Criminal *** ½
Short Take: While Criminal is nothing special, it is well made and harks back to a time when that’s all most movies needed to be.
REEL TAKE: Criminal is just one more example (and these examples are recurring with increasing frequency) where I find myself completely out of step with the general critical consensus. The overall critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes is abysmally low while the audience approval rating is around 60 points higher. As is usually the case when this happens, I find myself siding with the audience. In fact I often side with the audience when the reverse is true.
Having noted the discrepancy and having read most of the objections, I had a feeling that I would really enjoy this movie, and I did. The fact that there is nothing new here didn’t bother me at all. I’m now at the age to where I look forward to familiarity as long as it’s well done familiarity and Criminal is. It may be formulaic but sometimes that all you want from a movie.
The story may not be compelling but it is interesting, and when you add old familiar faces to it that makes it even more enjoyable. To be completely above board about this, I’ve always been a stargazer and have been attracted to movies that either contain stars I like or a collection of supporting players who play off well against one another.
In Criminal Kevin Costner plays Jericho Stewart, a violent habitual criminal whose frontal lobes were underdeveloped as a result of a childhood accident. He has no sense of right or wrong and acts completely on impulse. This makes him the prime candidate for Doctor Tommy Lee Jones’ radical new technique where a dying CIA agent’s memories are transplanted into those lobes where they take root and begin to alter Costner’s personality.
This reason this is done is so that a CIA head operative (Gary Oldman) can finish the agent’s mission which is to locate a fugitive who has the power to hack into and alter any military code including the ability to detonate weapons. A Spanish terrorist (Jordi Molla) also wants the fugitive and it was he who killed Oldman’s agent (a brief turn from Ryan Reynolds).
Concurrent with this story is one involving Reynolds’ wife (Gal Gadot) and young daughter (Lara Decaro) who are trying to adjust to his death when Costner shows up with some of Reynolds’ memories. The violent Costner is still there (“You hurt me, I hurt you worse”) but now the former agent’s personality is beginning to take over. Unfortunately it’s only a matter of time before Costner reverts to his true personality. Can he finish the mission?
Since this is a formulaic movie made only for audiences, we already know the answer to that question but that’s not important. What is important is that we stay engaged until we get there. I certainly was, along with the audience I saw it with. Apparently the same is true of several imdb users as well.
The actors work well together, the film is crisply shot and sharply edited, and director Ariel Vromen knows how to effectively stage his action sequences. While watching Criminal I couldn’t help but think of 1960s and 70s director Don Siegel, although old Don would have tightened things up a bit.
Adding to the fun are similarities to the plotlines of Charly and Awakenings, along with an obscure reference to an Outer Limits episode where Robert Culp and his wife had a secret sign for communicating with each other. While hardly a great film, Criminal held my interest, and on this occasion, that’s all it needed to do.
Rated R for strong violence and language throughout.
Review by Chip Kaufmann
Eye In The Sky **** ½
Short Take: A powerful modern war room drama and real-time thriller that delivers thoughtful introspection on the rules of engagement and moral implications of drone warfare.
REEL TAKE: Eye In The Sky may have left first-run theatres by the time this issue comes out, but we decided to still include a review of it because it’s a beautifully made film and an important one. It also marks Alan Rickman’s final role before his sudden passing in January. It is an extremely timely and thought provoking piece of filmmaking from South African director Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, Rendition and X-Men: Origins). It does not espouse what is right or wrong. It does not take sides. Instead it invites a vital dialogue about the moral implications of drone warfare and collateral damage.
Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) commands a mission to capture high level Al Shabaab extremists. Powell is located at Northwood Headquarters in Surrey. Her commander is in London, her eye in the sky is a drone pilot in Nevada, her eyes on the ground are field agents in Kenya, and the team that confirms identification of surveillance subjects is a team in Pearl Harbor. After a long pursuit it looks like a capture of several high ranking terrorists is at hand, and among them a young British woman turned extremist. But when intel confirms that a suicide bombing is imminent, Powell pushes for an immediate drone strike and seeks the approval from her superior, General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman) to kill instead of capture.
Benson is observing the mission with members of the government as witnesses. Benson asks for their authorization, but as politicians often do, they fail to reach a decision and turf it to the Foreign Secretary, who in turn turfs it to the US Secretary of State.
In the meanwhile a young girl has set up shop, selling bread at a table just outside the Al Shabaab safehouse, placing her in mortal peril if the missile is launched. With the collateral damage of an innocent girl now in the mix, the game has changed. Do they sacrifice one innocent life in order to save many? What’s legal? What’s not? What looks better for the government? The great debate, and the film is dialogue heavy, but Hood manages to keep the suspense ratcheted for maximum effect, while simultaneously coaxing each viewer to question their own position regardless of what it may be.
Mirren and Rickman are fantastic as always. Mirren’s part, originally written for a man, is unapologetic in her mission. Rickman is spot on as the military brass at the center of the debate and he gets a strong last line. The rest of the cast is great too. There’s not a weak link in the bunch, but Aaron Paul (TV’s Breaking Bad) as the drone pilot and Barkhad Abdi (Captain Philips) as the field agent in Nairobi are particular stand outs.
Hood keeps the film smart, taut, and provocative. The screenplay was initially written for television and occasionally it seems like it. It starts a little weak, and there are the trappings of manipulative dialogue here and there, but overall it’s much stronger as a cinematic piece. Ultimately Eye In The Sky never forgets to entertain us and you should make every effort to see it on the big screen.
Rated R for some violence, images and language.
Review by Michelle Keenan
A Hologram For The King ****
Short Take: A washed up American businessman travels to Saudi Arabia to sell a holographic teleconferencing system to the Saudi government.
REEL TAKE: By all accounts David Eggers’ 2012 novel doesn’t lend itself easily to film. A Hologram For The King is an existential story of a washed up American businessman, in the midst of a mid-life crisis, who travels to Saudi Arabia in a last-ditch effort to jump start his career. With adaptations of Cloud Atlas and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer under his belt, director Tom Twyker clearly doesn’t let that stop him from taking on a project. As is often the case, the book is probably better, but as is also often the case, more people will become familiar with the story because of the film.
Tom Hanks plays Alan Clay, our depressed and stressed hero. The year is 2010 and Alan has been tasked with selling a holographic teleconferencing system and IT infrastructure to the Saudi government. Embroiled in a bitter divorce and unable to pay his daughter’s college tuition, Alan has altogether too much riding on this deal. After arriving in Jeddah, Alan finds his tech team holed up in a tent in the desert while they wait for the King, a meeting that is continually pushed off until Alan pushes back.
A series of maladies and events take Alan on a wild ride, elevating Hologram from the typical ‘fish out of water’ story, and ultimately guide and shape his personal and professional journey. The best of these is the friendship he forges with his ‘limo’ driver Yousef (Alexander Black). This relationship infuses the story with humor and kindness and allows Alan to experience Arab culture and social caste system as few westerners do.
Meanwhile Alan’s stress literally manifests in the form of a golf ball size cyst on this back. In need of medical help after a bender on some local hooch, he meets Zahra (Sarita Choudhury), a female doctor in a male-dominated culture. They instantly sense an understanding with each other and share an unlikely attraction.
Hanks is perfectly cast in Hologram. Both the part and the story benefit from his everyman quality and from the blend of his comedic and dramatic chops. In the film’s opening sequence, Hanks emerges from his suburban home, lip synching to The Talking Heads’ “Once In A Lifetime,” while the bucolic image of the American dream go up in puffs of brightly colored smoke. When he wakes, he’s in the middle of plane bound for Saudi Arabia. Only Hanks could pull the scene off the way he does.
Twyker restrains himself from his usual penchant for heavy stylization and instead peppers the film with stylistic flourishes (the opening sequence being the biggest of these). By and large these moments work as catalysts for the Hologram, telling us what we need to know and developing the characters, without having to spend unnecessary time in back story. His artistic touches, an elegant reserve, and a bit of levity temper the weightiness of the source material and draw us closer to the characters.
The filmmakers try take on a little too much and story ends up scattered at times. The love story works when it’s a cautious attraction, but flounders a bit in its actuality. But for me, the film’s positives outweigh its shortcomings. Ultimately A Hologram For The King is a remarkably thoughtful and kind film and [for me] it’s positives outweigh its shortcomings.
Rated R for for some sexuality/nudity, language and brief drug use.
Review by Michelle Keenan
The Jungle Book **** ½
Short Take: Remarkable “live action” remake of Walt Disney’s 1967 animated version is darker and much closer in spirit to Kipling than its predecessor.
Reel Take: I was not impressed with the trailers for The Jungle Book. The completely computer generated jungle and animals (only Mowgli is real) looked just like that. Heavy handed, obvious computer generated images. Seeing the movie however is a completely different experience than watching the trailer. That’s because you can’t get the story in the trailer.
Within 15 minutes of watching the movie I became completely immersed in the story and forgot about the CGI. This is a testament not only to Kipling’s characters but to the cinematic storytelling of director Jon Favreau. While not following the stories to the letter, he manages to capture the essence of Kipling and imbues the film with it.
When Walt Disney made the animated film 50 years ago, he ordered his story writers to jettison the darker aspects of the material and concentrate on turning it into a traditional Disney animated feature. That was then, this is now. We live in darker, less innocent times and by following the original tone of the stories, Favreau has created a film that is contemporary yet timeless.
The storyline for this version follows the basic outline of the 1967 film as baby Mowgli is left by the panther Bageera with a pack of wolves to be raised by them and to keep him protected from the wrath of the man-hating tiger Shere Khan. Everything is fine for several years until Shere Khan returns to the jungle and Mowgli (Neel Sethi) is now old enough to leave the pack. Bageera plans to take him to the Man Village where he will be safe.
In a complete about face from the earlier version, almost all of the comedy has been downplayed in favor of a more realistic tone to match the state-of-the-art effects. I say almost because one central character has been retained from Walt Disney’s original. He is Baloo, the bear who is still a shiftless loafer, just minus Phil Harris’ scat singing. This Baloo is perfectly voiced by Bill Murray.
Two other principal characters are given significant makeovers. King Louis, the orangutan, is transformed into a King Kong sized ancestor called a gigantopithicus. As voiced by Christopher Walken he is both comic and menacing just like the actor. The tiger Shere Khan is transformed into a terrifying, vicious, but wily and extremely well spoken, predator. No George Sanders drollery here just Idris Elba with the film’s best voiceover.
Ben Kingsley, as Bageera the panther, narrates the film much the way Sebastian Cabot did in the original only without the intentional humor. The role of Kaa the python has been greattly reduced but Scarlett Johansson’s voice makes the most of what she’s given. Her CGI appearance is spectacularly awesome.
So far, so good. However the interjection of “The Bare Necessities” and “I Wanna Be Like You” (even if they’re not sung) seemed out of place. I understand why they felt like they had to do it, after all it’s the songs that made the Walt Disney animated features what they were, but the Disney live action remakes are totally different movies.
Still The Jungle Book shows us what computer generated images are capable of and how they can disappear within the confines of great cinematic storytelling. The ending credits remind us that the movie was “filmed entirely on location in Los Angeles, California” which makes the performance of the 12 year old Neel Sethi even more remarkable. It’s meant as an inside joke but it’s one that plays well today and will continue to do so for future audiences. Let’s hope that the already announced sequel will be just as memorable although that’s usually not the case.
Rated PG-13 for sequences of scary action and peril.
Review by Chip Kaufmann