Training Day (2001) * * *

 

Directed by:  Antoine Fuqua

Starring:  Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Snoop Dogg, Eva Mendes, Scott Glenn, Harris Yulin, Tom Berenger, Dr. Dre, Cliff Curtis, Macy Gray

Denzel Washington leaps into his villainous role of LAPD detective Alonzo Harris with all of the zeal and glee he could muster.  He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Training Day, turning an amoral, unethical cop into someone hypnotically watchable and fascinating.  All of the events in the film take place over one day, with Alonzo acting as the mentor to rookie Jake Hoyt (Hawke-in an Oscar-nominated performance) and providing a crash course in the streets that lend itself to its own brand of justice. 

Jake wants to join narcotics because he wants to rid the city of drugs and dealers.  He will soon find that not only isn't this possible, the system is a perpetual vicious circle.  Alonzo has no qualms about raiding a dealer's house with a phony warrant and stealing the man's cash and supply.  Jake has many qualms, but tries to go along as far as his conscience will let him.  Training Day packs a lot of activity into the day, which soon stretches the limits of credulity.  We will witness Jake take a hit of marijuana, supposedly to follow Alonzo's demands to make him more authentic, but later a different agenda is revealed.  Jake saves a teenage girl from being raped in an alley, which has a payoff later.  Then, Alonzo and his crew raid the home of a former cop (Glenn) sitting on millions under the floor of his kitchen.  It turns out Alonzo killed a connected Russian mobster in Vegas the previous weekend and needs to quickly raise $1 million to prevent himself from being rubbed out.  

When Alonzo and Jake visit "the three wise men", powerful cops who are at the head of the table overseeing the department's corruption, we see the full scope of the state of the police and wonder why Jake would subject himself to that.  Training Day doesn't operate in reality, or I hope it doesn't, and is effective on its intended level.  Instead, Training Day works in the grey areas, the shadows, and the blurred lines between morality and practicality.  Alonzo tells Jake that the suppliers and dealers work outside the law, so the police sometimes have to do the same.  The world mostly operates in the gray areas, including when Alonzo kills the former cop and forces Jake to go along with the official story or be framed for the murder.  

The first ninety minutes of Training Day are a well-crafted, tense foray into daily police life.  The final twenty venture into more typical shootout territory where the villain can't be killed and the hero leaps from a roof on to the hood of a car without any injury.  Washington delivers his famed "King Kong has got nothing on me" speech, but we still ask why the people act the way they do towards Alonzo.  The final frame is puzzling, but the first two acts are over-the-top and continually entertaining, mostly because of the effective byplay between Washington and Hawke, who represent the ends of the spectrum in police morality.  

Borderlands (2024) * 1/2

 

Directed by: Eli Roth

Starring:  Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black (voice), Edgar Martinez, Jamie Lee Curtis, Florian Munteanu, Ariana Greenblatt, Gina Gershon

Borderlands is a forgettable movie featuring a slumming A-list cast.  How can Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis, with three Oscars between them, star in this film?  Well, the movie was shot beginning in 2021 before Curtis won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar, but the question remains.  Borderlands is based on the popular video game, which I'd never heard of so I'm going into Borderlands cold, but I doubt it matters.  

Cate Blanchett stars as bounty hunter Lilith, who is hired by a powerful man to retrieve his kidnapped daughter on Lilith's home planet of Pandora, a desert wasteland populated with what looks like a few junkyards and scrap metal lying in heaps every few miles or so.  This is no Tattooine from Star Wars.  Lilith teams up with fellow bounty hunters, a hockey-mask wearing hulk striking an eerie similarity to Lord Humongous, and others to find their way to the mythical Vault.  The Vault supposedly contains either riches or powers beyond universal understanding.  Many have sought it, and the daughter named Tina (Greenblatt) allegedly is the key to opening the vault.   No points for predicting that Tina isn't the chosen one. 

Blanchett, being the professional and astounding talent she is, tries her mightiest to make Lilith into a person and not a typical cynical soul who knows this world like the back of her hand.  Borderlands curiously lacks energy.  It seems bored and in turn it bores us.  Jack Black is on hand as the voice of Claptrap, who is R2-D2 that can speak English.  He is the comic relief, but unfortunately, the amount of relief he would need to provide to make Borderlands palatable is too much to ask of anyone.  

American Gangster (2007) * * * *

 

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Starring:  Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Josh Brolin, Ruby Dee, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Idris Elba, John Hawkes, Roger Bart, Carla Gugino, Lymari Nadal, John Ortiz, Cuba Gooding, Jr. Joe Morton, Ted Levine, Armand Assante

Frank Lucas was a Harlem drug lord who broke crime barriers which would be applauded if he didn't deal in heroin.  He was ruthless, focused, and creative.  As the former driver and right-hand man for Harlem godfather Bumpy Johnson, Frank learned to dress well, stay under the radar, and always think of the next move.  When he's chastising his brother over his attire, Frank says, "The loudest person in the room is the weakest," which is advice he should've applied to himself when he attended the first Ali-Frazier fight in a fur coat.  

Before then, Frank ran a lucrative operation with insane profit margins because he cut out the middle man.  He traveled to Thailand during the Vietnam War and bought directly from a general who ran the local poppy farms.  The heroin was shipped to the U.S. using military planes (and later hiding the drugs in the coffins of dead soldiers).  Frank then branded the drug "Blue Magic" and sold at lesser prices than his competitors, forcing them out of business, and also keeping the Mafia out of his business.  It's capitalism no matter how you slice it.   Later, Frank works out a distribution deal with the Mafia where he expands his power.  This was unheard of in an Italian mob dominated crime scene.  

American Gangster's other story is of Detective Richie Roberts (Crowe), a mostly honest cop who became famous (or infamous) for finding nearly one million dollars in drug money and turning it in.  Instead of making him a hero, he becomes a pariah within the department.  If Richie doesn't share the wealth, how can cops trust him?  Richie, who attends law school at night, soon is hired by the feds to run his own team and take down the New York area drug kingpins.  American Gangster doesn't make the mistake of turning Richie into Saint Richie.  He has his flaws, including neglecting his wife and son.  In one scene, he bails out his partner who killed a junkie by wheeling the dead man out on a gurney, propping his eyes open, and pretending he's still alive.  When the partner, who is strung out on heroin, asks Richie to file a false report, that is a bridge too far.  

American Gangster is on a collision course between Frank and Richie.  In the mix is corrupt Detective Trupo (Brolin), who has no compunction about shaking down Frank for his cut, which turns out to be fatal for his prized Shelby Mustang.  Brolin plays Trupo as the embodiment of sleazy corruption, someone both Frank and Richie can despise for their own reasons.  Washington and Crowe give us multi-dimensional performances of driven men on different sides of the law.  Washington is a charmer when he needs to be, but also someone not to be trifled with, not even by his brothers and cousins he brings up from North Carolina to work for him.  Crowe's Richie is charming to the various women he beds, including his divorce lawyer, but otherwise he's a tenacious bulldog tearing little by little at the fabric of Frank's empire.  

The movie is nearly 2 3/4 hours but it hums along efficiently and fascinatingly as a dual character study with plenty of violence mixed in.  American Gangster is a superior crime film, taking its time to see the full scope of Frank's and Richie's activities.  We're never lost or confused, while seeing each character for all of their dimensions, faults, and even their good qualities.   When Richie and Frank meet face-to-face, it is a riveting several minutes of Frank trying to pull out all of the stops to unnerve Richie, who stoically stares down Frank and answers each of his attempted manipulations with the same strength which brought them together in the first place.  What a gem of a movie. 

 

Cobra Kai (Season Six-Part One) * *

 

Starring:  Ralph Macchio, William Zabka, Courtney Henggeler, Martin Kove, Peyton List, Xolo Mariduena, Tanner Buchanan, Mary Mouser, Jacob Bertrand, Yuji Okumoto, Sean Kanan

Cobra Kai enters its final season.  The first five episodes have streamed, with the next batch available in November.  The end of season five would have been a proper swansong, but then Kreese initiates a prison escape and now we have season six to deal with him.  The most glaring plot hole is how Kreese (Kove) is able to travel to, by my count, two different places overseas and slink around the San Fernando Valley while supposedly being a fugitive.  Prison escapees aren't exactly left alone by the authorities and the media, but Kreese seems to have the run of the country, or the world.  I think he should've been released early from prison for good behavior and then we wouldn't have to wonder how he winds up front and center of an international karate tournament. 

Kreese, who seemingly has no life even if he weren't on the run, once again wants to resurrect an even deadlier version of Cobra Kai after it was seemingly ended in the season five finale.  Kreese isn't alone.  The other sensei in Cobra Kai are apparently okay with teenagers pounding the holy hell out of each other in the name of either ridding the world of Cobra Kai or trying to rebuild it.  I briefly attended karate school as a youngster and I don't recall anyone drawing blood let alone breaking bones.  I further remember wearing headgear and gloves when sparring, which is something that never occurred to these lawsuits waiting to happen.  It seems no parents, except for Tori's (List), and of course Daniel and Johnny, even exist in the world of Cobra Kai. 

Cobra Kai exists in a world of tenuous alliances which break apart at the slightest sign of disrespect.  Tori and Samantha (Mouser) may now be members of the same dojo, but they can't forget their past.  They soon become friends, but then Tori is such an emotional wild card that it doesn't surprise anyone that she rejoins Cobra Kai at the drop of a hat.  How could Kreese trust her?  Mike Barnes (Kanan) is also re-introduced as a sensei who assists Daniel and Johnny in choosing the six participants that will enter an all-world tournament in Spain.  From my understanding, this tournament is a vicious, cruel, torturous ordeal which may result in permanent physical and psychological damage to the teenage participants.  In this litigious society of helicopter parenting, there is zero chance such a tournament would exist.  Johnny is still upset about being kicked in the face forty years ago.

Cobra Kai uses these interchangeable kids as pawns for the adults to work out their own crap built up over years.  There are interesting subplots, such as the discovery of items from Mr. Miyagi's past which make him appear that he wasn't what he seemed.   Daniel puts on his detective hat and probes to find out what Miyagi was up to seventy years ago, but do we really think this will end with Miyagi being unmasked as a monster or a criminal?  The first episodes end with the Miyagi-do participants flying to Spain for this international brouhaha and discovering Tori has joined Cobra Kai next to Kreese.  You would think Daniel and Johnny, who by now are on the outs for the umpteenth time in the series, would contact the police and have Kreese apprehended to rid themselves of this headache, but I strongly doubt that will happen.  Daniel and Johnny's relationship is tiresome.  They are forever on the edge of feuding again.  They have fought and made up so many times I've lost count.  

I was left with the same feeling I had at the end of season five:  Cobra Kai was entertaining in its own offbeat way, but now it is past its sell-by date.  It may have hung on for one season too long. 

Trap (2024) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  M. Night Shyamalan

Starring:  Josh Hartnett, Alison Pill, Hayley Mills, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Ariel Donoghue, Jonathan Langdon

M. Night Shyamalan's Trap contains too many plot holes to be fully satisfying.  The Josh Hartnett performance is a study in conflicted duality which is quite effective.  How do we reconcile the friendly, doting father and husband with the monster who exists in the same person?  There are long stretches where Trap works, but the nagging questions linger.  I will try to explain those without giving away spoilers, but it may be difficult.  

We will start with the premise.  Cooper (Hartnett) accompanies his teenage daughter Rachel (Donoghue) to a concert performed by Rachel's favorite singer Lady Raven (Saleka).  Cooper seems like a caring, loving, innocuous dad who wants to make his daughter happy.  He notices the extended police presence outside and all over the arena.  To quote Romancing the Stone:  "They're mobilizing for Iwo Jima here,"

Using this abundant charm, Cooper asks a helpful vendor named Jamie (Langdon) why the police are everywhere.  Jamie confides that a killer named The Butcher is expected to be at the concert and the police will be there to arrest him.  Cooper is, of course, The Butcher and spends the rest of his time at the concert trying to figure a way past the security fortress led by FBI profiler Dr. Grant (Mills).  Cooper is ingenious, but let's face it, he is aided by police officers who don't seem much concerned about this man gaining access to rooftops and top secret meetings.  

Lady Raven is featured heavily in the proceedings.  She isn't just the performer up on stage or a backstage diva.  Saleka Night Shyamalan infuses Lady Raven with a refreshing sweetness and plays a larger role in the movie than anticipated.  However, questions persist, such as how is it known The Butcher will be attending the concert?  And if authorities know, how do they not know what he looks like?  How is there no media presence at a concert where hundreds of FBI, SWAT, and police are barricading the building?  

The first two questions are answered, if not adequately explained.  The third act of Trap is a cat-and-mouse game between Cooper and Lady Raven, both of whom know the truth and yet can't reveal their cards.  Then, once Lady Raven leaves the scene, Trap becomes even more incredulous with Cooper seemingly able to slip in and out of disguises and escape capture easily.  Cooper, for all of his intelligence, then returns to the one place where he wouldn't be advised to go and the police allow enough time for Cooper and his wife to have a heart-to-heart and share a piece of pie.  The police and then allow for someone under arrest to do things that they should not allow that person to do.  

Trap ultimately ends frustratingly for the viewer because M. Night Shyamalan surely provides a strong setup and a sense of dreaded suspense, but it can't be sustained and followed to a logical conclusion.  

Top Secret! (1984) * * *

 

Directed by:  Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker

Starring:  Val Kilmer, Lucy Gutteridge, Peter Cushing, Christopher Villiers, Jim Carter, Michael Gough, Eddie Tagoe, Omar Sharif

Top Secret! is written and directed by the same trio that made Airplane! and Police Squad! (notice the exclamation points on the end of each of these titles).  They employ a comic method of mining each scene for humorous or outrageous possibilities.  They love to hurl verbal and sight gags at you to the point where you start instinctively ducking.  Most work, some don't, and that's the nature of ZAZ (Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker) comedy. 

Top Secret! is immersed in silliness from the get-go.  It spoofs spy movies and Elvis Presley musicals.  Nick Rivers (Kilmer) is a teen idol playing a concert in East Germany who stumbles across a government plot to destroy something or other.  In a movie like this, it doesn't much matter.  Nick meets Hillary (Gutteridge), whose father is being held in prison.  Nick falls for her and joins "the resistance" to foil the plot, which is led by Hillary's childhood boyfriend from when they were stranded on a desert island (in a lampoon of The Blue Lagoon).  

The musical numbers are performed by Kilmer himself, and these are the least funny of the sequences.  But there are plenty of laughs, including two men dressed as a cow wearing boots trying to infiltrate a prison, a horse that sings A Hard Day's Night, and a man throwing himself on a grenade which explodes only on the men surrounding it.  I even liked Omar Sharif's cameo where his spy character winds up trapped in a compacted automobile.  

Kilmer, like many of the actors in ZAZ movies, play the material straight and don't hint that they know they're in a spoof.  Well, there is one scene in which two characters acknowledge that they are in a "bad movie", but Top Secret! is not in that category.  

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) * * *

 

Directed by:  Christopher Nolan

Starring:  Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Matthew Modine, Morgan Freeman

The Dark Knight Rises comes off the heels of The Dark Knight (2008), the best film in the Dark Knight trilogy.  The Dark Knight Rises is still well-crafted and a fitting conclusion to the series, even with a slow first hour.  

The Dark Knight Rises picks up eight years after The Dark Knight, when the DA turned villain Harvey Dent met his end at the hands of Batman.  Bruce Wayne (Bale) lives as a recluse while his company and foundations lose money.  Dent is still hailed as a hero, with Commissioner Gordon (Oldman) espousing Dent's virtues on Harvey Dent Day in a speech while fully knowing the truth about him.   A smart and honest police officer named Blake (Levitt) knows intuits that Bruce and Batman are one in the same.  It are these traits that allow Blake to be promoted to Gordon's right-hand man.  As the muzzled and vicious Bane (Hardy) sets up beneath Gotham and starts setting off a series of crimes, Batman leaps into action again.  

Meanwhile, sexy burglar Selena Kyle (Hathaway) is drawn into the web after she robs Bruce of precious pearls.  She becomes his frenemy, but soon sides with him in his battle against Bane, who nearly cripples Bruce in a fight and exiles him to the same prison from where the dreaded Ra's al Ghul once escaped.  Bane is not Heath Ledger's Joker, but he's formidable and may not even be the person pulling the strings to bring Gotham to its knees.  The returning players from the previous two films (Bale, Caine, Oldman, and Freeman) continue to shine in crucial roles which impact Batman's fate.  

There have been other incarnations of Batman since The Dark Knight trilogy concluded.  I especially enjoyed The Batman (2023) with Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader.  This series, however, mined the Batman mythology for all it was worth; dealing with the moral and physical implications of Bruce Wayne's journey.  One thing we know for certain at the end:  Being Batman is not for the weak.