Edge of Darkness: Not too sharp

Edge of Darkness (2010) • View trailer for Edge of Darkness
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.4.10
Buy DVD: Edge of Darkness• Buy Blu-Ray: Edge of Darkness [Blu-ray]

Mel, Mel, Mel ... you do suffer so.

Whether getting goosed by a cattle prod (Lethal Weapon), tortured by the sick fear that his belligerence may have doomed his kidnapped son (Ransom) or disemboweled, drawn and quartered (Braveheart), Gibson's on-camera meltdowns are the stuff of legend.

Boston homicide detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson, left) comes home one
evening to find shadowy government operative Darius Jedburgh (Ray Winstone)
in his living room. The two retire to the kitchen and some vintage whiskey,
where Jedburgh drops cryptic hints while promising not to kill Craven ... yet.
As might be imagined, that's rather cold comfort.

He's never less than wholly persuasive at such moments, and many of his film roles clearly have been designed to capitalize on this talent for anguish on demand.

Even if the Christ-on-the-cross parallels have grown tiresome over the years.

And Gibson's Thomas Craven certainly gets plenty of opportunities for agonized self-doubt in Edge of Darkness, which concerns a veteran Boston homicide detec-tive's stubborn, rage-fueled mission to discover why his only child — 24-year-old Emma (Bohana Novakovic) — was killed under rather puzzling circumstances.

Gibson does reasonably well in his first big-screen starring role since 2002's Signs; he continues to exploit the riveting presence that has served him so well, during a long and varied acting career.

Alas, as a comeback vehicle, Edge of Darkness rather lets him down.

This story began as a six-hour British TV miniseries back in 1985, each episode scripted by Troy Kennedy-Martin and directed by Martin Campbell (The Mask of Zorro, Casino Royale). The latter has returned to helm this big-screen American movie adaptation, but the writing chores have fallen to William Monahan and Andrew Bovell ... and, frankly, they've screwed it up.

You do the math: The original miniseries ran 317 minutes, and this film clocks in at 117 minutes. So if the result frequently feels like a Readers Digest Condensed Books version of a much more substantial narrative, you're not imagining things.

A Single Man: Singularly compelling

A Single Man (2009) • View trailer for A Single Man
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, and much too harshly, for nudity and mild sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.29.10
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We spend our lives searching for precious moments of clarity: the shock of epiphany that may come, if we're lucky, a few times before we shuffle off this mortal coil.

The recognition that, at this precise instant, everything makes sense.

Much as he might like to, George (Colin Firth) cannot freeze this pleasantly
intimate moment with Charley (Julianne Moore), despite her desire that he do
so; he's not in a position to provide what she needs. More to the point, he has
an appointment with his own pending suicide.

George Falconer (Colin Firth) thought he had found his place in life, the universe and everything, thanks to a deeply satisfying 16-year relationship with his partner, Jim (Matthew Goode). Everything made sense. But in a flash, during a drive on a snowy road in an entirely different state, Jim lost his life in a car accident.

Months later, George still hasn't recovered from the loss. He fantasizes being at the crash site, and approaching Jim's body to give him one last kiss: a comforting bit of closure denied to George, because Jim's parents — who never approved of the relationship — restricted the funeral and services to "immediate family only."

Director/co-scripter Tom Ford, working with screenwriter David Scaearce, has turned Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel, A Single Man, into a beautifully constructed film with a captivating attention to detail. Much has been made of Firth's starring role, and deservedly so; it's an achingly melancholy portrait of a man who, much to his regret, can't hold himself together.

Ford brings his skills as a world-famous fashion designer to every frame of this film, which is composed with the skill of a master musician.

The film's most fascinating aspect, however, is its ingenious use of color: a technique not employed with such creativity since director Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. Ford and cinematographer Eduard Grau capture the mundane aspects of George's life with a washed-out palette: a muddy, sepia-hued filter that reflects the despondent cloud that poisons his brain.

Crazy Heart: A bit too crazy?

Crazy Heart (2009) • View trailer for Crazy Heart
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.28.10
Buy DVD: Crazy Heart • Buy Blu-Ray: Crazy Heart [Blu-ray]

Despite fine performances by Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal — and they're both exceptional — I simply could not get past the key plot point in Crazy Heart.

In no real-world scenario would an attractive and reasonably perceptive young woman such as Gyllenhaal's Jean fall for a slovenly, smelly, chain-smoking, burned-out alcoholic such as Bridges' Bad Blake.

Despite prudent instincts that silently scream advice to the contrary, small-
town journalist Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal) allows herself to be moved by the
seductive heat that radiates from her subject, aging country singer Bad Blake
(Jeff Bridges). Savvy viewers who watch the movie and then take a second
careful look at this photo will notice, however, that the studio publicists
cleaned Bridges up -- a lot -- before snapping this publicity still. In the film,
during this scene, Blake looks much, much seedier. (One assumes that's why
they call it "movie magic.")

It'd never happen.

She's in her late 20s, early 30s tops: single parent to an adorable 4-year-old son. Blake, at 57, is a shambling, falling-down, vomiting-as-a-recreational-sport career drunk.

No way.

Mind you, I hold this opinion despite being a guy who, in the usual Hollywood fantasyland style, would love to have somebody as cute as Gyllenhaal give me even a second glance when I hit 57. A good many of the women who attended last week's Sacramento preview screening were much more troubled, and quite vocal in their objections and disbelief.

Writer/director Scott Cooper's film is based on a novel by Thomas Cobb, who I'll assume dealt with this issue more persuasively. Maybe Jean's character is older in the book. Maybe Blake isn't quite that much of a wreck.

Whatever. On the big screen, it's an insurmountable hurdle.

So is the notion, a bit later, that Jean would trust her young son — absolutely the most precious thing in her life — in Blake's unchaperoned care. Again, no way.

Crazy Heart also suffers from deja-vu; we've definitely been here before, most notably with Robert Duvall's Academy Award-winning performance in 1983's Tender Mercies, which also concerned a washed-up country singer seeking redemption. Switch careers, and we again saw this saga played out a year ago, when Mickey Rourke impressed everybody so much with his starring role in The Wrestler.

That film also had a May/October romantic subplot, but with an important distinction: Marisa Tomei's career stripper was pretty down and out herself. She and Rourke were cut from the same cloth to begin with, and had been equally disillusioned by forever getting stuck with — to quote Marilyn Monroe, in Some Like It Hot — "the fuzzy end of the lollipop."

Extraordinary Measures: Merely ordinary

Extraordinary Measures (2010) • View trailer for Extraordinary Measures
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for mild profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.22.10
Buy DVD: Extraordinary Measures • Buy Blu-Ray: Extraordinary Measures [Blu-ray]


The quest for medical miracles, although obviously compelling to those intimately involved, can be a tough sell cinematically; the real-world process is frustrating and grindingly slow, the obsessed, lab-coated doctors and researchers generally far from the big-screen archetypes likely to bring us into the story.

The usual "solutions," as a result, involve the infusion of melodrama and the fabrication of fictitious characters; the resulting narrative — at this point merely "suggested by" actual events, as opposed to rigorously factual — can turn into an eye-rolling TV movie designed to manipulate more than educate.

Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford, left) increasingly resents what he perceives
as partner John Crowley's (Brendan Fraser) bean-counting "corporatized"
decisions, believing that pure research is being sacrificed on the altar of
"acceptable loss." It's a frequent argument in today's biotech field, and one of
this film's most persuasive dramatic components.

Fortunately, Extraordinary Measures doesn't succumb to such shortcomings ... at least, not completely.

Robert Nelson Jacobs' screenplay — drawn from the book The Cure, by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Geeta Anand, who in turn based it on her own August 2003 Wall Street Journal article — does an impressive job of detailing the frankly insane financial and corporate constraints under which miracle drugs are developed these days. The saga is fascinating and frequently overwhelming, particularly with respect to the notion that any "regular citizen" could survive, let alone make progress, in such a process.

Our hearts are won as well by Brendan Fraser's persuasive and wholly sympathetic starring performance as John Crowley, who with his wife Aileen (Keri Russell) have been coping with having two children — out of three — who suffer from Pompe Disease, an extremely rare genetic disorder somewhat related to both muscular dystrophy and Lou Gehrig's Disease. It's fatal, with most children dying before their ninth birthday.

As the film opens, Megan (Meredith Droeger, a genuine charmer) is celebrating her eighth birthday. Patrick (Diego Velazquez), not quite two years younger, has the same disease; both children require wheelchairs, breathing devices and constant monitoring by trained nurses. First-born son John Jr. (Sam Hall) is completely healthy.

Crowley, having educated himself to every possible degree, is drawn repeatedly to the theoretical research of Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford), whose efforts are largely ignored in the tiny lab he holds together at a Nebraska university. Ford plays Stonehill as a crusty eccentric with two ex-wives and a preference for working with loud music blaring: a guy who can't really be bothered with "people skills."