Movie Review: The Messenger (2009)

A drama about war's ravages on the homefront, The Messenger is a study of two characters consigned to the difficult margins of conflict.

Decorated US Army staff sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) was wounded in the Iraq War while heroically saving the lives of other soldiers. Now back in the US with three months to go before the end of his service, he is assigned to partner Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) on casualty notification duty.

Will is tending to eye and leg injuries, and emotionally still attached to ex-girlfriend Kelly (Jena Malone), although she is now with another man. The jaded and older Tony, a recovering alcoholic, teaches him the strict script-based rules of informing next-of-kin that their loved one has died on duty. Will gets to grips with the job and slowly forms a connection with newly-widowed Olivia (Samantha Morton) after notifying her of her husband's death.

Soldiers conveying a catastrophic message to family members are backdrops in many war movies. Here director Oren Moverman and co-writer Alessandro Camon place the notifiers front and centre in a subdued story of losses lapping up on the shores of army homes. It's a perspective worth exploring: delivering the worst possible news and repeatedly witnessing real-time emotional breakdowns takes an immense toll.

Moverman derives strength from the hold-your-breath nature of the doorway scenes. These are familiar, similar but different, unpredictable, and never short of impact. The suitably named Tony Stone has developed grim-faced stoicism in the face of grief, but inside he is seething from never having experienced combat (he was deployed but not needed in Desert Storm), his military career reduced to a bearer of bad news. The lure of the bottle is never far.

Will is younger, fresh from battlefield horrors, and more willing to interpret rules according to the situation. The two men alternate between clashing and bonding, their backstories and emotional traumas emerging through evening conversations. Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster invest heartily in the roles and complement each other, but are also limited by relatively stock soldier cliches. Drunken man-child hijinks become an easy approximation of friendship.

More interesting is Will's slowly evolving relationship with Olivia. Their bond strengthens over a quite magnificent eight minute single-take scene in her kitchen, first impressions yielding to genuine understanding of hidden hurt and war's often unseen domestic impact. With understated dignity, The Messenger steps inside a world of multifaceted pain.



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Movie Review: The Program (2015)

A biographical sports drama, The Program chronicles the chemically-enhanced rise of a fraud to the pinnacle of world cycling.

In the 1990s, American cyclist Lance Armstrong (Ben Foster) starts to participate in the Tour de France. He notices the top teams are under the care of Dr. Michele Ferrari (Guillaume Canet), who administers chemicals like Erythropoietin (EPO) to enhance performance. A testicular cancer diagnosis interrupts Armstrong's career and he undergoes brutal rounds of chemotherapy treatment.

Upon his return to racing, Armstrong is not considered a contender. But determined to win, he recruits Dr. Ferrari's doping services along with Johan Bruyneel (Denis Menochet) as team director, and they select teammates with the singular purpose of propelling Armstrong to a win. He is promptly victorious in 1999, crushing the field. Sunday Times reporter David Walsh (Chris O'Dowd) is suspicious of Armstrong's dramatically improved performance, but as the American proceeds to dominate the sport, proof of his doping is frustratingly difficult to secure.

Directed by Stephen Frears with a script by John Hodge, The Program adapts Walsh's book Seven Deadly Sins. The reporter is a relatively minor character in the film, with Frears focussing most of his attention on Armstrong as a headstrong phony. In a sport where not cheating means not winning, Armstrong and his crew are portrayed as perfecting doping and test evasion into an art form. His personal story of recovery from cancer provides cover from criticism, while an acquiescent media and inspired fans are happy to celebrate a feel-good story and avoid asking any questions.

The film adopts a relatively straightforward semi-documentary style, with the picturesque racing scenes adding some panache. With Walsh's investigation finding limited traction and a stone-faced liar occupying the story's centre, Frears is caught without a sympathetic protagonist. Ben Foster is in stoic form as a mechanical coldness permeates the narrative, the roboticization aided by an absence of context about Armstrong's formative years.

The Program does succeed in portraying a crass win-at-all-costs mentality devoid of sportsmanship. Armstrong builds a commercial empire on the back of his fake victories, rising to the top echelons of celebrity athletes and brand name recognition. Frears covers Armstrong's charitable work with cancer patients as the one ray of goodness within a jungle of deception.

The recruitment of Mennonite Floyd Landis (Jesse Plemons) into Armstrong's team introduces ethical tension and starts the sequence of events eventually exposing the truth. Also playing a role is professional bridge player and prize money insurance agent Bob Hamman (Dustin Hoffman, in just a couple of scenes), who smells a fraud and starts making inquiries. But the characters remain in the shadows of mendacity, and perhaps appropriately for a sport that sold its soul, The Program replaces the warmth of human achievement with bloodless efficiency.



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Movie Review: Galveston (2018)

A slow-burning drama, Galveston is a character study about the faint glimmers of purpose at life's dead ends.

In New Orleans of 1988, chain-smoking Roy Cady (Ben Foster), an enforcer for underground gangster and textile merchant Stan Ptitko (Beau Bridges), has a lung disease but refuses to seek treatment. In a simmering dispute over Carmen (María Valverde), Stan sends Roy into an ambush hoping to get rid of him. But Roy not only survives, he grabs evidence incriminating Stan and rescues professional escort Rocky (Elle Fanning), who was caught in the shootout.

Forming an uneasy alliance, Roy and Rocky go on the run and drive into Texas. They pass through her hometown of Orange, where she picks up her much younger sister Tiffany. The trio then hunker down at a seedy motel in Galveston. Roy has to find a way to survive, while Rocky is unsure how far she can trust her rescuer to stick around and is tempted to resume her sex trade.

An adaptation of the Nic Pizzolatto novel, Galveston is willing to take some risks. Working from Jim Hammet's patient script, director Mélanie Laurent studiously avoids familiar arcs and instead seeks the depths of emotional bleakness. The pacing is slow, the aesthetics gloomy and often downtrodden, and the overall ambience carries the weight of economic desperation, Roy and Rocky hiding out in corners forgotten by prosperity. 

In another fine and understated performance, Ben Foster's shifty stance, haunted eyes and tortured psyche drive the narrative through the slower patches. Elle Fanning finds matching intensity but is confined to a variation of the desperate hooker with a heart of gold cliche.

From his inability to even discuss his lung diagnosis in the opening scene and his insistence on smoking continuously, Roy is unsure about the point of carrying on. Instincts take over and he survives the ambush, and suddenly Rocky then Tiffany are all but dependant on him to live another day. This is not what Roy asked for, and with Stan surely in pursuit his options remain severely limited. The temptation to dig a deeper hole emerge in the form of sleazy motel room occupant and amateur thief Tray (Robert Aramayo) offering a cut from his next job.

Underpinning the drama is Roy recognizing, with no small amount of anguish, that he represents the best hope of survival for two defenceless victims. His bond with Rocky first cracks then strengthens as he awakens to her nightmare and Tiffany's vulnerability, providing him with a reason to try and survive. And here Galveston charts a unique course, Laurent demonstrating directorial flair with an impressive one-shot scene of escape then a worthy climax of revelation as a hurricane moves in. 

Galveston invests in the eerily quiet edges of the storm, where dread thrives and outcomes are uncertain.

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Movie Review: Hostiles (2017)

A soulful western, Hostiles combines the traditions of the arduous journey with a lyrical exploration of troubled relations between whites and natives.

In 1892 at Fort Berringer in New Mexico, Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale) is selected to escort ailing Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) to his ancestral lands in Montana. Blocker is close to retirement, and has built a fearsome reputation as a merciless fighter and killer of natives. He resents having to be civil to Yellow Hawk, who has a similar record of brutal killing, including scalping several of Blocker's colleagues.

Blocker recruits a few trusted soldiers for the mission, including long-term friends Sergeant Metz (Rory Cochrane), who is also nearing retirement, and Corporal Woodson (Jonathan Majors), as well as West Point graduate Lieutenant Kidder (Jesse Plemons) and raw recruit Private Dejardin (Timothée Chalamet). Yellow Hawk is accompanied by his son Black Hawk (Adam Beach), daughter, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter.

Soon after embarking on the trip they encounter settler Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike) in shock having just lost her entire family, including three children, to a vicious raid by a Cherokee war party. Rosalee joins Blocker's group, with many dangers to come on the long trail to Montana.

With chapters of brutal violence committed by all sides, some shown on screen and others described in hushed tones, Hostiles stares at the blood-drenched legacy of the west. After each bout of blood-letting director and writer Scott Cooper takes the time to include reverent burials, settlers, soldiers, natives, adults and children laid to rest in mounting numbers, often in unmarked graves, the hard soil of a nation-in-progress nourished by death. 

At 133 minutes, the film is long but Cooper sustains the intensity. Having established the barbarous context, Hostiles searches for what may emerge after the visceral need to kill subsides. Men like Blocker, Metz and Yellow Hawk are retiring or dying and understand they are too damaged to evolve. The next generation, personified by Lieutenant Kidder and Black Hawk and his family, may be a lot less blood thirsty, with fewer scores to settle and more capacity to achieve reconciliation, but only if they survive to forge a better future.

And Cooper ensures the moral dilemmas leave no room for black and white resolutions, only gray choices. Some horrific killings are justified as part of the job, other rampages are denounced as murder and punished by hanging. Violence in the name of protecting land is either noble or ignominious, depending on who is making the claim, and when. On such vagaries men live, die and judge themselves and others.

Although some chapters stumble and hints of repetitiveness set in, the film weaves an always unsettling sombre mood. Max Richter's music score adds poignant tones, and often stunning Masanobu Takayanagi cinematography captures majestic landscapes of untamed and unforgiving terrain.

Christian Bale delivers a performance of sometimes frightening intensity and stoic masculinity, conveying with his eyes the horrors of a life spent killing etched firmly on his psyche. But Bale also captures the irresistible forces of change in his humane approach to helping Mrs. Quaid and a gradual willingness to understand Yellow Hawk's world. The rest of the cast is suitably detached, and includes Ben Foster as an army soldier turned prisoner and Scott Wilson as an uncompromising landowner.

Dark, humourless and thought-provoking, Hostiles confronts all enemies, especially those lurking within.



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Movie Review: Leave No Trace (2018)

A drama about mental health and cross-generational impacts, Leave No Trace probes difficult subject matter with warm tenderness.

In Oregon, army veteran Will (Ben Foster) lives with his 13 year old daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) deep in a wooded public park outside Portland. Suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Will cannot properly function around people, indoors or in typical civilized surroundings. However he treats Tom well, and she is adjusted to living rough.

Park rangers uncover and arrest the pair. After an evaluation by social workers they are provided with a modest home on the property of a tree farmer. Will tries to adapt to living indoors and working on the farm, while Tom starts the process of making friends. However, Will soon insists they break free again and head to another distant park. But now Tom has a treasured glimpse of the potential for a better life, and is not as willing to be homeless with her father.

Leave No Trace features a minimal amount of dialogue, and the few spoken words are delivered with calm hesitation. Director Debra Granik co-wrote the script with Anne Rosellini, adapting the book My Abandonment by Peter Rock, with an emphasis on mood, quiet emotion and a sense of place. The film nevertheless builds up power and momentum from an overwhelming emotional displacement. Will knows he is in a mental place others cannot reach, and he only finds solace in physical space others cannot find.

Trudging through the muddy woods, in the rain, far away from prying eyes, is where he feels safe. He keeps his daughter secure and educated, and mostly warm and fed, but in social isolation. The nature of home (and home as nature), the misery and loneliness caused by untreated mental trauma, and the potential transference of psychological damage to the next generation are underlying themes within the thick foliage. 

The slow pacing and relative lack of incident demand two engrossing performances. Ben Foster speaks volumes by saying little, his haunted eyes hinting at plenty that needs to be said and the certainty none of it will be understood. New Zealander Thomasin McKenzie matches him by capturing a young teen transforming to an adult, her brief interactions with others creating daylight between the expectations of daughter and father, although he still represents the loving anchor in her life.

With quiet courage, Leave No Trace actively seeks the often ignored pain hidden on the edges of society. The causes are clear, but the solutions remain as slippery as the wet Northwestern rainforest.

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Movie Review: 3:10 To Yuma (2007)

A western about two men at the opposite ends of the moral spectrum, 3:10 To Yuma finds the right balance between well-staged action and character-driven discourse.

After serving as a sharpshooter in the Civil War, Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is now a near-bankrupt cattle farmer with a lame leg. He is trying to live his life the right way and look after his wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) and two boys, including teenager William (Logan Lerman). While rounding up cattle one day, Dan stumbles upon charismatic outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) and his gang robbing a rail company payroll stagecoach.

The heist is violent but successful, with Pinkerton agent Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda) the only stagecoach survivor. Ben allows Dan and his sons to walk away. At the nearby small town of Bisbee, Ben dallies with a saloon girl and is arrested, while the rest of his gang, including ruthless second-in-command Charlie Prince (Ben Foster), get away. Dan joins a small team assembled by the Marshal to escort Ben to Contention, where he can be placed on the 3:10 train to Yuma to face justice. Along the way, Ben does all he can to escape, and to psychologically wear down Dan.

A remake of the classic 1957 western, the 2007 version of 3:10 To Yuma is a worthy retelling of the delicate story. Directed by James Mangold, the film does unnecessarily bloat by about 30 minutes to a two hour running time, stretching the narrative limits of what is essentially a two-person character tug-of-war. But otherwise Mangold delivers plenty of well-staged action to punctuate the slowly evolving tension between rancher and outlaw.

While the original had a small-scale and intimate feel, Mangold opens up the film with more outdoor incidents. This works to create additional openings for shoot-outs and attempted escapes, but also strains credibility with convoluted script machinations to reconnect Evans and Wade every time they are separated.

A western primarily exploring two competing attitudes towards carving a frontier livelihood is fully reliant on the central performances, and Mangold is ably assisted by Christian Bale and particularly Russell Crowe in fine form. Bale is steady and intense and finds Evans' trauma as a man who may never gain the respect of his sons. Escorting a dangerous prisoner is a final opportunity to leave a legacy, a dance with the devil filled with danger and temptations.

3:10 To Yuma finds Crowe close to his creative peak, and the actor creates in Ben Wade an irresistible leader, combining smarts with ferocity. Crowe unleashes oodles of confidence within Wade and a quiet contempt for authority and anyone who claims the world is a fair place. And yet Crowe allows subtle hints to seep out suggesting he envies Evans' attempt at a building a domestic life the outlaw will never get to experience.

The dialogue exchanges between the two men are exceptionally well written, teasing out the power stalemate between the meek man carrying the rifle against the prisoner with all the brashness.

The film ends with an admirable if wild climax, one rancher and one crime boss carving out new destinies under a hail of bullets. As westerns go 3:10 To Yuma makes it to the station on time, carrying some excess weight but plenty of flamboyance.

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Movie Review: Contraband (2012)

An complicated crime thriller, Contraband is murky, muddled and mindless.

In New Orleans, Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is a retired smuggler, now happily married to Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and the father of two kids. Kate's younger brother Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) is caught up in a customs raid and has to ditch a cargo of drugs overboard, infuriating gangster Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi), who paid $700,000 for the shipment. Chris and his friend Danny (Lukas Haas) go back into business for one final run to make enough money to pay off Briggs, leaving Kate and the kids in the care of Chris' good friend and former partner-in-crime Sebastian (Ben Foster).

Chris, Danny and Andy board the cargo ship of Captain Redmond Camp (J.K. Simmons) and arrange to pick up high quality counterfeit bills during a stop in Panama City. Once there, they tangle with the heavily armed gang of local criminal Gonzalo (Diego Luna), who is planning his own heist of expensive artwork. Nothing goes according to plan, as Captain Camp becomes suspicious and Briggs sets his sights on terrorizing Kate.

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur and an adaptation of an Icelandic film, Contraband is overstuffed with secondary characters, jumps around to numerous side-quests, and stretches credibility well past the snapping point. The tried and tested "one more job" cliche is fine if deployed correctly, but here the job becomes a convoluted make-it-up-on-the-fly mess of shifting objectives and multiple double-crosses among a bunch of crooks, none of them likeable enough to matter.

The action scenes are shoehorned into the film for the sake of injecting gratuitous energy boosts. A bloody hold-up of an armoured truck in Panama City leaves multiple fatalities strewn across the road but seemingly no ill-effects or consequences for Chris and his buddies. Earlier, Captain Camp's massive cargo ship slams into the docks, with several containers toppling to shore, all as part of an engine sabotage plot to gain Chris some on-shore time. The investigation of the crash starts and ends with one customs official waving her arms about.

Meanwhile the film's entire premise is undermined and suspect: Chris appears easily capable of physically and emotionally intimidating bad guy Briggs whenever he chooses to, calling into question the entire reason why Chris re-enters the life of crime to save Andy's hide.

Despite some shadings of style and no shortage of talent in the cast, Contraband is overplotted and underwhelming.

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Movie Review: The Finest Hours (2016)

A rescue-at-sea drama, The Finest Hours is serviceable but never rousing.

The year is 1952, the location coastal Massachusetts and the Chatham Coast Guard Station. Boatswain's Mate First Class Bernie Miller (Chris Pine) meets and falls in love with local girl Miriam (Holliday Grainger). When he dawdles to commit, she proposes marriage, but Bernie insists on following the tradition of requesting permission to get married from his stiff Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Cluff (Eric Bana).

But Cluff is preoccupied with a massive incoming storm, and two oil tankers break apart in rough seas on the same night. One of them is the SS Pendleton, where the reticent engineer Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck) has to rally the surviving crew to keep half the massive ship afloat. Using a small boat, Bernie is dispatched to the Pendleton's last known location on a dangerous rescue mission, joined by Coast Guard Seaman Richard Livesey (Ben Foster), Engineman Andrew Fitzgerald (Kyle Gallner) and Navy Seaman Ervin Maske (John Magaro). Back on shore, Miriam frets about the fate of her husband-to-be.

The story of one of the Coast Guard's most famous rescues, The Finest Hours gets most of the technical details wrong, and is infused with a heavy dose of Disney's saccharine wholesomeness. The music crescendos to epic levels every five minutes, the dangers faced by Bernie and his crew are exaggerated to Greek mythology levels, the faces of Bernie and his love Miriam always glow in the incandescent light of love, and any hints of darkness, death, and guilt are pushed far to the edges, and often fully off-screen.

But after an ill-considered and really slow start that stumbles to connect Bernie with Miriam, director Craig Gillespie settles down to a respectable retelling of a harrowing rescue at sea, with Bernie's against-the-odds small-boat-in-a-big-storm journey intercut with Sybert rallying the Pendleton crew to improvise a pathway to survival. For once the CGI is extensive but also good; the images of a monstrous sea are impressive, whether threatening to swallow up Bernie's tiny motor lifeboat or mercilessly tossing half an oil tanker.

Less effective is Miriam's subplot back on shore. She runs around rather aimlessly and tangles with other locals who are suspicious about Bernie's competence due to a previous non-rescue that is only ever hinted at but never properly discussed, the script dangling a backstory and then timidly backing away from it.

Out on the seas Chris Pine and Casey Affleck are stoic without ever stretching, the enormity of events surrounding them enough to sustain the drama without the need for stellar performances.

The Finest Hours is a rescue adventure painted by numbers, produced with slick efficiency but tightly confined between dependable and predictable.

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Movie Review: Lone Survivor (2013)

A war endurance story, Lone Survivor is a harrowing recreation of a mission-gone-wrong in the mountains of Afghanistan.

The setting is June, 2005, in Afghanistan. Four Navy SEALs are deployed on a remote mountaintop near an isolated village on a reconnaissance mission to identify and track a Taliban leader. The team consists of sniper Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), Lieutenant Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Communications Specialist Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) and sniper Matthew Axelson (Ben Foster). Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen (Eric Bana) tracks their progress from a forward operations base, but communications are patchy due to the difficult terrain.

The mission is compromised when three local goat herders stumble onto the SEAL's observation point. Murphy and his men decide to retreat from the area, but local anti-American militias are alerted to their presence and the four men are caught in a vicious firefight, vastly outnumbered and cut off from any support.

Directed by Peter Berg and based on the book of the same name by Luttrell, Lone Survivor stays close to the facts and pays respectful attention to the events of the ill-fated Operation Red Wings. Similar in tone to Black Hawk Down, Lone Survivor looks for the acts of valour and unshakeable brotherhood emerging in the midst of a ruinous military misadventure.

Berg steers clear of any politicizing or examination of why the US troops are in Afghanistan in the first place. This is a story zoomed-in on four highly-trained warriors attempting to execute a mission, and forced to innovate their way out of trouble while under fire. The ordeal is agonizing, the casualties are high, and Berg's cameras do not flinch in the face of bullet strikes, physical and mental suffering, and death.

Berg's script relied on actual mission reports and autopsies to capture the details of individual wounds, and Lone Survivor is a testimony to the eternal horrors of war, up-close and personal. More than once the SEALs tumbled down steep rocky embankments to try and escape their pursuers, and the images of human bodies hurtling out of control and bouncing repeatedly off hard objects are painful to watch.

Once the combat starts at around the 45 minute mark, Lone Survivor unleashes and sustains unrelenting intensity, the bonding between the men rising as their casualties mount and the inevitable arrives. Berg achieves a memorable combat and heroism climax when Murphy, under intense fire, insists on reaching a rocky but exposed high point to try and establish communications and call for help.

Given the film's focus on just the four men, Lone Survivor could have invested more time in their backstories. Berg provides a few perfunctory and abstract references to wives and girlfriends, and leaves it at that. The film also unfortunately falls into the tired Hollywood trap of over-juicing the final drama, placing Luttrell in perils that he never actually faced, when his actual ordeal should have been sufficient.

But these are relatively minor quibbles. Lone Survivor is a superior and forceful war film, capturing soldiers at their best under the worst possible conditions.

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Movie Review: Big Trouble (2002)

A madcap comedy, Big Trouble overloads the screen with wild characters and ridiculous events hurtling at an insane pace. A lot of it does generate big laughs, but the entertainment remains breathlessly shallow.

In Miami, former journalist Eliot Arnold (Tim Allen) runs a one-man advertising business. Eliot's teenaged son Matt (Ben Foster) attempts to drench classmate Jenny Herk (Zooey Deschanel) with a water gun, but instead interferes with the real attempted assassination of Jenny's father Arthur (Stanley Tucci) by hitmen Henry (Dennis Farina) and Leonard (Jack Kehler). Miami cops Monica (Janeane Garofalo) and Walter (Patrick Warburton) try to sort out the mess, while Eliot is immediately attracted to Anna (Rene Russo), Arthur's long suffering wife.

The events of the night result in wandering free spirit Puggy (Jason Lee), who likes to live in trees, meeting Arthur's housekeeper Nina (Sofia Vergara), and the two develop an immediate attraction.

Arthur is embezzling funds from a mobster-linked organization, and to seek revenge on his would-be killers he attempts to purchase a mysterious weapon in a steel case from Russian criminals. But his plans are foiled by Snake (Tom Sizemore) and Eddie (Johnny Knoxville), two sleazeball incompetent petty thieves. FBI agents Pat Greer (Heavy D) and Alan Seitz (Omar Epps) are trying to recover the missing weapon, resulting in a frenzied chase across Miami.

There is no doubt that Big Trouble contains some big laughs. Director Barry Sonnenfeld adapts the Dave Barry book of the same name with an eye to achieving a nutty spectacle at a breakneck pace, and often hits his targets within a compact 85 minutes of pure insanity.

Despite the numerous characters and events, Sonnenfeld manages to keep a hold of the material and generates a steady stream of laughs, quickly moving away from any sense of normal and into the realm of the absurd where anything goes. The scenes involving the Russian arms traders pretending to be seedy bar operators tend to work best, and the hitman character of Henry gets the sharpest lines and some funny gems.

The hapless duo of Snake and Eddie are effective as victims of Darwinian certainty surely awaiting their hour of extinction. Meanwhile a herd of goats makes a late appearance and gets right into the action, as does a mall cop, Eliot's cigar-chomping client and the Herk family dog.

Less effective is the airy subplot involving the ethereal Puggy being lifted along with events, while Nina is the most notable victim of the overstuffed script. Tim Allen is supposed to be in the middle of the mess but only achieves middling success, his suburban doofus Dad persona not quite finding a home in the edgy material. Stanley Tucci goes the other way with his over-the-top bagman, cussing up a storm.

Ultimately what Big Trouble lacks is any sense of genuine soul or caring. The film is about a large number of people running around engaged in cartoon-like behaviour and stirring up crazy funny antics; none of them come close to being real characters worth knowing or caring about. Big Trouble is really funny while it lasts, but has big trouble leaving a lasting impression.

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The Movies Of Ben Foster

All movies starring Ben Foster and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Big Trouble (2002)

Phone Booth (2002, uncredited)

3:10 To Yuma (2007)

The Messenger (2009)

The Mechanic (2011)

Rampart (2011)

360 (2011)

Contraband (2012)

Lone Survivor (2013)

The Program (2015)

The Finest Hours (2016)

Hell Or High Water (2016)

Inferno (2016)

Hostiles (2017)

Leave No Trace (2018)

Galveston (2018)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Inferno (2016)

The third film adaptation of a Dan Brown novel, Inferno reaches a new low in the series: mechanical, plodding and lacking in both logic and intensity.

Harvard University symbologist Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) wakes up in a Florence hospital, with evidence of a bullet having grazed his head, suffering from short term memory loss and horrific hallucinations of a hell-on-earth. Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) administers care, but soon she is helping him flee the hospital when assassin Vayentha (Ana Ularu) shows up, seemingly intent on killing Langdon. At Sienna's apartment they discover a miniature image projector in Langdon's possession depicting Sandro Botticelli's Map of Hell, a visualization of Dante's Inferno. The image has been slightly modified to contain clues.

The hidden text in the image suggests that recently deceased billionaire Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) has arranged for a catastrophic virus to be unleashed on humanity to solve the overpopulation problem, and it's up to Langdon to discover the virus location and stop its release. Langdon and Sienna chase down a series of art-based clues in Florence and Venice, hotly pursued by the assassin Vayentha, World Health Organization officials Christoph Bouchard (Omar Sy) and Elizabeth Sinskey (Sidse Babett Knudsen), as well as Harry Sims (Irrfan Khan), the head of a secretive private security agency.

Directed by Ron Howard, Inferno is a soulless connect-the-dots exercise. While the book was already suffering from formula fatigue, the film manages to conclusively erode any lingering interest by defaulting to the worst kind of chase movie, where every other scene has to feature dozens of police cars, helicopters and drones, but none of it creates any sort of tension or engagement. The intricate puzzles supposedly at the core of Langdon's skill set are presented and solved within about a minute each, reducing the main character to a lumbering professor huffing across a couple of European cities in a perfunctory sprint to a stock climax.

Making matters worse is a plot that ultimately defies all logic. The film changes the book's challenging final twist in favour of a really dumb Hollywood ending. This is not only a weak-kneed surrender to the worst tendencies of an industry often afraid to provoke debate, but in this case also undermines the entirety of Zobrist's carefully constructed plot.

The few flashback scenes to Zobrist ironically emerge as the most interesting thing that Inferno has to offer: a movie about the billionaire would have been much more interesting, but only in the hands of a more astute director.  As for Inferno, it's neither cerebral nor kinetic; just an irritatingly inconsequential burn-out.

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