Movie Review: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (2009)

Genre: Biography  

Director: John Pielmeier  

Starring: Cuba Gooding Jr., Aunjanue Ellis, Kimberly Elise  

Running Time: 90 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1987, Dr. Ben Carson (Cuba Gooding Jr.) of Johns Hopkins Hospital travels to Germany to examine new-born twins conjoined at the head. Flashbacks reveal he was raised in Detroit by his illiterate single mother Sonya (Kimberly Elise), who pushed Ben to excel. He overcomes bullying and a short temper, and at Yale University meets Candy (Aunjanue Ellis), who became his wife. As a doctor Ben encounters racism, demonstrates initiative, and tackles difficult cases, including a patient suffering severe brain convulsions. Back in the present, Ben has to devise a method to operate on the twins before it's too late.

What Works Well: This cable television production is a well-intentioned traditional biography. Dr. Carson is portrayed as a likeable and upright physician, and the vignettes from his childhood uncover a mother's determination to help her son overcome adversity and rise above humble beginnings. The societal pitfalls and personality flaws that could have derailed Ben's life are given due prominence, and the conjoined twins story provides a sturdy framing device.

What Does Not Work As Well: This is straightforward, episodic, and old fashioned storytelling, bordering on a reverential hagiography. In the gap between childhood experiences and confident doctor, the passion and talent for medicine are lost. The production values lack artistry and style, remaining well-entrenched within television confines.

Key Quote:

Sonya (to her son Ben): I always said, you can do anything anyone else can do, only you can do it better.

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Movie Review: Radio (2003)

Genre: Biographical Drama  

Director: Mike Tollin  

Starring: Ed Harris, Cuba Gooding Jr., Debra Winger, Alfre Woodard  

Running Time: 109 minutes  

Synopsis: In suburban South Carolina of the 1970s, Harold Jones (Ed Harris) is a teacher and football coach at the T. L. Hanna High School. He notices the mentally infirm James Robert "Radio" Kennedy (Cuba Gooding Jr.) hanging around the football team's practice sessions, barely able to speak and susceptible to bullying. Harold takes Radio under his wing, welcoming him to practice sessions and the school environment. Radio's social skills improve, but school Principal Daniels (Alfre Woodward) is unsure about his prospects, and the community of football parents worry that Harold is getting distracted.

What Works Well: Inspired by actual events, this is a heartfelt and feel-good story of kindness, priorities, and embracing uncertainty of outcomes. The Mike Rich script is comfortable not over-explaining everything, and respects a small-town culture where stoicism is a virtue and the community revolves around Friday night football. Both Ed Harris and Cuba Gooding Jr. provide affecting performances, well-supported by Debra Winger as Coach Jones' patient wife Linda. A well-contained running time preserves the story's humility.

What Does Not Work As Well: The sentimentality quotient is maintained at a high level, and James Horner's syrupy music score never relents. Coach Jones displays a knack for always jumping to the right conclusion.

Key Quote:

Linda: It's never a mistake to care for someone.

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Movie Review: Boyz N The Hood (1991)

A social drama and coming-of-age story, Boyz N The Hood is a stunningly clear-eyed look at the grim realities of the Black inner-city experience.

It's 1984 in Los Angeles, and 10-year-old Tre gets into trouble at school one time too many. His divorced mother Reva (Angela Bassett) transports him to live with his father Furious Styles (Laurence Fishburne) in the tough Crenshaw neighbourhood. Furious is a real estate agent and determined to keep Tre out of trouble by being a good male role model. The other neighbourhood kids, including brothers Darren and Ricky, are not so lucky and lack a father figure.

Seven years later, Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is finishing high school, holding a job at the mall, and courting girlfriend Brandi (Nia Long). They are both planning to go to college. Ricky is already a father, but hoping his football skills will secure him a college scholarship. Darren has dropped out of school and is into thuggery as the neighbourhood crack cocaine dealer. Crenshaw is besieged by despair, frequent shootings, brutality, and police interventions. When Darren tangles with a rival gang, the violence escalates.

At 24 years old, John Singleton wrote and directed Boyz N The Hood based on his own experiences and the friends he grew up with in South Central Los Angeles. The first Black cinematic perspective of the treacherous environment where American Black youth are brought up, this is a painfully stark and often harrowing portrayal of a hell on earth. The language is coarse, the behaviour brazen and crass, the attitude towards women abhorrent, and it's all routine for youth coming of age unequipped to even seek a better future.

Young men like Tre, Ricky and Darren emerge from broken homes where parents are more than likely to be addicts. With limited opportunities and resources, they flounder to find their way out of a jungle dominated by violence, guns, drugs and abuse. Singleton underlines the siege mentality with the clatter of police helicopters hovering incessantly overhead, the Crenshaw residents' main interaction with government reduced to officers quick to aim guns at heads and hardware at the entire neighbourhood.

The film does have weaknesses. The opening segment with the kids sometimes slips into television drama mode, a warped mirror of The Cosby Show. The salute to Stand By Me threatens to slip into mimicry. Beyond Tre, Darren and Ricky, the film is littered with young men who remain stock representations. And Cuba Gooding Jr. at 23 struggles to convince as the 17 year old Tre.

While the messaging is preachy, it is also effective in its simplicity. A present and caring father is a starting point to improve the odds. Birth control tames the cycle of instability. Young Black males refraining from knee-jerk reactions to kill each other at the slightest provocation helps. Pursuing school and employment is a good idea. And broader society could contribute by stemming the flow of guns and drugs into neighbourhoods least equipped to survive the resulting carnage.

Singleton does not pretend any outsiders are actively seeking solutions, and in Furious Styles Boyz N The Hood finds the catalyst for a change that can only come from within. The path out of affliction requires uncommon fortitude, but the alternatives are depressingly dire.

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Movie Review: Men Of Honor (2000)

Inspired by the true story of Carl Brashear, the first African American master diver in the United States Navy, Men Of Honor is a respectable effort with quality performances, but doesn't fully escape the trap of sanctifying its hero.

Born and raised in Kentucky and heavily influenced by his noble father Mac (Carl Lumbly), Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooding Jr.) leaves the life of a sharecropper and joins the Navy in 1948. Assigned the menial task of ship's cook similar to all other enlisted colored men, Carl refuses to conform or yield to racism and catches the eye of Captain Pullman (Powers Boothe), who re-assigns him as a seaman. But it is the heroism and determination of Master Chief diver Leslie Sunday (Robert De Niro) that inspires Carl, and he sets his sights on becoming the Navy's first black Master Chief diver. Meanwhile, a case of over-enthusiasm harms Sunday's lungs and ends his career as an active diver.

After numerous attempts Carl is accepted into the Diving and Salvage School in New Jersey. With Sunday as his instructor, Carl encounters rampant racism from the other trainees, as well as the base commander Pappy (Hal Holbrook). But he doggedly overcomes all hurdles and strives to complete the program, grudgingly earning the respect of Sunday. But just when Carl thinks that he has achieved his lifelong dream, he suffers another devastating blow that threatens all that he has worked for.

Tidily directed by George Tillman Jr., Men Of Honor is a straightforward story of uncommon persistence in the face of adversity. Because he is black, Carl he has to work three times as hard and show remarkable restraint to reach his goals, and his story is one of patience and remarkable tenacity. He is presented as a faultless man, rarely setting a foot wrong and never saying a bad word. Carl's singular focus is on achieving his career goal, and he will do whatever is asked of him to get there. His mission becomes a case of indestructible resolve forcing everyone else to finally concede the obvious: a black man can be as good as, if not better, than a white man. Remarkably, in the prime of his career Carl faces another form of discrimination, and has to fight yet another battle for his rights in the face of rampant disbelief from the Navy hierarchy.

As with many biographies, real life represents the film's strength and its weakness. History dictates that Carl will overcome every obstacle placed in his way, and admirable as the story is, it is also by default stripped of any overarching drama. The narrative becomes one of chronicling successive victories over many acts of individual and systemic discrimination, but it's a linear structure devoid of surprises or depth, and many of the most dramatic moments carry hints of being contrived.

The two central performances are never less than exactly what the material requires. Gooding Jr. presents Carl Brashear as a good and earnest man, always living up to his father's ideals and never descending to the levels of those who attempt to put him down. De Niro gets the more splashy part as the non-conforming Leslie Sunday (a fictional composite of many men from Brashear's life), an expert diver and proficient hell raiser who is happy to break all the Navy's rules. It is ordained that Brashear will eventually earn Sunday's respect, and the growing bond between the two men is one of the film's foundations

In addition to Holbrook and Boothe, there are small roles for Michael Rapaport as another trainee and Aunjanue Ellis as a medical student who becomes Brashear's tutor, girlfriend and then wife. Charlize Theron contributes a rather bewildering turn as Sunday's too-flashy wife.

Men Of Honor is a tribute to an impressive man who broke down racial barriers. The film may not reach dramatic heights of cinematic achievement, but it is brimming with heart and good intentions.

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Movie Review: Selma (2014)

A biographical drama focusing on a specific chapter in Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, Selma looks for the man behind the image, and finds a leader struggling against self-doubt as he charts a course to change history.

It's 1964, and in the southern United States, blacks have the theoretical right to vote. Practically, they are denied that right by a maze of paperwork and ridiculous civic tests administered by bigots at small-town city halls. In the shadow of the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young girls, black civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo) raises the issue with President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), who is sympathetic but distracted by other agendas. Although King and his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) are living under the constant shadow of death threats, King decides to push the issue by organizing peaceful marches deep in the south, and chooses the small town of Selma, Alabama as the rallying point.

Not all blacks are supportive of King's tactics, but he connects with members of The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and they start to organize. Alabama's Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth) does his best to inflame local opinions against King, and local sheriffs are quick to resort to brutality when the marches start. Johnson conspires with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker) to try and intimidate King into stopping the marches by creating a wedge in his relationship with Coretta. But King pushes ahead, the national media pick up the story, the marchers grow in strength, but the number of victims also mounts.

Selma does not spend much time on the marches themselves. Most of the 127 minutes are spent on the backroom politics that shaped public events, and on King's personal struggle to balance duties to his family, with his vision for his people and the trauma of placing individuals in harm's way. King was all of 35 years old when the events of the film took place, and director Ava DuVernay places the focus on the young man carrying an enormous burden, stripped from the legend.

For the first time the subject of a feature film, King in Selma is not just an imposing figure behind a microphone rousing a crowd (although there are several such scenes). Rather, DuVernay is more interested in how one man showed the courage to lead, move thousands, and change a country, despite opposition from the President, apprehension and dissent from on-the-ground black activists, and a marriage being rocked by threats and infidelity. The film is at its best when King is in small groups holding intense conversations, allowing waves of doubt to emerge, talking through the issues, deciding on the next action by assessing the trade offs, and then persuading others to join in.

Much like the marches, Selma moves slowly and deliberately. DuVernay contrasts dark rooms and prison cells with the harsh outside light, and unfurls the narrative at a gradual pace, allowing the enormity of the challenge to sink in. This does mean that the film drags on occasion, waiting for something to actually happen in amongst all the planning. When the climactic marches do finally start, DuVernay effectively marshals armies of extras, uncorks the tension that exists whenever history reaches a turning point, and finds impressive contrasts between those who define the future and those left behind on the sidelines, their raised middle finger a pathetic confirmation of their own extinction.

David Oyelowo steps in the shoes of King with confidence. While the speeches are delivered with the expected powerful cadence, it's in the many smaller, more intimate scenes, either with Coretta or with King's advisors, that Oyelowo shines. He creates the private King, passionate, determined, and yet often uncertain about his actions and the impact of his activism on his family. In a relatively few but pivotal scenes, Carmen Ejogo makes a strong impression, representing the home front where pride and fear reside side by side. Tom Wilkinson never quite gets the right angle on Lyndon Johnson. Martin Sheen and Cuba Gooding, Jr. have small roles in the court battle that helps determine the legality of the marches, while Gionanni Ribisi plays Johnson's main advisor.

Selma does not attempt to be the definitive statement about King, but it does provide a satisfying behind-the-scenes taste of his history-changing impact.

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Movie Review: Pearl Harbor (2001)

A romantic love triangle set before, during and after the Japanese attack, Pearl Harbor features a sensational 40 minute recreation of the raid, but is otherwise weighed down by clunky writing and listless performances.

Tennessee boyhood friends and lifelong aspiring pilots Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) enlist together and join the air command of Major Doolittle (Alec Baldwin). During the recruitment process Rafe meets and falls in love with nurse Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale). With the United States not yet involved in World War Two, Rafe is granted a transfer to the Eagle Squadron of American pilots fighting in the Battle Of Britain, while Danny and Evelyn are stationed at Pearl Harbor.

Rafe proves himself to be an ace pilot, but his plane is lost during a dogfight and he is assumed killed in action. Gradually the grieving Danny and Evelyn get close, and after a few months they fall in love. In the meantime, the imperialistic Japanese government is negotiating peace with the United States while secretly plotting a devastating blow to the US Pacific fleet. Rafe, who had survived his crash and was sheltered by the resistance in France, returns to Pearl Harbor only to find his best buddy and girlfriend now in a full-fledged relationship, on the eve of the audacious Japanese attack.

With Titanic proving that famous real-life disasters can be recast as grand fictional romances and achieve great box office success, Pearl Harbor uses history as rough background for a three-hour romance. Pearl Harbor aims more for the dreamy universe of From Here To Eternity than the technical reality of Tora! Tora! Tora!. It's a reasonable effort, eschewing historical accuracy for fictional characters caught in the crosshairs of extraordinary events.

But when the emphasis is supposed to be on tenderness and people rather than action and machines, Michael Bay is likely the most wrong director to be at the helm. Bay is much more comfortable with exploding hardware than exploring human emotions. The romance elements never add up to any level of convicing passion, with neither the Randall Wallace script nor Bay's directing able to create memorable moments or sufficient chemistry between the three leads.

The casting choices don't help. Affleck carries a smugness that helps him in the cockpit but oozes insincerity in the romantic scenes, while the stiff Josh Hartnett labours mightily but to no effect trying to prove that he can actually act. Kate Beckinsale is the best of the three and could have smoldered, but she never finds the required masculine reciprocity from neither Affleck nor Hartnett to catch fire.

Wallace also packs in too much into the story. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor there is a side trip with Rafe to the Battle Of Britain, and after the attack Rafe and Danny participate in the training and execution of the Doolittle raid. Compared to the elaborate treatment of the central attack, the other two military sub-stories are rushed, underdeveloped and ultimately unnecessary.

Despite the mammoth running length, none of the supporting cast are given enough to do, and the likes of Jon Voight (President Roosevelt), Baldwin (Doolittle), Sizemore (as a soldier stationed at a small airfield who helps rustle up a modicum of resistance during the attack) and Gooding Jr. (as real-life hero Petty Officer Miller) are reduced to symbolic snippets. The Japanese commanders planning the attack never progress beyond grim faced men spouting stock lines.

This leaves the film with its centrepiece to celebrate, and its a masterpiece of battlefield recreation. Bay comes into his own, filling the sky with Japanese Zeros, the ground with thundering explosions and blazing fires, and the sea with large battleships being pummeled and with drowning, desperate men. It's a stunning sequence deserving of full praise, Bay capturing the fury, chaos and brutality of the "date which will live in infamy". Ironically, a film that attempted to emphasize romance at the expense of hardware is almost saved by the roar of battle squashing the intended sweetness of convoluted love.

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The Movies Of Cuba Gooding, Jr.

All movies starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Coming To America (1988)

Boyz N The Hood (1991)

A Few Good Men (1992)

Outbreak (1995)

Jerry Maguire (1996)

As Good As It Gets (1997)

Men Of Honor (2000)

Pearl Harbor (2001)

Radio (2003)

American Gangster (2007)

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (2009)

The Butler (2013)

Selma (2014)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Jerry Maguire (1996)

A story about love and the search for life's true meaning set in the cutthroat world of pro-sports, Jerry Maguire shines thanks to one of Tom Cruise's best performances and a terrific script from director Cameron Crowe.

High profile sports agent Jerry Maguire (Cruise) works for Sports Management International and represents many pro sports superstars. He is also engaged to be married to the ultra-competitive and brutally honest Avery Bishop (Kelly Preston). Feeling ill at ease with the artificiality of the business and physically ill after consuming bad pizza, in one night Maguire writes, publishes and distributes a sweaty "mission statement" advocating fewer clients per agent and more personal service. He is promptly fired, and is able to retain just one client: egotistical football star Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.). Nerdy accountant and single mom Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger) is the only other SMI employee to believe enough in Maguire to quit her job and join his fledgling new business. In contrast, Avery labels him a loser and they break up.

Jerry tries to re-establish his reputation but is rebuffed in his attempts to find clients. His relationship with Rod evolves towards a thorny friendship, while Jerry and Dorothy start to fall in love, despite the protestations of Dorothy's sister Laurel (Bonnie Hunt). But while Dorothy is looking for a long-term father figure for her young son Ray (Jonathan Lipnicki), Jerry admits that he knows little about genuine long-term commitments. Meanwhile Rod wants a new big contract, but his negative attitude and constant complaining don't help his cause. Jerry realizes that he will need to confront what it really means to have fewer clients and provide more personal attention, in both his professional and private lives.

Cameron Crowe's sterling script is a rich, character-driven exploration of values, filled with clever insights, metaphors and warm humour. Jerry's quest to find his place in life is an unintentional journey, launched in the haze of a feverish night, and destined to end only when Jerry strips and rebuilds his soul not on paper but in real life.

His story is a perfect mix of drama, sports and romance, Crowe finding the magic ingredients to create two compelling relationships in Jerry's turbulent life. The friendship between Jerry and Rod is the more complex bond, the affection and trust between the two men emerging slowly after a turbulent, money-driven start. The fledgling romance between Jerry and Dorothy is the avenue for Jerry to come to terms with what he has to offer in his personal life, where slick promises, firm handshakes, marketing spin and shiny smiles are not nearly enough.

Tom Cruise has rarely been better, his portrayal of Jerry a dedicated performance, filled with human foibles and never settling for easy moments. Jerry's initial jaunty self-confidence perfectly fits Cruise's persona, but the the subsequent difficult self-awareness journey takes Cruise to new levels of subtlety and raw exposure, while always remaining real.

Renée Zellweger and Cuba Gooding, Jr. are both excellent as the other two points in Jerry's life triangle. This was Zellweger's breakthrough role, and she gives Dorothy a deep well of passion covered by the dowdiness of a drained single mother. And Crowe finds two extraordinary and heartfelt lines for his lovers in one conversation, Jerry's You complete me and Dorothy's You had me at hello the simplest and most complete expressions of two souls finding each other.

Gooding, Jr. is perfect as an egotistical football star channelling his energy in all the wrong directions and wondering where the big payday is. His signature line Show me the money! is another of the film's enduring legacies.

But Cameron is not satisfied with three strong characters, and he builds a dense ecosystem around them. Dorothy gets advice from her sister Laurel (a sensitive Bonnie Hunt), and she in turn surrounds herself with a squawky support group of divorced women, experts at talking and hopeless at listening. Rod's family includes bossy wife Marcee (Regina King), an out-of-control young son, and extended relatives all fully invested in Rod's financial success.

Jerry Maguire is part competitive sports business, part lessons in bonding, and all heart.

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Movie Review: American Gangster (2007)

An epic gangster's tale inspired by real events, American Gangster is a potent mix of low key audaciousness. As told by director Ridley Scott, the story of the rise and fall of drug lord Frank Lucas is quietly absorbing without veering into amplified dramatics.

In Harlem of the late 1960s, elderly local crime boss Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson (Clarence Williams III) dies, leaving his loyal driver and assistant Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) in charge of his fledgling operations. In the meantime, New Jersey police detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) makes himself extremely unpopular by turning in one million dollars worth of crime money that he found in the trunk of a criminal's car. With the police department rife with corruption and officers on the take, Richie's actions mean that he is shunned by fellow officers, while his home life is also falling apart.

Frank is ambitious but prefers to keep a low profile compared to the other flashy criminals trying to fill the vacuum created by Bumpy's demise. Frank spots an opportunity to mass import high quality heroin directly from the jungles of Vietnam on board US military cargo planes, and recruits his extended family, including his brother Huey (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to control the preparation and distribution of the drug under the Blue Magic brand. Frank is soon extremely wealthy and in control of the New York drug market, and marries Puerto Rican beauty queen Eva (Lymari Nadal). The higher quality and lower price of his product cause an addiction epidemic, and also antagonize the established Mafia families represented by Dominic Cattano (Armand Assante).

Richie is invited to lead a specialized anti-drug police unit, and assembles a group of unconventional but effective street-wise police detectives who start to investigate the drug kings of New Jersey and New York. With the impending end of the Vietnam War threatening Frank's supply of drugs, Richie gradually uncovers the remarkable extent of Frank's operations, and starts to look for an informer to bring down the drug empire.

A worthy addition to the collection of grand films about crime as a serious family business, American Gangster has a luxurious scope and monumental stamina. Despite a running length of close to 160 minutes, the film never loses momentum, screenwriter Steve Zaillian keeping two stories moving briskly in parallel, both inspired by exceptional real men but with artistic licence exercised to create a movie event.

Frank's surreptitious rise to the top of the New York drug world is an epic tale of the quiet black American man who out-manoeuvred his competition and dominated the market, peddling misery to the masses while enriching his family. Richie is as remarkable for being the straight cop in a sea of corruption, exorcised for doing his job but finding his calling in the pursuit of drug lords. Scott's challenge is that the two men only meet in the final 20 minutes, and this is handsomely overcome by drawing two trajectories that are clearly destined to come together but that are also robust enough to stand alone.

In a film packed with on-location shooting, Scott recreates Harlem and other New York locations of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a rotting apple where drugs, crime, misery and death flourish in the rampant urban decay. Frank heartlessly takes advantage of the downtrodden within the despair, his obsession with dignity standing in stark contrast with the plague that his neatly packaged heroin unleashes on the residents of his crumbling neighbourhoods.

In support of the excellent Washington and Crowe, American Gangster boasts an impressively deep cast, with small but important roles for Ruby Dee as Frank's mother, Josh Brolin as a corrupt New York City police detective, Cuba Gooding Jr. as a nightclub owner distributing Blue Magic, and Idris Elba as Tango, Frank's rival for control of Harlem after Bumpy's death.

The film is driven by the two main characters and has only one traditional cinematic action scene, a raid on a drug lab. Otherwise the menace of drugs seeping into the pores of society poses a greater threat than any number of chases or shoot-outs. Frank has to eliminate one competitor to make a statement, and he later becomes the subject of a mysterious assassination attempt, but otherwise American Gangster succeeds in creating a depressing canvass where death prevails through the mundane business of addiction rather than combat. As men like Frank Lucas know only too well, controlled, self-administered, and wide-spread violence that is unseen and unheard can be the most damaging - and the most lucrative.

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Movie Review: Outbreak (1995)

A micro-biology scientific thriller that implodes into the worst excesses of mindless action, Outbreak is half of a good movie. A deep cast maintains interest, but the acting talent cannot overcome a script that sells out to cheap thrills.

A deadly virus called Motaba breaks out in darkest Africa, causing death within hours. Infectious disease scientist Colonel Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman) of the US military and his team, including Major Schuler (Kevin Spacey) and Major Salt (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) are assigned to investigate. Motaba takes a ride inside a monkey with immunity to the virus, and crosses into the United States. Thanks to an unscrupulous pet smuggler (Patrick Dempsey), a lot of people are soon infected and start to die horrible deaths, with a concentration of cases in the town of Cedar Creek, California.

Daniels is eager to help find an antidote, but his boss General Ford (Morgan Freeman), along with another military commander General McClintock (Donald Sutherland), are not so keen: they have known about Motaba since the late 1960s, and in fact the military has secretly converted it to a biological weapon and developed a cure. Not willing to reveal these secrets, Ford and McClintock delay releasing the antidote, causing more misery in the now quarantined Cedar Creek. Daniels disobeys orders and teams up with his ex-wife Robby (Rene Russo) of the Centre for Disease Control to try to help the community, setting himself up on a collision course with his military commanders.

While the first half of Outbreak is a tightly wound examination of the battle between micro-organisms and man, with a cautionary look at how a lethal new disease can easily spread and devastate lives and communities, the back end of the story fragments into a ludicrous chase movie. Daniels and Salt set off on their own to attempt and save the town by finding the disease host, while McClintock spits venom and tracks them down to protect the military's dirty secrets. With stock helicopter chases and mid-air games of chicken replacing the smart science, Outbreak suffers from a most ignominious descent into banality.

The cast deserve better. Although none of them stand out, all are uniformly good, and even the relatively minor roles are interesting in the hands of the likes of Spacey, Gooding Jr., and Dempsey. Rene Russo makes the forced sub-plot of a lost marriage between Daniels and Robby more palatable. Meanwhile, the old pros Hoffman, Freeman and Sutherland cut through the unfolding drama with practised ease. Hoffman's Colonel Daniels is the caring soul at the centre of the movie, a character suitable for Hoffman's persona although if anything, Daniels is almost annoyingly too pure in his dedication to the alleviation of human suffering.

Freeman's General Ford is always going to be the hinge that will need to turn to change the course of the military's focus, and Freeman nails the veteran soldier disciplined to a fault but with a heart deep within his military uniform. Sutherland gets the easiest assignment: McClintock is mean as mean can be, and makes no apologies for his tunnel vision. Wolfgang Petersen directs with competence rather than passion, eager to give each star sufficient screen time and sacrificing any attempts at artistry in the process.

Outbreak appeals to the brain early and the brainless brawn late, a jarring transition that splits the film in half and wounds its heart.

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Movie Review: As Good As It Gets (1997)

A story of romance between two people on the edge, As Good As It Gets is a thoughtful look at what it takes to uncover the warmth beneath complex, harried and damaged souls. Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt shine as agitated New Yorkers wrapped up in their lives, not looking for love but finding it flickering under the unlikeliest of circumstances.

Melvin Udall (Nicholson) is a New York-based writer. He is also intolerably obsessive-compulsive, racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic. Melvin lives in an apartment building, where his neighbour is gay artist Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear), who has a black marketing agent Frank Sachs (Cuba Gooding, Jr.). Simon and Frank take the brunt of Melvin's insufferable behaviour, as does Simon's dog Verdell.

Melvin's fanatical routine includes eating breakfast daily as the same restaurant, sitting at the same table, and getting served by the same waitress, Carol Connelly (Hunt). A poor single mom of a sickly child, Carol in the only person who can tolerate Melvin, and in turn, he recognizes that he is dependant on her. When Carol starts skipping work to look after her son Spencer (Jesse James), Melvin arranges to pay for high quality medical care to stabilize Spencer's condition, so that Carol can return to work and serve him breakfast.

Simon is brutally mugged, and Frank insists that Melvin take care of Verdell, but Melvin's growing fondness for Carol prompts him to start taking his medication to improve his social skills, and he starts to cope better around people (and dogs). Melvin's relationship with Carol evolves slowly, with his deeply ingrained suspicion of people clumsily colliding with her desperate need for intimacy. Eventually Melvin, the battered Simon and Carol head out on a road trip to visit Simon's parents, and both Melvin and Carol need to confront their true emotions towards themselves and each other.

Under the direction of James L. Brooks, As Good As It Gets shines as a study of two desperately lost souls whose destinies collide over bacon and eggs, with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt both receiving best acting Academy Awards. Nicholson pulls out one of his most memorable performances to bring Melvin to life, a man deeply aware of his failings but standing just short of being able to address them, until he sees first in Verdell and then in Carol a reason to risk radical change. Nicholson makes impressive use of pauses, his eyes beaming with what he needs to say in order to join humanity's norms, but his mouth only able to spout the poison that creates a lonely vacuum around him.

Hunt is impressively equal to Nicholson, and rises to the challenge posed by the script (co-written by Mark Andrus and Brooks): it would have been too easy for Carol to be all-good opposite Melvin's radical offensiveness. Instead, Carol has deep-rooted issues of her own, and her desperation for companionship and a true partner in life allows her as many opportunities as Melvin to take painful missteps in their stuttering relationship.

Greg Kinnear and Cuba Gooding, Jr. add memorably chaotic New York life to Melvin's surroundings, while Shirley Knight as Carol's mom is instrumental in steering her daughter towards some painful but necessary decisions.

As Good As It Gets suffers from some bloating at close to 140 minutes for a romance, and Brooks could have benefited from sharper decisions in the editing room. Some realism is also sacrificed with the speed of Melvin's transition from reclusive and repugnant to half-way cuddlesome. But whenever either Nicholson or Hunt are on-screen the momentum is maintained, and As Good As It Gets proves to be plenty good enough.

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