Trap: Don't fall in it

Trap (2024) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violent content, disturbing images, and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

Every time I suffer through another M. Night Shyamalan fiasco, I exit the theater thinking, I’m done with this guy.

 

And yet ... here I am again.

 

Riley (Ariel Donoghue) is loving every minute of the stadium concert featuring her
favorite musician, particularly since her father (Josh Hartnett) is sharing the
experience with her. But why is the place laden with so many armed cops?

The creative talent he possessed, back in the days of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, has eluded him for many years; since then we’ve endured string of insufferably stupid stories, laden with characters who speak and behave in a manner wholly removed from reality. 

Honestly, he doesn’t even try now; his recent films have been classic examples of the “idiot plot,” which lurches from one scene to the next, only because each and every character behaves like an idiot at all times.

 

Trap is no different ... although, in fairness, one character is allowed to be smart (but I’ll not say who, since that would be a major spoiler).

 

The prologue seems ordinary enough, as doting father Cooper (Josh Hartnett) and his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) attend a sold-out stadium concert starring her OMG all-time-favorite singer/songwriter, Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan). Riley is beside herself with delight, her enthusiasm radiating like the sun’s rays.

 

But the atmosphere is a little off. The presence of armed cops seems way excessive, even in these dangerous times. Once the concert begins, Cooper seems overly obsessed by this heightened security; he’s also a bit OCD and tense. Hartnett plays this well, his eyes open a bit too wide, his cheerfulness oddly forced.

 

While father and daughter prowl the outer foyers during intermission, a merch vendor lets slip the truth: Police and the FBI learned that a notorious serial killer, dubbed The Butcher, would be attending this performance ... so they’ve arrived in force, determined to capture him.

 

(Actually, “in force” is an understatement; it looks like the place is filled with every cop in Philadelphia, along with massive contingents from the neighboring five states.)

 

Okay, let’s unpack this a bit.

 

We’re expected to believe that law enforcement would jeopardize tens of thousands of innocent concertgoers, knowing that a cornered lunatic could maim and kill God knows how many of them?

 

On top of which, given the tone that Shyamalan takes, are we seriously expected to hope that this guy, via guile and ingenious maneuvers, does evade capture? We’re supposed to cheer a maniac who — over time — dismembered 12 earlier victims, leaving body parts strewn all over the landscape? A guy who, as we watch, creates a distraction by permanently disfiguring a fast-food worker, when she gets hit in the face with scalding-hot French fry oil?

 

Sorry, but that’s just sick.

Oppenheimer: Bravura filmmaking

Oppenheimer (2023) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity, nudity and strong sexual content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.21.23

This is, without question, one of the most ambitiously powerful films ever made.

 

Director/scripter Christopher Nolan’s attention to detail, and his flair for dramatic impact, are nothing short of awesome. Viewed on a giant IMAX screen, the result often is overwhelming.

 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers veteran Leslie Groves (Matt Damon, left), tasked with
running the Manhattan Project, is constantly vexed by the demands that come from
head scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy).

This deep dive into the tortured life of J. Robert Oppenheimer also boasts a panoply of well-sculpted characters: many familiar by reputation (or notoriety), others just as fascinating. All are played by an astonishing wealth of top-flight acting talent.

Best of all, Nolan’s adaptation of Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer — published in 2005, and written over a period of 25 years — has the political complexity and narrative fascination that we’ve come to expect from Aaron Sorkin and William Goldman. Jennifer Lame’s pow-pow-pow editing also is terrific.

 

All that said, Nolan does himself no favors with a needlessly outré prologue that blends ostentatiously surreal imagery — representing the anxiety-laden guilt and terror that later plagued Oppenheimer — with Ludwig Göransson’s shrieking loud synth score. It’s much too intentionally weird and off-putting.

 

Göransson’s score and the film’s equally thunderous sound effects remain distracting during the first half-hour, obscuring dialogue while we struggle to absorb the initial character and information dump.

 

Nolan eventually settles comfortably into a multifaceted storytelling structure that cuts back and forth between Oppenheimer’s post-WWII security clearance hearing, held in the spring of 1954; and the June 1959 Senate hearings over whether former Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Lewis Strauss would be confirmed as President Eisenhower’s choice pick for U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

 

The former was a one-sided witch hunt deliberately kept out of the public eye, the latter a headline-generating circus very much in the public eye.

 

Oppenheimer, present throughout his 1954 hearing, reads a statement that opens the film’s third — and primary — narrative focus: his own life and career.

 

These sequences, as Oppenheimer’ history unfolds, are filmed in glorious 65mm color. (It remains true: Well-crafted film stock still is more satisfying — sharper, warmer, more vibrant — than digital.) 

 

The Strauss Senate hearings — an event beyond Oppenheimer’s control, in which he plays almost no role, although his presence is felt throughout — is shot in grainier black-and-white. The result feels more sinister and mysterious; first impressions of the key players ultimately prove misleading, as Nolan craftily moves his film into its third act.

 

But that comes much later.

Wrath of Man: Dismay of viewer

Wrath of Man (2021) • View trailer

Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and relentless violence

By Derrick Bang

I miss Guy Ritchie.

 

I miss the British director who burst onto the scene with snarky crime thrillers such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, populated by arch characters with improbable names such as Hatchet Harry, Barry the Baptist, Franky Four Fingers and Bullet-Tooth Tony, all bumping each other off in ways that would have been appalling, were they not so darkly hilarious.

 

As "H" (Jason Statham, second from left) begins his first day on the job, Bullet
(Holt McCallany, far left) introduces him to Hollow Bob (far right) and
Boy Sweat Dave (Josh Hartnett).

That Guy Ritchie attempted to go mainstream a decade ago, with uneven results, by tampering with pop-culture icons such as Sherlock Holmes and Napoleon Solo (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.)

 

Happily, the original Guy Ritchie returned with 2019’s The Gentleman, another cheeky crime thriller leavened by the writer/director’s caustic sense of humor.

 

Alas, that Guy Ritchie is AWOL in his new film. Wrath of Man hasn’t a single wry chuckle in its dreary 118 minutes; it’s nothing but a grim revenge saga with far too much collateral damage to be enjoyable on any level.

 

It’s not fun, merely tedious. No snark. No attitude.

 

It’s also a disappointing reunion with star Jason Statham, who was introduced — nay, detonated — in Lock, Stock and Snatch. Statham also isn’t fun here; he’s merely a grim rage machine, in an under-developed role that could’ve been played by any number of grade-C action stars.

 

The sole Ritchie touch evident — in a script co-written with Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, and adapted from the 2004 French thriller Le Convoyeur — is the clever, non-linear structure that teases us with partial details, until finally Revealing All during the third act.

 

But that’s hardly enough to hold our interest, when surrounded by so many one-dimensional characters.

 

Maybe the Los Angeles setting is to blame. Ritchie needs to operate in his native Merry Olde, where British wit is an institution. Everybody knows that Los Angeles has no sense of humor.

 

Anyway…

 

After a deadly ambush on one of its armored vehicles, L.A.-based Fortico Securities replaces one of its slain guards with tight-lipped Patrick Hill (Statham), who immediately is dubbed “H.” He barely passes the necessary driving, behavior and shooting tests administered by the veteran Bullet (Holt McCallany), who nonetheless speaks up for the new recruit, despite the doubts of depot manager Terry (Eddie Marsan).

 

Fortico handles the transport of major cash sums that — for one reason or another — can’t be processed via banks (a good option for marijuana dispensaries).