The Hunt: Deplorably tasteless

The Hunt (2020) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for relentless profanity, gore and strong bloody violence
By Derrick Bang

To coin a phrase — quite aptly, since a little porker figures in this grisly exercise in sadism — you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

The only thing worse than a gratuitously brutal horror flick, is one that attempts to “justify” its mayhem with a clunky political subtext.

Kidnapped and dumped in the wilderness for no apparent reason, a group of strangers —
from left, "Staten Island" (Ike Barinholz, back to camera), "Trucker" (Justin Hartley),
"Big Red" (Kate Nowlin), "Yoga Pants" (Emma Roberts) and Don (Wayne Duvall) —
wonder what they're supposed to do with an armory of weapons.

Rubbish is rubbish, no matter how it’s dressed.

In a better film, scripter Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof’s jabs at “elites” versus “deplorables” could have been suspenseful and uneasily relevant: a cheeky update of Richard Connell’s classic 1924 short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” most famously filmed in 1932 with Joel McCrea and Leslie Banks.

But director Craig Zobel’s horror-porn sensibilities are so gratuitously low-rent, that any semblance of social commentary is lost amid gore-laden blood, guts and entrails. Most of the so-called “characters” are too one-dimensional; the intended-to-be-astute remarks are too lame, obvious and random. This is filmmaking by arrested adolescents who enjoy pulling the wings off flies, and who delight in sharing the experience with us.

Let’s plunge in:

Eleven people, all with their mouths painfully collared, regain consciousness in random spots of a forest that surrounds an open meadow. They gradually assemble around a huge crate which, when opened, proves to contain a piglet in a T-shirt (don’t ask) and a weapons rack (a rather blatant swipe from The Hunger Games).

Alas, these hapless victims barely have time to contemplate whether they even know how to use such artillery, when they start getting picked off by explosive, high-powered rifle fire from a distant, well-stocked duck blind.

Not exactly sporting. Less “The Hunt,” and more “The Slaughter.”

Zobel and his scripters obviously enjoy toying with us, because in veryshort order, cinematographer Darran Tiernan’s systematic designation of such a film’s traditional survivors — the cute girl, the stalwart guy, etc. — is rent asunder. Within minutes, the group has been whittled down to just a few.

No surprise, since these poor souls aren’t even granted names, and instead are designated (but only in the press notes) as “Yoga Pants” (Emma Roberts), “Trucker” (Justin Hartley), “Big Red” (Kate Nowlin), “Vanilla Nice”(Sturgill Simpson) “Staten Island” (Ike Barinholtz) and “Dead Sexy” (Sylvia Grace Crim).

Considering what happens to the latter, her label is beyond offensive.

Motherless Brooklyn: The Big Apple's rotten core

Motherless Brooklyn (2019) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.1.19

Fans of Jonathan Lethem’s award-winning 1999 crime fiction novel will be quite surprised by what director/scripter Edward Norton has done with it.

The spider and the fly: Thoroughly irritated by the persistent investigation mounted by
private detective Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton, right), rapacious New York City developer
Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin) demands a face-to-face, hoping to make an offer his
pipsqueak tormentor dare not refuse.

Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, although contemporary to its late 20th century arrival, has the attitude, atmosphere and plot stylings of 1940s and ’50s pulp detective thrillers. Revering that style as a jumping-off point, Norton has retained the primary character — and very little else — while bouncing him back to 1957, and dropping him into an entirely new story that blends fact, fiction and noir sensibilities in a manner we’ve not seen since 1974’s Chinatown.

In a word, the result is mesmerizing.

Chinatown scripter Robert Towne ingeniously employed a “simple” gumshoe case to illuminate the real-world corruption and power-mongering behind Los Angeles’ bureaucratic theft of Owens River water, as ruthlessly orchestrated by civil engineer William Mulholland (fictionalized by John Huston’s Noah Cross). 

Norton, in turn, dumps Lethem’s intriguing protagonist into the clandestine, Tammany Hall-style empire ruled by the even more powerful Robert Moses, the mid-20th century developer/builder who — by manipulating politicians behind the scenes — ruthlessly transformed New York City into his vision of a metropolis. It’s a fascinating slice of history, which Norton cleverly blends with the character that he also plays in this thoroughly absorbing drama … but it has absolutely nothing to do with Lethem’s novel.

The film opens at a sprint: Lionel Essrog (Norton) and colleague Gilbert Coney (Ethan Suplee), both operatives of a small-time detective agency run by Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), accompany their boss when he arranges a meeting with shadowy figures left unspecified. The acutely perceptive Lionel knows that Frank is up to something, and likely something dangerous; this hunch proves accurate in the worst possible way, when Minna winds up dead.

Frank was more than merely a boss to Lionel; he also was mentor, friend and protector. Indeed, all four agency operatives — including Tony (Bobby Cannavale) and Danny (Dallas Roberts) — emerged from the same Catholic orphanage, back in the day, where Minna became their father-figure. 

His murder therefore hits Lionel quite hard, particularly since he is far from “normal.” Lionel is obsessive/compulsive and also suffers from an uncontrollable tendency to erupt in nonsense speech: often punning, rhyming and “clanging” against what somebody else has just said. He’s constantly forced to apologize for the “glass in the brain” that prompts such spontaneous outbursts; we recognize this as Tourette Syndrome, a designation not at all familiar to the characters in this re-imagined 1950s version of Lethem’s novel.

Deepwater Horizon: An honorable, action-packed tribute

Deepwater Horizon (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Actor-turned-filmmaker Peter Berg has run hot and cold during his directing career, from well-received inspirational drama (2004’s Friday Night Lights) to laughable popcorn dreck (2012’s Battleship).

Having learned that a crucial performance and safety check was skipped after the
installation of a fresh cement seal, Deepwater Horizon's offshore installation manager,
"Mr. Jimmy" (Kurt Russell, foreground), orders a supplemental pressure test, as equally
concerned members of his crew — from left, Curtis (Jason Pine), Clark (Ronald Weaver)
and Anderson (Ethan Suplee) — watch with apprehension.

He also has a fondness for wartime drama, although his gung-ho, America-first sensibilities sometimes slide into uncomfortable xenophobia, as with 2007’s deplorable The Kingdom.

But Berg’s skill as an old-school action director cannot be denied; even when the story leaves something to be desired, he exhibits a muscular filmmaking style that evokes the likes of John Sturges, Robert Aldrich and even John Ford. Berg simply needs to choose his projects more carefully, and resist the temptation to shove his politics down our throats.

Under optimal circumstances, the results can be both exciting and deeply moving, and that’s definitely the case with Deepwater Horizon: without question, Berg’s best film since Friday Night Lights.

This calamitous real-world event remains recent enough to resonate uncomfortably with viewers, who may recoil from being reminded that just shy of a dozen men died on April 20, 2010, under circumstances that absolutely were preventable. And, yes, at times Berg’s persuasive reconstruction of these events is grimly realistic and very, very hard to watch.

But the tone is never exploitative; indeed, scripters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand — drawing their material from a New York Times article by David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul — take an honorable and even heroic approach. Berg’s film celebrates bravery and courage, and serves as a deeply moving memorial to the 11 men who lost their lives, each of whom is cited by name and photo, just prior to the end credits.

Try not to choke up during that montage.

On top of which, as a meticulous account of recent history — allowing for some climactic exaggeration, for dramatic impact — this film stands quite nobly as a lingering indictment of the corporate bastards at British Petroleum (BP), who placed penny-pinching shortcuts ahead of human lives. In that respect, Berg has done us an incalculable public service.

It’s an old and sadly familiar story, brought to the big screen in numerous variations: mine workers exploited by callous supervisors; shop workers harassed by cruel owners; field laborers all but imprisoned on company farms. Hard-working “little people” at the mercy of smiling, condescending, immaculately dressed — and often indifferently ignorant — administrators.

True Story: In their dreams

True Story (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and disturbing content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.17.15

Bad movies are irritating for all sorts of reasons. Many, easy to dismiss as talentless garbage, aren’t worth fretting about.

Who's playing whom? That's the question at the core of this yawningly dull drama, as
disgraced journalist Mike Finkel (Jonah Hill, left) attempts to get truthful answers during a
series of intimate interviews with accused killer Christian Longo (James Franco).

I get seriously annoyed, though, with the ones that show promise — particularly those with an intriguing premise, and an approach that hints at clever psychological complexity — and then fail to deliver. Utterly.

Those are infuriating, generating a level of hostility that sends viewers grumbling from the theater, wishing it were possible to reclaim those two hours of their lives.

True Story is just such a film.

At first blush, for viewers who approach it cold, the early scenes of director Rupert Goold’s big-screen debut evoke pleasant memories of 1996’s Primal Fear, with its twisty battle of wits between hotshot attorney Richard Gere and the altar boy (Edward Norton) accused to killing a respected Catholic priest.

But True Story isn’t fiction; Goold and co-scripter David Kajganich have based their film on the bizarre events actually experienced by disgraced New York Times journalist Michael Finkel, as recorded in his 2005 book, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa. That shifts this big-screen adaptation into entirely different territory ... although, in the final analysis, the distinction is moot.

It would have been unsatisfying as a fictitious drama, and it’s equally tedious as a wannabe historical record.

I walked away with two strong impressions: 1) Finkel still wants absolution for past sins, and this film ain’t gonna bring him that satisfaction — frankly, nothing should — and 2) stars James Franco and Jonah Hill appear to have viewed this project as a means to establish some “serious actor” cred. They’re doomed to equal disappointment.

This movie’s a stiff: deadly dull, clumsily executed and ultimately maddening. The storyline sets up numerous issues that demand answers, none of them forthcoming. Setting aside any attempt by Goold to achieve artistic ambiguity, the reason for failure is obvious: We’re dealing with two liars. Once this becomes obvious, as the film concludes, we can’t help feeling conned.

Granted, one character may be a pathological liar, as opposed to the one who’s perhaps only an accidental liar — and I stress the “perhaps” — but the result is the same. We’re left in the hands of unreliable narrators: the death of engaging drama.