A Working Man: Needs more work

A Working Man (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for drug content, constant profanity and relentless strong and gory violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

As demonstrated in last year’s The Beekeeper, blend director David Ayer and star Jason Statham, and the result is hyper-violence.

 

The calm before the storm: Jenny Garcia (Arianna Rivas) goes over construction project
details with Levon Cole (Jason Statham, right), while her doting father (Michael Peña)
watches approvisngly.

Although this new film doesn’t feature a death quite as appalling as The Beekeeper’s notorious off-the-unfinished-bridge sequence, there’s no shortage of baddies getting pummeled, shot, stabbed, sliced, diced, defenestrated, blown away and blown up by all manner of knives, guns, grenades and makeshift bombs.

Along with Statham’s signature karate, wushu, Wing Chun kung fu, Brazilian jiu jitsu and kickboxing.

 

At best, the result is a vicious, violent and vicarious guilty pleasure, but there’s no denying the satisfaction of watching deplorable villains get what they deserve. And goodness, scripters Ayer, Chuck Dixon and Sylvester Stallone came up with a bevy of baddies: Russian Mafia lords and goons, opportunistic mid-level snakes, human traffickers and a squadron of biker thugs.

 

Can one man really take on such a barrage, and live to tell the tale?

 

Silly question. We’re talking about Jason Statham.

 

The title credits montage reveals that Levon Cade (Statham) served as a member of the British Royal Guard during some nasty military action. In the present day, he has become a construction foreman employed by Joe Garcia (Michael Peña), who runs the operation alongside wife Carla (Noemi Gonzalez) and college-age daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas).

 

Aside from being haunted by his former military actions, Levon also is blamed by his wealthy ex-father-in-law, Jordan (Richard Heap, truly unpleasant), for his late wife’s suicide. To that end, Jordan seeks full custody of his adorable adolescent granddaughter, Merry (Isla Gie), because he sees Levon as a PTSD-riddled ex-soldier unfit to raise a child.

 

This is why Levon has been sleeping in his truck outside the construction site each night, and subsisting on home-cooked meals supplied by the Garcias and other sympathetic construction workers, while saving money to battle Jordan in court.

 

Set-ups of this nature are key to Statham’s popularity, because — as is the case here — he often plays troubled, blue-collar guys with a sense of honor, and an unwillingness to bow down to any sort of opportunistic scoundrels determined to screw regular folks.

A Million Miles Away: Earthbound

A Million Miles Away (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for no particular reason

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.22.23

José Hernández’s remarkably impressive life and career definitely warrant a suitably exhilarating film.

 

Sadly, this one isn’t it.

 

José Hernández (Michael Peña, center), newly hired as an electrical and computer
engineer at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, finds that his input
is neither requested nor appreciated by his white colleagues. During meetings, he often
doesn't even get a seat at the table.

The script — by Bettina Gilois, Hernán Jiménez and director Alejandra Márquez Abella, based on Hernández’s 2012 autobiography — jarringly skips massive chunks of his early years, and is quite sloppy with respect to the passage of time. It’s also frequently hard to determine what year it is, and when various things take place.

Die-hard NASA fans will be able to fill in the gaps, but casual viewers will wonder if key scenes wound up on the cutting-room floor.

 

That’s a shame, because all the performances are strong and heartfelt, particularly Michael Peña’s starring role as Hernández. The film also excels at its depiction of family dynamics, and the strong ties binding him with his parents, his cousin Beto (Bobby Soto), and (eventually) his wife Adela (Rosa Salazar) and her family.

 

That said, it could be argued that Abella spends too much time on these relationships, at the expense of a more thorough depiction of how José gets from A to B, and then to C and D.

 

The story begins in the late 1960s, as the families of 7-year-old José (endearingly played in these early scenes by Juan Pablo Monterrubio) and Beto (Leonardo Granados) divide their lives between home in La Piedad, Michoacán, Mexico, and work each year as farmworkers, moving from one California town to another. Education is scattered and inconsistent, as the boys shuttle from one school to the next.

 

On top of which, they’re often both exhausted, sometimes — in a poignant scene — falling asleep on their school desks.

 

Even so, young José has a thirst for learning, and receives encouragement from a teacher (Michelle Krusiec) who sees a spark in his eager gaze. “You’re a force of nature,” she tells him. “Nothing will stop you.”

 

José’s father Salvador (Julio César Cedillo) also has a telling encounter with a guidance counselor. “A tree doesn’t like to be uprooted and planted somewhere else every few months,” she points out. “It will grow, but it won’t thrive.”

The Mule: Quietly powerful

The Mule (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for frequent profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.4.19

Clint Eastwood isn’t merely a savvy judge of good material; he also has lucked into projects that required a bit of patience.

After being confronted by a highway patrol officer, Earl (Clint Eastwood, left) must think
quickly, having just realized that the unassuming satchel in the back of his truck contains
a considerable quantity of cocaine.

He famously waited years to make 1992’s Unforgiven, because he wanted to be old enough to take the lead character. Nobody could have expected him to pull that trick off twice, and yet here he is again: age-appropriate for the starring role in The Mule.

At 88 years young, he once again stepped both behind and in front of the camera; the result is a thoroughly engaging character study, leavened with occasional dollops of dry humor … which is unexpected, given the subject matter.

Screenwriter Nick Schenk previously worked with Eastwood a decade ago, on Gran Torino. It, too, concerned a feisty senior citizen betrayed by progress, and stubbornly stuck in a past that has drained between his fingers. It’s an archetype that Eastwood could play in his sleep at this point, and yet he brings freshness to his portrayal of Earl Stone, a 90-year-old horticulturalist-turned-unlikely courier (“mule”) for a Mexican drug cartel.

Schenk’s script is inspired by New York Times journalist Sam Dolnick’s lengthy — and mesmerizing — profile of Leo Sharp, who was 87 on Oct. 21, 2011, when he was arrested by Detroit DEA agents. The five duffel bags in the back of his pickup truck contained 104 kilos of cocaine. And this was very, very far from his first run for the Sinaloa cartel.

Eastwood and Schenk wisely embraced only the crucial details of Sharp’s saga, preferring to develop a more intimate fictitious subplot with poignant highs and lows (thereby avoiding tiresome accusations about the absence of 100 percent accuracy, which have dogged Green Book and other excellent films of the past few years).

We meet Earl during a brief flashback, at the peak of his career as a farmer and flower breeder: a horticultural rock star whose efforts are prized by attendees at daylily conventions, who cluster around his booth to obtain free samples. But this fame has come at a price: He has chosen the adulation of strangers over a meaningful family life.

Flash-forward to (more or less) the present day, as Earl reluctantly abandons the now-foreclosed farm that has been his primary love for so long. As with so many other business models, the Internet has destroyed individual breeders and suppliers; Earl lacked the willingness to adapt, and now stands destitute.

Worse yet, he’s been absent far too much to garner any sympathy from his long-estranged wife, Mary (Dianne Wiest), and their adult daughter, Iris (Alison Eastwood). His granddaughter Ginny (Taissa Farmiga) is more tolerant and sweetly loving, insisting on having a relationship with him, warts and all. But Ginny is about to marry, and Earl’s sudden appearance is more than unwelcome; it intensifies the fury of Mary and Iris, angered both by his long estrangement, and his failure to honor a promise to pay for the wedding.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Diminutive delight

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for sci-fi action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.6.18

OK, this character is growing on me.

If only a bit.

With FBI agents and criminal mercenaries determined to snatch her father's technology,
Hope (Evangeline Lilly) prepares for battle as the Wasp, while Scott (Paul Rudd)
reluctantly suits up as Ant-Man.

2015’s Ant-Man was a train wreck, due to its insufferably smug tone and an over-reliance on Three Stooges-style farce: a rare miscalculation in the carefully plotted Marvel Universe franchise.

This sequel, having nowhere to go but up, wisely executed a course correction. Star Paul Rudd is less haughty, and therefore more sympathetic; co-star Evangeline Lilly’s considerably expanded role is a welcome change; the characters’ size-shifting abilities are put to much better use; returning director Peyton Reed toned down the gratuitous slapstick; and — definitely a relief — the core plot is grounded in a manner wholly removed from the universe-shattering consequences of recent Marvel entries.

The villains here have sensible real-world motives: greed and self-preservation.

Best of all, the script — fine-tuned by no fewer than five credited writers, along with (no doubt) more behind the scenes — blends the obligatory action with plenty of larkish banter, all well delivered at a slow-burn tempo.

Points, as well, to whoever thought to reference 1954’s Them!

All this said, there’s still a sense that The Powers That Be don’t quite know what to do with this character: that he’s a second-string joke not granted the respect that his abilities should demand. Again, this may be down to Rudd — a credited co-scripter — who rarely looks like he’s taking any of this seriously.

The same could be said of Chris Pratt’s handling of Peter Quill, in the adjacent Guardians of the Galaxy series … but Pratt has a better acting range, and is a helluva lot more charming.

Anyway…

The “busted” Scott Lang (Rudd) remains under house arrest, thanks to his illegal alliance with Captain America, in 2016’s Civil War. Scott is a mere three days away from being freed from the ankle monitor that prevents outer-world quality time with beloved daughter Cassie (cute-as-a-button Abby Ryder Fortson). Happily, relations with ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) and her new companion Paxton (Bobby Cannavale) have improved; they’re now sympathetic to Scott’s plight.

A Wrinkle in Time: Crumpled beyond recognition

A Wrinkle in Time (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.9.18

Many reasons exist for this book’s failure to be adapted to the big screen, during the half-century since its publication in 1962, all of which director Ava DuVernay and scripters Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell attempted to ignore, evade or surmount.

Their well-intentioned effort clearly is heartfelt; it’s just as clearly a failure.

Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), younger brother of Meg (Storm Reid), has the ability to
"know things." Ergo, he's not surprised by the unexpected appearance of the decidedly
unusual Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon).

Madeleine L’Engle’s Newbery Medal-winning fantasy was quite unusual for its time: a loquacious children’s novel that blends discussions of quantum physics and upper-echelon mathematics with a Christian subtext likely inspired by C.S. Lewis. It’s a “head” story, with much of the narrative probing the thoughts and interactions of its protagonist, who — also quite unusual, for its time — is a young teenage girl.

That latter detail no doubt has made the book more attractive to today’s potential filmmakers, and I guess DuVernay can be applauded for bravery. But her handling of A Wrinkle in Time is ponderous, boring and weird, with characters too frequently placing so much weight on flowery speeches, that I’m surprised the words don’t sink beneath the story’s many unusual landscapes.

Much of the acting is stiff and clumsy, and Ramin Djawadi’s relentlessly maudlin orchestral score — which never, ever lets up — makes one want to scream for relief.

DuVernay practically begs her audience to regard this film as Momentously Important, and — needless to say — that’s the death of successful drama. (Indeed, she did beg, during the uncomfortably awkward on-camera appeal that preceded Tuesday evening’s preview screening.)

The many disappointing performances notwithstanding, Storm Reid is an exception. She stands tall as the saga’s heroine, Meg Murry, a brilliant but self-conscious social outcast who has come to believe that she’s nowhere near the best version of herself. Since that insecurity is worn like a shroud, she’s naturally a target for mean-spirited classmates.

Reid handles this role with delicacy, her flickering, downcast eyes often half-concealed by a hairstyle she wears as a shield. She blends the awkwardness of departing childhood with the coltish grace of impending womanhood, her face often on the verge of tears that Meg likely couldn’t explain. At the same time, Reid exudes the perception and ferocious intelligence at the core of this girl. She’s a marvelous heroine.

Adolescent angst notwithstanding, Meg has good reason for her unrelenting despair: She grieves the loss of her father (Chris Pine), a scientist who simply ... vanished ... four years earlier. He and his equally brilliant wife (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) — they’re never given first names, and are addressed simply as Mother and Father — had been working on a high-falutin’ concept of instantaneous space travel via what’s dubbed a “tesseract.”

12 Strong: An enthralling, fact-based war drama

12 Strong (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for war violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang

It’s easy to see why Jerry Bruckheimer and his co-producers were drawn to author/journalist Doug Stanton’s 2009 non-fiction best-seller. The title alone is an eyebrow-lifter:

Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan.

Despite his best efforts, Capt. Mitch Nelson (Chris Hemsworth, left) has trouble gaining
the trust of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum (Navid Negahban), who doubts that such a
young American, who lacks "killer eyes," can become a true warrior.

Stanton’s book details the jaw-dropping, just-then-declassified exploits of the 12-man Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595 Green Berets team, one of the first American units sent to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack. (Bruckheimer obtained the book in galley format, prior to publication.)

This big-screen adaptation, saddled with the appropriately gung-ho title of 12 Strong, is a suspenseful and riveting depiction of the events that took place during the 23 days that the ODA 595 team was “in country.” Director Nicolai Fuglsig, scripters Ted Tally and Peter Craig, and a solid cast appropriately honor the actual men, while delivering a thoroughly entertaining film that frequently feels like a slice of old-style Hollywood, while building to one helluva climax.

Indeed, this film stands tall alongside “impossible odds” classics such as Seven Samurai, Blackhawk Down, Saving Private Ryan and, most particularly, 1964’s Zulu. The latter also focuses on the mis-matched resources — albeit the other way ’round — that prompted this famous on-site quote from Afghanistan’s Capt. Will Summers: “It was as if the Jetsons had met the Flintstones.”

Add more than a passing nod to Lawrence of Arabia, and you’ve got a genuinely awe-inspiring war epic.

Tally and Craig have changed the names, and no doubt other details have been amplified for cinematic impact. But the core mission, the manner in which it went down, and the outcome are impressively faithful, and why not? This saga was made for splashy, big-screen treatment.

The drama is anchored solidly by Chris Hemsworth, who has emerged as one of cinema’s most stalwart and charismatic actors. His rise is quite impressive: only six years since an attention-getting supporting turn in The Cabin in the Woods, and now sliding with equal persuasiveness from the comic book larkishness of Thor and Ghostbusters, to more serious dramatic fare such as In the Heart of the Sea and, now, 12 Strong.

We believe it, utterly, when one of Nelson’s men tells him, with complete sincerity, “I’d follow you anywhere.” Hemsworth’s Nelson radiates that level of command charisma.

Collateral Beauty: Only mildly appealing

Collateral Beauty (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for thematic elements and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Overt sentimentality is a tough sell in this cynical era, so director David Frankel is to be congratulated: For the most part, his film manages to be sincerely poignant, without sliding too much into eye-rolling schmaltz.

While trying to finish a quiet, isolated dinner, Howard (Will Smith) is surprised — and
quickly annoyed — to be confronted by the personification of Love (Keira Knightley),
unaware that she's actually an actress hired to deceive him.

Allan Loeb’s original script is an audacious blend of It’s a Wonderful Life and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, reconfigured for modern times. That’s risky for all sorts of reasons, most notably because “borrowing” from such beloved classics invites comparisons that make most such endeavors fall short. Whether this update succeeds will be up to each viewer’s tolerance for Frank Capra-style melodrama (known as “Capra-corn,” back in the day).

This also is an unusual effort from a writer best known for slapstick moron comedies such as The Switch, The Dilemma and (God help us) Here Comes the Boom. But Loeb apparently has a more serious side, and he wrestles with some fairly weighty concepts here. It’s easy to see why the result piqued the interest of star Will Smith, who has demonstrated a fondness for holiday-timed melodramas such as The Pursuit of Happyness and Seven Pounds.

Smith is very good at morose angst; he suffers persuasively, radiating anguish with an intensity that can be painful to watch. We definitely feel for the guy, in such storylines, and — as a given narrative progresses — we become invested in his search for salvation, closure, relief or whatever else seems just beyond his reach.

He stars here as Howard, a charismatic New York advertising executive with a flair for inspiring both clients and staff. We meet him giving a warm pep talk to the employees of his successful firm: a moment enjoyed equally by his longtime business partners — and friends — Whit (Edward Norton), Claire (Kate Winslet) and Simon (Michael Peña).

But that was then. Flash-forward a few years later, as the story actually begins, and personal tragedy — the death of his young daughter — has reduced Howard to a disheveled, morose and perpetually silent shadow of his former self. He shows up to work each day solely to build elaborate domino mazes, ultimately knocking down each creation, then starting another. The business, left without its captain, has been sliding into oblivion.

Whit, Claire and Simon don’t know what to do. Every means of engaging Howard has been ignored or rebuffed, and — because he owns controlling shares of their company — they can’t even act on a friendly takeover offer. (We assume it’s friendly. Loeb’s script is a bit sketchy on certain important details: a failing that becomes more noticeable as the story proceeds.)

The Martian: Out-of-this-world suspense

The Martian (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

The most impressive aspect of 1995’s Apollo 13 lay in the tension that director Ron Howard generated, despite our certain awareness of the film’s outcome.

After all, history had spoken: Everybody knew that the astronauts got back safely. So, since Howard couldn’t concoct any suspense from the what, he concentrated on the how ... as in, how in the world did they survive?

Having realized that his only hope for survival involves the long-term rationing of his
supplies — along with figuring out some what of "creating" more food and water — Mark
(Matt Damon) begins a careful record of his days on Mars.

There’s something enticingly absorbing about watching engineers work a particularly difficult problem. In the realm of fiction, this is why caper thrillers and the Mission: Impossible franchise remain so popular: We love to see unworkable puzzles solved via triumphant bursts of ingenuity.

No surprise, then, that director Ridley Scott’s handling of The Martian is 141 minutes of nail-biting anxiety. Andy Weir’s 2011 novel (which has its own amazing history) is a crackerjack sci-fi thriller to begin with, and Scott and scripter Drew Goddard have pumped it up with an engaging blend of quiet agitation and gallows humor.

Best of all, this is smart science-fiction: a rigorously technical narrative that we rarely get from a Hollywood factory that equates the genre with the zap-gun antics of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy (which, let’s face it, are — at best — equal parts sci-fi and fantasy). In the literary realm, Weir’s book is regarded as “hard” science of the sort written by Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Such stories are harder to bring to the big screen, because they don’t grant actors many opportunities for showboating or melodramatic interpersonal dynamics. But exceptions do exist — 2009’s Moon comes to mind — and if Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman can generate unease from plodding investigative journalism, then surely talented filmmakers can do the same with a clever sci-fi premise. Right?

Indeed. To give further credit where due, Scott has packed his film with an impressive cast, assigning strong actors to even the smallest of roles. Top marks go to star Matt Damon, who anchors most of the film with a compelling, deeply expressive, one-man performance on par with what we’ve seen from Tom Hanks (Cast Away) and Robert Redford (All Is Lost).

The story, then:

The time is an unspecified point in the near future, after NASA has successfully sent a six-person mission to Mars. The Ares 3 crew has established a good-sized working habitat within the Acidalia Planitia plain, and has spent some number of days collecting samples and conducting experiments.

Ant-Man: A huge disappointment

Ant-Man (2015) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence and some rather nasty peril
By Derrick Bang

Well, it was inevitable: Mighty Marvel finally stumbled.

This film’s problems are numerous, but the largest issue is one of tone; director Peyton Reed, apparently adopting 1989’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids as his template, has emphasized slapstick sight gags and comic relief supporting characters to a point that pretty well destroys any of this story’s potential drama.

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd, center) listens attentively as Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) explains
the many hazards likely to be encountered during a clandestine assault on his own
company's research labs. For these reasons and many others, Hank's daughter, Hope
(Evangeline Lilly), believes Scott wholly wrong for the task.

The nadir is a climactic duel to the death between miniscule characters, which takes place within a child’s tabletop train set: a sequence that absolutely, positively doesn’t work on any level. And then, just to make a bad idea even worse, Reed punctuates this clash with an unexpectedly gigantic Thomas the Tank Engine, its enormous plastic eyes bouncing back and forth in dismay.

Just as mine were doing.

Reed’s sledge-hammer efforts at comedy are bothersome, but — in fairness — he can’t be blamed for trying to make the best of a bad situation. Ant-Man has been a troubled production for years, during a lengthy gestation in the hands of British writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End, among others), whose sly, subversive brand of humor certainly would have been better than what we wound up with here.

But the project was ripped from his hands at the last moment, the script subsequently re-written by Adam McKay and star Paul Rudd. McKay is responsible for numerous Will Ferrell projects, notably Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and its sequel, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and this year’s Get Hard. I submit that Ferrell’s favorite scripter can’t, by definition, be right for anything taking place in Marvel’s ambitious film universe.

So: What were Marvel and Disney thinking?

Rudd’s meddlesome hand is equally evident. The star clearly shaped the script to fit the insufferable smugness that has become his go-to screen persona, rather than — as always should be the case — modulating his performance to suit the character’s needs. But the latter undoubtedly would require a level of acting beyond Rudd’s capabilities, and thus we’re stuck with his usual lackadaisical swanning from one scene to the next.

Rudd simply doesn’t seem to care about this character, or indeed the entire film. Ergo, why should we?

The core story follows the broad strokes established during several decades in the Marvel comic book universe, with genius scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) having perfected a process that allows him to shrink to ant-size, while maintaining his molecular density in order to (among other things) deliver full-strength punches. Along the way, he also developed the means to communicate with ants, and thus can command massive insect armies to help take out nefarious villains in his guise as Ant-Man.

But all that was years ago. Wary of the military applications contemplated by Howard Stark (John Slattery) and his weasel corporate associate Mitchell Carson (Martin Donovan, suitably smarmy), Pym retreats into seclusion. And since Ant-Man’s brief “career” remained under the public radar, the very notion of such a superhero has become little more than an urban myth.

Fury: Much too angry

Fury (2014) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and relentless battlefield violence and gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.17.14

Classic World War II movies, absent the cynicism and despair that later infected so many big-screen depictions of the Vietnam quagmire, laced their stories with honor, chivalry, moral fortitude and an absolute respect for the chain of command.

Frightened and badly out of his depth, Norman (Logan Lerman, left) can't imagine that he'd
be of any use to the Sherman tank team led by Wardaddy (Brad Pitt). But this battle-weary
sergeant knows how to inspire his men, even a callow newcomer like Norman, and soon
the kid is executing Nazi scum with the enthusiasm of a seasoned warrior.

The Nazi enemy may have behaved like vicious, amoral swine, but our stalwart boys worked together with courage and righteousness, guided by the innovative strategies of battlefield stalwarts whose ingenuity helped trump sometimes superior forces.

This classic archetype continued for decades thereafter, building to modern classics such as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and HBO’s lavish miniseries, Band of Brothers, both of which gained their power from a rich tapestry of characters about whom we cared very, very deeply.

It would appear that this cinematic model has fallen out of favor.

Writer/director David Ayer’s Fury presents the latter days of the European campaign as the equivalent of an inner-city street fight between drug gangs, with the grunts on our side no better than the animals wearing the Nazi cross. The so-called “good guys” in this unpalatable story seem modeled on the thugs who tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib; early on, in fact, we’re granted a sequence of American GIs behaving just that badly with a captured German soldier.

It’s interesting — carrying this observation even further — that this story’s sole act of genuine kindness, of benevolent altruism, is offered by one of those aforementioned Nazi monsters. We could call it dramatic irony, but I’m not willing to give Ayer that much credit.

Three of the five primary characters in this film are one-dimensional brutes granted only a hiccup of actual characterization: superficial affectations implied solely by nicknames such as Gordo, Bible and Coon-Ass.

(Just in passing, I’d love to declare a moratorium on movies with characters who never seem to have real names, but instead are granted stupid monikers better suited to comic book villains. It has become a tiresome and frankly irritating cliché.)

Our other two protagonists, while graced with a bit more presence and personality, aren’t that much more likable ... but we eventually bond with them, to a degree, solely because we’ve gotta care about somebody in this mean-spirited mess.

And “mean-spirited” is this film’s prevailing tone: no surprise, since Ayer is the enraged scripter of nihilistic cop dramas such as Training Day and End of Watch, and earlier this year wrote and directed the offensively deplorable Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, Sabotage. Ayer clearly doesn’t think much of his fellow man, and a little of that contemptuous vitriol goes a long way.

Given this new film’s 134-minute length, that’s a very long way.

Gangster Squad: Cheeky, audacious portrait of 1950s Los Angeles

Gangster Squad (2013) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for nonstop violence, gore and profanity
By Derrick Bang

It’s a can’t-miss formula that goes back to the days of vintage Hollywood Westerns: the few against the many, particularly in a righteous cause.

Electronics nerd Conwell Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi, center) overhears some delectable
information from the bug he planted in mobster Mickey Cohen's home, while squad
members John O'Mara (Josh Brolin, left) and Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) determine
how best to use this revelation.

This already engaging dynamic was enhanced by turning the underdog heroes into rag-tag misfits, with the genre expanding to include war and crime (or the war on crime). Some of the best examples have become cinema classics, such as The Magnificent Seven — and its forbearer, The Seven Samurai — and The Dirty Dozen. My own list of personal favorites includes Where Eagles Dare.

Director Brian De Palma upgraded an early 1960s TV show and brought Sean Connery an Academy Award as the moral center of 1987’s The Untouchables. A decade later, that film’s 1930s Chicago setting shifted to 1950s Los Angeles with director Lee Tamahori’s stylish handling of Mulholland Falls. Even post-WWII crime thrillers weren’t quite this noir.

All of which brings us to director Ruben Fleischer’s energetic Gangster Squad, based on Paul Lieberman’s book of the same title, and adapted with snap by Will Beall, who employs the same crisp sparkle he has brought to several episodes of television’s Castle. The dialogue sizzles, the dames are delectable, the actors chew their lines with the snarling fury of a hungry lion tearing into a steak, and the action has the rat-a-tat ferocity of the Tommy guns wielded on both sides.

Although Lieberman brought veteran journalistic skills to his well-researched account of gangster Mickey Cohen’s attempt to seize control of Los Angeles during the 1950s, this film probably bears no more relation to actual history than Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Some of the names will be recognized, but the execution here feels more like Mission: Impossible and L.A. Confidential, with a soupçon of 21st century sass.

And — sad to say — plenty of violence and some unnecessary gore. The story may demand a vicious streak, but must we really watch a man torn in half after being chained to two cars accelerating in opposite directions? Surely that image could have been left to our imaginations, rather than splattered across the screen ... along with the yummy glimpse of wild dogs tearing into the remains.

But then, Fleischer also is the gleeful maniac who upped the snark count in walking dead flicks, with 2009’s Zombieland, so I guess it’s in his genes. And, in fairness, everything that follows the aforementioned dismemberment — a prologue, of sorts, to set the mood — involves somewhat more palatable gunplay. And a few knives. And some acid. And ... well, you get the idea.

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.