The Grouchy Editor

The Messenger belongs to a long line of Hollywood movies about American servicemen returning home from war.  These films include The Best Years of Our Lives (World War II), The Deer Hunter (Vietnam) and, more recently, Brothers (Iraq).  Unfortunately, The Messenger doesn’t pack the emotional punch of those other dramas.

Director Oren Moverman’s movie does have powerful moments, but most of them involve secondary characters.  When U.S. Army Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) and Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) deliver the news of Iraq casualties to stunned family members, you have to be a cold customer, indeed, not to feel their pain.  But The Messenger’s main storyline, depicting Montgomery’s torturous adaptation to life back in America, doesn’t resonate as well.

Montgomery engages in a tentative romance with a war widow played by Samantha Morton.  This bit of casting is inspired because Morton does not have typical “movie star” looks, and that affords her credibility as a blue-collar, struggling single mother.  But this tender interlude between two scarred people leads nowhere until much too late in the film.

The main problem with The Messenger is the character of Montgomery, either as written or as performed.  Foster conveys anger and intensity well, but he lacks a certain softness, some humanity with which we can identify.  He’s not as vulnerable as Dana Andrews was in The Best Years of Our Lives, nor as accessible as Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter.  Sgt. Montgomery’s emotional state might appear realistic to actual war veterans, but in a movie that seeks to send a strong message, it’s the wrong note.           Grade:  B

Director:  Oren Moverman  Cast:  Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, Jena Malone, Steve Buscemi, Lisa Joyce  Release:  2009

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Is Exit Through the Gift Shop an elaborate hoax?  Is this “documentary” about street artists good enough to warrant excited speculation about its authenticity among the nation’s film critics?

The answer to the first question is … probably not.  The answer to the second question is … probably not.  For those who have not heard the movie’s backstory, it goes something like this:  Earlier this decade, a French immigrant to L.A. named Thierry Guetta turned his obsession with photographing everything into a more-specialized activity:  filming street artists at work.  Guetta was introduced to the mysterious “Banksy,” a British legend in the world of illegal street art.  In a neat twist, Banksy became the filmmaker and Guetta the artist, resulting in an art-world frenzy for Guetta’s work and this acclaimed documentary for Banksy.

At one point, street artist Shepard Fairey (who is not a fabrication) wonders aloud whether Guetta’s artistic pretensions are simply a con.  The enigmatic Banksy questions Guetta’s mental health.  And since the film’s release, the nation’s film critics are questioning their own grasp of reality — is this film a prank?  Did events really transpire the way we are led to believe in Exit Through the Gift Shop?

The movie is amusing — that’s all.  I did not leave the theater pondering any Big Questions:  What is art?  Is it in the eye of the beholder?  Has art become too commercialized?  No, I left the theater pondering the merits of the movie itself, which to me was mildly entertaining.  No more, no less.        Grade:  B

Director:  Banksy  Featuring:  Thierry Guetta, Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Rhys Ifans (narrator)  Release:  2010

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If there were any justice in the world, we’d all be learning a hot new catchphrase that would join movie chestnuts like “I’ll be back,” and “Make my day.”  And that catchphrase would be … “Close your eyes, kids!”

That line is senseless to the uninitiated, but I’m guessing it’s instantly recognizable to anyone who’s seen The Good, the Bad, the Weird, a Western joyride out of South Korea.  Yes, I said South Korea.  Director Ji-woon Kim’s film is a love letter to the Spaghetti Western that is both respectful and delightfully silly.

The story is about a whole bunch of bad guys trying to lay their hands on a treasure map in 1930s Manchuria. That’s pretty much all you need to know about the plot.  Here is what else you should know:  The movie is inventively shot, gorgeous to look at, and blessed with great performances.  “The Bad” (Byung-hun Lee) is a vain mercenary who struts about like Prince with bloodlust; “The Good” (Woo-sung Jung) is Korea’s answer to Clint Eastwood, and he’s featured in not one but two breathtaking action sequences that manage to reinvigorate that tired Western staple, the shoot-‘em-up; “The Weird” (Kang-ho Song) is on hand primarily for comic relief — and to utter the immortal “close your eyes” line.

Although the film is a bit on the long side (130 minutes), The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a screwball Western for people who think they burned out on Westerns a long time ago.      Grade:  B+

       The Good

The Bad      

       The Weird

Director:  Ji-woon Kim  Cast:  Kang-ho Song, Byung-hun Lee, Woo-sung Jung  Release:  2010

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Daybreakers is a vampire movie with a social conscience.  It’s a horror film that doesn’t settle for violence and gore; it also wants to make you think.  And that’s what’s wrong with the blasted thing.

As the movie unfolded and began to bombard me with allusions to 1) class warfare, 2) immigration, 3) vegetarianism, 4) capitalism, 5) conservation, and  6) the kitchen sink, I could picture the directors (two brothers again; what is it with all these sibling directors — do studio heads now demand them?) planning their DVD commentary.  No simple discussion of wooden stakes and garlic for the Spierig brothers.  Nope, they would discuss social issues!  That’s an admirable goal for a movie with just one hitch — a vampire film first and foremost needs to be scary.  If you get that part right, then you can discuss serious stuff on the DVD. 

(Confession:  I haven’t seen the DVD.  Perhaps there isn’t any commentary, but you get my point.)

I also kept thinking of another vampire movie I recently watched, called 30 Days of Night.  That film worked because it had a very simple plot.  A horde of scary-looking bloodsuckers descends on an Alaskan village and does battle with the townspeople.  That’s pretty much it.  Danny Huston plays a truly terrifying vampire, and not once as I watched him was I reminded of conservation.  Or immigration.

I’d go into the plot details of this film, but if you’ve seen I Am Legend, you pretty much get the idea.  A terrible virus or plague or something mutates most humans into blah, blah, blah.  Daybreakers, by trying to make big statements, is instead a pretentious little bore.          Grade:  C-

Directors:  Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig  Cast:  Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Michael Dorman, Claudia Karvan, Sam Neill  Release:  2010 

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Sometimes I wonder why England, Japan, Sweden, and other victimized countries haven’t united to file some sort of class-action lawsuit against Hollywood.  Tinseltown has an annoying habit of taking perfectly good foreign movies, stuffing them into the blender of American culture — adding car chases and rock music — and then spitting out unrecognizable glop it calls “remakes.”

Next up on the hit list is poor Sweden, which will see not one but two of its recent successes – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Let the Right One In – regurgitated by Hollywood.

Edge of Darkness, the Mel Gibson thriller newly out on DVD, is not a bad remake. It’s just incredibly mundane.  I haven’t seen the BBC Television series that the film is based on, but critical reviews of the time (1985) acclaim it as excellent drama.  The Gibson version has the same director (Martin Campbell) as the original series, so I guess this downgrade isn’t entirely America’s fault.

But a lot of people don’t give a hoot about old British miniseries.  They just want Mel to get mad, get armed, and get payback, all of which he does as a Boston detective out to avenge the murder of his daughter, who was out to expose criminal collusion between a nasty corporation and the government.  As if to remind us that another country once did this story much better, there is one sparkling performance in the new film – it’s the role of CIA agent Jedburgh, played by Ray Winstone who is, naturally, British.       Grade:  C

Director:  Martin Campbell  Cast:  Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Bojana Novakovic, Shawn Roberts, David Aaron Baker  Release:  2010

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