Divergent: Allegiant — Sci-fi twaddle

Divergent: Allegiant (2016) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, dramatic intensity and shadowed nudity
By Derrick Bang

With apologies for the unavoidable pun — given that Miles Teller is one of this film’s stars — you could get whiplash trying to keep up with the shifting character loyalties here.

This person is a good guy. Oh, dear; he’s really a bad guy. No, he’s only pretending to be a bad guy; he’s actually a good guy. Damn; he really is a bad guy.

Having escaped from what has become a mess back in Chicago, our heroes — from left,
Christina (Zoë Kravitz), Tris (Shailene Woodley), Four (Theo James), Caleb (Ansel Elgort),
Tori (Maggie Q) and Peter (Miles Teller) — confront the massive wall that separates their
city from the outer wasteland known as the Fringe.

That person is dedicated to the cause of peace and freedom. Hmmm, she seems to have hidden megalomaniacal tendencies. Uh, hang on; is that a glimmer of conscience? No, false alarm; she’s genuinely deranged. But ... then ... how can she lead a kumbaya hug in the final scene?

Our heroine is smart, brave and resourceful. Actually, she’s rather naïve and foolish. Well, hey, cut her some slack; she really is a dedicated and stalwart heroine. No, she’s genuinely stupid and unbelievably gullible, and doesn’t deserve to be leading her companions into constant peril, let alone suckering us viewers into tolerating yet another two hours of nonsense driven almost entirely by her personality flaws.

If all this sounds strained, random and utterly bewildering ... there’s a reason for that.

Like at least one other current big-screen franchise derived from young adult fantasy lit — and, God knows, we’ve been drowning in them lately — the Divergent series feels like everything is made up from one moment to the next. We can’t really blame novelist Veronica Roth, on whose books these films are based; as the film series has progressed, the scripts have, ah, diverged significantly from their respective sources.

Mostly, though, it remains a case of diminishing returns. Whether we’re discussing the Twilight series, or Divergent, or (definitely the worst) Maze Runner, or even The Hunger Games, each new film in its respective franchise has been notably weaker. In part, it’s because the various scripters and directors have deviated too much, abandoning elements that made these young heroines and heroes interesting in the first place, in favor of mindless running, fighting, jumping, fighting, arguing and more fighting.

But the bigger problem does lie with the original book authors, who failed to construct these alternate realms with adequate creativity, plot logic and continuity. Time and again, I’m reminded how vastly superior J.K. Rowling is, not only as a writer and world-builder, but as a novelist capable of fabricating fully dimensioned characters not only with her core protagonists, but with supporting players and casual bystanders.

From books one through seven — and films one through eight — Harry Potter’s adventures flow smoothly and logically, with impressive continuity elements that signify very, very careful planning. People don’t think or act stupidly in Rowling’s fantastical realm.

I sure wish the same could be said here.

Steve Jobs: A tarnished Apple

Steve Jobs (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.23.15

The ensemble cast is strong, impeccably directed and well-suited to each role.

The dialog is rat-a-tat enthralling: classic Aaron Sorkin arguments and badinage, with verbal zingers and snarky rejoinders landing like physical blows, recipients wincing in pain or retreating behind wary glances. It’s the stuff that made The Social Network and TV’s West Wing and The Newsroom so spellbinding: the intelligent, sharp-edged and fast-paced discourse that we’re neither clever enough, nor quick-witted enough, to deliver in real life.

Struggling to find some way to connect with the young daughter whose paternity he denies,
Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) encourages Lisa (Makenzie Moss) to play with a
spanking-new Macintosh computer. "You can't break it," he promises.

It feels more like an intimate, minimalist stage play, and in fact Sorkin has structured it that way, with three distinct acts. I was reminded, more than once, of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, made into a similarly mesmerizing 1992 film.

But those characters were fictitious, if familiar archetypes that we’d likely find in the rapacious atmosphere of a high-end, nail-the-deal-no-matter-what real estate office.

Steve Jobs, in contrast, profiles the actual Apple guru, with ample attention paid to the close advisors circling his incandescent star. (He doesn’t appear to have any actual friends.)

And not once, not for a second, did I feel that Sorkin and director Danny Boyle had come anywhere close to capturing the actual Steve Jobs. This relentlessly distracting fact ruins the entire film. Although clearly a sort of “truthiness” — the script is adapted from Walter Isaacson’s thoroughly researched biography of Jobs — this drama seems to exist in a parallel universe where Sorkin has indulged in his own myth-making.

Goodness knows, Jobs was highly skilled at crafting and stage-managing the persona he displayed in public. And, in the interest of full disclosure, Sorkin has described this film as an “impressionistic portrait” of Jobs: an abstraction concocted to surround the Apple guru with the same six characters, at three crucial points in his career, and let them “bang on each other.”

A “heightened version of real life,” Boyle adds, in the press notes.

Balderdash. Those quotes sound like a defensive excuse: an effort to get ahead of the negative publicity destined to emerge — and it definitely has — after Jobs’ actual associates begin to complain, quite noisily, that Sorkin’s so-called portrait is pure hooey.

The degree to which this does or doesn’t prove off-putting will depend on each viewer’s allegiance to truth, and/or a sense of the real-world Jobs. Taken purely on its own merits, Boyle and Sorkin’s film deserves all the descriptive accolades cited in my opening paragraphs; it is riveting.

But even if we give Boyle and Sorkin the benefit of that particular doubt, we cannot escape one glaringly obvious problem: The Steve Jobs depicted here is a relentless, abusive, unapologetic bully. Michael Fassbender’s nuanced performance notwithstanding, there’s no trace of the persuasive, charismatic futurist who inspired and demanded greatness from his associates and staff.

This big-screen Jobs is just a cruel bastard. He couldn’t inspire anybody to change a light bulb, let alone deliver the miracles that routinely emerged from Apple. And all viewers, even clueless tech luddites, will understand the utter wrongness of this dynamic.

That said, one cannot argue with Sorkin’s clever narrative structure.

The Martian: Out-of-this-world suspense

The Martian (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

The most impressive aspect of 1995’s Apollo 13 lay in the tension that director Ron Howard generated, despite our certain awareness of the film’s outcome.

After all, history had spoken: Everybody knew that the astronauts got back safely. So, since Howard couldn’t concoct any suspense from the what, he concentrated on the how ... as in, how in the world did they survive?

Having realized that his only hope for survival involves the long-term rationing of his
supplies — along with figuring out some what of "creating" more food and water — Mark
(Matt Damon) begins a careful record of his days on Mars.

There’s something enticingly absorbing about watching engineers work a particularly difficult problem. In the realm of fiction, this is why caper thrillers and the Mission: Impossible franchise remain so popular: We love to see unworkable puzzles solved via triumphant bursts of ingenuity.

No surprise, then, that director Ridley Scott’s handling of The Martian is 141 minutes of nail-biting anxiety. Andy Weir’s 2011 novel (which has its own amazing history) is a crackerjack sci-fi thriller to begin with, and Scott and scripter Drew Goddard have pumped it up with an engaging blend of quiet agitation and gallows humor.

Best of all, this is smart science-fiction: a rigorously technical narrative that we rarely get from a Hollywood factory that equates the genre with the zap-gun antics of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy (which, let’s face it, are — at best — equal parts sci-fi and fantasy). In the literary realm, Weir’s book is regarded as “hard” science of the sort written by Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Such stories are harder to bring to the big screen, because they don’t grant actors many opportunities for showboating or melodramatic interpersonal dynamics. But exceptions do exist — 2009’s Moon comes to mind — and if Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman can generate unease from plodding investigative journalism, then surely talented filmmakers can do the same with a clever sci-fi premise. Right?

Indeed. To give further credit where due, Scott has packed his film with an impressive cast, assigning strong actors to even the smallest of roles. Top marks go to star Matt Damon, who anchors most of the film with a compelling, deeply expressive, one-man performance on par with what we’ve seen from Tom Hanks (Cast Away) and Robert Redford (All Is Lost).

The story, then:

The time is an unspecified point in the near future, after NASA has successfully sent a six-person mission to Mars. The Ares 3 crew has established a good-sized working habitat within the Acidalia Planitia plain, and has spent some number of days collecting samples and conducting experiments.

Looper: What goes around, comes around

Looper (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: R, for strong violence, gore, profanity, nudity, sexuality and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Clever time travel stories can be intriguing head-scratchers; I just wish Looper weren’t so vicious, nasty and morally bankrupt.

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, right), a professional assassin for a mob boss in the year
2044, should have killed his future self, "Old Joe" (Bruce Willis), in order to retire
gracefully on his hard-earned savings. But Old Joe isn't interested in being offed, and
in fact offers a partnership with his hot-headed younger self, in order to tackle a
bigger enemy whose activities will affect them both. Confused yet? The time-travel
issues only get more complicated...

This is one of those stories populated solely by thugs, killers and other assorted low-life scum; by the time our one truly sympathetic character steps onto the stage, we’ve been numbed almost senseless.

Writer/director Rian Johnson is known for his off-center sensibilities, which have ranged from the whimsically eccentric (2008’s The Brothers Bloom) to the downright brutal (a few episodes of TV’s Breaking Bad). His career-making debut, 2005’s Brick, starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a teenage loner who turns amateur Sam Spade in order to figure out who killed his former girlfriend; rarely has high school looked so corrupt and seamy.

Johnson re-unites with Gordon-Levitt for Looper, another in a recent line of science-fiction concepts that takes place in a near future where society and compassionate behavior have gone straight to hell. (See In Time, Repo Men and the remake of Total Recall, among others.) Such films borrow strongly from Blade Runner, but generally without the intelligence, wit and fascinating ethical undercurrents of that 1982 classic.

That said, I give Johnson credit for an intriguing premise. The year is 2044, the setting a major American metropolis that has failed, its dilapidated infrastructure barely able to support the 99 percent who now appear to live in slums, and look with envy upon the few sophisticates wealthy enough to purchase things such as slick hover vehicles. The economy has fallen apart, and manufacturing appears to have stopped; as a result, the “common folk” drive old cars and live in apartments that could have sprung from a 1950s-era Raymond Chandler novel.

And, as with the sci-fi/western mash-up Joss Whedon concocted for his short-lived but much-loved TV series, Firefly, the weapons of choice are 19th century pistols and a shotgun-esque nightmare known as a blunderbuss.

Time travel doesn’t yet exist, but it’s known to have been invented 30 years in the future, where it’s illegal and available only on the black market. Since disposing of a dead body is near impossible in 2074, mobsters employ time travel in order to “vanish” their enemies. The hapless victims pop up at pre-determined spots in 2044, where a “looper” — a hired killer — blows them away and then cremates the remains. No muss, no fuss.

Traitor: Issues of faith

Traitor (2008) • View trailer for Traitor
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence, brief profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.29.08
Buy DVD: Traitor • Buy Blu-Ray: Traitor [Blu-ray]


Espionage thrillers have become quite distressing.

Heinous terrorist acts aren't really all that new; all the way back in 1977, the film adaptation of Thomas Harris' Black Sunday was a nail- biting race to derail a plan to detonate an explosives-laden blimp hovering over the annual Super Bowl game.

The quietly honorable Samir Horn (Don Cheadle, left) has trouble explaining
his point of view, let alone his behavior, to a shadowy CIA contractor (Jeff
Daniels) who tends to favor ruthless "solutions" to any perceived problem.

Even so, the landscape has changed in these uneasy early years of the 21st century. Whereas previous fictitious plots — suggested, as they often were, by real-world events — generally involved lone crackpots, single assassins or at worst a small group of dedicated killers, today's politically charged action flicks often focus upon the legions of religiously brainwashed Islamic fanatics who've replaced skinheads and covert Nazis as the reflexive villains of choice.

And, let's face it, a plot to have 50 bomb-toting true believers detonate their explosives — while riding 50 buses filled with average folks taking random journeys across the great American heartland — feels a little too possible to be dismissed as sheer screenwriter's fantasy.

But writer/director Jeffrey Nachmanoff's Traitor takes awhile to get that far. In the meanwhile, we're given a fascinating character study of a former U.S. special-ops agent gone rogue: a man given quite persuasive substance thanks to another of star Don Cheadle's immaculately layered performances.

To say that Samir Horn (Cheadle) is complex would be the gravest of understatements; although devout enough to carefully unroll a carpet and pray even when in prison, Samir is introduced while on a mission in Yemen, as he supplies explosives to Islamic terrorists quite prepared to use them. And not just the explosives themselves, but the knowledge required to design foolproof bombs.

"I can prevent you from blowing yourselves up," he explains, somewhat mordantly adding, "unintentionally, anyway."

The quip does not go over well with Omar (Saïd Taghmaoui), an Islamic "patriot" who doesn't trust Samir for a second. His suspicions seem well-founded when their meeting is interrupted by local soldiers — the good guys — assisted by visiting counter-terrorism FBI agents Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce) and Max Archer (Neal McDonough).

As it happens, Clayton and Archer have been trailing Samir for quite some time; Clayton believes their quarry opportunistic but not a radical ... in other words, somebody who could be "turned" toward U.S. interests. Samir surprises them; even the threat of an almost certain death in a Yemeni prison does not bring a flicker to the almost sadly analytical gaze he turns on Clayton.

If anything, the offer seems to insult him, and further harden the as-yet-undisclosed resolve that dictates his actions.