The 33: Buried beneath clichés

The 33 (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.13.15

The 2010 Copiapó mining accident, which trapped 33 men 2,300 feet underground after a catastrophic collapse within the 121-year-old copper-gold mine, is the stuff of legend: a tribute to heroism and indomitable human spirit, and a reminder that we are, indeed, capable of selflessly pulling together at times of extreme crisis.

As all of his fellow workers watch closely, Mario (Antonio Banderas, center) carefully
measures equal portions of their meager food supplies into 33 cups: the once-daily meal
that must sustain them all for as long as possible, while — they hope — rescue operations
proceed above ground.

It’s an incredible story, both in terms of what the men endured throughout their 69 days of captivity, and because of what took place on the surface, during what blossomed into an unprecedented world-wide effort to save them.

Sadly, director Patricia Riggen and her four (!) screenwriters fail to capture much of that drama in their oddly uninvolving film. Although their adaptation is based on Deep Down Dark — the best-selling account of the ordeal by Héctor Tobar, the only journalist granted access to the men and their families — this film is oddly shallow.

Despite a 127-minute running time, and some strong actors, we learn very little about most of these people; similarly, key details involving the above-ground rescue efforts are glossed over or omitted entirely.

Mostly, though, the film’s often larkish tone is simply wrong. Granted, tension can be maximized by occasional dollops of levity, but that’s a delicate balance, and Riggen makes hash of that recipe. Matters aren’t helped by an overly cheerful score from the late James Horner: a series of frivolous melodies that sound like the sort of hackneyed stuff that accompanied “south of the border sequences” in 1960s TV shows.

As the final score Horner completed before his untimely death in June, it’s an unfortunate postscript to an otherwise exemplary cinema legacy: This music too often trivializes these events.

We meet some of the primary characters during a typically jovial gathering, most of the miners and their families having bonded through their shared knowledge of this dangerous work. Mario Sepúlveda (Antonio Banderas) is the respected family man, with a doting wife and teenage daughter; Álex Vega (Mario Casas), a skilled young mechanic, chooses to work the mine because the pay is better, and thus offers greater promise to the life he wishes to build with his pregnant wife, Jessica (Cote de Pablo).

Luis “Don Lucho” Urzua (Lou Diamond Phillips), the shift supervisor, has long waged bitter arguments with mining company managers who ignore mounting evidence of the mine’s growing instability. Edison Peña (Jacob Vargas) is the token goofball and wannabe Elvis impersonator; Yonni Barrios (Oscar Nuñez) blatantly juggles a wife (Adrianna Barazza) and mistress (Elizabeth de Rasso) who live within shouting distance of each other.

Focus: A sharply conceived caper

Focus (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, sensuality and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.27.15

Heist flicks rely on two essential ingredients: a tight, logical script that holds together even as the narrative veers in unexpectedly twisty directions; and — just as important — a sharply constructed cast of characters, played by actors who approach this material with sincerity and conviction.

Having pulled off yet another successful con, Nicky (Will Smith) and Jess (Margot Robbie)
realize that they make a pretty good team. But their increasing fondness for each other, on
a personal level, threatens the objectivity that's essential in their nefarious line of work...

In other words, actors who don’t preen from one scene to the next, undercutting the tension and suspense we desire from the genre.

Ideal scripts, in turn, need to be clever on three levels: the core storyline — in other words, the actual caper(s) — which should be intriguing, unusual and introduced with zest; the inevitable “unexpected” glitch that complicates matters, and which the filmmakers usually expect us viewers to anticipate; and, finally, the genuinely surprising second twist, which nobody sees coming, and which leaves us nodding with admiration.

Hats off to the writing/directing team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, then, because Focus delivers on all counts. Heist thrillers are one of my favorite genres; I’ve seen scores of good ones, and therefore usually anticipate all manner of revelations, hiccups and gotchas.

And yet Ficarra and Requa startled me, with their devious, eleventh-hour eyebrow-raiser. Well done.

On top of which, they’ve assembled ideal talent, starting with smooth-as-silk Will Smith, whose every word, deed, gesture and wary expression denote career larceny. He’s perfectly cast as the sophisticated Nicky Spurgeon, a seasoned master of misdirection, who deploys and unerringly supervises a veritable squadron of sharps, pick-pockets and thieves at crowded, high-profile events such as conventions and parades.

Smith is well matched by Margot Robbie’s Jess Barrett, a frisky blonde with a sensual wiggle, who worms her way into Nicky’s crew with the sort of breathy admiration and flirty innocence that Marilyn Monroe perfected, back in the day. Robbie will be remembered as Leonaro DiCaprio’s seductively controlling wife in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street, and let’s just say that she’s equally alluring here.

And just as unpredictable. Indeed, Jess wears “devious” like the slinky, skin-tight dresses into which Robbie gets poured; we can’t help wondering about her end game, from the moment she catches Nicky’s attention.

But, then, we also don’t expect him to be candid with her, so the question revolves around who’s likely to get played, and how quickly.

Meanwhile, Smith and Robbie — both dripping with sensual savoir-faire — circle each other with a playfully erotic grace that wholly eluded the characters in Fifty Shades of Grey.

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.

300: Rise of an Empire ... fall of a movie

300: Rise of an Empire (2014) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for constant gory violence, nudity, profanity and a hilarious sex scene
By Derrick Bang

In case anybody has wondered, two hours of gore-porn is a total yawn.

Impressed by the battlefield savvy demonstrated by her enemy, Artemisia (Eva Green)
offers Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) a place at the head of her own army ... and,
as an added inducement, a place in her bed. Will this Athenian commander succumb
to such temptation? Do we care in the slightest?

Director Noam Murro hasn’t the slightest affinity for this material: no surprise, since his only previous big-screen credit is the 2008 comedy bomb, Smart People. I can’t imagine what led Warner Bros. to trust Murro with the sequel to 2006’s unexpectedly popular 300, but, then, I rarely understand what transpires in big-studio pitch meetings.

Not that Murro should shoulder all the blame, with so much to spread around. I doubt any director could have made much of the wafer-thin narrative that scripters Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad audaciously call a screenplay. I always thought writers endeavored to create characters whose thoughts and deeds would engage our emotions, but Snyder and Johnstad apparently believe the same can be accomplished with another splash of blood on the screen.

Not hardly.

Indeed, it’s difficult to remember anything else taking place during this flimsy excuse for a movie. Occasional scenes of stilted, woodenly acted dialogue aside, 300: Rise of an Empire is 102 minutes of disembowelments, severed limbs and decapitations, seasoned with some slashed throats and pierced eyeballs. And most of the interminable battle scenes are filmed in loving slow-motion by cinematographer Simon Duggan, with the gallons of splattered blood inserted later, via CGI sweetening.

If all the melees and close-up hacking and slashing were projected at normal speed, this film probably wouldn’t run more than half an hour. Which would be a good thing.

As an added bonus, this film’s 3D effects were added after the fact, contributing to the overall murky pallor that hangs over every frame. As was the case with Clash of the Titans and numerous other “fake 3D” efforts, many sequences are so dark that it’s difficult to discern what the heck is happening. Call that an unintentional blessing.

As adapted clumsily from Frank Miller’s graphic novel Xerxes — itself a sequel to his graphic novel 300 — this story occurs during the aftermath of the great battle that took place at Thermopylae in 480 B.C., when King Leonidas and his “brave 300” gloriously battled a much larger Persian army to a standstill. For a time.

The Last Stand: Solid comeback vehicle for Schwarzenegger

The Last Stand (2013) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for considerable violence, gore and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.18.13

The New Year seems to have brought a run of transplanted Westerns.

Last week, the Magnificent Seven template wound up in 1950s Los Angeles, as Gangster Squad. This week, Howard Hawks’ iconic 1959 John Wayne oater, Rio Lobo — which John Carpenter riffed, just as suspensefully, as 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13 — has been transformed into a modern-day mission to stop a notorious Mexican drug kingpin from making it back to the safety of his native country.

When screwball Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville, being carried) gets pinned down by
gunfire, Frank (Rodrigo Santoro) charges into the thick of battle in a rescue attempt.
Things have gotten out of hand in the sleepy little town of Sommerton Junction, and
they're about to get even worse...

The only thing in his way: the helplessly outnumbered and outgunned citizens in the pokey little border town of Sommerton Junction.

The Last Stand marks the American directorial debut of South Korean director Kim Jee-woon, perhaps known on these shores for A Tale of Two Sisters and his genre-bending Oriental Western, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, which was Korea’s top box-office hit in 2008.

No surprise, then, that Kim would favor us with a variation on a classic American Western known for its blend of suspense, deftly sketched characters and snarky humor (in this case, quite dark at times).

Frankly, Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t have selected a better comeback vehicle, at this point in his career. Andrew Knauer’s story — clearly shaped by the earlier Hawks and Carpenter films, with scripting assists from Jeffrey Nachmanoff and George Nolfi — plays to Arnie’s advancing age, while amply demonstrating that movie action heroes never die, they just find more inventive ways to get the job done.

Mind you, this scenario is wholly outlandish and ludicrous, and no laws are broken more than the basic laws of physics. But it’s all in good fun — if unexpectedly gory at times — and you’ll have no trouble embracing Kim’s all-stops-out rhythm.

Events kick off late one evening in Las Vegas, as grim-faced FBI Agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) oversees the transfer of drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) via a special prisoner convoy. Borrowing a gag from James Bond’s You Only Live Twice, Cortez makes an impressive escape; within minutes, he’s speeding from the scene at 250 miles per hour (!) in a tricked-up Corvette ZR1.

Worse yet, Cortez has a hostage handcuffed in the passenger seat: FBI Agent Ellen Richards (Genesis Rodriguez).