In Theaters: FANTASY ISLAND (2020)

FANTASY ISLAND
(US - 2020)

Directed by Jeff Wadlow. Written by Jeff Wadlow, Chris Roach and Jillian Jacobs. Cast: Michael Pena, Maggie Q, Lucy Hale, Austin Stowell, Michael Rooker, Jimmy O. Yang, Portia Doubleday, Ryan Hansen, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Kim Coates, Mike Vogel, Robbie Jones, Evan Evagora, Goran D. Kleut, Ian Roberts, Charlotte McKinney. (PG-13, 109 mins)

It was only a matter of time before the ball landed on FANTASY ISLAND on the Intellectual Property roulette wheel. Airing on ABC on Saturday nights from 1978 to 1984, FANTASY ISLAND followed THE LOVE BOAT, and both shows offered endless guest spots for both popular TV actors of the time and past-their-prime stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. It was a big hit and briefly turned Herve Villechaize's Tattoo into a pop culture phenomenon until the reportedly difficult actor was fired from the show just before its final season. Tattoo's catchphrase "The plane! The plane!" is really all anyone remembers about FANTASY ISLAND these days, though it did provide veteran actor and Chrysler pitchman Ricardo Montalban his most recognizable role until 1982's STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN as Mr. Roarke, the mysterious, white-tux-clad overseer of a luxurious vacation getaway where, for a price, visitors could fulfill their ultimate fantasies (or at least as "ultimate" as network TV would allow). There was always a dark undercurrent to the show with its "be careful what you wish for" scenarios, so re-imagining it as a straight-up horror movie might've had some potential, but in the erratic hands of the wildly inconsistent Blumhouse, the end result is an almost total disaster.

The set-up remains the same, with a group of vacation package contest winners landing on the titular island. Tattoo is nowhere to be found in these more sensitive times--and rest assured, there's already woke thinkpieces about his "troubling legacy"--so their arrival is met with an exuberant "The plane! The plane!" exclaimed by Julia (Parisa Fitz-Henley), the newly-hired assistant to Mr. Roarke (Michael Pena). The vacationers looking for their greatest wish fulfillment include Gwen (Maggie Q), who turned down a marriage proposal five years earlier and has regretted it every day since; desk-bound cop Patrick (Austin Stowell), who always wanted to follow in his hero father's footsteps and join the military but never did; dudebro stepbrothers J.D. (Ryan Hansen) and Brax (Jimmy O. Yang), who just want a kickass party weekend; and Melanie (Lucy Hale), who's seeking revenge on Sloane (Portia Doubleday), the Mean Girl who made her life hell in high school. Mr. Roarke encourages them to enjoy their fantasies, with the caveat that he is powerless to intervene and that "all fantasies must come to their natural conclusion."

So far, so meh, as director/co-writer Jeff Wadlow (who also directed Hale in Blumhouse's universally-reviled TRUTH OR DARE) cuts back and forth between the various fantasies, much like the TV show. J.D. and Brax--who gets very irate when J.D. refers to him by the past nickname "T" in a cumbersome way that you know it must mean something later--hook up with available hotties and bond as brothers, which is important to Brax as everyone in their family but J.D. cut him off after he came out of the closet years earlier. Patrick is given combat fatigues and set loose in the jungle, where he immediately comes upon a covert military operation; Gwen opens a door to find her ex-boyfriend Alan (Robbie Jones) waiting for her in the very restaurant where she rejected him to propose to her once more; and Melanie is taken to an underground control room where she finds Sloane strapped to a chair with a variety of physical and psychological torture methods at the ready, ranging from electric shocks to posting a secret video of Sloane's recent adulterous tryst all over social media for her husband and her friends to see. But then the fantasies start intersecting--a grenade blast taking place in one is heard in another, and all parties keep running into Damon (Michael Rooker), a disheveled, machete-wielding mystery man who's hiding out on the island, warning everyone that it and Mr. Roarke are pure evil.

With its tired plot machinations, predictable jump scares, mostly annoying characters, and a PG-13 target audience that's, at best, vaguely aware of its 40-year-old inspiration, FANTASY ISLAND goes nowhere slowly, and it gets even worse when it starts piling on twist after twist until nothing makes sense anymore. The story just becomes a series of rote rehashes of horror films past, with M. Night Shyamalan plot turns; a vaguely CABIN IN THE WOODS situation in the way the island is "controlled;" an evil, hulking, stitch-mouthed figure known as "The Surgeon" (Ian Roberts), who looks like he lumbered in from a bad circa 2002 Dark Castle production; and clumsy references, like when the island transports Patrick 25 years into the past to a Venezuela military operation run by his dad (Mike Vogel), and another soldier says "You look dazed and confused...you know, like that movie that came out last year!" And there's even black-ops Russian mercenaries in PURGE masks led by Kim Coates, plus some zombies oozing black goo from their eyes, because what the hell, why not? As everyone's fantasies start intersecting, it becomes clear that something bigger--and dumber--is going on, especially as Mr. Roarke grows more evasive about the true nature of the island. It all leads to at least a half dozen false endings (it seriously looks ready to wrap up at one point, but it drags on for another 25 minutes), culminating in an eye-rolling groaner of a punchline that's notable not just for its belabored set-up and execution but also in its hubristically ballsy assumption that this thing is getting a sequel.

Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize
in a publicity shot for the original series

Maggie Q is really the only one who seems interested in giving a real performance here. Elsewhere, the almost-40-year-old Will Arnett-lookalike Hansen (of VERONICA MARS and PARTY DOWN) is way too old to be playing someone still indulging in these kind high-fiving bro-downs, Hale (PRETTY LITTLE LIARS) brings nothing to her obnoxious character aside from hip snark and can't even 'tude, and Rooker only seems to be here in a desperate attempt to curry favor with the convention crowd. Worst of all is a horribly miscast Pena, who registers none of the effortless magnanimity or the subtly sinister presence of the great Montalban. This was shot mostly on Fiji, and the one thing Pena convincingly sells is that he's only here for the paid vacation. Montalban's Mr. Roarke was a master class in exquisitely-tailored, regal authority. Pena is visibly slouching in more casual, wrinkled attire, is absent for long stretches, and only seems to perk up when he gets to put some extra sauce on every utterance of "faaaahntahhsssyyy." Maybe he's too young for the role--Andy Garcia did a fine job of playing Montalban in HBO's Herve Villechaize biopic MY DINNER WITH HERVE, and a black-suited Malcolm McDowell also acquitted himself well on ABC's otherwise forgettable one-season 1998 revival. Any number of older actors could've brought more suavely erudite gravitas to a new Mr. Roarke: Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem, and Pierce Brosnan immediately jump to mind. Coming soon after the latest revamp of CHARLIE'S ANGELS tanked, FANTASY ISLAND (or, "Blumhouse's FANTASY ISLAND," according to the opening credits) could serve as a teachable moment for producers and studios to cease raiding the back catalog of classic TV intellectual property and maybe come up with some new ideas (you'd think Pena and Hansen would've learned their IP lesson after appearing in 2017's CHiPS, which you completely forgot about, didn't you?). Of course, we know that won't happen, so all we can really do is wait for Blumhouse to get around to putting a DEATH SHIP/GHOST SHIP spin on THE LOVE BOAT, hopefully with the ominous tag line "Come aboard...they're expecting you."

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 Netflix: EXTINCTION (2018)

EXTINCTION
(US - 2018)

Directed by Ben Young. Written by Spenser Cohen and Brad Caleb Kane. Cast: Michael Pena, Lizzy Caplan, Israel Broussard, Mike Colter, Emma Booth, Lex Shrapnel, Amelia Crouch, Erica Tremblay, Lilly Aspell. (Unrated, 95 mins)

Originally set to be given a nationwide rollout in theaters by Universal in January 2018, the apocalyptic sci-fi saga EXTINCTION was pulled from the schedule two months prior to its release without explanation. In the tradition of other A-list sci-fi offspring rejected by their mothers--Universal's SPECTRAL, Paramount's THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX--the film was sold to Netflix and is finally debuting as a Netflix Original. 2016's ambitious and unexpectedly imaginative SPECTRAL was better than Universal's treatment of it would lead you to expect, but EXTINCTION is a muddled mess from the start. In a vaguely defined near-future, factory maintenance worker Peter (a bland Michael Pena) is plagued by recurring nightmares of an alien invasion, so troubled by them that he's growing preoccupied and distant from his concerned wife Alice (Lizzy Caplan) and frustrated daughters Hanna (Amelia Crouch) and Lucy (Erica Tremblay, younger sister of ROOM's Jacob Tremblay). He falls asleep at work and starts seeing mysterious light formations in the sky, but no one believes him and his seemingly skeptical but sympathetic boss (Mike Colter) suggests he see a doctor. While entertaining some friends (Emma Booth and Lex Shrapnel, who may have the greatest name ever) the next evening, the alien invasion begins, with buildings brought down and black-helmeted soldiers marching through their high-rise mowing down everyone. After their friends are killed in the mayhem, Peter, Alice, and the girls manage to escape to safety in a secret tunnel beneath the industrial complex where he's employed, a place he only knows exists because he saw it in one of his nightmares.

It's shortly after this point, with the introduction of an alien soldier calling itself "Miles" (Israel Broussard), that EXTINCTION shifts gears and heads into a different direction. This twist is intriguing enough--and puts the film firmly in the formulaic Netflix wheelhouse of "feature-length BLACK MIRROR episode"--that it makes you wonder why the first hour was basically pissed away with what could've easily been titled SKYLINE: EXTINCTION. The credited screenwriters are Spenser Cohen and Brad Caleb Kane, with an earlier Cohen draft circulating around Hollywood as far back as 2013. The extent of which Cohen's and/or Kane's work made it into the finished movie isn't clear, but it's an open secret that the script was almost completely reworked by an uncredited Eric Heisserer, who was nominated for an Oscar for his ARRIVAL screenplay. There's certainly a "too many cooks in the kitchen" feel to what EXTINCTION is trying to accomplish as it juggles too many Philip K. Dick concepts (you'll spot the BLADE RUNNER and TOTAL RECALL elements) while mostly serving as yet another rote CGI destructiongasm. The visual effects aren't really up to par for a major-studio production, and director Ben Young (2016's acclaimed HOUNDS OF LOVE) does the film no favors by opting to shoot much of the first hour in murky darkness with the action conveyed mostly in incoherent quick cuts. The twist around the hour mark is actually pretty good, and for about a 20-minute stretch, EXTINCTION seems dangerously close to getting its shit together. Unfortunately, it fizzles out with a huge, clumsy exposition dump in the closing minutes that's completely unsatisfying, and like Netflix's recent dud HOW IT ENDS, makes the entire project feel like a tanked series pilot. There's little mystery as to why Universal kicked this one to the curb and why Netflix figured it would fit right in with their unofficial mission statement of offering as many thoroughly disposable and instantly forgotten sci-fi mediocrities as possible. Do give SPECTRAL a whirl, though. That one's worth a look.

On DVD/Blu-ray: TONI ERDMANN (2016); WAR ON EVERYONE (2016); and TANK 432 (2016)

TONI ERDMANN
(Germany/Austria - 2016)

Nominated for 2016's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (it lost to Asghar Farhadi's THE SALESMAN), TONI ERDMANN was one of the most critically-praised arthouse titles of last year. The third film from acclaimed German writer/director Maren Ade, and her first since 2009's EVERYONE ELSE, TONI ERDMANN has some amusing moments, heartfelt observations, and fine performances from its two leads, but at an absurdly bloated 162 minutes, there's simply too much of it, as Ade obviously loved everything she shot so much that she wasn't willing to part with any of it. Winfried Conradi (Austrian actor Peter Simonischek) is a retired, widower music teacher and an affable eccentric, an incessant prankster who's introduced answering the door for a package and telling the delivery driver it was ordered by his brother, who's just been paroled from prison where he was serving time for sending mail bombs. He excuses himself to get his brother, who's revealed to just be Winfried in a different robe, with a wig and fake teeth. The set of fake teeth is his go-to prop, and when his beloved, elderly, and blind dog Willi dies, Winfried is sure to take them with him to Bucharest, where he drops in for an unannounced visit with his daughter Ines (Sandra Huller, so memorable in 2006's REQUIEM). Ines is a consultant for firm dealing in oil export, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that her goofball dad gets in the way despite her insistence that he keep his silliness at a distance. Winfried is a free spirit who wants to enjoy the moments as they happen and not take life so seriously. He tries to pass this philosophy on to Ines, but she's only focused on her work, and the two have a falling out ("Do you have any plans in life other than slipping fart cushions under people?") after she misses an important meeting because she dozed off and Winfried didn't wake her.

That's the first hour of TONI ERDMANN. There's a lot of insider talk about the corporate world and how the structure is such that Ines has to work twice as hard as her male counterparts to make an impression, and even after she delivers a presentation to her boss Henneberg (Michael Wittenborn), he concludes the meeting with "Well, gents," choosing only to address the men in the room. Ade makes salient points like this, but belabors them. It's roughly 65 minutes in before we finally meet "Toni Erdmann," who shows up at a bar where Ines is having drinks with two female colleagues. "Toni" is clearly Winfried in his most grandiose prank yet, with a shaggy black wig and those same fake teeth, the Tony Clifton to his Andy Kaufman, claiming to be a life coach visiting Bucharest for the funeral of his Italian dentist friend's turtle. This kind of absurdist humor provides the highlights of TONI ERDMANN, but these moments are too sporadic. As "Toni," Winfried keeps following Ines around, meddling in her work life, eventually working his way into her office to act as a life coach for Henneborg and later trying to pass himself off as the German ambassador to Romania. Ade eventually caves to shock comedy with a pair of much-talked about scenes that really aren't that funny: one in a hotel room where Ines denies sex to workplace friend-with-benefits Tim (Trystan Putter), forcing him to masturbate and ejaculate on to a tray of petits four brought up by room service, after which she scarfs down one of the semen-covered appetizers. The other is the impromptu "naked party" sequence that was hailed as a set piece of Blake Edwards-ian genius but is really just awkward, uncomfortable, and not funny, especially when Winfried crashes it wearing a Bulgarian kukeri costume. Of course, it goes for sentiment at the end when father and daughter reach an understanding, but should it have taken a meandering and punishing two hours and 40 minutes to get there? TONI ERDMANN has already been deemed a modern classic, and yeah, there's some big laughs scattered throughout, Huller has a great incredulous, deadpan glare and convincingly belts out an impressive version of Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love of All," and Simonischek often demonstrates a kind of Peter Sellers-meets-Sasha Baron Cohen quality with his endless antics (though his "Toni Erdmann" get-up really looks a lot like the late, great Alan Bates). With a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I'm obviously in the minority by not adoring this film, but by the two-hour point, part of me was hoping Winfried would choke to death on those goddamn fake teeth the next time he slipped them into his mouth with an impish grin. A Hollywood remake is already in the works, with Kristen Wiig and Jack Nicholson in his first film since 2010's HOW DO YOU KNOW? (R, 162 mins)



WAR ON EVERYONE
(UK/UAE - 2016; 2017 US release)

An equal opportunity offender, the aptly-titled WAR ON EVERYONE is a bile-soaked, misanthropic screed of a buddy/cop movie from Irish writer/director John Michael McDonagh (THE GUARD, CALVARY). The story centers on two outrageously dirty cops running rampant in Albuquerque, New Mexico: brainy and philosophical Bob Bolano (Michael Pena) and impulsive anger management case Terry Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard). Sort of like a well-dressed STARSKY AND HUTCH filtered through BAD LIEUTENANT, Bolano and Monroe are introduced deliberately running over a mime and telling a witness that they can get away with because they're cops. They've just been taken off suspension by the perpetually flustered Lt. Stanton (Paul Reiser) after allegations of bribery and corruption and an unfortunate incident involving Bolano beating the shit out of a racist colleague who called him a "wetback," with Stanton explaining "This is the police department! We're surrounded by racist pigs!" but empathizing by explaining "I get it that he's racist...I understand. I'm married to a chink. I have chink kids." That's WAR ON EVERYONE in a nutshell: a feature-length trigger warning that wallows in cheap shots not just at Asians, but at African-Americans, homosexuals, transgender, Muslims, Quakers, dyslexics, overweight kids, people with MS, bad British teeth, the mentally ill, Stephen Hawking, and the Irish, just to show McDonagh's not excluding anyone. Much of it is admittedly funny in a "Did they just go there?" kind-of way, but WAR ON EVERYONE's convoluted plot feels like a half-baked rough draft that Shane Black scribbled out and would've tossed aside until he could devote his full attention to it. After framing an informant named Reggie X (Malcolm Barrett) with drug possession, Reggie coughs up some info: he was the getaway driver for a $1 million racetrack heist orchestrated by sleazy, heroin-addicted British dignitary Lord James Mangan (Theo James). After numerous run-ins with Mangan and his fey underling, strip club manager Russell Birdwell (Caleb Landry Jones as old-school Crispin Glover), Bolano and Monroe plot to steal the racetrack take for themselves which, naturally, leaves a trail of corpses all over Albuquerque.

There's also time for Monroe to have a romance with stripper Jackie (Tessa Thompson of CREED), and for him to find the caring soul within when it comes to Danny (Zion Leyba), a nice kid whose mother's been arrested for killing his father for reasons that are deliberately left obscure but, of course, will tie into the main plot much later. There's a lot in WAR ON EVERYONE that's amusing, but too much of it is just posturing attitude and characters saying things just to see how offensive the film can get. Elsewhere, McDonagh (the older brother of IN BRUGES writer/director Martin McDonagh) tries too hard to do some post-Tarantino pop culture riffing, with Monroe being an obsessive Glen Campbell fanatic (there's a Monroe/Jackie dance number set to "Rhinestone Cowboy"), Bolano and Reggie griping that "you can't see Jennifer Lopez's tits" in OUT OF SIGHT, and Monroe trying to recall if the first movie he ever saw was THE BLUE LAGOON or DOC SAVAGE: MAN OF BRONZE. There's scattered moments where WAR ON EVERYONE gets some momentum going and scores an occasional sterling bit of quotable dialogue ("European jizz?"), and James (the DIVERGENT series) makes a truly loathsome villain, but McDonagh probably should've given his script another polish before rolling the cameras. (R, 98 mins)



TANK 432
(UK - 2016)

There's a strong sense of the familiar with TANK 432. It's produced by cult filmmaker Ben Wheatley (KILL LIST, HIGH-RISE, the upcoming FREE FIRE), and it's the feature writing/directing debut of protege Nick Gillespie, who's served as a camera operator on all of Wheatley's films. The plot begins with faint echoes of Neal Marshall's DOG SOLDIERS before becoming something more surreal and psychological and by the end, it feels like a longer-than-usual episode of BLACK MIRROR, something that's probably inevitable in UK genre fare given the show's popularity and fervent following. An enemy is closing in on a team of mercenaries led by blustery, barking Smith (Gordon Kennedy), who orders everyone to retreat and leave injured Capper (Wheatley semi-regular Michael Smiley) behind with a bone jutting out of his leg. Smith has two hooded prisoners in orange jumpsuits and they pick up another tag-along in an unnamed woman (Alex March), who they find in utter hysterics until she's sedated by medic Karlsson (Deirdre Mullins). The squad is rounded out by unstable Gantz (Steve Garry), who's already seeing flashing visions of a barely-discernible creature following them, and requisite voice-of-reason Reeves (Rupert Evans, of Amazon's THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE), who's struggling to hold it together. After finding several headless bodies of decapitated mercenaries in a barn, Smith leads everyone--minus one of the two prisoners who's killed a scuffle, leaving only Annabella (April Pearson) as the recovered quarry in their unspecified assignment--to an abandoned tank in the middle of an empty field. Deciding it's the safest place to take refuge from whatever is pursuing them, they all pile into its cramped, claustrophobic confines.

It isn't long before everyone's sanity starts to crumble, especially once they're inside and the only door in or out is jammed and no one can pry it open. Whatever's after them taunts them from outside, clanging and banging on the tank. Gantz unsuccessfully tries to start the tank, shits himself, and goes catatonic after being exposed to a strange orange powder. And Karlsson finds a box filled with files--on each of them. Too much of TANK 432 is just everyone shouting at one another, and Gillespie tips his hand too early with constant shots of Smith eyeballing everyone, scribbling in a notebook, and being evasive whenever anyone asks what he's writing, making it fairly obvious that things aren't what they seem, there's some kind of secret, and that Smith is on it. When that secret is finally revealed, it's hardly worth the elaborate and shouty buildup. Gillespie does a decent job establishing a tense atmosphere early on, but the film eventually grows tedious, and by the time Capper improbably reappears, Gillespie and Wheatley just let their buddy Smiley run rampant, ranting and yelling and basically hijacking the climax. (Unrated, 88 mins, also streaming on Netflix)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE VATICAN TAPES (2015); Z FOR ZACHARIAH (2015); and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE III: VENGEANCE IS MINE (2015)

THE VATICAN TAPES
(US - 2015)

An absolutely atrocious EXORCIST ripoff, THE VATICAN TAPES was directed by Mark Neveldine, best known as half of Neveldine/Taylor, the duo behind the brilliant and insane CRANK (2006). Unfortunately, they've made nothing but unwatchable garbage since (CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE)  and in stepping out for his debut solo joint, Neveldine just has nothing to say and only succeeds in further proving CRANK was a fluke. How many more of these generic, PG-13 possession movies do we need? It's been 42 years since THE EXORCIST--anyone making a demonic possession movie has to realize they have nothing new to bring to the table, right? With the pointless THE VATICAN TAPES, we just get more of the same, only dumber: attractive young woman (Olivia Taylor Dudley as Angela) gets possessed by a demon after accidentally cutting her finger. As her erratic behavior increases--vomiting; speaking an archaic language she couldn't possibly know; trying to drown a baby in the maternity ward; willing a detective to smash light bulbs into his eyes--she's discharged by the hospital shrink (Kathleen Robertson) into the care of a priest (Michael Pena) who appeals to the church higher-ups until a cardinal (Peter Andersson) who, natch, is some kind of legendary possession whisperer, is dispatched from Vatican City. In between all that, there's lots of mandatory found footage snippets (with a bunch of footage the Vatican couldn't possibly have on file), as the framing story of the film has a vicar (Djimon Hounsou) watching the already-occurred events on what must be the Vatican's top secret "Exorcism's Greatest Hits" YouTube channel.

THE VATICAN TAPES is shameful in the way it wastes overqualified actors: I expect to find Dougray Scott scowling as Angela's overprotective military dad and Michael Pare slouching as a detective, but why is two-time Oscar nominee Hounsou slumming through this, completely wasted in such a frivolous, nothing supporting role that anyone could've played? Why is Pena prominently billed but stepping aside while Andersson's Cardinal does all the exorcising? Swedish actor Andersson, with his unusual screen presence and strange performance (he looks like a shaven-headed David Gilmour and practically growls his dialogue like Christian Bale doing his Batman voice), is the only remotely interesting element of this otherwise miserable waste of time, unless you count an absurd scene where Angela vomits three whole eggs ("The Holy Trinity!" the Cardinal gravely declares) in a moment more reminiscent of AIRPLANE! than THE EXORCIST. It's insultingly bad, and might even be worse than THE DEVIL INSIDE and THE LAST EXORCISM PART II. Lionsgate knew they had a turd on their hands--they shuffled this off to their Pantelion division, specializing in films aimed at Latino audiences, and only released it on 420 screens. There's nothing here specifically geared toward Latino moviegoers (or any moviegoers, for that matter), unless you count the presence of Pena, and if that was their only justification for slapping the Pantelion logo on this, then the level of audience contempt is just off the charts. Fuck this movie. (PG-13, 91 mins)


Z FOR ZACHARIAH
(US/Switzerland/Iceland - 2015)

Z FOR ZACHARIAH is a confused adaptation of the 1974 sci-fi novel by Robert C. O'Brien, whose Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH was made into the 1982 animated film THE SECRET OF NIMH. Director Craig Zobel (COMPLIANCE) and screenwriter Nissar Modi take so many liberties with O'Brien's novel--for no real reason--that by the end, you'll wonder why they even bothered. The novel centered on two characters: Ann Burden and John Loomis, the apparent sole survivors of a nuclear disaster. The film starts out the same way, with Ann (Margot Robbie) encountering John (Chiwetel Ejiofor) exploring near her farm in a contamination suit. Ann's farm rests in a deep valley that somehow managed to avoid radioactive contamination. John is a chemist who was working in an underground science lab. Ann welcomes John into her home and for a while, the two live a life of platonic domesticity, fishing, farming, and surviving. Things get complicated when Ann makes romantic overtures and a hesitant John is afraid of ruining what they have, instead holding her and telling her they've got plenty of time to take that next step. Zobel and Modi have already dramatically strayed from the novel: Robbie's Ann is about a decade older than the 15-16-year-old girl O'Brien created, and in the book, it's John who makes mostly unwelcome advances on the underage girl, leading to tension for the duration of the story that escalates into violence by the end. At the point where John tells her they should wait, the filmmakers complicate things in the most cliched way imaginable with the mid-film introduction of Caleb (Chris Pine), a character completely invented by the filmmakers. The presence of Caleb immediately creates a standard-issue love triangle, made even more hackneyed by the racial element that didn't exist in the novel because John was white and is now being played by a black actor, with Ejiofor's John even making a snide comment to Ann about her now having a white guy in her life.

If this sounds familiar, that's because instead of an adaptation of O'Brien's novel, Zobel and Modi seem to have just gone ahead and made a rural farmland remake of the 1959 film THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL, where an abandoned NYC is inhabited by two survivors--black Harry Belafonte and white Inger Stevens--whose peaceful existence is complicated by the arrival of a third, an erudite and vaguely bigoted white guy played by Mel Ferrer. They don't even bother to explain the novel's meaning of the title Z FOR ZACHARIAH. The actors bring their A-games: Ejiofor and Robbie are very good and even with the earlier deviations from the book, things are working because they work so well together. Through it's not his fault, the film skids into a ditch when Pine's Caleb shows up and whatever is left of O'Brien's story basically gets tossed so he and John can glower at each other over who's going to get in Ann's pants first. Shot in New Zealand and West Virginia, Z FOR ZACHARIAH looks great, but nobody seemed to have any idea what direction to head in with this thing, rendering the entire project pointless. (PG-13, 98 mins)



I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE III: VENGEANCE IS MINE
(US - 2015)

The 2010 remake of Meir Zarchi's 1977 grindhouse rape/revenge cult classic I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE was surprisingly not terrible, brutal as hell and one of the relatively better torture porn outings, with a committed, ferocious performance by Sarah Butler as a young woman who's gang-raped and, to put it mildly, goes medieval on the asses of the men responsible. One wouldn't think it would spawn a franchise but then, 2013's terrible I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 was really just another remake, minus Butler, with the setting moved to Bulgaria and with Jemma Dallender as another victim of gang-rape who turns the tables on her attackers. Butler returns for this third installment, which ignores the second film and functions as a direct sequel to the first. Here, Jennifer (Butler) is now calling herself Angela and is in regular sessions with her therapist (Harley Jane Kozak sighting, and she's a long way away from PARENTHOOD and ARACHNOPHOBIA) and attending a weekly rape victims support group. She still encounters creeps everywhere she goes (even a homeless guy grunts "Nice tits" as she gives him some spare change) and is so stand-offish that her co-workers think she's a bitch. She finally befriends group member Marla (Jennifer Landon, Michael's daughter)--whose grating behavior has to be a nod to Helena Bonham Carter's Marla in FIGHT CLUB--only to lose her when she's killed by her crazy ex-boyfriend, who's set free due to lack of evidence. This sets off Jennifer/Angela's vigilante within, and she becomes an angel of vengeance, getting rid of all the male pigs that have caused so much pain and anguish in the group. Of course, hapless SVU detective McDylan (Gabriel Hogan) and hard-nosed homicide investigator Boyle (Michelle Hurd, a long way from the first season of LAW & ORDER: SVU) don't take long to figure out that Angela is a prime suspect, along with the bitter, frothing-at-the-mouth Oscar (Doug McKeon, a long way from ON GOLDEN POND), the lone male in the support group, there to find closure over the suicide of his teenage daughter, a victim who lost her will to live when her rapist got off on a technicality.

Though the reveal isn't handled very well, there's actually a fairly interesting third act plot twist that's telegraphed in distracting ways but probably looked great on paper. Even if director R.D. Braunstein and first-time screenwriter Daniel Gilboy didn't botch their admittedly ambitious whopper in the finale, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE III would still be a pretty dumb movie. The deck is completely stacked, with every human being with a penis a leering, salivating threat. Every cop is an idiot, the legal system is useless, Jennifer/Angela's character arc is a tired cliche, and Butler, so strong playing it straight in the first film, just goes for a grinning, crazy-eyes approach here and comes off as cartoonish, especially when she starts busting out the Freddy Krueger one-liners, like quipping "Just the tip!" when she spits out the bitten-off head of a guy's cock after starting to suck him off, slicing it in the middle and opening it up like she's peeling a banana with both hands; or "You don't deserve the lubricant but it won't go in otherwise" as she's about to shove a long pipe with a daunting circumference up the ass of a man regularly molesting his stepdaughter. Looking at her performances in the first and third films, it's obvious Butler's a strong heroine when playing tough and pissed-off, but she doesn't do nearly as good a job going over-the-top crazy. It's completely skippable, especially since the two big splatter moments (the "just the tip" bit is so graphically over-the-top and so instant-NC-17-worthy that it's actually funny) are likely to become YouTube favorites rather quickly. (Unrated, 91 mins)

In Theaters: THE MARTIAN (2015)

THE MARTIAN
(US - 2015)

Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Drew Goddard. Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Benedict Wong, Mackenzie Davis, Donald Glover, Chen Shu, Eddy Ko, Nick Mohammed. (PG-13, 141 mins)

During a manned mission to Mars, a catastrophic storm suddenly appears and the crew of the Ares III is ordered to evacuate the landing site and abort the mission by Cmdr. Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain). Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is blown away by a satellite antenna in a powerful gust of wind and when he doesn't respond and his vitals cease to register, he's presumed dead and Lewis and the crew--Martinez (Michael Pena), Johansson (Kate Mara), Beck (Sebastian Stan), and Vogel (Aksel Hennie)--begin the ten-month journey home. But Watney survived, though he's been impaled by an antenna and has no way to communicate to anyone at NASA that's he's been left behind. With enough pre-packaged meals for the entire crew to last 400 sols (a Martian sol being slightly longer than an Earth day) if he rations carefully, he must find a way to grow food to last four years until the next planned manned Mars expedition. Fortunately, Watney is a botanist and uses his wits and ingenuity ("I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this thing") to grow a small potato crop. Around the 54th sol after being left behind, Mars expedition director Dr. Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and graveyard-shift NASA analyst Mindy Park (Mackenzie Davis) notice movement of structures on satellite imagery of the landing site, proof that Watney is alive. What follows is the thoroughly engrossing saga of Watney's struggle to survive when faced with one catastrophic obstacle after another, and the efforts of those at NASA to get him home.

Adapted by Drew Goddard (THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) from the novel by Andy Weir, THE MARTIAN is career highlight for director Ridley Scott (BLADE RUNNER, THELMA & LOUISE), an ageless workaholic who shows no signs of slowing down at 77 years of age (he just had EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS in theaters ten months ago). Unlike 79-year-old Woody Allen and 85-year-old Clint Eastwood, two legends who seem to crank out annual movies more out of obligation than anything, Scott still seems interested in challenging himself, whether it's venturing back to the ALIEN universe for PROMETHEUS or going way off on a tangent with the inspired and insane THE COUNSELOR. Scott's hardly been skidding, but THE MARTIAN is his best work in years, a masterful mix of drama, humor (there's a great running gag about Lewis' terrible taste in music), thrills, hard science, and escapist entertainment, operating at a level of quality you rarely see these days. It's rousing without being pandering, and filled with baited-breath intensity, and emotion and sentiment that's earned and not forced. It's a crowd-pleasing popcorn movie done right, with a terrific ensemble whose performances make a very human and universal story rather than simply "CAST AWAY in space." The world comes together in plausible ways to rally behind Watney and his safe return--the Chinese space program even sets its own ambitions aside to work with rival NASA by contributing a necessary booster that the Americans have yet to develop. There's a certain element of "Nobody gets left behind!" but it's not a jingoistic flag-waver. Watley's plight unites the planet.

Sure, that could've been some hokey, feel-good bullshit, and a man stranded alone on the red planet has been explored to some degree in the revered 1964 sci-fi classic ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS, but Damon's performance, filled with raw emotion, self-deprecating humor, and a spirit of dogged persistence, is nicely juxtaposed with a large cast of characters. They all get moments in the spotlight (with the possible exception of Kristen Wiig, who isn't given much to do as NASA's media relations coordinator), from each of Watney's fellow astronauts to the brilliant scientific minds on the ground (Ejiofor's Mars mission director, Sean Bean as the launch director, Benedict Wong as a rocket designer, and Donald "Childish Gambino" Glover as an astrodynamicist), to Jeff Daniels as the bottom-line, very Jeff Daniels-ish NASA chairman, a character that other films would've made into an obligatory earthbound adversary but here, his blunt demeanor that occasionally comes off as insensitive is just a realistic reaction to the situation. THE MARTIAN is a triumph across the board, from its story to its performances to its astonishing visual effects, particularly in the tense, nerve-wracking climax. Most of the film was shot on sets constructed at a Hungarian studio, but the Mars exteriors were shot in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan, looking appropriately desolate and otherworldly through the lens of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (working on his fourth straight Scott film), augmented by the appropriately otherworldly, Tangerine Dream-ish synth score by Harry Gregson-Williams, who also contributed to the soundscapes of Michael Mann's underrated BLACKHAT. THE MARTIAN is the most satisfying and thrilling time at the movies since MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and like the mad genius George Miller, the great Ridley Scott is essentially conducting a seminar on how it's done.

On DVD/Blu-ray: FRONTERA (2014) and SOULMATE (2014)

FRONTERA
(US - 2014)

FRONTERA's topical subject matter of immigration and US/Mexico border security leads to a well-acted but nevertheless routine and predictable drama with a late plot twist that almost threatens to turn it into a Paul Haggis version of EL NORTE. Honest, hard-working Miguel (Michael Pena) seeks a better life in America for his pregnant wife Paulina (Eva Longoria) and their young daughter. Sneaking over the border into Arizona with the duplicitous and lazy Jose (Michael Ray Escamilla), the pair run into Olivia (Amy Madigan), a sympathetic woman on horseback who offers them water and a blanket. She tells them she and her husband own the vast swath of land they're on, known as "The Wash," which is so extensive that they're on safe ground for at least another day. In the distance, overlooking the land, three teenagers are gleefully firing warning shots at the illegal immigrants, causing Jose to flee and Olivia to be thrown from the frightened horse. Hearing the shots, her husband Roy (Ed Harris), the recently-retired local sheriff, speeds from their ranch and only gets a few moments to say goodbye before Olivia succumbs to a massive head injury. Roy only sees Miguel leaving the scene and once he's picked up, the new sheriff (Aden Young) is certain they've got their man. The sheriff didn't really conduct much of an investigation, but Roy isn't convinced Miguel is guilty and starts snooping around ("Somebody's gotta do your job for you," he tells his successor), finding shells and casings on his land that corroborate Miguel's version of what happened, but the sheriff will hear nothing of it. Meanwhile, the three teenagers responsible start panicking and one (Seth Adkins) seems destined to crack, and receiving word that Miguel is in jail, Paulina's family pays coyote Ramon (Julio Cesar Cedillo) to take her over the border, which takes the story into altogether new and grim direction.

If anything, director/co-writer Michael Berry and co-writer Luis Moulinet III try to cover too much ground in FRONTERA.  As a result, the film is torn between being a grand statement on border and immigration issues and an intimate drama of two old-school, self-reliant men brought together by an unspeakable tragedy. Pena, who delivers his performance entirely in Spanish (as does Longoria) is good as an upstanding man whose morals only seems to get him in trouble while schemers and criminals like the vicious Ramon always get ahead, and Harris is all steely convincing grit as a hard-edged, modern-day cowboy, but FRONTERA is all over the place. It's scattered and ponderous, and its third-act twist is obvious and completely collapses under any serious scrutiny. OK, follow me here: the just-retired sheriff owns the biggest piece of land in the vicinity (The Wash), and these local, small-town kids specifically say "Let's go to the Wash and shoot at some illegals," but they apparently have no idea that Roy owns it or that the woman on the horse might be Mrs. Roy, who, it's later revealed, was a teacher at the local high school?!  FRONTERA, please! A film with a more focused and hard-hitting statement to make certainly could've made better metaphorical use of the notion of Roy and Miguel bonding and taking that first step toward rebuilding their lives by taking up their shovels and working together to clean the horseshit out of Roy's stable. (PG-13, 103 mins)


SOULMATE
(UK - 2014)

Neil Marshall (THE DESCENT, DOOMSDAY) produced this low-key British ghost story for his wife Axelle Carolyn, a sometime actress making her feature writing/directing debut. Avoiding the splattery chaos favored by Marshall in his films and in the occasional GAME OF THRONES episodes he's directed, Carolyn goes quaintly retro, fashioning SOULMATE as something that has a distinct Hammer/Amicus vibe. Light on gore aside from a bloody wrist-slitting in the opening scene, SOULMATE focuses on recently-widowed Audrey (Anna Walton of HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY), who's so distraught over her husband Tristan's (Guy Armitage) death in a car crash that she attempts suicide. Checking out of the hospital, she decides to rent a small cottage in the Welsh countryside to clear her head and get back on her feet again. It isn't long before she's hearing strange noises coming from a locked attic room and property manager Theresa (Tanya Myers) and her doctor husband Daniel (Nick Brimble, who played the Monster in Roger Corman's FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND) are evasive about it and write it off to "the house settling." Soon after, Audrey starts seeing the spectre of Douglas Talbot (Tom Wisdom), the homeowner who committed suicide in the cottage 30 years earlier. His ghost has been trapped in the house and has never been seen by anyone until Audrey. A friendship forms between the two as Douglas' loneliness is relieved and Audrey finds in Douglas someone who understands the torment of wanting to end one's life. Matters are complicated Audrey tries to convince Theresa and Daniel that Douglas' ghost continues to inhabit the cottage and Theresa, still carrying a torch for Douglas, her lover all those years ago ("I'm well aware that you settled for me when you couldn't have Douglas," Daniel tells his wife), grows jealous of the attention his spirit is giving to Audrey.

As you can see, the story careens into a silly, soap opera direction when it becomes less focused on eerie chills and comes perilously close to becoming a supernatural Harlequin romance. It's too bad, because Carolyn establishes a foreboding, vividly chilly atmosphere in the first half of SOULMATE and has it moving along like the kind of film the alleged new "Hammer Films" should be making. Shot on location in the vast hills and mountains of the Brecon Beacons in South Wales, SOULMATE looks absolutely beautiful and drawn-out scenes like Audrey lying motionless in bed while hearing the floor creak as something slowly moves down the hallway are terrifying. But once Douglas makes his presence known and all the way up to the formation of the Douglas-Audrey-Theresa love triangle, SOULMATE just starts rapidly disintegrating. Perhaps things would've worked a bit better had Wisdom played Douglas more or less resembling himself rather than looking like a ghost in a Benny Hill skit, with his face powdered in white pancake makeup and dark circles drawn around his eyes. It not only undermines the credible performance of Walton but also the film as a whole. Through no fault of Wisdom himself, it's just hard to take anything seriously after he gets a couple of closeups. It does work in Carolyn's favor that she avoids the obvious after what initially looks like a terrible job of telegraphing twists--obviously, you're thinking the cottage is some sort of purgatory and Audrey is alerady dead, and Theresa and Daniel's dog being named Anubis may have you thinking of the Egyptian god whose main duty was escorting souls into the afterlife, but it's some welcome misdirection on Carolyn's part, or just an excuse to put Anubis, the Marshall family dog, into a movie. SOULMATE gets off to a terrific start and really could've been something, but it just starts stumbling and bumbling along to nowhere special. Carolyn obviously has the directing chops to make a serious and enjoyable old-fashioned fright flick, but her script just doesn't get the job done. (Unrated, 104 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)

In Theaters: FURY (2014)

FURY
(US - 2014)

Written and directed by David Ayer. Cast: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, Brad William Henke, Xavier Samuel, Scott Eastwood, Kevin Vance, Jim Parrack, Anamaria Marinca, Alicia von Rittberg, Laurence Spellman. (R, 133 mins)

It's been 16 years since the visceral brutality of the opening sequence of Steven Spielberg's SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, a horrific depiction of the D-Day invasion at Normandy, forever changed the cinematic depiction of war. Sure, plenty of war films, especially those centered on Vietnam, pulled no punches and went straight for the jugular, but SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was a game-changer, at least as far as depictions of long-ago wars were concerned. Its impact has been felt in practically every war film or TV show that came in its wake, from the graphic detail of the beloved HBO miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS and THE PACIFIC to the infamous femoral artery scene in Ridley Scott's BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001). The fictional FURY, set in April 1945 during the final month of action in the European theater, is a film that wants to be another SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but really only ends up being an exponentially more violent and foul-mouthed take on the kind of WWII saga that would've been made in the days after WWII and into the late 1960s. It has engrossing story, some good performances, and some well-shot battle sequences that abstain from today's standard quick-cut shaky-cam action, but there's a gnawing feeling that you've seen it all before, from the graphic carnage and the way ammunition shreds through flesh to the outsider joining an established unit and going through the requisite hazing and having to prove his manhood, to Brad Pitt's performance being a somewhat toned-down rehash of his work as Lt. Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009). Writer/director David Ayer (END OF WATCH) has Spielberg-sized ambitions, but he can't resist relying on easy genre tropes, cardboard characterizations, and fuckin' macho tough guy fuckin' posturing just like he fuckin' had earlier this fuckin' year in fuckin' SABOTAGE, one of fuckin' 2014's worst fuckin' movies. And please, in the name of all things cinematic, the time has come to declare a moratorium on alpha-male lunkheads in war movies or cop movies or firefighter movies or doctor movies--any kind of real-world movie or TV show with an ensemble of everyday people doing heroic things--feeling the need to emphatically declare "This is what we do!"

FURY focuses on a close-knit Sherman tank crew (the tank has been christened "Fury") led by Wardaddy (Pitt), a stern, no-nonsense type who lives for war because it's what he does. He's fiercely protective of his men: devoutly-religious Bible (Shia LaBeouf), fast-talking Gordo (Michael Pena), and sub-literate hillbilly Coon-Ass (Jon Bernthal). They've just lost their assistant driver and Wardaddy isn't happy with his newest addition: inexperienced and terrified Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a typist who's been in the Army for eight weeks. Naturally, Norman is razzed and ridiculed by the others and an early fumbling of the ball leads to another tank commander being ambushed and killed by German soldiers ("That's on you!" Wardaddy yells, because of course he does). Ayer's episodic script follows the men on a series of assignments, culminating in an epic battle where every other tank in their company is destroyed and they hit a mine shortly after, rendering the tank immobile. Rather than turn the film into DAS TANK, Ayer introduces a battalion of German officers approaching from further down the road as the men of Fury strap in, hunker down, and arm themselves for a 5-against-300 suicide mission that jettisons the relative realism of the preceding 80 or so minutes as the film degenerates into the equivalent of a WWII cartoon.

Ayer leaves no cliche unused, and the men of Fury exit in the exact order you expect.  Of course, Norman proves his worth to the crew and earns his own cool nickname--"Machine"--because that's what he is. The arc of "Machine" hits all the required marks of a naive, innocent, baby-faced kid turning into a battle-hardened killer. And of course, Coon-Ass isn't the complete dipshit he spends almost the entire film being, acting like a bullying Neanderthal before putting his arm around Machine and grunting "Yer alright." Some attempts at character depth are made, like Wardaddy excusing himself so he doesn't look shaky and apprehensive in front of his adoring men, and LaBeouf turns in a strong performance as Bible, with a stare that belongs to a good-hearted man who's dangerously close to losing it--it's too bad Ayer undermines LaBeouf's performance by almost constantly showing him with tears welling in his eyes to the point where it becomes unintentionally funny. But for a film where none of war's graphic horrors are spared--heads are blown off, tanks squash corpses underneath, limbs are seared off, bodies split in half, Norman has to clean up pieces of his dead predecessor's face--the most impressive and suspenseful section of FURY is a long sequence where Wardaddy and Norman invite themselves into the home of a German woman (Anamaria Marinca) and her niece (Alicia von Rittberg). We're not sure where it's going, but as the women make eggs and coffee and Wardaddy shaves, a romance blossoms between Norman and the niece and there's a temporary and oddly tranquil domesticity amidst the madness that's destroyed when the other three guys from Fury drunkenly barge in and behave like animals. The ultimate end to this detour is that it makes Norman a man in more ways than one, but it's a strange sequence (I'm surprised the studio didn't make Ayer shorten it or cut it entirely) that demonstrates something genuinely substantive beyond Ayer's uber-macho dick-swinging and the checklist of war movie cliches and could almost function as a stand-alone short film. If only the rest of FURY was as unpredictable and willing to take chances.