Wolfs: Crime served wry

Wolfs (2024) • View trailer

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

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.6.24

This quietly sardonic crime thriller demonstrates anew the captivating power of star wattage.

 

Because — to be blunt — writer/director Jon Watts’ film wouldn’t be such a much, absent George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

 

Despite competitive wariness, two professional "fixers" — Brad Pitt, left, and George
Clooney — reluctantly admit that they'll need to work together, in order to clean up
what has become an increasingly troublesome mess.

They make it sparkle.

Watts clearly designed this project with them in mind, playing to their unruffled charisma, and the fact that both — along with their characters — gamely make the most of being in their early 60s. You’ll also detect a strong echo of the Danny & Rusty vibe from Ocean’s Eleven and its two sequels, including some familiar bits of dialogue: “What’s the play here?” (Clooney) and “I don’t work that way” (Pitt).

 

Or, for those with longer memories, the similarly well-bonded banter between Paul Newman and Robert Redford, in 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

 

But it doesn’t begin that way here.

 

Watts opens his story with a bang, as ambitious New York politician Margaret (Amy Ryan), blood splattered all over her dress, finds herself in a fancy hotel suite with the body of a young stud. Panicked, knowing full well that this could destroy her career, she dials a number listed in her phone solely as a pair of brackets.

 

That reaches Clooney’s anonymous character — known solely, from this point forward, as “Margaret’s Man” — who shows up sporting a fashionable black turtleneck, leather coat ... and latex gloves, along with assorted other, um, tools of his trade. That would be “cleaner,” or “fixer,” or “calmly methodical fellow who makes problems go away.”

 

He has barely begun to work when his apparent twin (Pitt) shows up: similarly dressed, clearly in the same line of work, and equally irritated to discover that he has competition. He has been summoned by hotel owner Pam (Frances McDormand, making the most of her brief voice-only phone performance). She has all her rooms bugged and on camera, and wants this mess cleaned up for the same reason: to avoid bad publicity.

 

Pitt’s character, equally anonymous, is subsequently known as “Pam’s Man.” (Or perhaps we should just call them George and Brad, since Watts clearly wants us to identify with their signature screen presence.)

 

Clooney and Pitt make the most of the wry squabble over the “best way” to deal with this problem, how best to clean up the room and dispose of the body, and so forth ... while poor Margaret frets, gasps and blinks in wide-eyed helplessness.

 

(I suspect an actual seasoned politician would be more calm and self-assured, but Ryan had to play the cards that she was dealt.)

Worth: Not as much as it should be

Worth (2020) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for brief profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

What price a life?

 

Insensitive and vulgar as that question seems — how can anybody put a monetary value on the loss of a loved one? — actuaries, lawyers and insurance companies routinely do so.

 

A chance meeting at an opera performance allows Ken Feinberg (Michael Keaton, left)
and Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci) to start bridging the divide that has found them
judging the 9/11 compensation fund from strikingly different points of view.

Director Sara Colangelo’s provocative drama, which opens in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, follows the struggle to assess justice and fairness in one of American history’s most monumental attempts to assess “worth.” Max Borenstein’s screenplay is drawn from the 2006 memoir by Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed “Special Master” of the U.S. government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

As Borenstein’s script quickly depicts, however, this Congressional act of apparent compassion was — to a great degree — surface gloss. The fund was attached to the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act, a $15 billion bailout bill passed just 10 days after the terrorist strikes. The “fund gesture” hoped to “encourage” the survivors of 9/11 victims not to sue the industry into oblivion, thereby — in the words of airline corporate doomsayers attending a key meeting with U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (Victor Slezak) — preventing a “possible economic cataclysm.”

 

Feinberg (Michael Keaton) is introduced a few days earlier, as he demonstrates the legal nature of “worth” to a class of university students. He’s a number-cruncher and creature of pure pragmatism, believing to the core that any issue can be solved with carefully calculated equations, and that all individuals involved will behave rationally and respect the resulting “tort-style compensation” of such efforts.

 

Keaton is ideal for this role, his feral intensity and smirky condescension operating at full throttle. This master-of-the-universe aura notwithstanding, he certainly isn’t evil; he genuinely believes that he’s doing good, and that the best possible outcome can be achieved if everybody simply acknowledges that he knows best.

 

Such blunt expediency takes its toll; Feinberg relaxes, at the end of each day, by bathing himself in classic opera. We get a vague sense that his rough edges are softened by his wife, Dede (Talia Balsam); we also suspect that she doesn’t entirely agree with his attitude. But Borenstein’s script leaves their relationship badly under-developed.

 

Feinberg and his firm — his chief lieutenant is Camille Biros (Amy Ryan) — gained their lauded reputation as master mediators after chaperoning previous high-profile cases involving asbestos personal injury litigation, and Agent Orange product liability litigation. But those cases developed over the course of years, even decades, by which time emotions had cooled; on top of which, there never was a single “asbestos incident” that snuffed thousands of lives in a blinding flash: a distinction Feinberg fails to recognize.

 

As a result, when he gathers an initial few hundred victim survivors — mere months later — he treats the presentation just like the classroom lecture we witnessed earlier, expecting all participants to be uniformly impressed by his charts and graphs. He’s therefore genuinely baffled — Keaton’s expression radiates total confusion — when the attendees turn on him like a pack of snarling wolverines.

Late Night: Stay up for it!

Late Night (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and occasional sexual references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.14.19

I’ve suffered through so many vulgar, trashy, profane and infantile comedies during the past several years, that it seemed like the entire genre had been hijacked by such junk.

Imperious late-night talk show host Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) would only
"make nice" in this manner, with lowly writer Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling), if a publicity photo
were required. Otherwise, Katherine wouldn't waste a moment with such a staff peon...

Bless you, Mindy Kaling, for reminding us that witty, sophisticated humor still exists on the big screen.

Late Night is delightful. Kaling’s consistently amusing script is blessed with both sharp one-liners and shrewdly wry jabs at sexism, racism, ageism, tokenism and several other isms that don’t immediately leap to mind. The story also takes pointed pot shots at television and its cult of personality, while giving us the funniest behind-the-scenes writers’ room gang since we lost television’s much-loved 30 Rock.

And, unlike far too many lazy scripters these days, Kaling doesn’t focus solely on her story’s key characters; she also grants sidebar folks distinct personalities, and gives them little moments in which to shine. 

Manhattan-based Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) is a pioneer in her field, with multiple Emmy Awards to prove it: She’s the only woman to host a long-running late-night talk show. Unfortunately, she hasn’t changed her approach after three decades, and her ratings are tanking in an age where audiences prefer social media to social discourse. Stuffy philosophers can’t compete with YouTube “celebrities” who make embarrassing videos with their pets.

Worse yet, the notoriously impatient Katherine suddenly is accused of hypocrisy: as a so-called progressive feminist whose writers’ room is staffed solely by men. White men. Mostly young white men.

Stung by the accuracy of this charge, she orders her executive producer — Denis O’Hare, as the long-suffering Brad — to take the first “diversity hire” who walks into the building. Due to a hilariously improbable set of circumstances, that turns out to be Molly Patel (Kaling), a former chemical plant efficiency expert from suburban Pennsylvania, who has dreamed of being a comedy writer.

And whose sudden presence in the writers’ room goes over like the proverbial lead balloon.

Beautiful Boy: Descent into drug hell

Beautiful Boy (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and graphic drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.26.18

This film is highlighted by quiet, extraordinarily powerful little moments.

Director Felix Van Groeningen often is wise enough to simply hold his camera on stars Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell, and they never disappoint. Chalamet, in particular, is a fascinating study, his character’s intelligent glow gradually dimming as this morose story proceeds.

Having already watched his son Nic (Timothée Chalamet, left) relapse repeatedly,
despite numerous stints in detox and rehab, David Sheff (Steve Carell) wonders
if things will be any different this time.

Unfortunately, the film as a whole disappoints.

Stories that trace the downward spiral of drug addiction are of a type, and it’s hard to bring any freshness to a narrative with beats that are both inevitable and familiar: the initial descent and personality shift; the attempt at recovery and subsequent relapse; the attempt at recovery and subsequent relapse. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Van Groeningen and co-scripter Luke Davies deserve credit for trying to adjust the recipe, and it’s somewhat novel to view so much of this saga from the viewpoint of those who represent collateral damage: which is to say, the helpless family members. On the other hand, the constant flashbacks become irritating, even confusing. While it makes sense for David Sheff (Carell) to remember the cheerful, jovial kid his son Nic once was, at times it’s difficult to know whether a given scene — with Nicolas (Chalamet) as a young adult — is in the “present,” or the not-quite-present.

The story definitely gets additional dramatic heft from its real-world origins. Sheff is a widely celebrated journalist and author whose résumé includes work for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Fortune and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Van Groeningen and Davies’ script is adapted from Sheff’s best-selling 2008 memoir of the same title: a painfully raw account of dealing with Nic’s addiction to methamphetamine.

The script also draws from Nic’s version of events, in his book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.

Difficult as it is, to watch this film at times, Van Groeningen and Davies chose not to include some of the books’ even bleaker events. Which probably is just as well.

Although Chalamet has the “showier” role, Carell’s David is the story’s focus. His is the more challenging acting job, since David most frequently reacts in response to Nic’s behavior. Carell’s face is a constant study in pain: haunted gaze and slumped posture, burdened by weary desperation. Rarely has the phrase “carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders” seemed more apt.

It’s natural to expect that if this saga includes a life-changing epiphany, it’ll belong to Nic; after all, the options are sharply etched. Either he kicks the habit, or he dies. But the crucial moment of dawning realization — a genuinely heartbreaking scene — actually belongs to David: when he finally, reluctantly, despondently realizes that he can’t fix this.

We’re reminded of the “three Cs” during an Al-Anon meeting that takes place toward the end of the film: You didn’t cause it; you can’t control it; you can’t cure it. Impossibly difficult to accept, for a parent accustomed to being a child’s full-time protector.

The Infiltrator: One of the greatest roles ever played

The Infiltrator (2016) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for strong violence, profanity, sexual candor and drug content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.15.16

Truth isn’t merely stranger than fiction; it’s also a lot scarier.

When the undercover Bob Mazur (Bryan Cranston, right) finally gains an audience with
Colombian drug cartel overlords, he's surprised to discover that he first must pass some
sort of dangerous "initiation" overseen by Rudy Ambrecht (Carsten Hayes, left).

U.S. Customs operative Robert “Bob” Mazur spent years as a deep undercover agent in the 1980s, climactically building an identity as a high-level money launderer for senior members of several Colombian drug cartels. The operation ultimately led to one of the largest busts in U.S. history: 100 drug traffickers and money launderers arrested, along with the seizure of 3,200 pounds of cocaine and roughly $100 million in cash and assets.

Perhaps more dramatically, it brought about the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, at the time the world’s seventh largest privately held financial institution, with assets of $20 billion. It also was one of the world’s largest money-laundering banks.

Remember BCCI? Anybody involved with the banking industry recalls full well how transaction reporting regulations changed, almost overnight, in the wake of this scandal.

Mazur detailed his experiences in a riveting 2009 memoir, The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel. That book, in turn, has been transformed into an equally compelling film by director Brad Furman. Screenwriter Ellen Sue Brown’s adaptation is by turns fascinating, suspenseful, terrifying and even mordantly amusing.

The film gets additional dramatic heft from star Bryan Cranston’s impressively nuanced portrayal of Mazur: a performance of delicate subtlety that becomes more persuasive as the narrative moves from one jaw-dropping incident to the next.

And while it’s true that Cranston commands the screen, he has equally superb support from all of the impeccably selected co-stars. This is another film that lends weight to the call for giving casting directors their own Academy Award category, because Gail Stevens found just the right individual for every part.

Perhaps more than anything else, this is a very nervous film. Despite knowing full well that Mazur will survive these events, the suspense is no less intense; plenty of sidebar individuals are vulnerable at every turn, and we’ve ample evidence throughout, of the cold-blooded ferocity of cartel shot-callers.

Central Intelligence: Very little on display

Central Intelligence (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and generously, for strong profanity, crude humor, fleeting nudity and considerable violence
By Derrick Bang

Personality can trump weak material, and that’s certainly the case here.

Director/co-scripter Rawson Marshall Thurber’s limp spy comedy is nothing to write home about, and the so-called plot — fitfully fleshed out with Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen — is pretty thin gruel, mostly serving as a flimsy template for sight gags and one-liners.

An online data analysis request made by Bob (Dwayne Johnson, right) seems simple
enough, but Calvin's (Kevin Hart) accounting savvy quickly alerts him to strange transaction
details. In another few minutes, he'll know that he should have left well enough alone...

But stars Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart give the package far more oomph than it deserves. They’re a great Mutt ’n’ Jeff pair, milking considerable humor from their size differential — an entire 12 inches! — and disparate personality quirks. The ever-smiling Johnson is sunshine and light, unflappably carefree even under crazed circumstances; Hart, in turn, is fussy, frantic and eternally put-upon. They play off each other quite well.

Which is a good thing, because they certainly deliver more than the material deserves.

Central Intelligence opens with a cringe-inducing prologue, set 20 years in the past, as high school superstar senior Calvin Joyner — nicknamed The Golden Jet, for all his sports and academic accomplishments — celebrates his graduation with a triumphant pep rally speech before the entire senior class. The event becomes notorious when five bullies burst into the room and toss the gentle but haplessly overweight Robbie Weirdicht, the uncoolest kid in school, onto the gym floor. Butt-naked.

Via the magic of CGI “sweetening,” Hart and Johnson play these younger versions of their characters (the latter’s puffy features, grafted onto an extra’s body, being particularly spooky).

Calvin resurrects some of poor Robbie’s dignity with an act of generosity: a benevolent gesture destined to have unexpected consequences.

Flash-forward to the present day. Calvin (Hart), despite all those long-ago “most likely to succeed” accolades, has become a drone accountant stuck on the middle rung of the corporate ladder, garnering zero respect from colleagues (Ryan Hansen’s Steve being a particularly obnoxious example). On the possible side, Calvin did marry high school sweetheart Maggie (Danielle Nicolet), and they’re clearly made for each other.

Trouble is, Calvin’s career dissatisfaction has magnified into marital tension.

Then, out of the blue, Calvin gets a Facebook “friend request” from somebody named Bob Stone. Intimidated by the Facebook culture into accepting, Calvin gets an immediate “let’s go for a beer” offer from said fellow. To Calvin’s astonishment, it turns out that “Bob Stone” (Johnson, now in all his buff glory) actually is a new and improved Robbie. All he did, Bob explains, is work out six hours a day, every day, for the past 20 years. Heck, he insists, anybody could do that.

Superbly toned bod notwithstanding, Bob still is hopeless uncool, decked out in a fanny pack, and sporting a T-shirt with a My Little Pony unicorn. Worse yet, his favorite film still is 16 Candles, and his clumsy efforts at “bro talk” generally land with a thud.

And yes, watching the towering Johnson wallow contentedly in geeky affectations is just as funny as it sounds.

Bridge of Spies: Riveting Cold War thriller

Bridge of Spies (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for war violence, dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.16.15

Atticus Finch lives.

Harper Lee is known to have based the iconic hero of To Kill a Mockingbird on her own father, Alabama lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee, who — like the book’s character — represented unpopular defendants in a highly publicized (and politicized) trial.

As the trial that might send Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance, left) to the gas chamber proceeds,
defense attorney James Donovan (Tom Hanks) is surprised to see his client remain so
calm. "Aren't you worried?" Donovan asks. Abel's response becomes the film's best
signature line.

How ironic, then, that at the same time Harper Lee was fine-tuning the novel that would make her famous, newspaper headlines across the United States pilloried the country’s most-hated lawyer, James Donovan, who had bravely accepted the assignment to defend captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

I can’t help wondering if any of Donovan’s characteristics wandered into Lee’s depiction of Atticus.

Donovan’s name and historical significance have remained buried for decades, although Abel might ring a few bells. Sirens are likely to go off, however, when both men are linked to American pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was captured after his U-2 spy plane was blasted out of the sky during a photographic reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union.

The interlinked saga involving Donovan, Abel and Powers has been resurrected and transformed into a thoughtful, fascinating and thoroughly absorbing period drama by director Steven Spielberg and scripters Matt Charman, Joel and Ethan Coen. It’s Cold War-era spyjinks right out of John Le Carre, except that these events actually took place: yet another reminder that truth can be far stranger than fiction.

(The film credits make no mention of Donovan’s well-received 1964 memoir, Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary Powers, which I find odd; it’s impossible to imagine that Charman and the Coen brothers didn’t read that book.)

Spielberg’s film is anchored by a commanding performance from Tom Hanks, who channels every dedicated and deeply honorable character ever played by Henry Fonda and James Stewart. At the same time, Hanks brings his own wry, subtle humor to this depiction of Donovan: a capable and hard-working family man caught up in events far beyond his imagining.

(Or so we’re led to believe. Given Donovan’s WWII service as General Counsel at the Office of Strategic Services, he may not have been as “ordinary” as this film suggests. But this portrayal makes for a better story.)

Birdman: A dark comedy that soars

Birdman (2014) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity, sexual candor and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.31.14

This isn’t merely a movie; it’s a bravura display of cinematic pizzazz as mesmerizing as its three starring performances.

This one demands repeat viewing. First time out, you’ll be overwhelmed by the stylistic approach — dazzlingly so, to the point of wanting to applaud — and then you’ll need a second round to better appreciate everything else going on.

When Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton, left) learns that co-star Mike Shiner (Edward
Norton) has hijacked some of his best personal material for a lavish newspaper interview,
raw fury propels the two men into the sort of laughably flimsy fist-fight that one would
expect from two guys who haven't the faintest idea how to throw a punch.

We’ve never seen anything quite like this.

Granted, director/co-scripter Alejandro González Iñárritu borrows respectfully from predecessors going all the way back to Robert Wiene (1920’s silent The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), with strong nods toward Alfred Hitchcock (1948’s Rope), Roman Polanski (1965’s Repulsion) and Paddy Chayefsky (1976’s Network).

Much more recently, Joe Wright attempted similar cinematographic trickery with 2012’s Anna Karenina, but with far less success; the stage-bound stylization called too much attention to itself, at the expense of the story.

But that, too, is the genius of Iñárritu’s Birdman: The audacious approach is part of the story, indeed the throbbing heartbeat of an exhilarating descent into artistic madness, whose pulse is amplified by a score devoted solely to Grammy Award-winner Antonio Sanchez’s percussive drumming.

That latter affectation is jarring at first, particularly as Sanchez’s efforts become pervasive, his shifting tempos altering the story’s rhythm and pace in a manner normally handled by cutting wizardry. But editors Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione seemingly have very little to do in this film, because cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s brilliantly composed scenes are — like our central character’s relentless fever dream — one long tracking shot.

Yep. For 119 minutes. Over the course of this narrative’s roughly three days and nights.

Not entirely true, of course, which is why that word — seemingly — is so crucial. Despite having the appearance of a single extended take, Iñárritu, Lubezki, Crise and Mirrione collaborate quite cleverly to convey this illusion ... just as everything that happens on a Broadway stage is pure artifice.

Except when it isn’t, which is the whole point here. Even before we dive into his rapidly unraveling psyche, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) has lost the ability to separate his actual life from what takes place on stage; his performer’s artifice may be the only thing helping him cling to whatever remains of his sanity. Indeed, how many actors, stretching back centuries, have insisted that they only come alive each night, when they hit their marks ... their vivid, full-color nighttime dreams far more real to them than the washed-out black-and-white of their actual lives?

Escape Plan: A breakout surprise

Escape Plan (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: R, for violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Sometimes it pays to approach a film with diminished expectations.

After the comic book nonsense of both Expendables flicks, not to mention January’s distastefully trashy Bullet to the Head, I held out little hope for Sylvester Stallone’s recent return to the big screen.

Although trapped in a maximum-security prison that offers little hope for any sort of
escape plan, Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone, left) and Emil Rottmayer (Arnold
Schwarzenegger) have a few ideas ... all of them highly dangerous, of course, and
with little chance of success. But it's not like they have anything else to do...

And although Arnold Schwarzenegger cleverly parodied his advancing age in The Last Stand, also released in January, box-office disinterest made that little action flick’s title seem prophetic, with respect to his career.

I therefore haven’t been surprised by the disinterest in Escape Plan, which arrives in theaters today after a rather lackluster publicity campaign.

Which just goes to show the folly of jumping to conclusions. Swedish-born director Mikael Håfström has uncorked a tidy little thriller, which gets much of its juice from a clever script by Miles Chapman and Jason Keller. The premise is intriguing, the execution is engaging — if occasionally burdened by exploitation flick clichés — and, yes, Stallone and Schwarzenegger acquit themselves honorably.

Indeed, they’re perfectly cast in this twisty prison saga, which seems to have been shaped with their strengths — and acting limitations — in mind. Håfström allows them to do what they do best, and they do it well; the result certainly won’t be more than a footnote in cinema history, but it’s a reasonably entertaining way to spend a night at the movies.

Ray Breslin (Stallone) has a most unusual career: He’s a structural engineer who specializes in prison design, or — more precisely — the weaknesses of such institutions. As the “field agent” half of the Los Angeles-based security firm Breslin-Clark, he allows himself to be incarcerated into various prisons as an apparent felon, in order to escape and thus expose design and (more frequently) staffing weaknesses.

Although ostensibly on his own, Breslin always is monitored by his operational partners: handler Abigail Ross (Amy Ryan) and genius hacker Hush (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson). Partner Lester Clark (Vincent D’Onofrio) acts as the company “face,” securing the assignments and managing the tidy sums that Breslin charges for his talents.

Following the completion of yet another routine assignment, Breslin is offered a tantalizing challenge by CIA operative Jessica Miller (Caitriona Balfe). Wanting to remove the political stink left by a decade’s worth of nasty headlines concerning Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition, shadowy U.S. black-ops agencies have collaborated to construct a top-secret über-prison at an undisclosed location, well away from prying media eyes. The goal is to keep its dangerous occupants locked up, no matter how clever — or desperate — they might be.

That’s where Breslin comes in: If he can’t break out, then All Concerned will be satisfied that their “detention center” lives up to its promise.

Win Win: Quiet triumph

Win Win (2011) • View trailer for Win Win
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity and teenage smoking
By Derrick Bang


Actor turned writer/director Tom McCarthy concocts marvelous little ensemble pieces that are populated by disparate characters trying to connect with each other. They might be lonely, frustrated or somehow incomplete, but they’re always familiar and engaging: the sort of folks who could live next door, possibly as good friends in need of an emotional lift.

With bills piling up and his career circling the drain, Mike (Paul Giamatti, left)
yields to an ill-advised impulse ... and suddenly, weirdly, finds that things
start to go right in his life. But the knowledge of his misdeed eats away at his
soul, threatening all the new joy in his daily routine ... including a delicate
but genuinely loving bond with a lonely teenager, Kyle (Alex Shaffer).

McCarthy came to our attention back in 2003, with The Station Agent, a whimsical saga about a man (Peter Dinklage) who moves to rural New Jersey to mourn the loss of a friend, and winds up having to deal with an equally lonely woman (Patricia Clarkson) and an uncommonly chatty hot dog vendor (Bobby Cannavale). You can’t watch this charming film without smiling repeatedly; at the same time, McCarthy demonstrates an unerring sense of the way people reach out for each other, even while insisting they’re doing no such thing.

McCarthy’s next film, 2007’s The Visitor, upped the ante in terms of content and dramatic heft. Richard Jenkins garnered a well-deserved Academy Award nomination as a bereft college professor who, still missing the wife who died young, discovers that his New York City apartment has been, ah, “occupied” by squatters. But this young man and woman aren’t low-lifes; they’ve been tricked into believing the apartment genuinely was available. The subsequent narrative puts a human (and refreshingly nonjudgmental) face on the plight of illegal immigrants, while demonstrating how helping others can teach us how to help ourselves.

All of which brings us to Win Win, which nestles somewhere between McCarthy’s first two films, with respect to tone. Although not as charged as illegal immigration, this story’s underlying premise — the tantalizing lure of situational ethics — still prompts us to confront our own behavior. As is so blindingly true in the real world — more so than ever these days, it seems — mistakes themselves aren’t necessarily the end of one’s relationship, career, whatever; we’re judged by what we do after the lapse in judgment.

Disheartened elder care attorney Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) has watched his one-man business slide deeper into financial crisis for some time now. He seems genuinely drawn to his trusting clients, but lacks enough of them to make ends meet. He shares an office — actually a converted house — with Stephen Vigman (Jeffrey Tambor), a CPA similarly stressed by economic woes. Both men have been reduced to their own ill-equipped handyman repairs, whether dealing with a blocked toilet or a basement boiler/water heater that sounds like it’s auditioning for a role in Stephen King’s The Shining ... and is, in the words of a plumber, “ready to blow” at any moment.

Mike also moonlights as a high school wrestling coach; Stephen is his assistant. Their team is a hapless, listless, dispirited bunch; they’ve have to dig up to reach the cellar. In other words, Mike also derives no joy from this extra-curricular activity.

The Green Zone: Zoning out

The Green Zone (2010) • View trailer for The Green Zone
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for battlefield violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.12.10
Buy DVD: The Green Zone • Buy Blu-Ray: Green Zone [Blu-ray]

The Green Zone gets by with a lot due to momentum, which is fortunate; the moment you stop to think about Brian Helgeland's ludicrous script, the whole thing falls apart.

This much-heralded reunion between director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon — after working together on the latter two entries in the Bourne series — is nothing more than fanciful wish fulfillment: a revisionist take on the "big lie" that got the United States into Iraq, guaranteed to delight liberals and enrage conservatives.

After foolishly charging into the rabbit warren of Baghdad's mean streets late
one night, hoping to facilitate a meeting with the high-level members of Iraq's
Baath party who've gone to ground, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt
Damon, center) gets kidnapped by parties unknown. What, like he should
be surprised?

Given the rigorous military protocols established at the outset of this war zone drama — which takes place in 2003, right around the time President Bush naively declared "victory in Iraq" during his infamous photo-op — it's simply not credible to accept the notion of a lone wolf soldier breaking rank, ignoring the chain of command and plunging pell-mell into the middle of Baghdad, because he knows The Truth Is Out There.

Not even if the lone wolf is Matt Damon.

Perhaps sensing his uncertain footing, Greengrass makes a point, in his film's press notes, of insisting that, "This is not a movie about the war in Iraq. It's a thriller set in Iraq."

Yeah, right. And if my grandmother'd had wheels, she'd have been a trolley car.

It's simply not possible to view this film, and its preposterous storyline, while ignoring the context of recent events that remain quite fresh in everybody's memory ... and, in fact, continue to unfold to this day.

Initially, the actions taken by Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) are reasonable, if unlikely; all too soon, however, he morphs into Jason Bourne while blithely ignoring personal safety ... and the safety of the half-dozen men who faithfully follow him.

Honestly, the word "reckless" can't begin to cover this film's third act.