Straw Dogs (2011)

 

Director: Rod Lurie
Starring: James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgard, James Woods, Dominic Purcell, Laz Alonso, Willa Holland,Walton Goggins, Anson Mount
Running Time: 110 min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★)

I cringe whenever I'm about to see a remake of a classic film I'm very familiar with or have great affection for. It's almost impossible to watch without comparing it, sometimes scene-by-scene, to the original. Such a comparison almost always ends unfavorably for the remake. Fortunately or unfortunately, in the case of Rod Lurie's re-imagining of Sam Peckinpah's controversial 1971 ultraviolent classic Straw Dogs, I'm extremely familiar with the original, but not altogether opposed to the idea of remaking it. Following its release late last year, one of the major complaints from critics and audiences alike was that this was merely a modernization, following exactly the same plot lines and exploring the same themes as its predecessor. Which begs the question: If the original's a classic and Lurie hardly changed a thing, how could it be a failure? And therein lies the inherent contradiction with remakes. As many as there are each year, it seems we still haven't found a way to come to terms with their purpose. This version does make some little changes, in addition to a major thematic adjustment most missed. Whereas the original clearly argues in favor of an animal instinct residing inside all men, this take is more interested in exploring society's definition of manhood. Who's to blame for the events that eventually unfold is also more ambiguous, while the one famously ambiguous scene from the original is made clear as day. Lurie's presentation isn't as subtle, but it's tension-filled, and definitely not the horror "torture porn" it was strangely advertised as.

When screenwriter David Sumner (James Marsden) and his TV actress wife Amy (Kate Bosworth) return to her hometown of Blackwater, Mississippi to rebuild her recently deceased father's house. Their arrival brings Amy's ex-boyfriend Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard) and his three friends (Rhys Coiro, Billy Lush, Drew Powell) out of the woodwork and in an attempt to extend an olive branch, David hires them to fix the roof of the barn. With his manner of speak and dress, the well-to-do David immediately sticks out like a sore thumb in town, unable to fit in and at times displaying a condescending attitude toward Blackwater's customs. Perhaps out of jealousy that he's Amy husband or maybe just merely the fact he doesn't like him, Charlie and his gang begin subtly taunting and harassing both of them. As it escalates, David's insistence at avoiding any type of confrontation drives a rift in their relationship with Amy instigating Charlie and his gang to prove a point, putting both their lives in danger and forcing him to step up, or maybe down, to their level.

As much as the commercials have tried to convince you otherwise, this isn't your routine black and white, good vs. evil thriller. And like the original, it isn't a typical horror film despite many scenes providing more than a fair share of psychological terror. There's definitely a slow burn toward the climax, for which Lurie should be commended as I'm sure the pressure was on from the studio to reboot this as some kind of relentless gore fest. Changing the location from England to the deep South (replacing the British working class with Gulf Coast rednecks) was an inspired decision that ends up benefiting the mood and atmosphere, while also bringing the culture clash uncomfortably closer to home for American audiences. The couple's Hollywood occupations don't earn points for subversion or subtly, but it does seem to create an even greater rift between David and and the townspeople he seems to look down on. Or does he? What can easily be construed as condescension could almost equally be interpreted as ignorance (such as in a key scene when he walks out during church service) or just simply not fitting in and overcompensating to cover for it.

The power of the story (adapted from Gordon Williams novel, The Siege of Trencher's Farm) has always been it's realism and ability to put the viewer in the middle of a moral circumstance that could easily occur. At worst, David's a wuss willing to do just about anything to avoid a conflict, even when the situation absolutely necessitates it. Arguably his hesitance makes the ordeal worse, letting the problem fester until finally exploding. At best, he's a normal and responsible guy who could easily be defended for showing patience and trying to work issues out with something other than his fists. According to Amy, whatever he's doing isn't enough and when David's response to her is to "wear a bra" when the gang's leering at her, the gloves come off as she intentionally baits them with her body. The infamous rape scene is presented less ambiguously and as an overt act of violence, mostly doing away with the notion that Amy could have "enjoyed" it. But given her actions up to that point and the animalistic nature of the story, discerning viewers couldn't be blamed for still at least considering the possibility.

Physically, James Marsden is miscast, seeming on the surface too much of a pretty boy to fill Dustin Hoffman's nerdy mathmatician shoes from the original. Marsden solves that problem by wisely not attempting to and offering up a completely different take on the character. He need not necessarily be believable as a full-blown geek, but instead a  passive-aggressive people pleaser who living in his own bubble. Marsden does a great job fleshing that out, while at the same time making you feel empathy for the no-win situation David finds himself in, which isn't all his doing. Bosworth's task isn't as daunting in terms of the shoes she must fill, but she's as perfect a fit as for this as she wasn't for Lois Lane, giving one of her best performances as a woman taking power of her sexuality while at the same time pressured into subverting it. And as for the more emotionally disturbing scenes, she's more than up for it. With a southern drawl and seductive smirk, True Blood's Alexander Skarsgard really steals the show as Charlie, smoothly underplaying everything to the point where it's almost difficult not to like the guy until all hell breaks loose. Even then, he never resorts to playing him as a full blown psychopath, keeping it cool all the way through. It's to his credit that lines between good and evil seem so blurred. That I have problems even remembering the actor who originated the role proves Skarsgard must have done something right.

A major sub-plot involving the town's hotheaded former football coach Tom Heddon (James Woods) and his teen daughter Janice's (Willa Holland) infatuation with mentally handicapped man Jeremy (Dominic Purcell)  is over-the-top to say the least. It's definitely wasn't this insane in the original, with Purcell oddly resembling Steve Carell on steroids and a terrifying Woods devouring each scene as if it were his last day acting day on Earth. Had nothing else in this movie worked (which it thankfully does), this would still be worth seeing for Wood's performance, if only just to say you saw it and survived. Ironically enough, it most resembles his oscar-nominated turn as white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in 1996's Ghosts of Mississippi, at least in terms of outright hostility.  His daughter's clearly acting out to stick it to him, but the tragic consequences of that are unintended. This and the main story seemed to merge better in the original despite Lurie deviating very little from the source.

The eventual climax is thrilling, if a little too slickly filmed. It's only here where it becomes apparent we're watching a modern re-interpretation. The rest of it exists in some kind of bizarre 70's time warp, which isn't such a bad thing. The other little changes are justifiable as well, even if the jury's still out as to whether modernizing a film improves upon on it by simply making the material more timely. It all still feels a little routine, if powerful. But that the eventual violence still feels shocking and unsettling in this era proves that it was the context and ideas, not the violence itself, that made the original so unnerving. It's recreated here to chilling effect, with the original and remake both somehow coming out of this looking better as a result.

21

Director: Robert Luketic
Starring: Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Lawrence Fishburne, Aaron Yoo
Running Time: 123 min.
Rating: PG-13

** (out of ****)

21 is a movie that shows us everything, yet doesn’t get us to feel any of it. I know you’re supposed to review a movie based on what it is rather than what it isn’t but I can’t help myself this time because the missed opportunities were just too great. As I watched I imagined what a Scorsese would have done with this material, which desperately needed to be presented as an R-rated character study if it was to be taken seriously at all. It’s probably an unfair comparison but there’s no escaping the fact that this feels like the made for television version of what should be a much better film.

Despite not knowing the first thing about the film’s topic and having never played Blackjack in my life, after seeing the trailer and commercials I was actually looking forward to seeing this. Which is why I’m so astonished how bad it is. Even if I had no idea going in the guy who made Legally Blonde directed it I would have been able to guess, which isn’t good. He’s in over his head here. It almost borders on complete incompetence as it’s clumsily directed, poorly written and paced and features a really terrible lead performance.

A film that should have been so much fun instead comes off as depressing and a big reason why is because the characters have no depth and aren’t likable. Chief among the offenders are a wimpy protagonist who’s a bland, passive loser and a college professor who belongs in a mental institution instead of an academic one. There is one character I liked, but I’m convinced it’s only because she looks amazing, which is fitting considering the film’s focus on emptiness and superficiality. Any pleasures to be had here are entirely on the surface. I may have never read Ben Mezrich’s best-selling novel, Bringing Down The House, from which this is based, but it says a lot about how bad this film is that even I thought it was obviously unfaithful to the source material.
21 tells the story of graduating M.I.T. senior Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) who has his heart set on attending Harvard Med School. With stellar grades he’s accepted but the problem is getting the $300,000 to go there since he has virtually no chance of getting a full-ride scholarship. But his mathematics professor, Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) sees great potential in Ben and offers him a spot on his secret Blackjack team consisting of 5 students who have mastered the science of card-counting, which they’ve been using to fleece Las Vegas casinos on weekends. Ben initially refuses but his desire to go to Harvard Med and also win the affections of team member and school crush Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth,) prove the offer to be too tempting to turn down. When they hit Vegas the real action begins and under Micky’s guidance the card-counting method raises the ire of Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), head of security at Planet Hollywood, who will do anything to bring this team down.

The main characters may have been counting cards but I was fully occupied counting something else, namely missed opportunities and mistakes in a film that should have been great. Actually, forget about great. I would have settled for just good. The first of many problems is the casting of Sturgess, who beyond being just bland takes it a level further with a truly whiny and irritating portrayal. Imagine the shyest, most socially awkward and clumsy kid you’ve ever met. Now, magnify that by about 10 and you have Sturgess’ performance, which more closely resembles a puppy dog begging for adoption than any real college student. What’s the first thing he does when he enters the casino? He trips. Of course we know this is all set-up so he can be “corrupted,” which pays off later in the film’s most laughable scene.

Supposedly Sturgess had a dialect coach for the film since it’s far easier for studio executives to waste time and money hiring an actor with an accent only so they can teach him how to get rid of it. It didn’t work as he struggles mightily with his American accent the entire picture and I could swear I saw him concentrating hard at points. He even manages to give a bad voice-over performance in the many unnecessary segments of narration. The film also employs another narrative device that’s really been bothering me lately: the opening flash-forward. A movie opening at the end for no other logical reason other than that it can. Here we get that in conjunction with the pointless voice-over so it’s twice as bad. Memories of Sturgess' inspired work in Across The Universe is erased as he still has a long way to go before proving himself as a dependable leading man.

After suffering through nearly an hour of M.I.T. Ben stuttering and stammering through his social interactions when they all finally get to Vegas things don't improve much. Luketic, somehow manages to make Vegas look washed out and visually uninteresting, a rare accomplishment. We never get a clear idea of the counting scheme or how it works because he’s too busy showing off fancy camera tricks and as a result, the casino scenes don’t come off nearly as well as they should. He also adds a third act twist not realizing he delivered it about twenty minutes too late when viewers will be ready to pack up their bags up and go home. The movie runs just over two hours, yet feels much longer because it’s so poorly paced, as if scenes were thrown in at random. At least it features a great soundtrack, but again, that’s a superficial pleasure.

Since 1999 I’ve been waiting for Kevin Spacey to do something that’s maybe just half as interesting as his Oscar winning role in American Beauty. That wait continues. His Micky Rosa is essentially Lex Luthor teaching at an institute of higher learning. Spacey plays him in exactly that same style, a choice that can at least partially blamed on the script and direction. What kind of college professor would hang out with his students in Vegas over the weekend and help them rip off casinos? Just that question suggests all kinds of intriguing possibilities for Spacey’s character and the story, all of which go unexplored so he can be presented as a sneering egomaniac.

The man is so arrogant and unlikable it’s a miracle any student would listen to a word he has to say no matter how much money is involved. A smarter decision would have been to play him as an actual mentoring figure so the underused Lawrence Fishburne could shine as the chief heavy. The direction they take Micky late in the film is ill advised, not to mention laughably over-the-top. I'm not asking for a long back story on the guy but it would be nice if he wasn't presented as a stock villain and there was a trace of humanity in Spacey's portrayal, suggesting there's a real person in there.

This is the latest in a long line of poor choices for Spacey and he doesn’t have any excuses this time since he co-produced it. As usual, he drags his Beyond The Sea and Superman Returns co-star Kate Bosworth along for the ride, who I must say has never looked better. Also, for a change, she isn’t sleepwalking and appears healthy and motivated to actually try to give her first complete performance. But Luketic isn’t the kind of director who can wrangle that out of her and the script doesn’t give her anything to work with. We learn nothing about Jill, which is a shame because I would have actually liked to.

The relationship between Ben and Jill is written as a complete joke to the point where we're literally forced not to care about it. She understandably has no interest in this guy but about ten minutes and one trip to Vegas later she’s jumping him in a hotel room. Why? Luketic wants you to think it has something to do with Ben’s remarkable, overnight transformation into an arrogant stud, memorably depicted in slow motion shot of him strutting into the casino like the second coming of Tom Cruise. What an embarrassment. Of all the film’s flaws this scene is indicative of its biggest. That it fails to show us how this experience has changed these kids’ lives, specifically Ben’s. Instead it just tries to tell us... unconvincingly.

The movie caused some controversy when it was released because all the characters upon which this film was based were Asian-American. Here only two are (played by Aaron Yoo and Lizzy Lapira) and they’re relegated to bit, background roles. That’s especially a shameful in the case of Yoo, who was so funny and entertaining in his small role in Disturbia last year and could have really contributed if given the opportunity.
Normally, I would write off discrimination allegations like this as groundless and accuse everyone of being too sensitive since producers should have a right to cast whomever they like, but this time it’s a little different. I have no problem with them changing the ethnic background of the characters so long as it serves a purpose and the right actors were placed in the roles. Unfortunately, Sturgess is terrible so their excuse of “picking the right actor for the part” doesn’t fly and the other main players aren’t believably intelligent in a story that’s supposed to be based on it. Still, this might be more a case of Hollywood stupidity than discrimination. At least I hope it is.

This is one of the few films this year where as I was watched I actually thought all the blame should fall entirely at the director’s feet. Some feel it should anyway but I never subscribed to that theory when so many bad scripts are being written that no filmmaker could possibly save. This script, which is obviously weak, could have at least been salvageable if a director with just minimal vision were at the helm. I can understand how it had a strong opening weekend back in March since the commercials did a great job of promising us something Luketic just didn’t have the skills to deliver. Say what you want about Legally Blonde, but at least it was intentionally dumb. I’m all for losing myself in fun and mindless entertainment but 21 only fulfills one of those criteria well.

Superman Returns

Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, James Marsden, Parker Posey, Frank Langella, Eva Marie Saint
Running Time: 154 min.
Rating: PG-13

** (out of ****)


There's something really arrogant and stupid about Superman Returns. The movie assumes we can just pick up where we left off in the Superman saga even though it's been nearly twenty years since we last saw any of the characters on screen and they're now being played by different actors. It doesn't establish anything and we're just expected to "go with it" because it's Superman. Just because it's Superman the movie feels no need to let us know the characters or put them in an interesting situation. This effort was phoned in to milk more money out of D.C. Comics' biggest cash cow. By the end of the film I had just one question: Why? What was the purpose of this? If anything, this movie only exists to remind us how how great a job Christopher Nolan did at reviving the Batman franchise last year.

Superman (Brandon Routh) has returned to Earth after a lengthy visit to what's left of his home planet Krypton to discover Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) is engaged, has a young son and has basically gone on with her life without him. Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) is out of prison and plotting to build a continent of made of Kryptonite that will wipe out all of North America. Could I ask just once in a super hero movie that the super villain have a feasible plan to destroy the world? Or if not a feasible one (I realize this is fantasy), a realistic way of going about it that would actually cause some kind of fear or dread in the audience and make the film feel like something other than a live-action cartoon.

The script's ridiculous insistance of picking up where it left off (wherever that was) proves to be a huge distraction. If this is a continuation of the Superman saga how come Lois doesn't know Superman is Clark Kent? In this movie we're back to the beginning and Lois has no idea, like the writers wanted to have their cake and eat it too. I promised myself I would make it through the review without comparing Brandon Routh to Chistopher Reeve. It's really not fair. They should be able to cast whoever they want as Superman without worrying how he'll stack up to Reeve and I think they made the right move picking an unknown. The problem is they picked the wrong unknown. Routh isn't necessarily bad, or good. He's just there. He isn't much of anything. At times it looks like he's just a guy pretending to be Superman for Halloween. I kept waiting for the real Superman to appear and take him out. The costume's a little cooler looking than the past, but Routh looks ridiculous in it. So much so I caught myself laughing at times during the film when he's standing there trying to strike a Superman pose. He has a look on his face like, "Look at me...I'm Superman."

To be fair, he did a much better job as Clark, but we're given so little time with that character it has no impact. Kevin Spacey does an okay, if unmemorable job as Lex Luthor, but he's not given much to work with so it's understandable. I was surprised how little screen time he had actually. I was racking my brain trying to figure out who would have made a better choice as Lois than Kate Bosworth and then it occured to me. Anyone. She brings absolutely nothing to the role and her character's whiny and petulant throughout the film, like a child. Lois Lane is supposed to be fiesty and strong-willed. I'll believe Lex Luthor can build a continent that will destroy North America, but I cannot buy that this woman actually won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. I don't think I've ever appreciated Margot Kidder as much as during this movie.

Superman Returns is never boring and I was pleased that the special effects, particularly of him flying, didn't look fake or too CGI like they did in the Spiderman movies. There's a scene early in the film where he stops a plane crash that's really well done and thriling. The set and production design is also top notch, but I can't say I'm happy with them making Metropolis look like it's out of a comic book. Lately, there's a disturbing trend going on in Hollywood to make these superhero movies as cartoonish as possible and aimed at five year olds. I really enjoyed Batman Begins because it had a dark, gritty realism to it and took the time to explain the origins of Batman. You have to cater to all audiences, not just kids and comic book fanatics. NBC's Heroes has struck a cord with viewers because they like seeing real everyday people discovering something special and extraordinary.

If you want to see Superman I suggest buying Richard Donner's great original and the recently released uncut version of Superman 2. It's tough to reconcile that Bryan Singer, the mastermind behind the Usual Suspects, was responsible this mess. I can take solace in the fact this movie dissapointed at the box office, so maybe this a sign audiences are beginning to smarten up. If anything, watch Superman Returns just for the opening credits so you can one again hear John Williams' legendary score. Unfortunately, it's in a movie undeserving of it.