The Magnificent Seven: Guns a'blazin'

The Magnificent Seven (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and somewhat generously, for relentless violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.23.16

This premise has been bulletproof ever since Akira Kurosawa introduced it, back in 1954.

It’s not merely a great set-up for an action epic; it also plays to our idealistic belief that everybody — no matter how bad their behavior — yearns for an opportunity to become heroic in the eyes of people not familiar with their past deeds. A chance at redemption, and generous self-sacrifice.

Having determined to transform a community of farmers and townsfolk into a defensive
army of sorts, the "Seven" grimly assess their recruits. From left, Jack Horne (Vincent
D'Onofrio), Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier), Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), Goodnight
Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), Josh Faraday (Chris
Pratt) and Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee).

Can’t miss.

Nor does it, in director Antoine Fuqua’s muscular remake of 1960’s American adaptation of Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai. With Denzel Washington top-lining a cast of scene-stealers every bit as engaging as the characters they play, and some narrative tweaks that make their shot at moral salvation virtually impossible — or is it? — this new Magnificent Seven delivers on the promise of the adjective in its title.

That said — and acknowledging the narrative adjustments made by scripters Nic Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk,  in keeping with 21st century sensibilities — all concerned should be ashamed of themselves, for failing to better acknowledge the core story concept by Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. Pizzolatto and Wenk didn’t concoct this concept out of thin air, and it’s annoying to see them claim sole screen credit during the opening titles, as if the entire inspiration were theirs, and theirs alone.

Humph.

(But I digress...)

The story begins in the tiny post-Civil War community of Rose Creek — a truly stunning set built by production designer Derek Hill and his crew — where the townsfolk have been invaded by ruthless carpetbagger Bartholomew Brogue (Peter Sarsgaard), who has established a destructive gold-mining operation only a few hundred yards from the local church.

Brogue and his hired thugs have made life unbearable, but that isn’t sufficient; he has decided to destroy the community in order to expand his mining efforts ... and he couldn’t care less that this means driving hard-working farmers off their properties. In a prologue that sets new standards for heinous behavior, Brogue and his men hijack a town meeting and make their point brutally clear.

Do we loathe Brogue, in the space of a few swift minutes? Oh my, yes; rarely will you find a villain played with such callous élan. Sarsgaard is coldly, chillingly vile: a truly memorable performance.

The Hateful Eight: Insufficiently nasty

The Hateful Eight (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore, profanity, graphic nudity and racist behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.15

Quentin Tarantino’s best films are highlighted by deliciously snarky dialog, scene-stealing — and sometimes career-reviving — performances by delectable character actors, and twisty scripts that build tension to the screaming point.

Every time somebody enters Minnie's Haberdashery, those already inside — in this case,
John Ruth (Kurt Russell, left), Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and a wincing
Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern) — have to yell for the door to be nailed shut, lest the
blizzard blow it open again.

The Hateful Eight gets two out of three.

Tarantino’s tough-talkin’ homage to classic Westerns — complete with an awesome new orchestral score from 87-year-old Ennio Morricone (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), his first Western score in 40 years — simply doesn’t have enough story to justify its butt-numbing 182-minute length. The set-up is rich with potential, and it screams for the multiple back-story treatment that made Kill Bill so engaging ... but no; aside from two brief flashbacks, we and the cast are stuck in the same claustrophobic cabin for three interminable hours.

Granted, the actors do their best to hold our attention. Ultimately, though, the posturing and narrow-eyed ’tude can’t make up for a script that doesn’t kick into gear until after the intermission (roughly 100 minutes in).

Tarantino makes us wait much too long for the good stuff, and by then things are rather anticlimactic.

And yes, I’m fully aware that the “good stuff” is the enfant terrible filmmaker’s gleeful dollops of blood and gore. But even here, it feels like Tarantino is only half-trying; having teased us with a cabin laden with hammers, shovels, iron spikes and all sorts of other implements of potential mayhem, he settles for gunfire. Which, tasteless as it sounds, is quite disappointing.

As he did with Kill Bill, Tarantino divides this saga into chapters, starting with “Last Stage to Red Rock.” The setting is post-Civil War Wyoming, with a six-horse stagecoach doing its best to outrun an approaching blizzard. The driver is forced to halt after coming upon former Union soldier-turned-bounty hunter Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), perched in the middle of the road atop three of his sanctioned kills.

Warren’s horse has given out on him; he’s hoping for a lift to Red Rock. But that’s a problem; the stage has been chartered exclusively by fellow bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), who is handcuffed to his prisoner, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and escorting her to a date with the hangman at Red Rock.

The wisely suspicious Ruth views any strangers as either a) somebody trying to steal his bounty; or b) somebody trying to rescue Daisy. But it turns out that Warren and Ruth know each other, if only vaguely; the requested ride is granted, if grudgingly.

The Lone Ranger: The mild, mild West

The Lone Ranger (2013) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rating: PG-13, for intense action violence and suggested gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.5.13

The best that can be said for this fiasco, is that it’s marginally superior to director William A. Fraker’s leaden, charmless 1981 film, The Legend of the Lone Ranger.

But that’s damning with very faint praise.

Having failed to persuade a Comanche tribe that war with the neighboring white-man
settlement is a bad idea, Tonto (Johnny Depp, left) and the Lone Ranger (Armie
Hammer) are left in a painfully vulnerable position. And it's about to get worse, when
scorpions come calling...

Chief among that earlier film’s many flaws was the block-of-wood “performance” from no-name star Klinton Spilsbury, in (thank God) his only big-screen appearance. Michael Horse, as Tonto, acted circles around him.

But pretty much everything else was wrong, as well; even the usually dependable John Barry turned in a listless score that was marred further by a pokey, half-speed rendition of “The William Tell Overture” — the Lone Ranger’s iconic theme — that brought the already sluggish drama to a dead stop.

So I give composer Hans Zimmer credit for his spirited, cheer-inducing handling of “The William Tell Overture” during this new film’s climax, and I credit director Gore Verbinski for knowing how best to use it. Kudos, as well, to Verbinski and special-effects supervisors Tim Alexander and Gary Brozenich, for two audacious train chases: a good one to open the film, and a dog-nuts-sensational one to close it.

But pretty much everything else is wrong.

For openers, this clumsy, overcooked mess runs a butt-numbing 149 minutes: a “privilege” Verbinski apparently earned because his similarly bloated Pirates of the Caribbean entries have made a gazillion bucks for Disney. Mind you, length is fine if the script demands it, but that’s far from the case here; as my watch’s illuminated dial ticked off the minutes — depressingly slowly — toward the two-hour mark, I desperately hoped we were about to wrap things up ... but no, the slog continued, mercilessly, for another half-hour.

The major problem is that Verbinski and his scripters — Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio and Justin Haythe — can’t decide what sort of movie to make. On the one hand, they more-or-less attempt to honor the existing Lone Ranger mythos, as established by the popular radio series (1933-54) and TV series (1949-57). I appreciate the effort, half-hearted though it may be.

On the other hand, they blend this often grim drama with the sort of jokey, slapstick tone that marked the Pirates series ... no surprise there, since Elliott and Rossio wrote all four entries in that franchise. No surprise, as well, that Johnny Depp’s Tonto is the same sort of mincing, scowling, alternate-reality caricature that the actor made of Capt. Jack Sparrow. The only difference is that Tonto isn’t ever drunk ... although the film’s scripters flirt with that notion, as well.

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).

Rango: Sickly green

Rango (2011) • View trailer for Rango
2.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for rude humor and occasionally tasteless action mayhem
By Derrick Bang 


I’d say this animated oddity goes off the rails when Clint Eastwood shows up – yes, Clint Eastwood (after a fashion, anyway) – but it actually jumps the track long before that.

Right about the time the crushed armadillo starts talking like the Dalai Lama.

Rango (center) contemplates an odd local ritual surrounding the desperate need
for water, as townsfolk Priscilla (far left) and Wounded Bird (right) clutch empty
bottles and line-dance their way to a spigot that they pray, this time, will
provide the life-sustaining fluid. If this peculiar sequence is intended to be
funny, it fails ... like much of the rest of this film.

Well, no; even that’s too far in. Rango loses its way right from the start, when its chameleon hero runs through a Stanislavski acting exercise with the help of a cocktail sword, a plastic tree and the maimed torso from some long-discarded doll.

Successful comedy requires two elements: sharp writing and deft timing. The gags – and the set-up – must have potential to begin with, and then the lines must be delivered with unerring precision. If either ingredient – or both – fails to gel, the result falls flatter than an unwatched soufflé.

And it doesn’t matter whether we’re discussing live actors or animated characters; the goals are the same. Indeed, well-animated wisecracks – think of all the perfectly timed lines and facial expressions in Despicable Me – can be delivered just as well those spoken by real-world performers.

All of which goes to explain why Rango simply doesn’t cut it. Too much of this film just can’t rise to the occasion; it lays there, helpless, like road kill. Director Gore Verbinski may know how to handle the ba-dum-bum frozen beat that follows a good gag – as all the characters hold the moment – but this only works if something funny has preceded the pause.

Absent a genuine giggle, we’re left only with lots of dead air time. Rango has way too much dead air time; it’s a total yawn. The script – by John Logan, Verbinski and James Ward Byrkit – simply isn’t very good.

Frankly, I can’t imagine what made Verbinski think he could handle an animated film in the first place. While it’s true his amazingly successful Pirates of the Caribbean series has more than an average amount of CGI sweetening, when the camera rolls each day, he’s still handling human beings. Animated comedy requires an entirely different mind-set and years upon years of training and practice ... as any Pixar director will be the first to insist. One cannot simply “jump into animation” and expect to get it right; that betrays impressive levels of both ignorance and arrogance.

True Grit: Larger than life

True Grit (2010) • View trailer for True Grit
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.24.10


Despite Hollywood’s current love affair with remaking almost everything under the sun, certain classics remain sacrosanct.

In a precious few cases, neither film buffs nor the general public would tolerate any attempt to improve upon perfection. The Wizard of Oz and Singing in the Rain come to mind, and the list also includes Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane and Casablanca. (The latter did, however, suffer a TV series remake in 1983, with – no, I’m not making this up – David Soul in the Humphrey Bogart role.)

Having demonstrated her own "true grit" by fording a stream without benefit of
the nearby ferry, Mattie (Hailee Steinfeld) proves that she's not about to be left
behind by LaBoeuf (Matt Damon, center) and Rooster (Jeff Bridges).

True Grit has been viewed the same way, not so much because the 1969 film is that good – actually, it isn’t, and hasn’t aged well at all – but because of John Wayne’s iconic portrayal of Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn, which finally brought the Hollywood legend an Academy Award. Eyebrows lifted then, and have remained raised ever since: Wayne was many things, but the phrase “great actor” never could be applied to his work. Still, it was a nice way to acknowledge an impressive career, and – for better or worse – True Grit became firmly identified with Wayne’s starring performance.

And Charles Portis’ great novel, consequently, went into limbo. (More’s the pity.)

Finally, happily, somebody has seen fit to take another stab at it. And whereas the 1969 film suffered from stunt casting and a family-friendly effort to “sanitize” the storyline, this new version boasts excellent performances, a sharp and much more faithful script, and an atmosphere that does justice to the novel’s whimsical tone.

The latter is crucial. Portis blended rugged Western drama with snarky, comic sensibilities; his book can be hilarious at one moment, deadly serious the next. Needless to say, Joel and Ethan Coen are absolutely perfect for this material, since they have the same macabre and vicious sense of humor. Recall every moment that Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh was on the screen in 2007’s No Country for Old Men: He was simultaneously ludicrous – those clothes, that hairstyle – and terrifying.

This new version of True Grit doesn’t include a villain of such evil magnitude, but the story’s various rustlers, layabouts and bandits behave with oddly dignified gentility, as if following some 19th century bad guy’s manual of refinement. At the same time, they can explode into unexpected violence: an apparent contradiction that imbues even the least significant characters with added weight.