Mark can stop him. 

It took some nerve for Culkin to play against type even at his young age, but once the perverse fascination of seeing the young actor who played Kevin McAllister now playing a budding serial killer passes, then we're left with a movie with all of the cliches of a slasher movie with kids playing the adult roles.  And then we have the ending in which Henry's mom is hanging on to both Mark and Henry while they both dangle over the cliff.   She doesn't have enough strength to hold both kids, so like Sophie's Choice, the poor woman must sacrifice one of them to the sea below.  I told you the cliff would come into play.