Black Sea: No treasure here

Black Sea (2014) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and violence
By Derrick Bang

Something’s rotten in the state of cinema...

Back in the day of classic Hollywood “disaster movies” — a cycle that began with 1970’s Airport — the survival rate was roughly an audience-acceptable 50 percent. This issue revolved around key characters; in 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure, we lost Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, Roddy McDowall, Leslie Nielsen and Stella Stevens, while Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Pamela Sue Martin, Jack Albertson, Carol Lynley and Eric Shea made it to daylight.

Frustrated by the mutual hostility that divides his Russian and British crew members,
Robinson (Jude Law, center) angrily orders the men to get along ... while promising that
this clandestine submarine mission will make them all very, very rich.

In 1974’s The Towering Inferno, Robert Wagner, Jennifer Jones, Robert Vaughn, Richard Chamberlain and Susan Flannery got toasted, while the survivors included William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Fred Astaire. (Paul Newman and Steve McQueen weren’t in the building.) And so it went, with Earthquake, the various Airport sequels and others.

More to the point, many of those who perish do so heroically or tragically, in some cases while saving others. We feel for them. Yes, all such films have their villains, but no more than one or two ... and they always get their just desserts.

Things have changed.

These days, disaster/survival films have become slaughter films: mainstream cousins of the countless “dead teen” horror flicks that erupted in the wake of 1980’s Friday the 13th. Most of the characters are nameless, faceless and two-dimensional, just like all those doomed teens: stick figures present solely to be killed, under unpleasant and often ludicrous circumstances. Nobility and self-sacrifice are absent, replaced instead by venal and brutish behavior.

If we’re lucky, one person might survive, as in 2011’s odious Sanctum, which raised the bar for acceptable mainstream butchery. Alternatively, nobody survives, as with 2012’s The Grey. Heroic effort proves futile.

Which, in my mind, makes such films rather pointless.

And deplorably mean-spirited.

I’d hate to think this attitude shift reflects our national psyche; if it does, we’re in a lot of trouble.

All of which brings us to Black Sea, ostensibly an action thriller from director Kevin Macdonald, best known for absorbing dramas such as The Last King of Scotland and State of Play. I say “ostensibly” because you shouldn’t believe the promotional slant; this is actually a disaster movie. Which is to say, in the current vogue, a slaughter-fest.

And an insufferably dumb one, at that.

A Most Wanted Man: Superb espionage drama

A Most Wanted Man (2014) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.25.14

John Le Carré continues to write gripping espionage thrillers, and he has the added bonus of seeing many of them translated intelligently to the big screen.

A Most Wanted Man is no exception.

Having brought naive young lawyer Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams) into custody against
her will, German intelligence agent Gunther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman) patiently —
oh, so patiently — explains the folly of her recent behavior, in an effort to get her to reveal
information about the young man she believes needs her help.

This compelling adaptation is helmed by Dutch director Anton Corbijn, who first came to our attention back in 2010 with his disappointing handling of The American, an adaptation of Martin Booth’s A Very Private Gentleman. In fairness, that film’s failure had more to do with its dull, dreary script and a miscast George Clooney’s soulless performance, along with the fact that it was difficult to sympathize with a career assassin possessing few redeeming qualities.

Corbijn obviously learned a lot from that experience, because A Most Wanted Man boasts everything that his previous thriller lacked. For starters, le Carré’s riveting plot is ripped from contemporary headlines and fueled by the moral dilemma that troubles all progressive Western countries: Can we justify subverting established law in the pursuit of terrorists who refuse to “play fair”?

Le Carré’s densely complex novel has been compressed ingeniously by scripter Andrew Bovell, who deftly stripped away an entire set of supporting players (the British) in order to amplify the German setting and characters, primarily the veteran black-ops surveillance agent who has become the heart of this narrative.

That would be Gunther Bachmann, played to ferocious perfection by Philip Seymour Hoffman: the last film he completed before his tragic and untimely death.

To say that Hoffman’s performance is mesmerizing would be gross understatement; the man owns the screen, and this film. The forever disheveled Bachmann is a study in contrasts: a beady-eyed, chain-smoking, whisky-drinking fox who flouts established authority and couldn’t care less about currying favor, and yet possesses investigative skills that cannot be dismissed, even by colleagues and superiors who loathe him.

Hoffman has for quite some time transcended the artifice of performance; he’s one of very few film actors who doesn’t merely “play” a part, but instead fully inhabits the role of moment. That’s particularly true here, where we quickly cease to see Hoffman and instead watch, fascinated, as Gunther Bachmann embraces the sacred trust placed in his hands: to make the world a safer place.

That’s a key line: Watch Hoffman’s body language, and his expression, when he is given the opportunity to toss it back at the individual who first says it to him. Rarely will you see such an impeccably crafted blend of amusement, irony and barely controlled fury.