Ticket to Paradise: A bumpy trip

Ticket to Paradise (2022) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and stupidly, for one wholly unnecessary blast of profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Old-style romantic comedies live or die on the basis of three essential ingredients:

 

• Stars with charisma and chemistry;

 

• A premise that’s either fresh or, if familiar, has some sort of novel twist; and

 

• Dialogue that sparkles with wit, flirty banter and just enough — but not too much — snark.

 

David (George Clooney, left) and Georgia (Julia Roberts) may look cheerful, as they
arrive in Bali and see their daughter waiting on the beach, but their ulterior motives
are far from noble.

It also doesn’t hurt if the setting is swooningly gorgeous.

Director Ol Parker’s Ticket to Paradise manages about 1.5 out of three, with bonus points for location-location-location.

 

George Clooney and Julia Roberts obviously have charisma to burn, and they’ve demonstrated delightfully flirty chemistry in earlier films such as Ocean’s Eleven. But this story — co-written by Parker and Daniel Pipski — finds them indulging far too long in spiteful bickering and bad behavior, to the detriment of a sweet parallel plot element that becomes far more endearing than anything involving our two stars.

 

David (Clooney) and Georgia (Roberts) married 25 years ago, enjoyed five years of wedded bliss, then divorced and have spent the past two decades sniping at each other from opposite ends of the country … much to the dismay of daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), who has tried hard not to pick sides.

 

As the film begins, David and Georgia reluctantly re-unite — as briefly as possible — in order to celebrate Lily’s graduation from college, where she has worked hard toward an anticipated career as a lawyer. By way of reward and emotional release, Lily and BFF Wren (Billie Lourd) take off for a sun, sand and — in Wren’s case — soused vacation in Bali.

 

Slightly more than a month later, David and George receive a bombshell email: Lily has decided to abandon her law school plans, remain in Bali, and marry the just-met love of her life … a seaweed farmer named Gede (Maxime Bouttier).

 

Determined to prevent their daughter from making the same mistake they made a quarter-century ago, David and George reluctantly team up in order to make Lily come to her senses, by sabotaging the wedding.

 

A few problems here.

 

We’ve already watched Lily and Gede “meet cute,” and — even though she falls for him improbably quickly — Dever and Bouttier are totally endearing together. A match made in heaven. We also can’t help being charmed by a subsequent sequence when Gede explains his long-held family profession to Lily; he’s far more savvy entrepreneur than “mere seaweed farmer.”

 

Watching David and Georgia burst into this dazzlingly romantic scene, like bulls in a china shop, is wincingly painful.

Ben Is Back: He should have stayed away

Ben Is Back (2018) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for frequent profanity, dramatic intensity and drug use
By Derrick Bang

It’s a shame to see a fine performance wasted on poor material.

Julia Roberts acts up a storm in this well-intentioned melodrama, but writer/director Peter Hedges’ increasingly contrived script ultimately defeats her. 

Ben (Lucas Hedges, center) is protectively flanked by his mother (Julia Roberts) and
step-father (Courtney B. Vance), as they watch his younger half-siblings participate
in a church Christmas pageant.

Part of the problem is familiarity breeding contempt, and raising expectations. We’ve recently seen Beautiful Boy, which is a far superior study of a family attempting to endure — and surmount — the anxiety-laden complexities of dealing with a drug-addicted young adult son. That film felt authentic, its various crises proceeding logically, one to the next.

Hedges, in great contrast, lards his film — which takes place during a single 24-hour day — with an escalating series of revelations, challenges and predicaments that ultimately become ridiculous. The compressed time period doesn’t help, since it calls greater attention to the escalating absurdity.

The morning of Christmas Eve is bright and cheerful, until Ben Burns (Lucas Hedges) surprises his family with a visit: unexpected — even potentially unwelcome — because the 19-year-old is supposed to be confined to a detox clinic. It’s okay, Ben smoothly insists; my progress has been excellent, so my sponsor approved this one-day visit, for Christmas.

His mother Holly (Roberts) is deeply conflicted, a duality that Roberts conveys superbly. Holly wants to believe him, but is doubtful; her daughter Ivy (Kathryn Newton), slightly younger than Ben, doesn’t trust him for a second. More to the point, Holly has built a new life, with a second marriage to Neal (Courtney B. Vance) that has produced their own two young children, Lacey (Mia Fowler) and Liam (Jakari Fraser). Their safety also warrants consideration.

(There’s no significant reference to Ben’s father, who plays no role here.)

Neal, patient and pragmatic, reminds his wife that they’ve been through this countless times before; rules have been established, which Holly agreed to. But it’s Christmas, and she desperately wants to share the holiday with her son. Ben, for his part, launches a charm offensive that quickly wins over his half-siblings.

But we viewers already know, emphatically, that Ben is lying. We watched him arrive at the house, while his mother and the other children were out shopping: witnessed his anger and impatience at not being able to get inside.

Money Monster: A beastly good time

Money Monster (2016) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for brief sexual content, violence and frequent profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.13.16

Between this new film, The Wolf of Wall Street, Margin Call and The Big Short, one gets the impression that people have become deeply concerned about corporate malfeasance and Wall Street shenanigans.

Gee, I can’t imagine why.

The calm before the storm: Unaware that this day is about to become anything but average,
TV financial advice guru Lee Gates (George Clooney) and his producer, Patty Fenn (Julia
Roberts), discuss the talking points for their upcoming live broadcast.

Director Jodie Foster’s Money Monster may not be as imaginatively brilliant as last year’s The Big Short, but it’s just as entertaining and pointedly audacious. Scripters Alan DiFiore, Jim Kouf and Jamie Linden set up a hair-trigger premise and then develop it with an unlikely — but quite successful — blend of suspenseful twists and scathing humor.

Along the way, they also skewer the 1 percent who’ve absolutely, completely — and without awareness or shame — abandoned any sense of comradeship with the rest of us ordinary mooks.

This is only Foster’s fourth big-screen feature as director, after having cut her teeth with 1991’s poignant Little Man Tate; she obviously chooses her projects carefully. “Money Monster” proves that the double Oscar-winning actress has matured into an equally capable shot-caller. This is the sort of endeavor that could have collapsed any number of times, in less skilled hands; she unerringly navigates the ship past all dangerous shoals.

With thoughtful, infuriating, hilarious and even unexpectedly poignant results.

George Clooney stars as high-profile financial TV guru Lee Gates, who has built a viewership on the strength of sideshow antics more befitting the local news clowns who used to dole out weather predictions while dressed in funny outfits. We get an extended view of Gates’ smirky, hyperactive — and insultingly patronizing — shtick as he begins one of his financial analysis/advice segments on an average day, under the much calmer guidance of longtime producer Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts).

It ain’t pretty.

It’s also a not very exaggerated jab at what a serious topic such as money management has become, in our cynical, bread-and-circuses era of cable/satellite infotainment. Any semblance of capably researched public service has been abandoned — goodness, that would be boring — in favor of keeping the gullible masses distracted. And hey: If Gates misstates, exaggerates or even lies today, he won’t even think about amending or retracting tomorrow; he’ll simply proceed with an all-new set of encouraging prevarications and half-truths.

Just like dozens of shrill, malicious and defiantly deceitful radio show hosts.

Mother's Day: Holiday fatigue

Mother's Day (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and rather pointlessly, for fleeting profanity and mildly suggestive content
By Derrick Bang

Veteran director Garry Marshall began what could be termed his “holiday merry-go-round” series with 2010’s Valentine’s Day, which blended an impressively diverse ensemble cast with a reasonably clever series of interlocking stories from scripters Katherine Fugate, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein.

When Sandy (Jennifer Aniston, left) brings her sons (Caleb Brown and Brandon Spink)
for their regularly scheduled weekend with their father Henry (Timothy Olyphant), she's
dismayed by his new young wife Tina's (Shay Mitchell) barely there clothing, and by the
lengths she has gone to curry favor with the boys.

It was popular enough to generate a sequel, 2011’s New Year’s Eve, which included a few casting carryovers and a script credited solely to Fugate. Alas, the result wasn’t nearly as satisfying; the intertwining stories weren’t as clever, their outcomes far more predictable.

Despite this, Marshall has gone to the well a third time, with further diminishing returns. Perhaps hoping that new blood would invigorate the premise, Marshall turned this time to scripters Tom Hines, Lily Hollander, Anya Kochoff and Matthew Walker. Frankly, it feels like they worked independently, rather than collaboratively; the episodic narratives link up clumsily, if at all, and Mother’s Day too frequently feels like an average episode of TV’s Love Boat or Fantasy Island.

Which isn’t necessarily bad, I suppose, although that sets the bar rather low.

Yes, some of the arch one-liners will elicit giggles, and it’s still fun to see so many familiar faces in a single project. But the slapstick elements are TV-sitcom stupid, and the core storyline involving racist, insensitive parents churns out a candy-coated happy resolution with ludicrous swiftness (hence the Fantasy Island reference).

So, get your scorecards out...

Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) and Henry (Timothy Olyphant), amicably divorced, have been sharing custody of two young sons (Caleb Brown and Brandon Spink). But the situation’s harmony is shattered when Henry announces his surprise marriage to a much younger hotsy-totsy named Tina (Shay Mitchell). Cutting remarks about cradle-robbing aside, Sandy fears that she’ll be downgraded to “other mother” status: of particular concern, with the impending arrival of Mother’s Day.

At the same time, Sandy hopes to enhance her career as a clothing and set designer by landing an interview with TV shopping network diva Miranda Collins (Julia Roberts), represented by longtime agent and friend Lance Wallace (Marshall perennial Hector Elizondo).

August: Osage County — A blistering summer

August: Osage County (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, for frequent profanity and earthy dialogue, and occasional drug content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.24.14

Some children dream, worshipfully, of growing up to become just like their parents.

Other children have nightmares about that same possibility.

As Violet (Meryl Streep, left) grows increasingly annoyed by a clumsy before-meal
prayer that stumbles its way from awkward to tedious, daughters Ivy (Julianne
Nicholson, center) and Karen (Juliette Lewis) close their eyes and wait for the
inevitable explosion.

August: Osage County, adapted by Tracy Letts from his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, charts the highs (very few) and lows (too many to tabulate) of the extended Weston family, brought by unexpected tragedy to the Northern Oklahoma town that several of them fled, years ago, in self-defense.

Although Oklahoma isn’t technically a southern state — nor is it one of the plains states, despite an early comment by one of these characters — the tone here is very much in the dysfunctional Southern gothic tradition of Tennessee Williams, Beth Henley and numerous other playwrights who regard this classic American setting as less a geographical place, and more a regional attitude.

Southern families argue in a style all their own, tempers often as high as the mercury-shattering thermometers. And they don’t merely bicker; they dig at each other with rapacious delight, unerringly targeting each victim’s soft underbelly. Characters in such settings turn sniping into an art form, perhaps even an Olympic sport.

It’s impossible to imagine Northern California families quarrelling in such a fashion, no matter how strained the relations. The cadence, rhythm and circumstances are quintessentially rooted south of the Mason-Dixon line. Or thereabouts.

Be advised, then: Despite its mesmerizing script and bravura performances, August: Osage County is an endurance test in the manner of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It’s not easy to watch people eviscerate each other for two hours, no matter how crisp the dialogue, or how striking the acting.

Most of the slicing and dicing emanates from family matriarch Violet Weston (Meryl Streep), an embittered, waspish harridan embracing old age with no grace whatsoever. Demonstrating that God does indeed possess a mordant sense of humor, Violet has just been diagnosed with mouth cancer, which has exacerbated her tendency to be a prescription junkie.

But the cancer hasn’t muted Violet’s bark, nor has it diminished her nicotine habit. Nothing is more ghastly — or darkly amusing, in a gallows humor sort of way — than watching Streep gently poke a cigarette into the less painful left corner of her mouth, and then fire it up so she can puff away.

Mirror Mirror: A shattering disappointment

Mirror Mirror (2012) • View trailer
Two stars. Rating: PG, and needlessly, for fantasy violence and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang


Ever have one of those days when everything goes wrong?

Tarsem Singh had an entire film’s worth.

Snow White (Lily Collins, right) finds herself quite unwelcome at a lavish ball
given by her evil step-mother (Julia Roberts), who warns the girl — with dire
threats of reprisal — to refrain from crashing any future parties. Alas, we'd have
no story if Snow obeyed this edict, and besides: The next gathering will be
thrown in honor of the handsome prince who just arrived at the castle.

Either that, or the woefully under-prepared director slept through the entire shooting schedule of Mirror Mirror. Rarely has so much gone wrong, in so many obvious ways.

In fairness, there’s plenty of blame to spread among numerous other folks, starting with Melisa Wallack and Jason Keller, and their impressively clumsy script: no more than a “greatest hits” effort to beg, borrow or steal bits, concepts and even atmosphere from far better predecessors.

This is less a screenplay, and more a cynical attempt at formulaic success: the plot-establishing prologue, in a stylized artistic montage, from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast; a queen’s court comprised of decadent, garishly dressed aristocratic grotesques, from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland; the bickering, roughly garbed but technologically adroit dwarfs, from Time Bandits; the occasional exaggerated twinkle of eye or tooth, from Blake Edwards’ The Great Race; and mostly the quirky blend of fairy-tale clichés and contemporary snark, from The Princess Bride.

Heck, I’m pretty sure somebody even says “As you wish,” with the same sort of inflection.

Unfortunately, mimicking so much, from so many earlier sources, is no guarantee of doing it well ... and, indeed, Mirror Mirror merely makes one yearn for all those other, far better films.

In a word, it’s a mess.

A rather boring mess, at that.

Which is a shame, because it’s certainly well-cast. Julia Roberts and Nathan Lane bring the appropriate brio to their ham-on-wry performances as, respectively, the evil queen and her cowering sycophant; Lily Collins deftly matures from fragile, sheltered princess to resolute champion of the kingdom; Armie Hammer is properly virtuous and heroic as the dashing young prince; and the dwarfs — in this case dubbed Grub, Grimm, Wolf, Butcher, Napoleon, Half-Pint and Chuckles (because he never laughs) — are a squabbling hoot.

They give their all, but it’s all for nothing. Because nothing else works.

Larry Crowne: Long may he reign

Larry Crowne (2011) • View trailer for Larry Crowne
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for brief profanity and occasional sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.1.11


True movie stars could captivate us while shopping for groceries.

Tom Hanks, my generation’s esteemed answer to Henry Fonda, charms with every word and gesture. When on camera, he brightens the most mundane task, adds sparkle to the most ordinary line. His questioning gazes are pregnant with hidden meaning; his double-takes are to die for.

Try as he might, Larry (Tom Hanks) can't seem to impress or even satisfy his
public speaking teacher, Mercedes (Julia Roberts). Sadly, Larry doesn't know
that Mercedes has made ill-advised assumptions about some of the other
people in his life. Can a budding relationship survive such misunderstandings?

He projects the sort of uncomplicated ease that Cary Grant also wore so well, suggesting that Hanks would be the ideal neighbor, dinner guest, friend of the family or boon companion. We must credit his on-camera craft for this, of course, although all indications suggest that the off-camera Hanks is the same genuinely pleasant fellow. I envy his friends and family members.

While never without work as an actor, Hanks has been quite selective about the projects he chooses to write and/or direct. Although involved in such capacities with episodes of the TV miniseries dramas From the Earth to the Moon and Band of Brothers, Hanks hasn’t written or directed a big-screen film since 1996’s thoroughly delightful That Thing You Do.

Our loss. And now our gain, with the release of Hanks’ sophomore feature, Larry Crowne.

This gentle romantic saga places Hanks in the sort of role that suits him best: that of a quiet Everyman who, faced with a real-world crisis that could strike any one of us, meets the challenge with calm dignity. He displays the bearing and demeanor that we’d love to summon at such a moment: the personification of what we hope is the best part of ourselves.

Hanks shares scripting credit with Nia Vardalos, best known for My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Vardalos’ subsequent career has been spotty: Greek Wedding made an ill-advised transition to television — best forgotten — and then she stumbled with her next two scripts: Connie and Carla and I Hate Valentine’s Day, the latter all but unreleased.

Larry Crowne, on the other hand, represents a deft meeting of the minds: an impeccably polished and delightfully constructed script that perfectly suits its chosen genre. This is how a romantic comedy should be done, with careful attention also paid to minor characters, and whimsical payoffs for incidental bits of business (such as where to hide a spare key, for those occasions when one is locked out of one’s own home).

Eat Pray Love: Dour prayer

Eat Pray Love (2010) • View trailer for Eat Pray Love
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for sexual candor, brief profanity and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.20.10
Buy DVD: Eat Pray Love • Buy Blu-Ray: Eat Pray Love [Blu-ray]

Full disclosure compels me to admit that I'm not currently a woman, nor am I likely to become one in the near future. 

This puts me at something of a gender disadvantage when attempting to discuss films such as director Ryan Murphy's current adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir, Eat Pray Love, or — reaching back a few years — director Audrey Welles' kinda-sorta 2003 adaptation of Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun. 

While in Italy, Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts, center) embraces the guiltless,
senses-tingling joy to be found in sumptuous meals. She also smiles a bit. But
be warned: Roberts' signature, radiant grin gets very little exercise in this
mostly melancholy and self-indulgently gloomy drama.

Both are intended for a very precise demographic, which turned out in force during the afternoon screening of Eat Pray Love that I caught: 98 percent female, 100 percent older than 35. 

At a core emotional level, I'll never be able to empathize with some of the ways that Eat Pray Love might touch this crowd. Some things simply are too gender-specific: Fellas granted the supreme gift of silver-tongued, crowd-swaying oratory still couldn't explain the Three Stooges to their female companions. 

But I can say this much safely and honestly: I've absolutely no interest in watching a whiny, self-absorbed guy wander the world for a year while trying to "find himself" during a "crisis" of his own creation, and wrapping that same character into Julia Roberts' talented frame doesn't make the menu any more palatable. 

Mind you, I've long admired Roberts, and make a point of seeking out all her films. 

In fairness, the problems with Eat Pray Love — and there are many — have nothing to do with the acting. Roberts sells her scenes persuasively; she quite successfully got me to view Liz Gilbert as a petulant narcissist incapable of being grateful for all the blessings in her life. Acting is an art designed to provoke a reaction from the audience, and Roberts certainly provoked me; I wanted to reach into the screen, shake her by the shoulders and scream, "Perspective, woman ... perspective!" 

Viola Davis makes the most of her brief scenes as Gilbert's publisher and best friend, Delia Shiraz; James Franco is scruffily charming as David, the young stage actor who serves as Liz's first rebound affair. Javier Bardem is his usual swooningly debonair self as Felipe, the world's greatest divorced father; Richard Jenkins steals the film as "Richard from Texas," a guy with genuine problems who hasn't yet figured out how to forgive himself for past sins. 

Valentine's Day: Rather sweet

Valentine's Day (2010) • View trailer for Valentine's Day
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for sexual candor and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.12.10
Buy DVD: Valentine's Day • Buy Blu-Ray: Valentine's Day [Blu-ray]


Interconnected stories and all-star casts have been a Hollywood staple ever since 1932's Grand Hotel, a best picture Academy Award winner that tossed Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery — and numerous other big names of the day — into a richly melodramatic and romantic stew that took place at a plush Berlin hotel "where nothing ever happens."

The technique also has been exploited for tension-fueled drama in recent hits such as Crash and Babel.

Ten-year-old Edison (Bryce Robinson, right) thinks nothing of the fact that he
has insufficient funds for an expensive flower transaction, and assumes that
Reed (Ashton Kutcher) will stand him the difference. Their negotiation is one
of many aw-shucks moments in Valentine's Day.

On a lighter, more playfully romantic note, the recent benchmark remains 2003's Love Actually, one of the most sparkling ensemble romps ever made.

Director Garry Marshall and a trio of screenwriters — Katherine Fugate, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein — seem to have fashioned Valentine's Day as an American response to Love Actually, and to a degree they've succeeded. Marshall's film, although uneven, hits many of the same whimsical high notes; the large ensemble cast is well used in a series of stories connected in ways that are both mildly contrived and extremely clever.

Indeed, the final few surprises — saved for the film's very end — can't help making you smile.

The varied events and encounters take place during a single day — Valentine's Day — throughout various portions of Los Angeles. We begin with three different couples waking in each other's arms: flower shop vendor Reed (Ashton Kutcher), who springs a ring and pops the question to girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba); grade school teacher Julia (Jennifer Garner), deliriously in love with new boyfriend Harrison (Patrick Dempsey); and agent-in-training Jason (Topher Grace), in the early stages of dating agency receptionist Liz (Anne Hathaway).

Elsewhere, teen bubblehead Felicia (pop music sensation Taylor Swift) receives a huge stuffed white teddy bear from boyfriend Willy (Taylor Lautner). Felicia's good friend Grace (Emma Roberts) and her longtime boyfriend Alex (Carter Jenkins) have decided to "take their relationship to the next level" with a clandestine lunchtime bedroom rendezvous at her home, when she knows both parents will be out.

Grace babysits 10-year-old Edison (Bryce Robinson), who lives with his grandparents (Shirley MacLaine, Hector Elizondo) and is a star pupil in Julia's class. Edison, secretly sweet on somebody in his classroom, has grandiose plans for this particular Valentine's Day.

But not everybody is swooningly, deliriously perky over the prospect of this annual holiday for lovers. TV sports reporter Kelvin (Jamie Foxx) resents being stuck with a day of "lovers in the street" puff pieces, when he'd much rather pursue a story involving the future of star football quarterback Sean Jackson (Eric Dane).

Duplicity: Untrustworthy

Duplicity (2009) • View trailer for Duplicity
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for profanity and mild sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.26.09
Buy DVD: Duplicity • Buy Blu-Ray: Duplicity [Blu-ray]


There's such a thing as being too clever.

Duplicity is a lot of fun to watch; it could hardly be otherwise, since Julia Roberts and Clive Owen illuminate the screen with enough spark and star wattage to power a good-sized city.

With his credibility on the line, Ray (Clive Owen, foreground left) tries to
persuade the rest of his corporate "dirty tricks" team that an accusation by
Claire (Julia Roberts) is without merit; his efforts are, shall we say, an
uphill struggle. But it's also one of dozens of moments when we've no way
of knowing who -- if anybody -- actually is telling the truth.

At the same time, the film also is quite annoying.

Writer/director Tony Gilroy certainly knows the spy genre, having scripted The Bourne Identity and its two sequels. One can imagine, given his total immersion with a character burdened by serious trust issues, that Gilroy saw the light comedy potential of a story that brought together two characters who — as a necessary part of their careers — deal with evasion and false identities ... but who nonetheless fell in love.

How can either one trust the other? Can any exchange of information, or confessions of devotion — no matter how seemingly heartfelt -— be taken at face value?

Therein lies the rub ... not only for the characters, but also for us viewers.

Because just as former MI6 agent Ray Koval (Owen) and former CIA agent Claire Stenwick (Roberts) all too quickly assume the worst of each other, we very quickly discover the same problem. Gilroy's narrative is so twisty — it positively wallows in double- and triple-crosses — that we're unable to believe anything we see or hear, and we therefore cease to care about any of the plot twists.

All we can do is assume that some subset of these characters will wind up gaming the rest of them, no doubt quite cunningly, and hope for a reasonable amount of sense (justice? payback?) as the final credits role.

Meanwhile, we can take pleasure from once again — after too many years — seeing Roberts in the sort of part that perfectly suits her: one that gives ample excuse for her radiant smile and sensuously naughty laugh. Owen, far from chopped liver, matches her beat for beat, his British charm and savoir faire also given considerable exercise.

We hit the ground running, with Ray and Claire somehow mixed up in a ruthless cold war between the CEOs of rival multinational corporations: industry titan Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and brash upstart Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti). Tully is the careful strategist and poker player; Garsik is the impatient and opportunistic wild card nipping at the older man's heels.

Both hate each other. With a vengeance.

Both regard industrial espionage — at its core, the bald theft of proprietary ideas and innovations — as a reasonable means to an end.

Ray is part of Garsik's "black ops squad," tasked with uncovering any weak links in Tully's legion of employees: anybody who could be exploited or (better yet) "turned" to advantage. Claire does the same as part of Tully's comparable dirty tricks team ... except that Claire's a double: She actually works for Garsik, and clandestinely routes information to him via her handler, who happens to be Ray.

Still with me?

Don't jump ship yet; it gets much more complicated.

Charlie Wilson's War: Audacious slice of recent history

Charlie Wilson's War (2007) • View trailer
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, drug use, nudity and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.10.08


Those who wonder if truth really is stranger than fiction need look no further than Charlie Wilson.

The East Texas congressman's wild escapade in Afghanistan is the sort of crazed endeavor that wouldn't be believed if it turned up in a mainstream thriller; it's a throwback to the gung-ho statesmanship of President Theodore Roosevelt, whose flamboyant style was portrayed so well in 1975's The Wind and the Lion.

When Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks, left) demands to know precisely what sort
of weapon would be required to down a Soviet war helicopter, scruffy CIA agent
Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman, center) introduces the congressman
to a chess-playing expert on Soviet intel named Mike Vickers (Christopher
Denham). These are merely three of many colorful characters who slyly
orchestrate what comes to be known as "Charlie Wilson's War."

But that story — highly fictionalized, despite being lifted from an actual historical incident — took place during simpler times, when one still could imagine two men changing the destinies of entire countries. The events of Charlie Wilson's War, by contrast, are scarcely two decades old ... and apparently far closer to actual truth.

The setting is the early 1980s, and we're forced to believe that an unlikely trio — a Texas congressman best known as a party animal, a thoroughly vexed CIA agent and a wealthy Texas socialite who had found God — moved bureaucratic mountains so that long-suffering Afghan rebels could get the weapons they needed, in order to repel the invading Soviet army.

Jaw-dropping.

I'm not sure which is worse … accepting the notion that Wilson managed to finesse the Washington, D.C., system and engineer this nutball scheme, or the possibility that this sort of behavior is business as usual on Capitol Hill.

And while screenwriter Aaron Sorkin — adapting George Crile's best-selling book — clearly cherry-picked details and messes a bit with the timeline, the basic facts are so wonderfully audacious that they cannot be dismissed. When asked how the Russians were defeated in Afghanistan, then-Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq replied, "Charlie did it."

OK, sure, quite a few more people were involved, and the truth was more complicated.

But not all that much...

Tom Hanks is perfectly cast as Wilson, who by 1979 has represented Texas' second district for six years, and has a reputation derived solely from his nickname: "Good time Charlie."

Wilson loves alcohol and women, and not necessarily in that order; he also isn't too judicious about the company he keeps. Indeed, we first meet him in the fantasy suite of a Las Vegas casino, relaxing in a hot tub with a few strippers and other questionable companions.

It seems an unduly salacious beginning for a saga of political machinations, but this is the very setting where the actual Wilson had his epiphany, when his attention was distracted by a televised 60 Minutes profile — produced by Crile — about the Afghans who, armed with the equivalent of flintlocks, were trying to wage war against the assault helicopters of the invading Soviet army.