The Covenant: Promises to keep

The Covenant (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violence, frequent profanity and brief drug content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.21.23

Although director Guy Ritchie’s harrowing war drama is a fictionalized extrapolation of actual events, it’ll resonate strongly with anybody horrified by what has become of Afghanistan.

 

Americans who served there likely will find this particularly grim viewing.

 

Although Sgt. John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal, right) has been told that the road ahead is
safe, he eventually yields to the insistence of his interpreter, Ahmed (Dar Salim), who
is convinced that something is amiss.

Ritchie and his co-writers — Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies — have concocted a nail-biter that shines a spotlight on the many thousands of Afghan translators and military personnel who were shamefully abandoned when American forces withdrew in May 2021 … despite having been promised visas and safe passage to the States, for themselves and all family members.

Nor was this merely a case of being “left behind.” It was — and remains — common knowledge that the Taliban would hunt down, torture and execute Afghans who previously worked alongside U.S. and NATO forces. 

 

One of a well-crafted story’s strongest assets is its ability to transform an abstract — “thousands” — into a tightly focused saga of symbolic individuals. That’s definitely the case here.

 

It’s March 2018, the setting Bagram Air Base, Parwan Province, in Taliban-occupied Afghanistan. Army Sgt. John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) — on his final tour of duty, looking forward to returning home to his wife and children — leads an elite unit tasked with finding Taliban munitions. A routine search at a vehicle checkpoint goes awry when two of Kinley’s men — one of them the group’s Afghan interpreter — are killed by a lorry bomb.

 

Back at base, in need of a new interpreter, John selects Ahmed (Dar Salim) from half a dozen willing candidates. John is impressed by Ahmed’s ability to speak “four languages worth speaking,” but is cautioned about the newcomer’s reputation for independent thinking.

 

As it soon turns out, Ahmed knows stuff … lots of who, what and where. Even so, the initial dynamic is prickly; John, not accustomed to being questioned by a “mere translator,” views such behavior as borderline insubordination. (“Actually,” Ahmed retorts at one point, “I’m here to interpret.”) Gyllenhaal’s gaze and attitude stop just shy of being condescending or racist; John simply is more accustomed to strict protocol and the military chain of command.

 

Salim, in turn, grants Ahmed a multitude of depth via his expression and body language: intelligence, wariness, quiet nobility and — most of all — mild amusement, at the arrogance of Americans who claim to “know better.”

 

When the unit is deployed once again on the house-by-house search of a nearby village, Ahmed’s initial efforts to help — outside his interpreter duties — are rebuffed by John, who nonetheless notes the accuracy of the new man’s input. A few sorties later, armed with information on two potential Taliban IED manufacturing sites, Ahmed’s instincts prove very helpful during a drive to the first.

Bad Boys for Life: An excessive final (?) rodeo

Bad Boys for Life (2020) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for strong bloody violence, relentless profanity, sexual candor and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang

Too long, too loud and too laughably ludicrous.

Too profane, as well. Along with deplorably violent.

In characteristic fashion, Marcus (Martin Lawrence, left) wants to reason with a highly
agitated suspect, whereas Mike (Will Smith) prefers the more direct,
confrontational approach.

Par for the course, in a film co-scripted by Joe Carnahan (who previously brought us Narc, Smokin’ Aces and 2018’s remake of Death Wish, among others).

Carnahan got an assist from co-writers Peter Craig and Chris Bremner, and the result — the very late-arriving threequel to 1995’s Bad Boys — delivers precisely what this series’ fans expect. I’ve no doubt they’ll all go home satisfied.

That said, this bloated cop thriller would be a slog without the mirthful banter between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, returning as forever bickering “bad boys” Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett. Except that they’re no longer “boys, as their much younger colleagues frequently point out. They’ve become the cop equivalent of creaky old-timers, and the story has fun with this dynamic.

Marcus, a newly minted grandfather, is more than ready to call it a day. Mike, lacking his partner’s family ties, stubbornly hangs onto his bad-ass rep … while clandestinely dying his signature goatee, in order to conceal the grey. He believes the rep is all he has, despite Marcus’ insistence to the contrary.

Bad Boys for Life — something of a surprise, given the space between it and 2003’s Bad Boys II — is fueled by a classic “one last rodeo” plot. It’s laden with nonstop mayhem: gun battles; sniper assassinations; landscape-pummeling vehicular pursuits in cars, motorcycles, sidecars and helicopters; and several gratuitously gory deaths. Scores of assault gun-wielding thugs are dispatched bloodily, like swatted flies.

It’s all quite over the top; at a self-indulgent 123 minutes, this film definitely wears out its welcome. It also stretches credibility way past the breaking point, starting when Mike unexpectedly takes four to the chest from a semi-automatic assault weapon. And survives.

Seriously?

Catching one bullet would be sufficient for story purposes; four is an early indication of the absurd excess favored by Moroccan-born co-directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (who built their résumé with the Belgian crime dramas Image, Black and Gangsta). 

And no; that’s not really a spoiler, since this intended assassination takes place scant minutes into the film. 

When the Game Stands Tall: Gridiron glory

When the Game Stands Tall (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for mild intensity and brief violence
By Derrick Bang

Inspirational sports sagas are the ultimate feel-good movies; they engage our souls and pluck at the heart, particularly when adversity and underdog status are part of the equation.

And most particularly when they’re true.

Coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel, center right), assistant coach Terry Eidson (Michael
Chiklis, center left) and members of the De La Salle Spartans react with undisguised
dread as the much larger and tougher members of the Long Beach Poly team take the
field. What follows is, by far, this film's most exciting chapter. 

Director Thomas Carter has fashioned a stirring drama from former Contra Costa Times sportswriter Neil Hayes’ 2003 nonfiction book, which profiled De La Salle High School football coach Bob Ladouceur at a point when his team had amassed a truly stunning streak of victories. Scripters Scott Marshall Smith and David Zelon have remained pretty close to established fact, allowing for the usual composite characters, one fast-and-loose modification of what happened when, and a needlessly melodramatic sidebar conflict between a young player and his overbearing father.

Those issues aside, Carter’s film is far more accurate than most that claim to be “inspired” by actual events; he respectfully captures the deeply spiritual tone that characterized Ladouceur’s entire coaching career, along with the atypically close ties and locker room candor that bonded the young players.

Yes, they really did take the field, at the start of each game, holding hands.

At first blush, star Jim Caviezel is a perfect fit for Ladouceur; as archive footage of the coach reveals, during the film’s closing credits, Caviezel looks and carries himself in much the same way. He adds the same heartfelt weight to the soulful pep talks that were typical of Ladouceur’s approach: “Winning a lot of football games is doable. Teaching kids there’s more to life, that’s hard.”

We don’t doubt, for a moment, that Caviezel’s Ladouceur genuinely cares about every single one of his players, off the field even more than on.

That said, Caviezel never has been an expressive actor, and those same closing-credits clips also show that the actor lacks the actual coach’s fire and passion. Caviezel is one of the acting community’s Mr. Cools, as his ongoing stint on TV’s Person of Interest reveals quite clearly. He’s dry and flinty, much like Clint Eastwood, and relies on half-smiles, grim silences and stern frowns to get his emotive point across.

Doesn’t always work. Co-star Laura Dern, as Ladouceur’s wife Bev, acts circles around him. She conveys greater emotional depth, in a few brief scenes, than Caviezel manages in the entire film. This is most apparent during the crisis that opens this story, as Ladouceur narrowly survives a heart attack that would have killed many men. Caviezel simply cannot sell the epiphany of Ladouceur’s initial post-recovery chat with his wife, as he acknowledges having been an absentee husband and father because of over-commitment to the job.

Nor does the film really address that issue, moving forward. Given Caviezel’s thespic limitations, that’s probably for the best.

Lone Survivor: Heartbreak ridge

Lone Survivor (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, for strong war violence and pervasive profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.10.14

Color me surprised: Peter Berg finally made another decent movie.

The actor-turned-writer/director scored an indisputable hit with 2004’s warm-hearted Friday Night Lights, a character-driven study of small-town Texas high school football; the film led to an equally well-received TV series that kept fans happy for three well-scripted seasons (with Berg supervising the entire run).

Having trekked to a vantage point where they can see their targeted enemy combatant,
the covert SEAL team — from left, Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Marcus (Mark Wahlberg),
Axe (Ben Foster) and Dietz (Emile Hirsch) — contemplate their next move. Sadly,
that decision is about to be taken out of their hands.

On the big screen, though, Berg’s résumé didn’t merely stall; it nose-dived into overwrought wretched excess. The Kingdom (2007) was marred by unpleasantly vicious racism; Hancock (2008) did little but embarrass star Will Smith; and the less said about 2012’s laughably atrocious Battleship, the better.

That’s a rather sad and pathetic downward spiral.

I therefore held out very little hope for Lone Survivor, upon learning that Berg was directing and scripting from Marcus Luttrell’s gripping 2007 memoir ... which just goes to prove, once again, the folly of rash assumptions. This film deserves place of pride alongside A Bridge Too Far, Gallipoli, Black Hawk Down and other war dramas that honor the grit, bravery, indomitable will and almost superhuman resilience of overwhelmed, ground-based soldiers betrayed by circumstances beyond their control.

Lone Survivor isn’t merely stirring; it’s nail-bitingly tense and, ultimately, heartbreaking.

The story details a SEAL operation code-named Operation Red Wings, which in June 2005 sent four men into a mountainous region of Afghanistan; they were tasked with locating and killing Ahmad Shah, a Taliban sympathizer who had orchestrated the ambush of 20 Marines the previous week.

To say that everything went wrong would be an understatement. Radio communications were spotty at best, absent entirely when the subsequent crisis erupted. Worse yet, American intel seriously underestimated the size of Shah’s resident militia. When the dust had settled, as this film’s title warns us, only one man had survived ... and the fatalities had expanded to include far more than the initial SEAL team.

Berg, long a gung-ho champion of American warrior spirit, unveils this film’s credits against actual footage of formidable SEAL training sessions; our immediate takeaway is that these men will endure anything, battling far beyond “normal” levels of pain and punishment, in the pursuit of successfully completing a mission and returning home with their comrades.

It’s an impressive montage, and it certainly sets the mood for what is to come.

We meet our protagonists immediately prior to their mission, during a typical “waiting” period at Camp Ouellette, at Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield. They cheerfully compete with each other, send e-mails to loved ones back home, make plans for the future. The day’s most significant event involves the “induction” of newbie SEAL Shane Patton (Alexander Ludwig, appropriately enthusiastic), a process that involves some mild hazing and considerable hoo-rah bonding.