Hustlers: Don't be conned

Hustlers (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for nudity, pervasive sexual content, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Sometimes the elements simply don’t gel.

The whole winds up less than the sum of its parts. And in the case of Hustlers, the parts aren’t that engaging to begin with.

Having fleeced hundreds of thousands of dollars from drugged marks, the gals — from
left, Annabelle (Lili Reinhart), Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), Mercedes (Keke Palmer) and
Destiny (Constance Wu) — treat themselves to some party time.

Director/scripter Lorene Scafaria’s lurid little drama is “inspired by” Jessica Pressler’s lengthy December 2015 feature article in New York magazine. Scafaria actually strip-mined Pressler’s piece quite extensively; in terms of detail, the resulting film is much more authentic to its source than most claiming to be “based on actual events.”

But that’s far from satisfying. The major problem is that both Pressler and Scafaria have hitched their respective narratives to highly unreliable narrators. Pressler wisely adopted a clinical journalist’s approach, putting more faith in details subsequently verified by police investigations.

Scafaria, in contrast, constructed a story inhabited by characters who — if not sympathetic — would at least be interesting.

In this, alas, she failed. 

More than anything else, Hustlers — with its quartet of scheming escorts — is boring. Extremely boring. It also falls into a trap common to films that attempt to illuminate exploitative behavior: It becomes relentlessly exploitative.

On top of which, it’s difficult to ignore the cynicism of this film’s creation. It’s clearly a vanity project for Jennifer Lopez, who — in her parallel role as producer — ensures that Jennifer Lopez (as star) gets plenty of exposure. That descriptor is deliberate; there’s no question that Lopez wants us to be impressed by her 50-year-old body, much the way Demi Moore strutted her stuff in the 1996 adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s Striptease.

So, okay, yes: Lopez is in phenomenal shape. Truly stunning. No argument.

But therein lies another problem: Her presence overwhelms this tawdry saga. It’s always Jennifer Lopez, walking, talking and stalking. At no time does she transcend her own self in order to become Ramona, ringleader of a coterie of cuties who graduate from pole twirling and lap dancing to the unpalatably larcenous — and, for a time, highly successful — fleecing of wealthy Wall Street jerks.

Jason Bourne: One helluva ride

Jason Bourne (2016) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense action and violence, and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.29.16

Wow.

Director Paul Greengrass certainly hasn’t lost any of his juice. This newest installment in the Bourne franchise is relentless: It hits the ground running, never lets up for two full hours, and is bookended by a pair of spectacular action sequences.

After learning that Nicky (Julia Stiles) has obtained proof of CIA black-ops programs that
relate to his past, Bourne (Matt Damon) arranges to meet her at an Athens plaza, where
they hope to blend into a melee between rioting civilians and local police officers.
Unfortunately, this chaos does nothing to stop the efforts of pursuing CIA teams.

I wouldn’t have thought Greengrass ever could top the mano a mano melees in 2004’s Bourne Supremacy, but he has ... and then some. Jason Bourne is a taut, breathtaking experience, its giddy momentum the result of equally fine work by editor Christopher Rouse, a longtime Greengrass colleague (and Academy Award winner, for 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum).

Greengrass and Rouse also collaborated on the timely, ripped-from-the-headlines script, which references the “safety or security?” argument at the heart of the recent spat between Apple Inc. and the FBI. The players have been altered to avoid lawsuits, but there’s no question which side of the fence our filmmakers occupy. Having navigated conspiracy-laden waters for more than a decade, Greengrass clearly doesn’t trust government agencies to have their citizens’ best interests — or privacy — at heart.

And with paranoia running rampant these days, this film definitely captures the national zeitgeist.

When last seen, Bourne (Matt Damon) had successfully back-tracked his actual identity, along with those responsible for the CIA training that transformed him into a hardened assassin. The victory was pyrrhic, as it left him without friends or a country. Convinced that the CIA would have him “erased,” he simply vanished.

Having remained off the grid for nearly a decade, Bourne has become a ragged, rootless shell, subsisting on meager earnings from underground bare-knuckle boxing matches. Damon’s grim features are weary and despondent during this introductory montage: the quiet despair of a man lacking purpose.

Then, suddenly, a blast from the past: He gets a message from former CIA colleague Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), who — also long on the run — has joined a hacking collective with the goal of exposing CIA dirty tricks. Her quest has borne fruit: 30 years’ worth of black ops files that include Operation Treadstone — which “created” Bourne — and something new called “Iron Hand.”

Even more damning, Nicky has uncovered additional details pertaining to Bourne’s actual identity — David Webb — along with the strong suggestion that his father, Richard (Gregg Henry), was directly involved with Treadstone. This revelation lends context to another of Bourne’s still fragmented memories: something having to do with a long-ago lunchtime meeting with his father.

Closed Circuit: They're watching us!

Closed Circuit (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity and brief violence
By Derrick Bang

Nobody does an edgy, paranoid espionage thriller better than the British.

No doubt it comes from living under the unblinking eyes of all those surveillance cameras. (Big Brother, indeed!)

With their supposedly slam-dunk case having gone increasingly pear-shaped, Martin
(Eric Bana) and Claudia (Rebecca Hall) wonder about their next step. Trouble is,
they shouldn't even be a "they"; because of the nature of this terrorism trial, Martin
and Claudia aren't supposed to communicate ... even when each begins to worry
about pernicious surveillance.

Way back in the day, Closed Circuit would have been a tidy little B-entry, designated as the bottom-of-the-bill companion to some prestige A production. The irony is that many of those so-called B-films were far more entertaining than their big-budget cousins.

The same can be said for Closed Circuit, which outshines several of this summer’s disappointing blockbusters: better acting and directing, and a vastly superior script.

And yet, sadly, it probably won’t make a dime. Getting released immediately prior to the Labor Day weekend is akin to television’s Saturday evening kiss-of-death timeslot: Nobody will notice.

That’s a shame, because scripter Steven Knight definitely knows his way around this genre, having previously dazzled us with his twisty plots for 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things and 2007’s Eastern Promises. This guy can write; he has a gift for putting ordinary people into extraordinary situations, while avoiding the burst of brilliant resourcefulness that turn American action stars into invulnerable, lone wolf superheroes.

When the two protagonists in this narrative eye each other bleakly, during a calm between storms, and acknowledge that there’s no way to put this particular Humpty Dumpty together again — no successful exit to the catastrophe — we know they’re right. The situation is beyond salvation, beyond their control.

And, maddeningly, it always has been.

Closed Circuit — marvelous triple-entendre title, by the way — opens its ripped-from-the-headlines story with a terrorist attack at a busy London market. With 120 civilians dead and the British public screaming for justice, an anonymous tip leads police to one surviving member of the suspected terrorist cell: Farroukh Erdogan (Denis Moschitto).

Preparations begin for what promises to be the trial of the century.

Silver Linings Playbook: A heart of gold

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: R, for sexual candor, brief nudity and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.23.12

Mental illness isn’t funny, and — thankfully — Hollywood has matured past the point of believing otherwise; standard-issue “loony-bin comedies” have gone the way of lovable drunks. When cinema tackles the topic these days, it’s generally with warmth and compassion, as with (for example) Adam and The Soloist.

Although Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) agrees to help Pat (Bradley Cooper) win back his
ex-wife, this assistance comes at a price: Pat must agree to train with Tiffany for an
upcoming dance competition. Needless to say, this is not an endeavor with which
Pat feels comfortable...

But every individual’s life is equal parts hilarity and heartbreak, which also goes for people battling emotional disorders. The key is to craft a story that acknowledges but doesn’t exploit the situation, at which point we can comfortably laugh with, and not at, the characters; the marvelous Benny & Joon is an excellent example.

All of which brings us to Silver Linings Playbook, directed and scripted by David O. Russell (The Fighter, Flirting with Disaster), and based on Matthew Quick’s debut 2008 novel. Russell’s cinematic approach can be quite eclectic, and he has a tendency to drift toward the heightened wackiness of Wes Anderson, but with lesser results; happily, Russell mostly eschews such tendencies here.

At first blush, his approach to Silver Linings Playbook is as tense, jittery and nervous as its badly damaged protagonist, Pat Solatano (Bradley Cooper), whom we meet as his mother (Jacki Weaver, as Dolores) checks him out of a state institution. The details emerge gradually; Pat’s eight-month stay resulted from a plea bargain that kept him out of jail after he came close to beating a man to death (with cause, it might be argued).

Pat has anger management issues, which is blindingly obvious from the moment we lay eyes on him. He grew up with undiagnosed bipolar mood swings, somehow holding things together long enough to finish school, obtain a teaching credential and marry ... but then the inner demons became too much.

Now, as we confront Pat’s manic ups and downs — Cooper so explosively forceful, so potential dangerous, that we can’t take our eyes off him — his mother’s optimistic decision to bring him home seems naïve, perhaps even hazardous. We sweat every scene, wondering if Pat will go off like a time bomb.

Pat is the worst-case scenario: perceptive enough to recognize that the meds that control his symptoms also diminish his ability to experience any joy. He’s required by law to take the meds — a condition of his release — but he doesn’t want to, because he knows that he loses himself. He prefers, as a result, to rely on a daily regimen of mental and physical exercise that seeks the “silver lining” in any given situation.