Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here, with my review of a couple of films that will hopefully be making their way to you very soon in select venues that play the non-blockbusters. Enjoy...

THREE MONKEYS
After making two films (DISTANT and CLIMATES) that were largely haunting images strung together by a loose story, Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan (who won Best Director at last year's Cannes Film Festival for this film) has assembled a film that exists to prod and probe what the differences are between feeling guilty and being guilty. When a noted politician (Ercan Kesal) is involved in a drunken hit-and-run accident, he convinces/bribes his driver (Yavuz Bingol) to take the fall for him, and he's sent away to jail for two years. A lump-sum payment is promised to the family upon Bingol's release, but his wife (Hatice Aslan) and slacker son (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) decide they need the money sooner. Aslan approaches the politician about getting the money earlier, and ends up in a tawdry sexual affair with him that goes on for much of her husband's incarceration.

In truth, this was a family that wasn't doing too well before Bingol decided to lie for his boss, but when the son finds out about the affair and attempts to keep it from his father upon his release, all hell breaks loose. It sounds like the making of a great family film crossed with a noirish betrayal story, but everything in THREE MONKEYS (starting with its title, which I assume refers to Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil, none of which is reflected in the film) feels about a beat too slow, and that throws the whole production off. The performances are good, especially from Kesal and Bingol, but the mechanical plot seems tired and just plain off. I was also put off by the fact that the politician's crime (vehicular manslaughter) is treated as less of an offense than a woman having an affair. I'm not here to champion cheating wives, but the emotional response to both incidents seems remarkably disjointed. I guess it's a cultural thing. Director and co-writer Ceylan have assembled a striking film to look at, but a strike in the face in terms of his film's moral platitudes. And while I watched THREE MONKEYS with some amazement initially, I realize now that I was largely appalled by what I was watching.

AN UNLIKELY WEAPON
Director Susan Morgan Cooper's AN UNLIKELY WEAPON is an absolutely essential profile of Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press photojournalist Eddie Adams, who had 13 wars under his belt and photographed presidents, celebrities, and other world figures, as well as documented some of the most horrific moments in history and crimes against human rights. But it is for one photograph in particular that Adams will be remember, even if he was not impressed with either the image or the impact it had on the Vietnam War. You know the photo. It's the one of the Saigon police chief shooting a Vietcong prisoner in the head. It's one of the most horrific images you'll ever see; at the exact moment Adams took the picture, the bullet was still in the prisoner's head, according to Army officials. Adams was by no means an antiwar journalist, looking for the worst atrocities he could find in Vietnam. He was an ex-soldier himself, so having a photo he took make American servicemen look bad shamed him to a degree. But most of the acclaimed anchormen and other photojournalists in the film agree that it was that single image that marked the beginning of the end of the war.

Adams is portrayed as cantankerous, confrontational, a carouser who lived life the fullest, but never missed an opportunity to teach a younger photographer or journalist what to look for in a battlefield situation. In his later years, he opened up a school of photography that seems to confirm that Adams was also a great teacher. The film does a great job making it clear that in his own life, Adams was always looking for a challenge. He may not have even liked the assignment, but if it was different than anything he'd done before, he'd do it. He shot for Penthouse and for Parade magazines. His celebrity photos were some of the most original of their time. I particularly love the story told about Adams shooting a single roll of film during a Clint Eastwood photo shoot, and Clint being so impressed with his expedience and talent that he used one of the shots (the one that shows Clint holding a revolver behind his back) as the movie poster for UNFORGIVEN.

Since Adams died some years back, it's actually kind of astonishing how much archival footage there is of him at work in his studio, being interviewed, or in the field. Fleshed out with some great interviews with legends of journalism (Peter Jennings and Tom Brokow among them), AN UNLIKELY WEAPON is a film about a man who to whom fame clearly meant nothing. He saw his fame as a means to get the freedom he wanted to do the work he desperately loved. This is a staggeringly good movie that should be seen by anyone who remembers time when news gatherers weren't led by the hand (by a political party or a publicist or an advertiser) and when combat photography still meant something.


-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com