Tower Heist: Quite a steal

Tower Heist (2011) • View trailer for Tower Heist
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for profanity and snarky sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.4.11


I had to check my calendar, to make sure it wasn’t 1982.

There was Eddie Murphy, as fresh, feisty and funny as he was back in 48 Hrs. and Trading Places. No preening. No mugging. No vanity turns.

Josh (Ben Stiller, far left) and his unlikely crew — from left, Mr. Fitzhugh
(Matthew Broderick), Enrique (Michael Peña), Charlie (Casey Affleck) and
Slide (Eddie Murphy) — case the luxury tower condominiums across the
street, seeking a way to evade FBI agents, police officers and regular staff
members while somehow making their way to the penthouse, where they hope
to find and steal $20 million.

Honestly, Murphy hasn’t been this entertaining in a live-action film for ... well, decades. He’s been an arrogant, self-centered glory hound for so long that I’d forgotten he could be anything else.

And Tower Heist is the perfect vehicle for this vintage, everything-old-is-new-again Eddie Murphy. In many ways, director Brett Ratner’s film even feels retro, as if it might have been made back in the 1970s or ’80s, during the glory days of heist comedies such as The Hot Rock and The Thief Who Came to Dinner.

Yep, this film is that much fun.

Ratner knows this territory, having helmed After the Sunset — a nifty, under-appreciated 2004 heist flick with Pierce Brosnan — in between Rush Hour and X-Men entries. Ratner delivers just the right breezy, light-hearted tone, while granting us a despicable villain to loathe: a guy we’re begging the heroes to take down.

More crucially, Ratner and his four writers — Ted Griffin, Jeff Nathanson, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage — pay careful attention to every member of an engaging ensemble of characters. And, in the grand tradition of such storylines, they’re the most unlikely “burglars” since Dick Van Dyke oversaw an aristocratic household of larcenous servants in 1967’s Fitzwilly.

The vintage atmosphere notwithstanding, the setting is completely contemporary: a luxury New York Central Park condominium complex dubbed The Tower, where manager Josh Kovaks (Ben Stiller) commutes from Queens — rising at 4:30 a.m. each day — in order to ensure that every last little detail is perfect for each tenant.

That’s every detail, whether dog-sitting an elderly woman’s pampered pooch, warning a philandering husband that his wife has returned three days early from an overseas trip, or running interference as bank officials try to evict destitute former Wall Street broker Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick).

Josh also enjoys matching wits during chess games played via the Internet with investment titan Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), who lives in the penthouse, where his many pleasures include a daily swim in the rooftop pool.

Much as the tenants depend on Josh, he also is respected by his own staff: the beloved elderly doorman, Lester (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who shares old jokes with anybody who will listen; a feisty maid, Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe, well remembered from Precious), who takes guff from nobody; the evasive Miss Iovenko (Nina Arianda), clandestinely studying for the bar while insisting she’s doing no such thing; and newly hired Enrique Dev’Reaux (Michael Peña), a bellhop/elevator operator-in-training delighted to have traded up from his former position at Burger King.

Oh, yes: and Charlie (Casey Affleck), Josh’s brother-in-law, who works as The Tower’s concierge and isn’t nearly as savvy as he imagines himself.

Precious: Flawless gem

Precious (2009) • View trailer for Precious
Five stars (out of five). Rating: R, for rape, child abuse, drug use, dramatic intensity and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.3.09
Buy DVD: Precious • Buy Blu-Ray: Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire [Blu-ray]

Some dramas are so persuasively powerful that they become more "real" than documentaries.

Director Lee Daniels' mesmerizing handling of Precious is just such a film.

I was so caught up in the story — so thoroughly immersed in Gabourey Sidibe's powerful lead performance — that at one point, late in the film, as Claireece "Precious" Jones gets out of a car in the midst of a brutal Harlem snowfall, I was immediately concerned that she'd better get inside quickly, lest she get cold.

Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe, left) sees her mother, Mary
(Mo'Nique), smile only when a social worker visits; the facade crumbles the
moment the interloper leaves the slum apartment, at which point Mary reverts
to her usual level of toxicity. Mo'Nique's performance is a horror story of
poisonous motherhood: a benchmark that stands alongside other memorable
monster parents such as Shelley Winters ("A Patch of Blue") and Angela
Lansbury ("The Manchurian Candidate").

The notion that this was a film — fiction — was long gone. I may as well have been watching this narrative through a window; it was genuinely happening, at that moment.

Although tremendously difficult to watch -— the story is unapologetically frank, and frequently brutal — Precious is a work of art in the truest sense: a film put together with unerring care, blending superlative performances with a storytelling style that both suits its environment, and respects its characters (those who deserve respect, I hasten to add).

Geoffrey Fletcher's gripping script is based on the book Push, a Novel by Sapphire, and it's as harrowing a slice of inner-city despair as ever has been conveyed on film. And yet, despite its bleak environment and frequently disturbing content, it emerges as a most unlikely empowerment saga: proof that the human spirit, no matter how beaten down and degraded, can flicker into unlikely glory if granted encouragement.

And love. Most importantly, love.

After experiencing a story such as this, one is inclined to believe that love is more crucial to human survival than breathing.

Sidibe's presence dominates this film — she's in nearly every scene -— and not simply because of her breathtaking size. She's a huge young woman of 16: tragically overweight thanks to a foul diet and a tendency to overeat as compensation for her miserable life. (You'll not regard fried chicken and McDonald's fast food quite the same way, after this film.)

We're riveted to her misery: an eternal expression of vacant despair that flows from her eyes — which miss nothing — and the grim set of her mouth. I'm grateful to the recent talk-show appearances that have revealed Sidibe to be a vivacious young woman with a ready smile; it's both nice to see her capable of such gaiety, and to be reminded that her work in this film is "only" acting.

But what acting. "Heartache" isn't a strong enough word to describe our reaction to Precious.