The Burial: We totally dig it!

The Burial (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.20.23

You can’t beat a well-mounted underdog saga … particularly one that boasts veteran scene-stealers such as Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx, and is based on actual events.

 

In this case, rather unusual actual events.

 

When their case takes an unexpected turn for the worst, Jeremiah O'Keefe (Tommy Lee
Jones, left) wonders if he did the right thing, even with shrewd attorney Willie Gary
(Jamie Foxx) at his side.

Biloxi-based entrepreneur Jeremiah “Jerry” O’Keefe was in the “funeral business” his entire life, continuing a family tradition that dated back to the end of the Civil War. By the time he reached comfortable old age, O’Keefe owned eight Mississippi-based funeral parlors, along with a parallel funeral insurance business.

But the approach of the 21st century found O’Keefe in financial difficulty for reasons beyond his control. In an effort to raise funds, he agreed to sell three of his funeral homes to Canadian businessman Ray Loewen, who headed a consortium that owned an increasingly large number of Canadian and American funeral parlors.

 

Loewen’s preferred tactic: He’d purchase available funeral homes in a given region, undercut smaller competitors until they went out of business, and then scoop up their operations at fire sale prices.

 

In O’Keefe’s case, Loewen simply stalled on signing and honoring their contract, waiting for the Biloxi businessman to go bankrupt. O’Keefe, justifiably outraged, got a lawyer.

 

But not just any lawyer…

 

What subsequently went down has become a thoroughly engaging legal duel in the capable hands of director Maggie Betts, who also co-wrote the script with Doug Wright, based on journalist Jonathan Harr’s equally absorbing October 1999 New Yorker article. But this isn’t merely a depiction of courtroom theatrics; Betts and Wright spend the lengthy first act introducing and developing the primary players, all well portrayed, so that we sympathize with everybody.

 

Except for Loewen. Bill Camp makes him an arrogant, unapologetic swine: an amoral skunk we want brought to his knees. Camp is the ideal villain.

 

On the surface, Jones’ O’Keefe is an amiable fellow: a doting husband and father of 13 children (!), and grandfather to 43. (We glance in awe at his wife, Annette, played with similar devotion by Pamela Reed.) But Jones’ bearing and expression also display the steel of a long-successful businessman, decorated World War II fighter ace, and former two-term mayor of Biloxi. This isn’t a man to take lightly.

 

And, let it be said, Jones is a longtime master of the cut-them-dead withering gaze.

Day Shift: Well-done stake

Day Shift (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violence, gore and profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.19.22

This is the sort of film that would have scandalized your parents, had they caught you watching it as a kid.

 

Actually, more than a few adults likely would be similarly horrified, were they to dial it up by mistake.

 

When the vampire-hunting Bud (Jamie Foxx, right) is saddled with Seth (Dave Franco),
a nerdish, pencil-pushing babysitter, the latter is warned to stay the heck out of the way.
What could possibly go wrong?

The rest of us will have a grand time.

Director J.J. Perry’s kick-ass horror comedy won’t be more than a gory footnote in cinema history, but it boasts momentum, a sassy script by Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten, and a richly entertaining performance by star Jamie Foxx. It’s fun to see him return to his comedy roots, although this isn’t actually a comedic performance; the humor derives from the way Foxx plays this material straight, with deadpan sincerity, even as everything around him slides into cheerfully gruesome lunacy.

 

Matters begin innocuously, as San Fernando Valley pool cleaner Bud Jablonski (Foxx) arrives at the home of his latest client. Ah, but Bud isn’t your average pool cleaner. Trays of chemicals are a cover for somewhat more lethal tools, as he quietly slides inside this homeowner’s residence.

 

And the apparently terrified little old lady within isn’t nearly as helpless or frail as she seems.

 

Let us pause, for a moment, to acknowledge that this isn’t an old-school vampire movie, wherein the fanged nasties can be dispatched with a simple wooden stake through the heart. No, Tice and Hatten have gone old-school, where legend dictated that decapitation was the only way to truly kill a vampire.

 

Needless to say, make-up designer Christopher Nelson and his massive team are kept quite busy, with what soon follows.

 

Bud’s unusual profession notwithstanding, he’s an ordinary blue-collar guy struggling to make ends meet. The financial situation suddenly grows dire when his estranged wife, Jocelyn (Meagan Good), threatens to move their daughter Paige (Zion Broadnax) to Florida. This isn’t a fit of pique; Bud and Jocelyn’s relationship is prickly but still mutually devoted. She simply can’t get by on what Bud has been providing.

 

Things have indeed been tight, since the headstrong Bud was thrown out of the more lucrative international union of vampire hunters, following numerous code violations. It has been difficult to make ends meet, when his only income has derived from selling fangs to seedy black-market dealers such as Troy (Peter Stormare).

 

Bud begs for just a few more days; he then swallows his pride, enlists the support of his legendary vampire-hunting pal, Big John Elliott (Snoop Dogg), and begs to be reinstated by hard-ass union boss Seeger (Eric Lange).

 

Seeger derives considerable joy from agreeing, with a no-argument stipulation: Bud must be babysat by nerdy union rep Seth (Dave Franco), a desk-bound pencil-pusher who’s finicky enough to note even the slightest transgression.

Soul: It has serious chops!

Soul (2020) • View trailer

Five stars. Rated PG, for mild thematic elements

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.20

This isn’t the first time I’ve observed that some of the sharpest, wittiest and most perceptive scripts belong to animated films.

 

An impressive percentage of them come from Pixar.

 

Joe Gardner's soul, right, tirelessly tries to find something that might inspire the cynical,
world-weary — and yet oddly childlike — Soul 22.

Pete Docter has been one of Hollywood’s most innovative writer/directors for well over a decade; he’s also one of the most savvy collaborators. Although he shared scripting credits on WALL•E, Up and Inside Out, all three possess an inventive point of view — a shrewd analysis of the human condition — that bespeaks Docter’s guiding influence.

 

This is even more obvious, given that he directed — and won well-deserved Academy Awards — for the latter two.

 

I figured Inside Out would remain his career masterpiece. I should’ve known better.

 

Soul — directed and co-written by Docter, with scripting assistance from Mike Jones and Kemp Powers — is another animated tour de force that ingeniously blends humor, pathos and social commentary with a wildly imaginative take on what makes us who we are.

 

Whereas Inside Out cheekily proposed how our workaday behavior varies according to the influence of (primarily) joy, sadness, fear and anger, Soul — available (ahem) solely via Disney+ — offers a fascinating theory for how our personalities are shaped, and the unalterable degree to which that influences who and what we become.

 

But the film doesn’t initially seem that way, and that’s another clever touch: An equally strong secondary story beats at its heart.

 

Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a gifted pianist with wicked jazz chops, has tirelessly gigged in an effort to get the one big break that might ignite a career. He’s a constant disappointment to his mother (Libba Gardner), who wishes he’d abandon such dreams and be content as a middle-school music teacher … particularly since he’s just been offered full-time employment.

 

Ah, but Joe lucks into an audition for world-renowned sax legend Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) … and nails it. She makes him a member of her quartet, currently headlining at the Half Note (the absolute epitome, as visualized, of an intimate New York basement jazz club).

 

Giddy with delight, oblivious to his surroundings, Joe has an accident … and winds up — now a much smaller, ghostlike presence that represents his soul — on a moving sidewalk leading heavenward into The Great Beyond.

 

(This whiplash assault on our emotions and expectations — giddy with joy, sharing Joe’s success, to sudden whattheheck??? — is typical of Docter’s films.)

Just Mercy: A real-world horror story

Just Mercy (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and racial epithets
By Derrick Bang

Effective advocacy cinema should enlighten, inspire or outrage.

And, in some cases, prompt grief.

Summoned back to court to hear the results of an appeal for a new trial by defense
attorney Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan, left), he and wrongly incarcerated
Death Row inmate Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx) await the judge's announcement.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy manages all of the above, and then some. This thoroughly absorbing — and progressively infuriating — drama is an impressively faithful depiction of the jaw-dropping ordeal endured by Walter McMillian, who in June 1987 was arrested for a murder he couldn’t possibly have committed, sentenced to death during a patently absurd trial, and subsequently spent six years on Death Row.

In late 1988, the case came to the attention of freshly minted Harvard lawyer Bryan Stevenson, newly arrived in Alabama to partner with Eva Ansley, with whom he’d co-found the Equal Justice Initiative. (Since 1994, the Republican-controlled Alabama has been the only state that refuses to provide legal assistance to death row prisoners.)

Stevenson’s growing involvement in McMillian’s nightmare fuels the drama in Cretton’s film; he co-wrote the script with Andrew Lanham, based on Stevenson’s 2014 memoir of the same title. The result is must-see cinema, thanks also to powerhouse performances from Michael B. Jordan (Stevenson) and Jamie Foxx (McMillian), along with equally solid work from a roster of shrewdly cast supporting players.

At its core, this saga is about repugnant racism, corruption and the hideous abuse of power by smugly arrogant white men who know they can get away with anything. The villains in this drama are headed by Michael Harding’s chilling portrayal of Sheriff Tom Tate, who — as the film opens — has been under mounting pressure to find the person who shot and killed 18-year-old dry-cleaning clerk Ronda Morrison (white, of course) on November 1, 1986.

For reasons this film never makes clear — partly because there didn’t seem to bea reason — seven months later Tate arrests McMillian, a pulpwood worker shown felling trees in a brief sequence prior to the fateful traffic stop. (The poetic image of blue sky shimmering through gently wafting pine needles, as McMillian glances reverently heavenward, will prove important later.) Tate’s choice seems governed solely by his belief that McMillian looks like a black guy who’d gun down a helpless white woman.

This arrest, surrounded by white cops with rifles and pistols drawn, gives Harding his first flat-out scary moment. (Several others will follow, the actor often radiating lethal menace without saying a word.)

Baby Driver: What a ride!

Baby Driver (2017) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.30.17

Goodness.

Blend the hyper-driving acceleration of Gone in 60 Seconds with Quentin Tarantino’s bad-ass dark humor, add a touch of the most superbly choreographed music-and-motion sequences ever concocted for classic Hollywood musicals, and you’re getting close to this audacious cinematic experience.

Baby (Ansel Elgort, left) has spent years working off his unusual debt to Doc (Kevin
Spacey), motivated — in part — by the hope that, eventually, this servitude will end.
But will this urbane crime lord really be willing to part with such a valuable asset?

Because the result still must be filtered through the impertinent sensibilities of British writer/director Edgar Wright, he of the manic blend of thrills and whacked-out comedy found in his cult-classic “Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy” (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End).

Baby Driver is no mere film; it’s a bold, edge-of-the-seat vision from an auteur who deftly, irreverently exploits the medium’s every aspect to the max. From the attention-grabbing prolog to the suspensefully exhilarating climax — not to mention one of the best aw-shucks Hollywood endings ever added as an epilog — Wright holds our attention to a degree most filmmakers can only dream about.

You dare not even breathe, at risk of missing something way-cool.

Not that you should worry about it, because everything about this flick is way-cool. Not to mention quite impressive, considering the way Wright slides from accelerated, throat-clutching intensity to larkish meet-cute romance — and back again — in the blink of an eye.

To cases:

Music means everything to Baby (Ansel Elgort), who developed a horrific case of tinnitus during a childhood accident, and drowns out the incessant whine by orchestrating every waking moment to paralyzingly loud music pumped into his brain, via the ubiquitous ear buds connected to one of a dozen iPods he carries at all times. Nor is he content to rely on the Top 40 power anthems of today and yesterday; he also mixes his own mash-ups of samples, beats and even offhand chatter captured via pocket digital recorders.

Aside from serving as the perpetual home-grown symphony to which he dances and sashays through even the most mundane activities — such as making lunch — this constant aural companion also propels Baby’s occasional occupation.

Some people drive. Baby drives.

Horrible Bosses 2: Fire 'em all!

Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity and crude sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.28.14

Director Sean Anders apparently was content to let this film’s three stars — Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day — babble through much of their obviously improvised, rapid-fire dialogue.

Oddly enough, Rex (Chris Pine, right) doesn't seem all that bothered after learning that our
inept heroes — from left, Dale (Charlie Day), Nick (Jason Bateman) and Kurt (Jason
Sudeikis) — planned to kidnap him. Seems that Rex has his own issues with his wealthy,
overbearing father...

Sometimes the results are amusing.

Usually ... not.

Dumb-bunny comedies often aren’t nearly as funny as those involved seem to think, and that’s definitely the case here. Nor are the “even funnier” out-takes, which unspool over the closing credits, as uproarious as Bateman, Sudeikis, Day and their co-stars want us to believe.

This film’s 2011 predecessor was pretty thin gruel to begin with: a potty-mouthed waste of time and talent that was little more than a race to the tasteless bottom by all involved. The notion that it did enough business to warrant a sequel is astonishing, but Hollywood — as always — lives by the quote often attributed to H.L. Mencken: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”

And so here we are, with a second dose of Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day).

This new entry is slightly better, thanks to the presence of co-star Chris Pine. He thoroughly embraces his gleefully condescending, spoiled rich guy role with a breezy élan that adds momentum to this fitful comedy every time he pops into a scene. He’s genuinely funny, and manages to be such without relying on the vulgarity that’s pretty much everybody else’s sole defining character trait.

The plot, then:

Having decided that working for “horrible bosses” undervalues their true potential, Nick, Kurt and Dale have become entrepreneurs with their own home care product: the so-called “Shower Buddy,” just the sort of gadget that pops up on late-night TV commercials for $19.95. Their effort to promote this item on a local morning chat show doesn’t quite work as expected, but the exposure does bring them to the attention of father-and-son investors Bert and Rex Hanson (Christoph Waltz and Pine).

Overjoyed by an initial order of 100,000 units, our three stooges overlook the cautionary step of obtaining a down payment in order to fund this massive production run. Bert subsequently cancels the order — which he intended to do all along — knowing full well that Nick, Kurt and Dale will be forced to foreclose. At that point, the Hansons will scoop up the entire company and all those Shower Buddies at fire-sale prices.

It’s merely standard-issue corporate raider behavior, which Bert cheerfully acknowledges, knowing full well that our hapless idiots can’t do anything about it.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Diminishing returns

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for plenty of silly action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.2.14

Spidey’s losing his snap.

I was no fan of Sony’s numb-nuts decision to re-boot this franchise, which the studio announced shortly after the 2007 release of the previous trilogy’s final installment; it seemed the height of lunacy. Our interest is such characters derives, in part, from the way in which they respond — positively or negatively — to an ever-expanding series of events and adventures; look at the brilliantly interwoven strands that have made all the other Marvel characters (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America) so much more interesting on the big screen.

Young gazillionaire Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), stricken with a hereditary disease
that will disfigure and then kill him, begs Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) for a blood
transfusion. But although the man beneath the mask regards Harry as a longtime
friend, Peter genuinely believes that complying with this request could kill Harry
much faster ... or do something even worse.

It’s no fun to see a character taken only so far — adolescent steps into a developing superhero career — and then slammed back into infancy.

The folks behind James Bond waited 44 years before re-telling his origin story, in 2006’s Casino Royale. Even characters as venerable and popular as Dumas’ D’Artagnan and his fellow musketeers are gathered anew, with fresh young casts, only once per generation ... if that.

But only a decade later, as was the case between Tobey Maguire’s debut outing as Spidey in 2002, and Andrew Garfield’s introduction in 2012? Madness.

On top of which, Maguire set the bar VERY high with his second outing; I still rank 2004’s Spider-Man 2 as the best modern superhero epic yet made (yes, even better than The Avengers).

Granted, there’s an obvious problem when it comes to the way Peter Parker is time-locked somewhere between high school and college ... but if Sony had thought that one through, they wouldn’t have started with 27-year-old Maguire in the first place.

Come to think of it, starting anew with 29-year-old Garfield suggests that Sony hasn’t learned its lesson.

But OK; all this aside, individual films should be judged on their own merits, even when part of an ongoing series. And, in fairness, Garfield’s debut outing as the unwitting victim of a radioactive spider bite was quite entertaining. His take on the character is captivating in a slightly different way; he’s more of a klutzy nerd than Maguire’s insecure, angst-ridden nebbish.

Plus, Garfield had the benefit of an excellent supporting cast. Emma Stone’s blond and effervescent Gwen Stacy is a reasonable substitute for Kirsten Dunst’s red-headed Mary Jane Watson (although the latter will be immortalized forever, thanks to her sweet, sexy, rain-drenched, upside-down kiss with Spidey in that series’ first entry).

Sally Field was — and is — terrific as Peter’s Aunt May; Martin Sheen was just right as Uncle Ben, and Denis Leary was properly stern and intelligent as Gwen’s father. And while the Lizard wasn’t my idea of a proper origin-story villain, scripters James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves — the latter two being Hollywood veterans with plenty of intelligent screenplays between them — delivered a thoroughly engrossing tale.

Which, for the most part, director Marc Webb managed not to screw up.

The same cannot be said for his handling of this overblown sequel.

Rio 2: Back to the jungle

Rio 2 (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated G, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang

Next to co-founder Chris Wedge, writer/director Carlos Saldanha clearly is one of Blue Sky Studios’ most treasured assets.

Jewel, center, feels right at home in the Amazon jungle; her mate Blu, left, is reasonably
secure, as long as he's got his cherished GPS device. Their music-loving daughter, Carla,
couldn't care less ... until she discovers that the jungle birds have their own wonderfully
vibrant approach to samba and bossa nova.

After sharing credit with Wedge on 2002’s Ice Age and 2005’s Robots, Saldanha soloed on the second Ice Age entry, shared credit once again on the third installment, and somehow found time for a couple of hilarious shorts featuring the acorn-challenged Scrat.

All the while, the Brazilian-born Saldanha must’ve been building up to his own pet project: 2011’s Rio, a thoroughly enchanting, bird’s-eye-view valentine to the city of Carnival, samba and a culture every bit as colorful as the film's eye-catching avian stars. In addition to being clever, witty and suspenseful — not to mention serving as an anchor for a gloriously celebratory soundtrack — that film’s script also worked in a mildly subversive, conservation-oriented subtext regarding the heinous black market trade in exotic birds and animals.

Saldanha kept all those plates spinning with the élan of a vaudeville pro. I was impressed three years ago, and equally captivated when I caught up with the film a second time last week, in anticipation of the subject at hand.

To cut to the chase, then, Rio 2 isn’t quite as fresh as its predecessor, but it's still quite entertaining. That said, I miss the greater involvement of Sergio Mendes. Although he returns once again as executive music producer, it’s to a noticeably lesser degree; nothing in this sequel matches the first film’s breathtaking paragliding scene, which took place against an updated rendition of the joyous Brasil ’66 hit, “Mas Que Nada.”

The songs and score in this sequel function more as they would in a stage musical — as story hooks to advance the plot — as opposed to augmenting the overall atmosphere with the rich, seductive sounds of samba and bossa nova. That’s an artistic modification, and not necessarily a bad one; I lament it only because there’s no shortage of animated musicals (I’m looking at you, Frozen), whereas Saldanha and Mendes were more creative and original with their use of songs in the first Rio.

A minor issue, granted, but it does affect this sequel’s tone.

Events pick up a bit after the first film’s conclusion, with our nerdy hero Blu (once again voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) enjoying domestic bliss with his mate, Jewel (Anne Hathaway) and their three offspring: Carla (Rachel Crow), Bia (Amandla Stenberg) and Tiago (Pierce Gagnon). They’re comfortably situated at the Rio de Janeiro animal sanctuary run by Blu’s BFF Linda (Leslie Mann) and Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro), newlyweds themselves, and partners in wildlife rescue and preservation.

While releasing one of their winged patients into the wild, Linda and Tulio spot a familiar cerulean feather: certain evidence that other blue macaws exist in this part of the Amazon. This is marvelous, breathtaking news, since Blu and Jewel were thought to be the last of their kind.

White House Down: Slick summer heroics

White House Down (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for fleeting profanity and relentless action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.28.13

You gotta give ’em credit: Despite an invasion premise that confines the primary characters to the labyrinthine White House interior, this crowd-pleasing action epic manages to work in a car chase.

And a reasonably plausible car chase, at that.

Having worked their way through secret tunnels that lead beneath the White House,
Cale (Channing Tatum, right) and President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) are dismayed to
discover that the bad guys have blocked the way with a complicated bomb. Worse
yet, irritated thugs with guns are right behind them...

Director Roland Emmerich and writer James Vanderbilt actually deserve credit for far more than that. Despite arriving late to this high-profile copycat party, White House Down is superior to spring’s Olympus Has Fallen: a much smarter script, vastly better characters and a superior blend of action and hell-for-leather humor.

THIS is the way I expect our heads of state to behave: defiant and resourceful in the face of death, rather than the cowardly, impotent weenies who populated Olympus Has Fallen.

Granted, both films offer the same sort of quasi-political hokum, but White House Down delivers the (mostly) one-man derring-do with far more style. Despite a self-indulgent running time of 131 minutes, Emmerich and editor Adam Wolfe keep the pace crisp, the tension coiled and the heroics more or less reasonable.

Vanderbilt’s narrative is a series of clever teases, with every small triumph offset by a newly discovered setback; we therefore cheer each cathartic victory while remaining invested in the primary goal that, vexingly, remains out of reach.

Best of all, we have a solid quartet of villains to boo and hiss: a turncoat mastermind and three delectably unscrupulous associates, each playing his part with gleefully malevolent brio. After all, heroes are measured by their adversaries.

John Cale (Channing Tatum), a capable D.C. policeman, is less successful on the home front, having let down his young daughter, Emily (Joey King), once too often. This comes as no surprise to ex-wife Melanie (Rachelle Lefevre), who, while sympathetic, doesn’t put much stock in Cale’s insistence that he’s trying to atone for past mistakes. Emily, also not impressed, prefers to call her estranged father by his first name.

Hoping to recover some ground, Cale scores a second White House pass so that Emily can tag along when he applies for his dream job, as a member of the Secret Service staff assigned to protect President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx). Alas, Special Agent Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal) also knows too much about Cale’s various character flaws, in part thanks to a long-ago affair with him. She thus denies him the shot.

Django Unchained: The West as it should have been?

Django Unchained (2012) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for relentless violence and gore, profanity, nudity and considerable ghastly behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.28.12

Since Jews were given the vicarious opportunity to blow up Hitler and his high-ranking Nazi goons in 2009’s alternate-history Inglourious Basterds, we shouldn’t be surprised that cinematic bad boy Quentin Tarantino would grant African Americans similar cheap thrills, by scolding the pre-Civil War, slave-holding South in the same cheeky manner.

Django (Jamie Foxx, left) believes that he and his partner have successfully tricked
Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) into accepting their feigned roles as slave traders.
Alas, Candie isn't quite as dense as he seems, and his fury builds to fearsome
proportions when the ruse is exposed. As for what happens next ... well, let's just say
that it's vintage Tarantino.

If Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles made you wince, by milking broad comedy from racism, this one will freeze your blood.

But make no mistake: Although Django Unchained definitely scores points in the ongoing debate about American race relations, at its heart this film is gleefully exploitative trash: giddily violent, gratuitously blood-soaked and unapologetically self-indulgent.

And yet ... undoubtedly a guilty pleasure. You just can’t help admiring Tarantino’s chutzpah.

He remains a walking film encyclopedia, with a particular fondness for the campy, low-budget sleaze of the late 1960s and ’70s, which ranged from the Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, to the blaxploitation flicks that made minor-league stars of Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree, Tamara Dobson and others.

Tarantino evokes them all in Django Unchained, a revisionist western that takes its title from a 1966 Sergio Corbucci rip-off of Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars — which, in turn, ripped off Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo — and starred Franco Nero as a coffin-carrying pistolero who blows into a town-turned-battle zone by feuding Mexican bandits and (you gotta love it) KKK members.

No surprise, then, that Nero himself pops up in a small part here; Tarantino loves to honor his predecessors. He also gets a kick out of “rescuing” familiar film and TV B-actors, and so you’ll spot the likes of Don Johnson, Tom Wopat, Don Stroud, Bruce Dern, Lee Horsley and Michael Parks.

And you’ve gotta love the parts assigned other visiting day players: Russ Tamblyn pops up as Son of a Gunfighter — a nod to the title of his own 1966 Spanish oater — which allows Amber Tamblyn an eyeblink appearance as “Daughter of a Son of a Gunfighter.” And speaking of the KKK, Jonah Hill is cast as “Bag Head #2” in a sequence played for high comedy, which mercilessly depicts clan members as the dim-bulb morons they undoubtedly were.

But all this comes later. As was the case with Leone’s similarly sprawling 1966 epic, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Tarantino — both writer and director here — takes his time setting up this narrative. It’s two years prior to the opening shot of the Civil War, and the story begins as Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a traveling dentist of questionable repute, encounters a couple of horse-riding toughs leading a small line of chained slaves, one of them Django (Jamie Foxx).

Law Abiding Citizen: Far from arresting

Law Abiding Citizen  (2009) • View trailer for Law Abiding Citizen
2.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, rape, torture, gore and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.15.09
Buy DVD: Law Abiding Citizen• Buy Blu-Ray: Law Abiding Citizen [Blu-ray]


The biggest mystery concerning this tawdry, wind-'em-up exploitation flick is how it managed to attract such an A-list cast.

Kurt Wimmer's mean-spirited screenplay never could have been anybody's idea of a good time at the movies, and F. Gary Gray's pedestrian direction coaxes no better than a fair-to-poor performance from star Jamie Foxx. Fortunately, co-star Gerard Butler and the supporting players do much better.

When the incarcerated Clyde (Gerard Butler, center) somehow orchestrates
another brutal killing, District Attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx, right) arranges
a private "interview" with the help of a sympathetic cop (Colm Meaney). But
Clyde isn't about to give away his secrets, which means we're in for more
indiscriminate murders.

But that's not likely to matter in a project that gives us nobody virtuous to cheer on: rather ironic, considering the degree to which the concepts of law and justice are bandied about. All the characters on display here are flawed, in some cases ridiculously so. More to the point, Wimmer's so-called "indictment" of the American justice system fails miserably, because he — and his on-screen "mouthpiece" — indulge in behavior far worse than is necessary to make some sort of point.

Wimmer also hasn't the faintest concept of authentic human emotion, and at times his characters behave in ways that are laughably unrealistic.

Finally, Gray wallows too much in unnecessarily vicious violence and gore. Although not as bad as the mainstream torture-porn that Diane Lane got sucked into last year — the utterly appalling Untraceable — this one's still gratuitously, needlessly unpleasant.

The film opens with a nasty prologue stolen from the original Death Wish, as Clyde Shelton (Butler) is bound and gagged during a brutal home invasion, and forced to watch as his wife is raped and then killed, along with their young daughter. Inexplicably, Clyde is left alive ... which, frankly, makes no sense at all.

The bad guys get picked up, and Clyde puts his trust in the hands of prosecutor Nick Rice (Foxx), an overly slick individual with his eye on conviction rates — no matter how compromised — rather than the human cost. The worst of Clyde's two attackers gives evidence against his younger, much less involved companion; the latter gets a death sentence, while the truly guilty thug gets a plea-bargained slap on the wrist.

Clyde does not take this well.

A decade passes, during which Nick has climbed the ladder in the Philadelphia district attorney's office, where he has become close to his boss and mentor, Jonas Cantrell (Bruce McGill, in a nicely modulated performance). Nick also has his own loyal understudy, the resourceful Sarah Lowell (Leslie Bibb, similarly convincing).

The younger felon involved in the Shelton family assault, finally having wound his way through the system, is strapped into the prison execution chamber for his lethal-injection cocktail. Nick, Sarah and several others are in the viewing chamber when the procedure goes horribly awry.

But that's nothing compared to what Clyde does to the other guy, more or less simultaneously, elsewhere in the city.