Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
October’s an interesting month at the movies. The things you can see are all over the place in terms of tone and style and star power. These aren’t the big guns, the holiday movies the studios are really counting on. These are the orphans, the movies the studios sort of don’t know what to do with. These are the movies that some people will probably like quite a bit, but that not everyone’s going to enjoy. By coincidence, there are three movies coming out this month that can broadly be called “crime films,” and all three are worth some discussion for different reasons.
SLEUTH
I don’t think I’d quite call the original 1972 version of SLEUTH a classic. It’s a little creaky, a little too stagey, and it takes two and a half hours to tell a story that really, really doesn’t need that sort of time to do it justice. But none of that really matters, since the whole reason to watch the film is the duet between Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine. At the time, they represented radically different camps of acting style, and pitting them against each other represented what was happening to the British film industry at the time. That’s what made it really exciting... watching Olivier and Caine trade chops as if the future of cinema depended on the outcome.
On paper, it must have seemed like a great idea to have Michael Caine play the Olivier character in a remake, pitting him against Jude Law, who actually already had the cheek to play another iconic Caine role in a remake, and the rest of the pedigree for this film looks pretty damn good as well. Kenneth Branagh directing, Harold Pinter writing the new screenplay... you really can’t ask for a better resume. But just putting big names together doesn’t guarantee creative chemistry will happen, and in this case, I’m not sure what anyone thought they were trying to accomplish with this retelling. Whatever it was, they missed the target. It plays as a near-complete misfire, two actors desperately trying to find a reason to do what they’re doing.
At this point, I almost feel bad for Jude Law. He’s a good actor, and given the right supporting role, he’s been very good in much of what he’s done. But he’s not a movie star, and for whatever reason, people still treat him like he’s capable of carrying a movie. Here, he’s nowhere near as emblematic of a particular generation of film actors as Caine was in the original, and he seems too deferential to Caine in general to be effective in this role. I don’t think Law’s got the weight to go toe-to-toe with Caine in this version... even in his 70s, Caine is still a fairly powerful figure, absolutely in command of every scene in this film, always setting the tone for each movement of the piece. Law’s keeping up with him, but that’s the problem... SLEUTH is supposed to be a game, a back and forth, all about one-upsmanship. But if it’s not two equals, then it doesn’t work. And watching this, realizing that they weren’t quite toe-to-toe... that’s when I sort of cringed on Law’s behalf. It’s tough to watch someone whose work you like sort of flounder, in over their head.
I have to say, though... if I have one major problem with the film, it’s the adaptation by Pinter. It’s too clever by half, and it strikes me as almost arrogant. After all, SLEUTH was a huge mainstream hit on stage before it was ever a film, at a time when Pinter was working in “serious” theater, and it must have chapped his ass to see the big broad obvious murder-mystery rewarded so greatly. Writing this streamlined tech-savvy 21st-century reinvention of SLEUTH must have seemed sort of delicious to him, and the second half in particular is such a deconstructionist reaction to the Mankiewicz film that it forgets to entertain. Pinter’s so determined to twist the original work that he fails to build a conclusion worth the build-up. He introduces some gay subtext that I thought was a complete dead-end creatively. It’s confused and smarmy more than anything. Branagh directs the living shit out of the film, in that way he always seems to do. He uses security cameras as his way into the film, and the visual style’s built out of that idea, but it’s all a little bit too busy, too interested with how it looks and less interested in what’s being said. SLEUTH was never deep, but in their efforts to class it up, Branagh and Pinter have robbed it of what made it worthwhile.
This is in limited release in some markets right now.
WE OWN THE NIGHT
SLEUTH is a Sony Pictures Classics release, aimed squarely at an adult market, so it seems odd that they’d release it the same weekend that Sony released WE OWN THE NIGHT, also squarely aimed at the adult market. I read an interview where Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix talked about being attached to this film for the past eight years while writer/director James Gray worked to get it made. I admire the tenacity that takes. Unfortunately, I don’t think it translates to a film that accurately reflects that degree of passion. It’s overly familiar fare, and it all seems sort of mechanical. Knowing this was Gray’s dream project just makes it harder to write a review as indifferent as this one.
WE OWN THE NIGHT is the story of the Grusinsky family, pitched against the backdrop of the world of the NYPD. Burt Grusinsky (Robert Duvall) is a decorated senior officer, and Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) is a rising star in the department. The one embarrassment to the family is younger brother Bobby (Phoenix), who uses the last name “Green” professionally, and who never speaks about his family. Makes sense, considering the world Bobby lives and works in as the manager of a mob-connected nightclub in Brooklyn. This basic triangle of tension between the father and the two sons is enough to drive the film, but Gray doesn’t make any of it fresh. For a few minutes at the start of the film, it felt like it really had a pulse, and there’s a sexual encounter between Bobby and his girlfriend Amada (Eva Mendes) in the club that is genuinely hot. But that strong start fades fast, in my opinion, and after a while, the film settles into this sort of glacial pace as good guys do questionable things and bad guys do truly horrible things and some people get caught in the middle and other people change sides and deals are made and broken and it’s all very serious, but it just doesn’t feel real to me. I never bought into the relationships between Bobby and his brother or Bobby and his father, and so when the film takes some radical left-turns late in the narrative, it just feels impossible, completely unearned.
Watching this one, I’ll bet James Gray is a big fan of Sidney Lumet’s PRINCE OF THE CITY. Me, too. But WE OWN THE NIGHT is too slick, too pat to really be the gritty ‘70s film it so desperately wants to be. It’s a noble failure, but a failure nonetheless.
WE OWN THE NIGHT is open wide currently.
GONE BABY GONE
Of these three films, GONE BABY GONE is the best of the bunch. Ben Affleck makes a solid debut as a writer/director with this film adapted from a novel by Dennis Lehane, the same guy who wrote MYSTIC RIVER. Affleck manages to create a credible onscreen Boston, a very specific time and place, and that’s one of the things I admire most in a filmmaker. Plain and simple, Affleck’s got chops. He can put a scene together. He creates a few moments of raw emotion, of effective tension. He gives his cast room to work. The best thing I can say is that I’m looking forward to whatever Ben picks next to direct.
I’m sure fans of Lehane’s novels will have plenty of nits to pick with not only the choices made regarding this particular story, but the decision to start with this, the fourth book in a series. This didn’t feel particularly franchise-minded to me, so it seems like Affleck just liked this particular story. His script, co-written with Aaron Stockard, doesn’t seem concerned with setting up a larger series of stories with Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan). This is pretty much a one-shot sort of thing the way Ben has built this. A little girl is kidnapped, and Kenzie and Gennaro are hired to serve as a bridge into a closed Boston community, to help the police in whatever way they can. And of course, what we think is going on is really just a cover for much more complicated things, morally questionable things that raise some big questions by the end of the movie. The last half-hour of this one works better than anything before it, and you almost forgive the film some of its minor sins for setting up such a frustrating, morally ambiguous dilemma for Kenzie. It’s smart stuff, and it gives the cast some meaty material to play.
It’s strange... I like the work that Casey Affleck does in the film, but I also feel like he’s sort of dead wrong for the role. I like the way he tackles the role precisely because it seems like he knows he’s wrong for it, but he’s going to play the shit out of it anyway. He’s too young, too slight, too tightly wound. All the qualities that make his work in THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD so explosively great are the things that keep him from being the right fit for this role. You see how conflicted that sounds? He’s good, but he’s not right for it... which is a real testament to how good he’s gotten.
The supporting cast is well-chosen and they all do what they’re supposed to. Amy Ryan is particularly good as the mother of the kidnapped girl, and Ed Harris and John Ashton (a favorite of mine since his work with Martin Brest in BEVERLY HILLS COP and MIDNIGHT RUN) do really strong work as well. Morgan Freeman’s good, but he’s not in a whole lot of the film. Basically, he just shows up for a few key plot scenes. My favorite small role in the film was played by Titus Welliver. The guy’s awesome, one of many things that makes the film feel authentic.
John Toll, about as great a cinematographer as you could hope for, makes both Afflecks look good here. He makes Casey a credible leading man, and he gives Ben’s Boston a burnished glow that is quite striking. I would hope that people seek this one out and give it a chance, and that they don’t get hung up on Ben Affleck’s name. I wasn’t a huge fan of MYSTIC RIVER, but I can see how this one is obviously from the same author. I think Affleck took this material and really made it live and breathe, and for that, he deserves to be encouraged as a filmmaker. This one may not be two solid hours of fireworks, but it’s engrossing and it earns the punch it lays on the audience near the end.
GONE BABY GONE opens in limited release on Friday.
So I’ve got something like eleven films to see this week. Gonna keep me hopping. I’ve also got to write up my reviews for LARS & THE REAL GIRL, ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, and 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, as well as three different interviews. You know why I do that? List everything I have to do? Because I thrive on your knowing disbelief. You know me well enough to know I’ll be lucky to bust ass through half of that. Sheeeeesh.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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