See You Yesterday: Not much to look at

See You Yesterday (2019) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated TV-MA, for violence and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.8.20

I love time-travel stories.

It’s always fun to see how clever — or not — the writer(s) are, in terms of trying to avoid blatant temporal contradictions. 

When the latest revision to their time-travel backpacks produces something of a mess,
C.J. (Eden Duncan-Smith) and Sebastian (Danté Crichlow) attract the wrong sort of
attention from his indulgent grandmother.

Gold standards include Back to the Future, Interstellar, About Time and Edge of Tomorrow, each of which ingeniously handles a twisty premise.

See You Yesterday, alas, does not belong in their company.

Director Stefon Bristol’s odd-duck fantasy doesn’t know what it wants to be, when it grows up. At first blush, the nerdish young protagonists’ aviator goggles and repurposed proton packs — apparently borrowed from Ghostbusters — suggest a larkish tone, even given the gravity of the event they’re attempting to undo by bouncing back in time.

Michael J. Fox’s cameo appearance, as their high school science teacher, also is a nice touch: an affectionate nod to one of the sub-genre’s high points.

But this initial suggestion of a family-friendly frolic is shattered by every character’s relentlessly coarse profanity; the frequent F-bombs are quite off-putting, and definitely warrant an R rating, as opposed to the misleadingly gentler “TV-MA” assigned by virtue of the film being a Netflix original.

Bristol and co-writer Fredrica Bailey also seem far more interested in making a social statement about racist white cops gunning down innocent black victims; the time-travel element becomes mere window-dressing on which to hang a “black lives matter” indictment. But it’s meager lip service; that plot element never goes anywhere. Bristol and Bailey merely state the obvious, as if that’s enough. (Hardly.)

Much worse: Their film’s so-called “conclusion” is a total cop-out, and a textbook case of lazy writing. Bristol and Bailey apparently hit a brick wall and didn’t know what to do next, so they simply … stopped. That’s just sad. And annoying.

The story begins in a deserted alley, as Brooklyn teenage prodigies and best friends C.J. Walker (Eden Duncan-Smith) and Sebastian Thomas (Danté Crichlow) test their newly assembled chrono-displacement backpacks. Sparks fly and soda cans wobble, but nothing else occurs. Back at the drawing board, they ponder what to adjust.

A Walk Among the Tombstones: Well-executed noir

A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for strong violence, disturbing images, profanity and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.19.14

Veteran novelist Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder hasn’t been seen on the big screen since all the way back in 1986, when Jeff Bridges played the character in director Hal Ashby’s lamentably sloppy adaptation of the series’ fifth book, 8 Million Ways to Die.

Having persuaded TJ (Brian "Astro" Bradley, right) to accept the offer of a hot meal,
Scudder (Liam Neeson) is increasingly amused by the kid's determination to somehow
help out with the developing investigation.

Director/scripter Scott Frank has done a far better job, with A Walk Among the Tombstones (tenth novel out of 17, for those keeping track). Frank economically blends Scutter’s essential “origin story” with this book’s core plotline, and the result is a brooding, thoughtful detective thriller firmly set in the modern noir genre.

Frank certainly knows the territory. I praised his scripting chops just last week, noting his involvement with some of the genre’s best modern authors: James Lee Burke (Heaven’s Prisoners), Elmore Leonard (Out of Sight, Get Shorty and even TV’s woefully under-appreciated Karen Sisco) and now Block.

Frank’s scripting chops are measured, intelligent and — most important — faithful to the tone and atmosphere of whichever author he sources. The result always has been a compelling, tightly wound thriller, and his handling of A Walk Among the Tombstones is no exception.

Bridges looked much too young and exuberant as Scudder, back in the day; this film’s Liam Neeson is a far superior choice. He radiates just the right amount of world-weary melancholy, Scudder being a classic flawed and tragic figure: a man never able to forgive himself for past sins, yet forever struggling to do just that.

He’s also a rather unusual knight errant: an alcoholic ex-cop gone private, but not quite. Scudder can’t be bothered with a license, and he doesn’t advertise his services; as he explains, Neeson’s wry smile wrapped around the words, he “does favors for friends.”

His concept of “friendship” is both broader and looser than most, and this particular case begins with a request from Peter Kristo (Boyd Holbrook), a semi-regular in Scudder’s Alcoholics Anonymous group. The potential “client” actually is Peter’s brother Kenny (Dan Stevens), whose wife was just kidnapped and brutally murdered ... after the ransom was paid.