In Theaters: THE MULE (2018)

THE MULE
(US/Canada - 2018)

Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Nick Schenk. Cast: Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Pena, Dianne Wiest, Andy Garcia, Ignacio Serricchio, Taissa Farmiga, Alison Eastwood, Richard Herd, Clifton Collins Jr., Loren Dean, Eugene Cordero, Victor Rasuk, Noel G, Robert LaSardo, Lobo Sebastian, Manny Montana. (R, 116 mins)

Since his post-UNFORGIVEN resurgence in the early 1990s, there's been an air of awards prestige around most new films by Clint Eastwood. There was certainly that feeling surrounding THE MULE when the grim and downbeat trailer turned up a couple of months ago, but the film itself is much more light and loose than you'd expect, and frequently quite funny. Inspired by the true story of Leo Sharp, a 90-year-old Michigan retiree who became an unlikely courier for the Sinaloa cartel, THE MULE stars Eastwood, in his first time in front of the camera since 2012's TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE, as 90-year-old Earl Stone, a Korean War vet and award-winning rural Illinois horticulturist who's big on the day-lily circuit but never seemed to have the time for his family. In a 2005 prologue, he skips the wedding of his daughter Iris (Clint's daughter Alison Eastwood) to accept an award at a horticulture convention at an area Holiday Inn. Cut to 2017, and Earl's home and business have been foreclosed, a casualty of internet convenience, and he's got nowhere to go. Iris hasn't spoken to him in 12 years, and his ex-wife Mary (Dianne Wiest) reads him the riot act for showing up at a party for their engaged granddaughter Ginny (Taissa Farmiga), the only member of the family who wants anything to do with him. After being ripped to shreds in front of everyone  is approached by a friend (Victor Rasuk) of a bridesmaid about a potential job "just driving." Desperate for income and wanting to contribute financially to Ginny's wedding, affable and naive Earl ends up driving to El Paso in his beat-up truck to pick up a package, drive it back to Peoria, leave his truck at a motel, come back in an hour, and find an envelope full of cash in the glove compartment waiting for him, no questions asked.

Ignorance is bliss, and Earl nods, smiles, and keeps quiet, but the more runs he makes, the more packed the envelopes are. He buys a new truck, pays for the remodeling of a fire-damaged local VFW post, and picks up the open bar tab at Ginny's wedding, much to the disapproval of Mary and Iris. Curiosity gets the better of him on one run and he looks inside a bag in his truck bed, finally realizing that he's running drugs for the cartel operation of Mexican drug kingpin Laton (Andy Garcia). The money's too good for him to stop, even as he's invited down to Laton's palace in Mexico, where the cartel boss seems unaware of a mutiny in his ranks, led by an ambitious underling (Clifton Collins Jr.). Meanwhile, in Chicago, DEA agents Bates (Bradley Cooper) and Trevino (Michael Pena) are told to tighten the screws on the drug trade by their boss (Laurence Fishburne), who's being directed by his boss to get busts at any cost. Bates objects to nabbing little fish at the expense of possibly losing the bigger ones, but a desperate informant (Eugene Cordero) facing two life sentences tells him of a major new "mule" in Laton's cartel known as "Tata," one who's been delivering major drug shipments to Illinois in a shiny new black truck.

Despite its potentially heavy, downer subject matter, THE MULE, written by GRAN TORINO scribe Nick Schenk, makes for a surprising crowd-pleaser, or at least as much of a crowd-pleaser as the story of a geriatric drug trafficker can be. It coasts almost entirely on the screen presence of its living legend star in a career now in its seventh decade, but even as a director, Eastwood seems little more engaged than he has on his too-often sloppy work of late, particularly in his unofficial "American Heroes" trilogy of AMERICAN SNIPER, SULLY, and this year's earlier, awful THE 15:17 TO PARIS. Eastwood the director has always had a "just get it done" philosophy, but as he's gotten older, that efficiency has often devolved into abject carelessness, reaching its nadir with the half-assed PARIS, but save for its rushed finale (including an offscreen beating that we probably should've seen), it's the return of a relatively more disciplined Eastwood (he still blowtorched through the production, which began shooting in June 2018 and is here in theaters just six months later). It's got plenty of laughs, but it's serious enough that it doesn't lapse into geezer comedy vulgarity. This is despite the fact that the 88-year-old Eastwood has cast himself in a film where his character partakes in not one, but two threesomes with women young enough to be his granddaughters. THE MULE probably could've been something more socially or politically conscious and "meaningful" (the internet's impact on Earl's day-lily empire is about as close as it gets to making a statement about the economy's shifting landscape), but it's an Eastwood vehicle first and foremost, and there's some poignancy in his attempts at stepping up when his estranged family needs him, and reconciling with his ex-wife (Wiest is terrific) and daughter, which has the added resonance of being a real-life father and daughter on screen.

Much is made of Earl feeling like "somebody" in the horticulture world when he was a "nobody" at home, which was his excuse for always being away. That's more or less the reasoning that pulls him deeper into the world of Laton's operation. Laton is so pleased with his work as a driver that Earl can't help but bask in the adulation. He's somebody here, even if it's as a drug courier, and getting caught never seems to enter his mind. The initial trailer made absolutely no attempt at selling how funny THE MULE can be, but it's mostly from recognizing the absurdity of a 90-year-old drug mule without actually condoning what he's doing. When a pair of cartel flunkies bug Earl's truck and follow him close behind on a run, they listen in disbelief as he spends the whole trip singing along to oldies on the radio. We soon see Earl behind the wheel belting out "Ain't That a Kick in the Head," with the cartel guys in their car, singing along. And it gets a huge laugh from the audience.

Earl also has a knack for developing a folksy rapport with everyone, even as he drops unfiltered and at times casually racist asides that aren't meant to be hurtful, as the elderly are wont to do. He gets chummy with his El Paso and Peoria cartel contacts (among them the inevitable Noel G and Robert LaSardo), who are soon affectionately calling him "Big Papa" as they BS while loading his truck ("How's your nephew doing?" Earl asks one). Before his business is closed, he refers to one Mexican employee's car as a "taco truck" and jokes with him about getting deported. Or when he treats a pair of cartel guys to pulled pork sandwiches at a roadside rib joint down south, where they're eyeballed by the red-state clientele and harassed by a local cop. "Everyone's staring at us," one says, as Earl replies "Because you're two beaners in a bowl of crackers!" Or stopping on the highway to help a stranded black family change a flat tire and not realizing "negro" is no longer the preferred nomenclature. Is THE MULE essential Eastwood? Not in the big picture, but it's his most satisfying work as a filmmaker since GRAN TORINO a decade ago, also the last film in which he directed himself (his producing partner Robert Lorenz helmed TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE, though in a very Eastwood-like fashion). Eastwood's effortless charisma and his no-bullshit persona haven't diminished a bit with the years, and it's always cause for celebration when we're given an increasingly rare chance to see him onscreen.

On Blu-ray/DVD: THE FORGIVEN (2018) and BENT (2018)

THE FORGIVEN
(US/South Africa/UK - 2018)

1984's THE KILLING FIELDS and 1986's THE MISSION earned Roland Joffe a lifetime pass to the Respected Filmmakers Club, but his career's been in a near-constant state of freefall for the better part of 25 years. His last good movie was 1998's underrated modern noir GOODBYE LOVER, and in the years since, he crashed and burned with 2007's unwatchable CAPTIVITY, a repugnant SAW ripoff made at the height of the torture porn craze that has to go down in the annals of cinema as one of the most shocking and depressing downfalls for a once-revered filmmaker. Joffe's subsequent films range from forgettable at best to embarrassing at worst (who knows how he got roped into directing the t.A.T.u.-inspired Mischa Barton vehicle YOU AND I, which went straight to DVD in 2012 after three years on the shelf?), but THE FORGIVEN almost qualifies as a return to form. It's ponderous and slow-moving, and has to dumb it down for the audience (opening with a caption that defines "apartheid"), but it's also sincere, well-acted, and get better as it goes on. Set in 1996 in post-apartheid South Africa under President Nelson Mandela, THE FORGIVEN centers on Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Forest Whitaker) and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a restorative justice body whose goal is to grant amnesty for those guilty of human rights violations, all in the hopes of the country coming together to put its past behind. Tutu is assessing the amnesty candidacy of Piet Blomfeld (Eric Bana), an ex-death squad member in a maximum security Cape Town prison. Blomfeld doesn't seem interested in clearing his conscience--he taunts the Archbishop with the kaffir slur and enthusiastically recounts his most vile crimes against black South Africans--but Tutu senses something in him when it comes to a court case involving two murdered teenagers that connects Blomfeld with two other death squad cohorts--Francois Schmidt (Jeff Gum) and Hansi Coetzee (Morne Visser)--who are now guards in the very prison housing him.

Based on the Michael Ashton play The Archbishop and the Antichrist, THE FORGIVEN was scripted by Ashton and Joffe and expands on the play by adding a subplot involving a 17-year-old black inmate (Nandiphile Mbeshu) forced into the attempted murder of Blomfeld to establish his cred on the inside only to be taken under his target's wing. Blomfeld's demonstration of a capacity to forgive and his AMERICAN HISTORY X/Come-to-Jesus moment where he realizes the error of his ways never quite come off as believable, despite Joffe's ham-fisted attempts to hammer it home by providing the loathsome, rage-filled racist with a tragic backstory to excuse the monster he's been for his entire adult life. But Bana is good, as is Whitaker, despite being forced to act around an almost comically large prosthetic nose that makes him look less like Desmond Tutu and more like Squidward from SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS. The long scenes between Tutu and Blomfeld (a fictional composite) constituted Ashton's play and here, with Blomfeld's unapologetic and horrifically detailed descriptions of his misdeeds, almost makes these sequences play like a post-apartheid EXORCIST III with back and forth monologues by the two stars. The climactic courtroom showdown between an on-trial Coetzee and the grieving mother (Thandi Makhubele) of two teenagers brutally slaughtered by Blomfeld while Coetzee and Schmidt looked on is powerful and unexpectedly moving. THE FORGIVEN is a mixed bag--it's too slow and meandering and the story arc for Blomfeld smacks of plot convenience--but it has its moments, especially once you can get around Whitaker's cartoonishly fake nose and focus on his performance. It's not enough to say the 72-year-old Joffe is back per se, but THE FORGIVEN shows that there might be some signs of life. (R, 120 mins)




BENT
(Spain/US - 2018)

After winning an Oscar for co-writing CRASH with Paul Haggis, Bobby Moresco made the little-seen crime drama 10TH AND WOLF and moved on to TV, creating the acclaimed but short-lived series THE BLACK DONNELLYS. He wrote and directed the straight-to-VOD BENT, his first feature film in over a decade, and it's a thoroughly generic and utterly forgettable present-day noir-inspired cop thriller. Disgraced ex-cop Danny Gallagher (Karl Urban) has just been paroled after serving three years for the killing of an undercover officer during a botched drug bust set up by his broke, gambling-addicted partner Charlie (Vincent Spano). They were supposed to nail scumbag businessman Driscoll (John Finn), but Charlie ended up getting killed, Gallagher took two bullets, and both Charlie's and Gallagher's names were dragged through the gutter after Driscoll framed them as corrupt, or "bent" cops on the take. Once he's out, Gallagher makes like an unlicensed and uncharismatic Philip Marlowe, trying to get to the bottom of the mystery that may involve the car bomb death of the wife of a Driscoll associate, as well as shady and untrustworthy femme fatale government agent Rebecca (a miscast Sofia Vergara), who's been ordered to keep Gallagher from digging any further, an assignment that inevitably involves showing up unannounced at his ramshackle pier house and immediately disrobing and stepping into the steaming shower with him.

Based on a series of Gallagher novels by J.P. O'Donnell, BENT is hopelessly muddled (there's even a red herring about "Arab terrorists" being involved), with an uncharacteristically dull Urban on what seems to be one of the least urgent quests for vengeance you'll ever see. BENT is filled with would-be hard-boiled dialogue that rarely works, mainly because it's delivered in such a bland fashion. It's the kind of movie that has a climactic showdown and shootout at a shipyard. It's the kind of movie where the bad guy delivers a long-winded, Christopher Walken-esque speech ("You know, in Alaska, they smoke this fish on the beach...") while intimidatingly slicing salmon with a huge knife. It's the kind of movie where you know a prominently-billed name actor has to have more to do with what's going on since he's barely in it until the last 15 minutes. Also with Andy Garcia as Gallagher's retired, fatherly cop mentor who pops up periodically to tell him to let the past go and get out of town, BENT doesn't even muster the energy to be a harmless time-killer on a slow night. Nobody seems really invested in it, and New Orleans is rather unconvincingly played by Rome, of all places. At least everyone got a nice Italian vacation out of it. (R, 96 mins)

In Theaters: PASSENGERS (2016)

PASSENGERS
(US/China - 2016)

Directed by Morten Tyldum. Written by Jon Spaihts. Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Andy Garcia. (PG-13, 116 mins)

The sci-fi epic PASSENGERS is a triumph of production design weighed down by a script that feels like its second half was hastily rewritten after focus groups said more shit needed to blow up. Its intriguing opening act does a commendable job of replicating that unique Kubrickian chilliness and isolation, with a 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY vessel seemingly revamped by an interior decorator whose favorite movie was THE SHINING. Even the pattern on a wall matches the carpeting where Danny is playing with his cars outside Room 237. Set in a future where people are looking to move beyond an overcrowded Earth, PASSENGERS opens aboard the Starship Avalon, with 5000 passengers and a crew of 238 in hibernation on a 120-year voyage to a planet colony called Homestead II. 30 years into the voyage, a minor collision with an asteroid causes a brief disruption in the computer system that results in engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) being awakened from his hibernation pod. It takes him a while to realize he's up 90 years too early, but going back into hibernation is impossible, a message sent to Homestead headquarters back on Earth will take 19 years to arrive, and his only company for what's looking like the rest of his life is affable robot bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen), who in no way reminds one of Lloyd in the Gold Ballroom of the Overlook Hotel.

An increasingly disheveled and depressed Jim spends the next 15 months alone, growing increasingly despondent by the day. He's contemplating suicide by shooting himself through an airlock and out into space, but notices hibernating Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) in her pod. Checking the passenger manifest and watching her video file, a desperate Jim falls in love with her and with the idea of having a companion. He agonizes over the decision for months, spending his days sitting by her pod and talking to her and when he's reached his breaking point, he reworks the pod mechanism so she's awakened. Letting Aurora think her pod malfunctioned just like his, Jim gives her time to accept the circumstances but after a while, they inevitably go from friends to lovers, with Jim still leaving her in the dark about what he did. Of course, she'll eventually find out, but that becomes a secondary issue after slowly-developing malfunctions and glitches, all snowballing since the initial asteroid collision that caused Jim's pod to open, start to jeopardize not just their solitary--and now hostile--living situation but also the lives of the crew and passengers, who still have 88 years before they reach their destination.


The next paragraph contains SPOILERS.

The early scenes of PASSENGERS are the strongest, with Jim realizing the seriousness of his situation while wandering around the most visually stunning spaceship we've seen in quite some time, accompanied by a frequently John Carpenter-meets-Vangelis-sounding score by Thomas Newman that works like a charm. It stumbles a bit during Jim's disheveled phase, where Pratt is required to wear an awful wig and what might be cinema's least-convincing fake beard, which looks like someone glued a stunt bush from a community theater production of BOOGIE NIGHTS to his face. Once Aurora is awake, there's considerable tension as Jim is wracked with guilt over his decision to mislead her, but screenwriter Jon Spaihts (PROMETHEUS) and Norwegian filmmaker Morten Tyldum (HEADHUNTERS, THE IMITATION GAME) quickly lose interest in exploring this ethical dilemma. After a period of not speaking, they more or less agree to set aside their differences when they're joined by Gus Mancuso (Laurence Fishburne), a Chief Deck Officer whose hibernation pod has also malfunctioned. It's here that PASSENGERS shows that it doesn't have the courage of its convictions, abandoning a serious moral quandary in order to restage key elements of GRAVITY and THE MARTIAN out of an apparent need to make Pratt the hero. Some reviews have responded harshly to Jim's actions, likening him to a creep, a stalker, and a psycho, and taking offense over the perceived notion that Aurora is more or less Stockholm Syndromed into falling for him. These sound like the imaginary concerns of people looking for something to outrage them. Jim does what he does out of loneliness, desperation, and slowly encroaching insanity. He doesn't approach it lightly, but he can't fathom the idea of spending the rest of his life. It's wrong and more or less indefensible and he shortens Aurora's life, but it's an extreme situation. And, it's worth mentioning, even if it's ultimately a plot convenience that lets Jim off the hook, they all would've died anyway since Jim ultimately can't save the ship and the other 5000+ people without Aurora's help. It's doubtful the same criticisms would be leveled at PASSENGERS had it been Aurora who woke early and decided to open Jim's pod 89 years early, or if Jim was played by say, Michael Shannon or Steve Buscemi or Clark Duke and it would be easier to grasp Jim's actions because he's being played by an oddball character actor or a dweeby-looking comedian and not Chris Pratt. Focusing on Jim's decision certainly would've made a more interesting film on a psychological thriller level--and it could've given Pratt a chance to show some range--but this is a $100 million holiday movie with two of the most attractive and popular celebrities on the planet.

I'm not asking for Tarkovsky's SOLARIS here, but PASSENGERS could've tried a little harder. The second half wants to be a big, epic, special effects crowd-pleaser and the abrupt tone shift leaves Lawrence and Pratt stranded, which is shame because in the more character-driven sections, their performances are quite good. As far as the rest of the cast goes, Sheen is amusing, Fishburne is fine with his limited screen time, and Andy Garcia has been almost completely cut from the film since his entire role as the ship's captain consists of him walking through a sliding door and looking up, giving him about five seconds of screen time with no dialogue for what must be the most frivolous big-name, prominently-billed cameo since Albert Finney's eight-second appearance in a YouTube video in 2012's THE BOURNE LEGACY.  He had to have a larger role initially. You don't hire Oscar-nominated Andy Garcia, a respected actor for the last 30 years, to walk through a door and look confused, unless he's also wondering what he's doing in this movie. In the end, PASSENGERS is always fascinating to look at, but it abandons its thought-provoking aspects and is riddled with rampant lapses in logic. For instance, why is Arthur online and tending bar for no one?  Why is the liquor opened when no one would be drinking it for 120 years? And if the crew is scheduled to be awakened a month before the passengers, who's been maintaining the pool for the first 30 years of the voyage? Wouldn't switching on Arthur and opening the booze and filling the pool and chlorinating it be something the crew did in the month before the passengers were revived?  How fresh is the sushi that Aurora is eating? Is that the smartest thing to have on the menu?

In Theaters: KILL THE MESSENGER (2014)

KILL THE MESSENGER
(US - 2014)

Directed by Michael Cuesta. Written by Peter Landesman. Cast: Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Tim Blake Nelson, Barry Pepper, Oliver Platt, Michael Sheen, Paz Vega, Michael Kenneth Williams, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Robert Patrick, Richard Schiff, Gil Bellows, Yul Vazquez, Lucas Hedges, Dan Futterman, Josh Close, Steve Coulter, Susan Walters, Clay Kraski. (R, 112 mins)

Though it has some flaws in its execution, particularly in its second half, it's a shame that the compelling KILL THE MESSENGER isn't finding an audience. That Focus only has it on 425 screens nationally isn't helping, but it's also indicative of the fact that smart films for adult audiences--films that used to be commonplace--are now largely relegated to art houses and limited/VOD releases. With just a $5 million budget and a sizable cast of well-known faces taking a pay cut to be onboard, KILL THE MESSENGER is obviously a project that the actors believed in and it'll find an audience eventually, but with its incendiary subject matter and a riveting performance by Jeremy Renner, it should be getting more attention than it's received thus far. Based on Gary Webb's 1998 book Dark Alliance and Nick Schou's 2006 book Kill the Messenger, the film tells the story of Webb (Renner), a small-time San Jose Mercury News reporter who stumbled onto a story that blew the doors off the CIA's involvement in cocaine trafficking and the crack epidemic in South Central L.A. that helped fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

KILL THE MESSENGER opens in 1996 with Webb following the money in the trial of drug dealer Danilo Blandon (Yul Vazquez) and sticking his nose into the story to the point where the irate prosecutor (Barry Pepper) drops the charges. Webb figures out that Blandon is both a drug dealer and a paid CIA informant who needs to be operational in order to supply the agency with the information it needs. Acting on a tip from incarcerated drug runner Ricky Ross (Michael Kenneth Williams), Webb's detective work leads him to Nicaragua where imprisoned cartel boss Norwin Meneses (Andy Garcia) informs him of the CIA's involvement in the drug trade to fund the Contra rebels a decade earlier, which was the government's only way to secretly pay for a war that Congress wouldn't approve for President Reagan. As Webb's investigation deepens and ominous government officials strongly encourage him to back down, it only fuels the fire and when the story runs, Webb is the toast of the journalism world, much to the delight of his editors (Oliver Platt, Mary Elizabeth Winstead). His triumph is short-lived, however, as he soon realizes he's being followed, he spots a prowler in his driveway, and finds silent, sinister men in suits in his basement, rifling through his files. The CIA and other news outlets begin a smear campaign to discredit him, digging into everything in his past, including an affair he had while working at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which led to Webb moving his wife Susan (Rosemarie DeWitt) and kids to California to start over.

For its first hour or so, KILL THE MESSENGER is cut from the same cloth as ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976), SHATTERED GLASS (2003), and the Robert Graysmith investigative portions of ZODIAC (2007), the kind of newsroom nailbiter where the tension is cranked up and every conversation is an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Director Michael Cuesta (L.I.E.) and screenwriter Peter Landesman (the little-seen Kevin Kline drama TRADE) have studied the classics and the film is propelled by an excellent Renner, in maybe his best performance yet. But once Webb's bombshell of a story is published, the filmmakers keep the focus strictly on Webb, despite the explosive implications of the bigger picture. On one hand, I get that he's the central character and everyone--from his previously-adoring editors to jealous competitors to shady CIA operatives--is trying to throw him under the bus, but other than a Los Angeles Times editor (Dan Futterman) chewing out his staff for missing the boat on the story, we never get a grasp of just how much Webb's story has shaken things up. All we see is the effect on his job (he's busted down to the Cupertino office, which seems to be located in a strip mall) and the soap-opera subplots for his family, with his adoring teenage son (Lucas Hedges) sobbing "I'm disappointed in you," when he learns of the affair, and Webb telling his wife "I never stopped loving you" when they reunite after Cupertino. Though Webb's story should be told, the KILL THE MESSENGER story is bigger than just Gary Webb. Cuesta and Landesman (and probably Renner, for that matter) seem conflicted over lauding and paying tribute to Webb while trying to do the right thing and show him as a flawed human being. They wisely avoid the pitfall of devolving into grandstanding pontification and canonizing the protagonist (can you imagine if Oliver Stone directed this?). Webb has cheated on his wife and been forgiven, though Susan lets him know that she hasn't forgotten. His CIA/Contra story, while completely true and enough to have the top levels of the US government in a panic, isn't air-tight as far as sources go. If anything, KILL THE MESSENGER probably needed to be a longer film in order to include all facets of the story and not make the second half feel glossed-over and scaled-down, and the detours into Webb's personal life flow more smoothly.

Gary Webb (1955-2004)

Though Renner is front and center, he and the film get solid support from the fine ensemble, many of whom only have one scene but make it count. Garcia is terrific as Meneses (when he mentions an "Ollie," Webb asks "Ollie?  You mean Oliver North?" Meneses: "No, Oliver Hardy. Yes, Oliver North!"), Michael Sheen has a marvelous bit as a weary and disillusioned congressman who knows the story needs to be told but warns Webb that it will only ruin him ("They won't address the story...they'll just attack you"), and Ray Liotta has an odd scene that doesn't really go anywhere but allows him to serve as this film's Donald Sutherland-in-JFK. Until its midpoint, KILL THE MESSENGER is thoroughly engrossing, suspenseful filmmaking but it doesn't really follow through on its potential. Imagine ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN if it paused the Watergate digging and cut down the scenes with Jason Robards, Jack Warden, and Martin Balsam to introduce subplots about Woodward's and Bernstein's personal lives. That's not to say it isn't worthwhile--it's a very good film that, for a while, flirts with being almost great. Though the focus shifts to Webb the man, it doesn't follow him all the way to his tragic end as the CIA released a 400-page report later in 1998, admitting its complicity and completely vindicating Webb, though that story received almost no coverage because the media was focused on the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. In December 2004, Webb was found in his apartment with two bullet wounds in his head.  His death was ruled a suicide.

On DVD/Blu-ray: ENEMY (2014); ROB THE MOB (2014); and WOLF CREEK 2 (2014)

ENEMY
(Canada/Spain - 2014)

Loosely based on Jose Saramago's novel The Double, but not to be confused with the recent Jesse Eisenberg film THE DOUBLE, Denis Villeneuve's ENEMY is one of those frustrating cinematic puzzles where the set up and the placement of the initial pieces prove much more challenging and engaging than the actual solution. ENEMY excels in its early stages in its depiction of the ennui-drenched L'AVVENTURA, RED DESERT, and THE PASSENGER alienation of vintage Antonioni fused with the cold Cronenbergian chill of Toronto high-rises that recalls everything from SHIVERS to CRASH and even Fernando Mereilles' underappreciated BLINDNESS, itself an adaptation of another Saramago novel. There's also an overt DEAD RINGERS vibe that begins with quiet, withdrawn history professor Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) suffering through small talk with a colleague, who recommends a movie called WHERE THERE'S A WILL, THERE'S A WAY. Adam rents the movie and it's a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, but something catches his attention: cast as "Bellhop #3" is one Daniel Saint Claire, who happens to look exactly like Adam. Adam researches the doppelganger's other roles, which are limited similar bit parts in two other forgettable films from a decade earlier, and eventually goes to the office of the agency representing Saint Claire and is mistaken for him, which gets him Saint Claire's phone number and address.  Adam calls the actor, whose real name is Anthony Claire, and though Anthony is initially hesitant, they meet. Their features are identical and they even have the same scar. Adam freaks out and regrets meeting, but Anthony, who has a history of cheating on his now-pregnant wife Helen (Sarah Gadon), forces Adam to go along with a swap so he can spend some time with Adam's girlfriend Mary (Melanie Laurent).

There's such an eerie, unsettling, Hitchcockian, De Palma-esque by way of Antonioni and Cronenberg feel to the first hour of ENEMY (at times, you might think it's a horror film) that it's almost enraging when you realize it's gone to such intriguing and fascinating lengths to tell such an ultimately banal story.  And I haven't even gotten into the ham-fisted symbolism of spiders and webs, which wasn't part of Saramago's novel. ENEMY is borderline brilliant for 2/3 of its running time, but the back end of the script by Javier Gullon (who also co-wrote the intriguing 2007 thriller KING OF THE HILL) has all the depth and insight of someone's first and quickly-discarded draft in an Intro to Creative Writing course. The film is very well-directed by Villeneuve, who also teamed with Gyllenhaal on last year's more commercial PRISONERS (ENEMY was shot first, but released after). Villeneuve is a director who brings out the best in the actor, who was riveting in PRISONERS in a performance that deserved more attention than it got. Gyllenhaal delivers two strong performances here, even as the film starts collapsing around him in the closing sequences as--you guessed it--the lines between real and fantasy become impossibly blurred, not to mention hopelessly hackneyed. Still worth seeing for that opening hour and the powerfully dread-filled slow build...at least until it starts sabotaging itself. (R, 91 mins)


ROB THE MOB
(US - 2014)

There's a slight sense of TRUE ROMANCE redux in this somewhat fictionalized account of Tommy and Rosemarie Uva, a Queens couple trying to stay on the right path after jail stints for armed robbery. Struggling in their 9-5 jobs, they started robbing mob-owned bars and social clubs. In one of their jobs, they managed to obtain a list that thoroughly detailed the Gambino and Bonnano family hierarchy, and as they got increasingly cocky and overconfident, they used it to guarantee their safety which, of course, backfired and the couple were whacked on Christmas Eve 1992.  In ROB THE MOB, directed by Raymond De Felitta and written by Jonathan Fernandez, Tommy (Michael Pitt) and Rosie (Nina Arianda) aren't married, for some reason (they're planning to get married on Christmas Day, so perhaps it was a dramatic decision), and some of the names are changed, but otherwise, it mostly sticks to the story. The none-too-bright Tommy has a lifelong grudge against the local gangsters, who strong-armed, shook down, and eventually killed his florist father, so once they get desperate and he starts toying with the idea of ripping them off, Rosie can't talk him out of it, and when the money starts rolling in, she's OK with it as well. During one robbery, they get "the list" from inside the wallet of aged and slightly feeble mobster Joey D (Burt Young), and all hell breaks loose in the family, run by the reclusive Big Al Fiorello (Andy Garcia), a composite of Bonnano boss Joseph Massino and underboss Sal Vitale.

ROB THE MOB does a good job of mixing lighthearted and serious moments, as Tommy's early, haplessly clumsy attempts at pulling a social club stick-up get a reaction from the mobsters that's not unlike Richard Pryor's famous "Mafia Club" bit. But as things get serious and the stakes get higher, the shift to drama is smooth and organic. De Felitta (who previously worked with Garcia on 2009's enjoyable CITY ISLAND) does a superb job with period detail and other than some CGI effects in the closing scene, the whole film has a vivid sense of time and place and feels like it could've been made 20 years ago. The film takes place during the trial of John Gotti, whose 1992 conviction was essentially the beginning of the end for the old-school glory days of the American Mafia, and it deftly ties in an elegiac feeling for that era, though only Big Al seems aware that things are about to change. Most of the goodfellas in ROB THE MOB have seen better days but there's a comfortable complacency that's set in for them. It's a period of Mafia history that isn't glorious and hasn't been covered much in popular culture and ROB THE MOB offers a unique perspective in the "working-stiff gangster" subgenre with films like DONNIE BRASCO (1997) and KILLING THEM SOFTLY (2012).  Fine performances all around from Pitt, Garcia, and Ray Romano as NYC crime reporter "Jerry Cardozo," presumably based on Gotti biographer and Mafia historian Jerry Capeci, in addition to colorful supporting turns by familiar faces like Michael Rispoli, Griffin Dunne, Cathy Moriarty, Yul Vazquez, John Tormey, Joseph R. Gannascoli, and Frank Whaley (Aida Turturro is prominently-billed but her role was cut from the film). The standout however, is Tony-winning Broadway actress Arianda in what would be a star-making big-screen breakout had Millennium released ROB THE MOB on more than 30 screens. Arianda is a ball of fire throughout, in her interaction with Tommy ("You bought me flowers!"), chewing people out on the phone at her collection agency job, or overcome with visions of fame and talking way too much when Cardozo wants to interview her. She handles the "tough moll" role in classic fashion and has a very natural, streetwise 1970s presence (these small-time Queens would-be gangsters always seem a little behind the times) that sets her apart from a lot of young actresses today, who probably would've appeared mannered and playing dress-up. It's the kind of showy role that could've easily been turned into a caricature, but Arianda keeps it under control and nails it, and if this movie had gotten any exposure at all, there's a good chance she'd be getting some legitimate Oscar buzz.  On the whole, ROB THE MOB wanders a bit and isn't as ambitious or as focused as it should be, but it's a solid little film, and Arianda's performance is a big reason why.  (R, 104 mins)


WOLF CREEK 2
(Australia - 2014)

In the horror genre, nine years is an unusually lengthy wait for a sequel, and after that amount of time, you might wonder why writer/director Greg McLean took so long to get to the follow-up to 2005's WOLF CREEK. And after you watch the absurdly tardy WOLF CREEK 2, you'll wonder why he even bothered. When it was released, WOLF CREEK got the attention of hardcore horror fans with its mercilessly bleak vision and its instantly iconic performance by veteran Australian character actor John Jarratt as gregarious Outback serial killer Mick Taylor.  As Mick, Jarratt came across as the terrifying doppelganger of Crocodile Dundee, and the grueling film wasn't for horror amateurs. Indeed, it didn't go over with mainstream audiences (earning a rare F from the ludicrous CinemaScore), and was lumped in with the then in-vogue torture porn craze (which, to be fair, it shared some aspects), but horror scenesters embraced it and McLean was hailed as a major new talent in the genre. He returned with 2008's surprisingly good killer crocodile flick ROGUE, buried by Dimension Films after the similar and inferior PRIMEVAL beat it to theaters and bombed.  McLean's been off the radar since ROGUE, and the pointless WOLF CREEK 2 isn't likely to re-establish his career momentum.

Jarratt is back, and rather than play Mick in the sinister, unsettling way he did nearly a decade ago, McLean instead has him crank it up to 11 and beyond, turning the character into a relentless killing machine with his endlessly-quipping Freddy Krueger zingers and asides ("Welcome to Australia, cocksucker!"). WOLF CREEK 2 eschews the nightmarish qualities of WOLF CREEK to go for broad horror comedy augmented by over-the-top splatter effects. Shifts in tone in a sequel are nothing new: Sam Raimi did it with 1987's EVIL DEAD 2 and it's the same approach Tobe Hooper took for 1986's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2. It doesn't work here, nor does McLean's decision to attempt a "shifting of the protagonists" move from the PSYCHO playbook.  The first hour is essentially one long chase as we spend a bunch of time with two likable German backpackers, Rutger (Philippe Klaus) and Katarina (Shannyn Ashlyn), only to have them exit as Mick's focus turns to British tourist Paul (Ryan Corr). Mick plays road and head games with Paul, eventually getting him back to his vast HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES torture dungeon. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where WOLF CREEK 2 implodes beyond repair, but Mick plowing over kangaroos to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is as good a location as any. It doesn't really matter in the end, because this only exists to be THE JOHN JARRATT SHOW, with the actor's overbearing histrionics turning his second interpretation of Mick into an extended tribute to the career of Bill Moseley, whether he's screaming at the top of lungs, shouting Aussie jingles and limericks, or mowing down a friendly old couple to "The Blue Danube Waltz."  Some nice cinematography and a tense opening sequence aside, the ill-advised and badly-executed WOLF CREEK 2 is just uninspired, stupid, and lazy. Here's to hoping McLean gets his mojo back before he has to shit out a WOLF CREEK 3 in desperation seven or eight years from now. (Unrated, 106 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE BAG MAN (2014) and AT MIDDLETON (2014)

THE BAG MAN
(Bahamas - 2014)

This low-budget, Bahamas-financed thriller was shot in Louisiana in 2012 and released on 15 screens a month ago.  It plays like one of those forgettable post-PULP FICTION Tarantino knockoffs that flooded video stores well into the late 1990s. There's an added bit of THE USUAL SUSPECTS tossed in, along with some occasional would-be David Lynch eccentricity that provides a few fleeting amusing moments but mostly just feels rote and tired, with cinematography so dark and murky that it's often hard to tell what's going on.  Based on an unfilmed screenplay titled MOTEL (the film's original title) penned by veteran actor James Russo, THE BAG MAN is the debut of writer/director David Grovic, who manages to corral a pair of slumming big names like John Cusack and Robert De Niro for a sort-of THINGS TO DO IN NEW ORLEANS WHEN YOU'RE COASTING. By now, it's no surprise to see Cusack or De Niro in this kind of Redbox-ready clunker that keeps a roof over the heads of guys like Michael Madsen or Tom Sizemore or Val Kilmer or Christian Slater, but not that long ago, this would've been a major release in theaters nationwide.  De Niro's been taking mercenary jobs for a few years now (you think he even remembers making RED LIGHTS?), and once in a while, a SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK might accidentally happen, but Cusack's fall from the A-list has been shocking in its suddenness because nothing really brought it on.  It's not like he got old or was involved in a scandal or had a string of bombs or a reputation for being unusually difficult. What gives?  Who did he piss off?  What the hell happened to John Cusack?

Here, Cusack is Jack, a flunky for Dragna (De Niro), a powerful New York mobster prone to windy, overly-scripted speeches that reference the likes of Herman Hesse and Sun Tzu.  Dragna gives Jack an easy, quick-money assignment:  retrieve a bag, don't look inside, drive it to no-tell motel in an off-the-beaten-path podunk town, and wait for him to arrive.  Jack arrives at the motel with complications already in tow--a guy who tried to get the bag from him is now a corpse in his trunk.  The situation doesn't improve once he goes through the hassle of checking in (Crispin Glover is the twitchy, wheelchair-bound desk clerk):  Jack shoots some mystery men waiting for him in the next room, then finds himself paired up with Israeli hooker Rivka (Rebecca Da Costa), who's being hassled by a pair of vicious pimps, one an eye-patched Nick Fury lookalike (Sticky Fingaz), the other a bad-tempered Serbian dwarf (Martin Klebba). Bodies start piling up and the sheriff (Dominic Purcell, who's actually good here) keeps nosing around before Dragna makes his explosive reappearance to inform Jack why he was selected for this job, and it's a front-runner for 2014's dumbest plot twist. There's lots of would-be Tarantino dialogue ("If you could fuck any woman from history, who would it be?") and quirky touches (Glover sternly telling Cusack "Don't touch my wheelchair...it belonged to my dead mother!" gets a big laugh), and De Niro, hamming it up and sporting near-George Romero-eyeglass frames and a big silver pompadour in a role that seems like it was written with Christopher Walken in mind, has a long monologue that centers on an episode of FULL HOUSE, but those moments are disbursed in a stingy fashion throughout a drab, dull, stagy noir that's going nowhere fast, much like Cusack's career if he doesn't stop seemingly choosing his scripts at random.  (R, 109 mins)


AT MIDDLETON
(US - 2014)

If you happen upon AT MIDDLETON in its last five minutes, you might think you missed a powerful, heartfelt look at two people who make a connection over the course of a day and are forced by the circumstances and the realities of their lives to part ways and return to their respective spouses.  But if you watch the rest of the film leading up to that finale, you'll get a grating, phony, and pandering middle-aged rom-com filled with obvious jokes, cliched plot turns, cardboard characters, and some frequently atrocious acting, the kind of fawned-over festival favorite that ultimately gets dumped on 20 screens with little fanfare.  There's a good film to be made--one that could deftly balance drama and comedy--about parents of an only child facing an empty nest when that kid goes off to college, but until its surprisingly poignant ending, AT MIDDLETON takes the easy route to stale laughs and even staler drama nearly every time and has almost nothing substantive to offer. Taking place over one day at the mid-level, mostly average Middleton College, the type of place no one really wants to go but they just sort-of end up there, AT MIDDLETON finds heart surgeon George Hartman (Andy Garcia) and his son Conrad (Spencer Lofranco) arriving for a campus tour when George has a meet-cute with Edith Martin (Vera Farmiga), when she steals his parking spot.  Edith is there with her ferociouly ambitious daughter Audrey (Farmiga's little sister Taissa of AMERICAN HORROR STORY; there's a 21-year age difference but they look so much alike that the initiallly odd casting works).  George is a milquetoast sort who wears a bow tie, while Edith is brash, loud, and free-spirited and prone to embarrassing Audrey. Gee, is there any way opposites won't attract and that dweeby bow tie won't be undone before the end of the movie?

George and Edith get separated from the tour group and spend the afternoon on their own, stealing a couple of bikes, crashing a drama class, going into the music building and playing "Chopsticks," climbing the campus bell tower, watching THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, watching a young couple have public sex, running through a fountain, and generally making nuisances of themselves campus-wide. In the film's worst stretch, George and Edith blaze up with a couple of stoner pre-med students.  Can you do anything new with the concept of square parents getting high? As evidenced by a baked Garcia rapping "I'm a cardiac surgeon!" over some background reggae beats, the answer is a resounding "no."  It just gets worse when one of the stoner dudes starts talking about a diseased dog's distended ballsack, which leads to the mantra "The ballsack is life," which is at least a brief respite from the film busting its ass to make "feckless" a punchline.  A mannered Vera Farmiga, who appears to have prepped for the role by visualizing the worst of Diane Keaton and running with it, is really hard to take at times, and in the most unintentionally telling shot, she actually grabs a crutch and starts using it for no reason. The younger actors don't fare much better, though they aren't required to embarrass themselves quite as much. Still, Taissa Farmiga gets one of the worst lines after a spat with Conrad--when he puts his earbuds back in and walks away, she yells "Confusion has a lot of great soundtracks!"  What?  What does that even mean? Peter Riegert appears briefly as a cynical DJ named Boneyard Sims, who gives communications major Conrad some pointers.  The best performance is a two-scene bit from Tom Skerritt as a famed linguistics professor who advises the driven Audrey to slow down and use college to explore her options when she melts down after he declines her request to be her mentor.  Skerritt brings a quiet, scholarly dignity to the role that's completely at odds with the cookie-cutter histrionics going on almost everywhere else, and with about four minutes of screen time, he succeeds in making you wish this was a film about his character. As George and Edith grow closer over the day, they question the decisions they've made and the complacency that's set in, but AT MIDDLETON isn't interested in that.  It's the kind of movie where a staid, uptight guy loosening his bow tie and rapping after a couple of bong hits is supposed to be instantly hysterical.  And there's the moment when Edith starts crying because the day's coming to an end, and she looks at George with tears streaming down her face and says "I thought you fixed hearts!"  Really?  Pros like Garcia and Vera Farmiga read that line in director Adam Rodgers' script and said "Yep...sounds good!  Let's do this!"?  But then at the end, something happens.  It gets serious, and the final moments are genuinely emotional as the two parties go to their respective vehicles and get on the road home, presumably never to see each other again.  The expressions on Garcia's and Farmiga's faces convey the pain, the missed opportunities, the uncertainty over the future.  They're exhibiting the best acting they've done in the whole film and then you realize why: because they aren't talking.  (R, 100 mins)