Movie Review: The Benefactor (2015)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Andrew Renzi  

Starring: Richard Gere, Dakota Fanning, Theo James  

Running Time: 93 minutes  

Synopsis: In Philadelphia, wealthy hospital benefactor Francis "Franny" Watts (Richard Gere) is best friends with couple Bobby and Mia (Dylan Baker and Cheryl Hines), and treats their teenaged daughter Olivia (Dakota Fanning) as his own. Franny is consumed by guilt when he survives a car crash that kills Bobby and Mia. Five years later the pregnant Olivia marries Luke (Theo Wilson), a doctor, and reconnects with Franny. He starts showering the couple with expensive gifts and favours, but Franny is also suffering from physical and emotional scars.

What Works Well: Richard Gere enjoys a larger-than-life role, gregariously dancing on the seam between joyful and overbearing. Writer/director Andrew Renzi tantalizes with mysteries surrounding the origins of Franny's wealth, his ailments and addictions, the true nature of his relationship with Bobby and Mia, and what happened in the aftermath of that fateful car crash. Olivia and Luke's discomfort carries an edge as their life is overwhelmed by Franny's largesse.

What Does Not Work As Well: The narrative is much better at asking questions than answering them, and ultimately this is an unsatisfactory half-movie with a host of non-resolutions. A critical pivot point is Franny's inability to renew a morphine prescription, a highly implausible hurdle for a hospital-owning tycoon. 

Key Quote:

Luke (to Franny): Just because you give and give and give doesn't make you a part of anything.

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Movie Review: The Equalizer 3 (2023)

Genre: Action Thriller  
Director: Antoine Fuqua  

Starring: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning  

Running Time: 109 minutes  

Synopsis: In Sicily, ex-US Marine Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) infiltrates a gangster-controlled villa in his pursuit of a stolen item. Wounded while exfiltrating, he is helped by a kindly doctor and a police officer to recuperate in the town of Altamonte on the Amelfi coast. Once healthy, McCall starts to enjoy the slower pace of life and befriends locals including business owner Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro). He alerts the CIA's Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) about dangerous drugs at the Sicilian villa, then tangles with a brutal Camorra faction led by Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio). 

What Works Well: The third chapter in Robert McCall's even-the-score vengeance adventures is a bit more laid back, with enjoyment of the quaint Italian coastal scenery the primary preoccupation for director Antoine Fuqua. Plenty of time is invested interacting with good-hearted locals and admiring idyllic cafes, piazzas, small stores, and winding steep staircases. In contrast the action scenes are few and far between, but still full of impact and gore. The plot is a standard set-up for a one-against-many showdown, and mafioso Vincent is appropriately despicable, but neither he nor his goon army can resist Washington's effortless star charisma.

What Does Not Work As Well: The script reaches for an awkward mix of Camorra, ISIS, drug trafficking, and off-screen acts of terrorism, but never achieves contextual success. The climax is particularly bland and free of tension, while Dakota Fanning tries hard but never comes close to convincing as a CIA agent.

Conclusion: Pretty picturesque and predictably polished.



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Movie Review: I Am Sam (2001)

A parenting drama with legal sparring, I Am Sam is sentimental but also well-intentioned and brilliantly acted.

Starbucks employee Sam Dawson (Sean Penn) has an intellectual disability and a mental age of seven. A homeless woman gives birth to his child and immediately walks out on him. Sam manages to raise his daughter Lucy through the infant years with the help of his reclusive neighbour Annie (Dianne Wiest), and a group of friends with disabilities.

Once Lucy (Dakota Fanning) reaches the age of eight, she experiences bullying and becomes aware of her father's condition. She starts to hold back her academic development to avoid embarrassing her dad. Social services move in and declare Sam incapable of parenting his daughter. He turns to high-powered lawyer Rita Williams (Michelle Pfeiffer) to fight the decision. Rita is initially not interested, but eventually accepts the case pro-bono, while Lucy is placed in the foster home of Miranda Carpenter (Laura Dern).

Asking questions about what defines good parenting, I Am Sam is comfortable offering a range of answers. The script by Kristine Johnson and director Jessie Nelson ponders whether love is enough, and the role of intellectual capacity in determining the need for state intervention. The narrative evolution is careful to avoid villains in this debate: everyone is kind, including the lawyer arguing Sam is ill equipped to help Lucy's growth into an adult. To maintain balance, Sam is portrayed as loving and good natured but also often overwhelmed and childlike.

As a result, Nelson is drawn towards a saccharine tone. Almost every scene and all the main characters are propelled by a purity of purpose designed to elicit sympathy. Sam and Lucy are immensely likeable, and lawyer Rita starts on the frantic partner track but is always moving towards her destiny of heroically representing the underdog. All the secondary characters including neighbour Annie, Sam's friends, and foster parent Miranda are manicured into ideal versions.

Sean Penn delivers an unforgettable performance, combining elements of Tom Hanks from Forrest Gump with Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man to create an affecting child-man in Sam. He can function as a coffee shop table server and does just enough to get by, the songs of the Beatles and the movie Kramer vs. Kramer significant influences on his behaviour. Susceptible to awkward tantrums when frustrated, he can read at the level of Dr. Seuss's I Am Sam, but struggles when Lucy's school assignments move beyond the rudimentary.

The supporting cast is stellar, particularly bright-eyed Dakota Fanning as Lucy. She enhances every scene without descending into irony or precociousness. 

At 132 minutes I Am Sam does go on, and the final act features some unnecessary back and forth nighttime trips instigated by Lucy. Any actual parent at any intellectual level would have immediately clamped down on such nonsense. But here all actions stem from love and goodness, positive light allowed to overwhelm any hints of darkness.

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Movie Review: Man On Fire (2004)

A revenge action thriller centred on a child kidnapping, Man On Fire is gripping, violent, and stylish.

With Mexico City experiencing a high rate of abductions for ransom, businessman Samuel Ramos (Marc Anthony) and his wife Lisa (Radha Mitchell) hire Creasy (Denzel Washington) as a bodyguard for their young daughter Pita (Dakota Fanning). Creasy is ex-military, but now has a drinking problem. He remains friends with Paul Rayburn (Christopher Walken), a former colleague who runs a security firm.

The dour and despondent Creasy gets off on the wrong foot with the talkative and curious Pita, but they then establish a deep bond of friendship. When heavily-armed kidnappers do target Pita, Creasy is unable to save her despite killing four assailants and being shot several times. While he recuperates, Samuel and lawyer Jordan Kalfus (Mickey Rourke) handle the ransom negotiations. But with corruption reaching the highest levels of the police force, the deal goes bad. Creasy vows revenge on all those who harmed his young friend.

Directed by Tony Scott from a Brian Helgeland script adapting A.J. Quinnell's 1980 novel, Man On Fire is a standard revenge story spiced-up by strong character development, hyperactive cinematography, and star power. While the man-on-a-mission-wasting-bad-guys premise offers little that is new, here the people are made to matter with smart pacing choices.

The first hour patiently introduces the flawed and self-aware Creasy, the smart and precocious Pita (short for Lupita), and the connection between them. At first she irritates him but then he helps her develop competitive swimming techniques and becomes a friend and trusted mentor. Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning invest genuine humanity into the roles, adding a potent emotional punch to the subsequent violence.

Once the killing starts it does not stop, Creasy working his way up the criminal food chain from foot soldiers to mid-level operatives, corrupt officials and finally the masterminds. He is calm, methodical and outwardly emotionless, dismantling a shadowy organization consisting of thugs and sleazoids hiding behind uniforms and officious titles. All the bad guys call themselves professionals, but Creasy demonstrates what the term really means. The usual methods of torture are deployed to expeditiously extract the necessary information in time for the next rocket-propelled grenade to impart the required damage. And along the way a conspiracy twist is revealed, adding internecine venom.

Creasy is helped by a couple of locals to balance out the Mexican portrayals. Rachel Ticotin is reporter Mariana Garcia Guerrero, eager to expose government corruption and incompetence, and Giancarlo Giannini plays Miguel Manzano, a federal police director willing to provide assistance in exchange for the right perks.

The Mexico City locations add vibrant authenticity, while Scott's insistence on manic visual flair and demented editing borders on nauseating but achieves the intended kinetic buzz. Man On Fire is both cool and blazing.



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Movie Review: Night Moves (2013)

A crime drama, Night Moves accompanies young environmentalists veering towards an act of terrorism to protest corporate greed and disregard for nature.

In Oregon, activist Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) volunteers on an organic produce farm. His friend Dena (Dakota Fanning) works at a spa, and they join forces with ex-Marine Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) to plan an eco-terrorist attack on a hydroelectric dam. Their objective is to raise awareness about climate change and the harmful impacts of dams on wild fish habitats, without causing casualties.

Dena comes from a rich family and provides the cash to buy a motorboat. The trio then have to purchase enough ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a controlled substance, to create the bomb. Despite careful attention to detail in planning the nighttime explosion, not everything will go according to plan, resulting in serious rifts between the three conspirators.

Moody, dark, and slow, Night Moves explores misguided idealism. Director Kelly Reichardt co-wrote the script with Jonathan Raymond, and adopts a tight focus on three people, allowing the greater issues to simply exist as background context. With deliberate pacing and sparse content, the film feeds on the intensity of deluded adults meandering into a major crime. The Pacific Northwest milieu is suitably moist and dour, but while the rain forest is the source of beauty, the film's low budget is also exposed, particularly in an embarrassingly static driving scene.  

The mostly off-the-grid existence of Josh, Dena, and Harmon is devoid of grand speeches or debates. They function either alone or within a close-knit community of like-minded individuals, and have crossed the line from living sustainably to a yearning for dramatic yet misguided action to wake up the world. 

For the more susceptible and fragile Josh and Dena, the absence of parents and family members is notable, while Harmon's military background affords him greater swagger. Night Moves is most compelling in the lead-up to the attack as a tense dynamic develops between the three conspirators, Dena improvising with tenacity to secure the bomb material, the trio then forced to smooth out an unexpected wrinkle on the night of the bombing.

Energy seeps out of the final act. Reichardt is only interested in the aftermath of the crime from the perspective of the criminals themselves, and Night Moves traces grim disintegrations at the individual and friendship levels. The physical consequences of the terror attack are described in abstract terms, and the subsequent investigation plays no part in the narrative. When disparate coping limits inflict internal depletions, external interventions are superfluous.



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Movie Review: Very Good Girls (2013)

A coming-of-age drama, Very Good Girls explores friendship, secrets and early sexual adventures but barely offers anything new.

In New York, best friends Lilly (Dakota Fanning) and Gerri (Elizabeth Olson) would like to lose their virginity before heading out to college. Lilly's home environment is tense and her parents Edward and Norma (Clark Gregg and Ellen Barkin) barely communicate. Edward (Clark Gregg) is caught having an affair and soon leaves the house. In contrast Gerri's household is warm and loud, enlivened by her animated father Danny (Richard Dreyfuss). Lilly woks for the summer as a tour boat guide and has to fend off the lecherous advances of her boss Fitsimmons (Peter Sarsgaard).

At Brighton Beach Lilly and Gerri meet hunky ice cream seller David (Boyd Holbrook) and they both set their eyes on him. Gerri openly states she wants to pursue David; Lilly is more coy, seeking a seduction without telling Gerri. Soon both young women are in various stages of involvement with the same guy, straining their friendship.

An independent production written and directed by Naomi Foner, Very Good Girls is low on energy and lacking innovation. The laid-back and carefree attitude suits the last-summer-before-college vibe, and both Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olson radiate youthful enthusiasm growing into adulthood with just the right dash of trepidation. But even for the sparse 91 minutes of running time, the material is thin and familiar, the characters quickly confined to uncommunicative territory spiked by obfuscation to serve the script's agenda.

The initial strong bond between Lilly and Geri is only sketched-in (a propensity for tearing off their clothes in public a hasty substitute for playful trust), leaving their friendship susceptible to the corrosive side-effects of a race for achieving womanhood behind secretive curtains. The scenes of young love and mutual seduction between Lilly and David are not helped by his predictably moody but vacuous character (he is the walking cliche of an aspiring street artist who wants to visit Europe). When their budding love affair hits the first rock of mistrust, the intended emotional impacts don't register.

The trio of Ellen Barkin, Richard Dreyfuss and Demi Moore (as Gerri's mother) roll back the decades and add veteran star power despite underwritten roles. Vaguely amiable without carving out an identity, Very Good Girls pout and plot but fade towards the back of a crowded class.



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The Movies Of Dakota Fanning

All movies starring Dakota Fanning and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

I Am Sam (2001)

Sweet Home Alabama (2002)

Man On Fire (2004)

War Of The Worlds (2005)

Push (2009)

The Runaways (2010)

Very Good Girls (2013)

Night Moves (2013)

The Benefactor (2015)

Ocean's Eight (2018)

Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood (2019)

The Equalizer 3 (2023)

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

Movie Review: Push (2009)

A science fiction superhero thriller, Push crashes into an incomprehensible plot and burns on the fuel of witless character definition.

Various people who have enhanced psychic abilities are hunted down by an evil government group called The Division, made up of baddies who also have psychic powers. Nick (Chris Evans) a "Mover" who can manipulate objects with his thoughts, is hiding out in Hong Kong having been hunted all his life by Agent Carver (Djimon Hounsou). Now Nick is approached by young Cassie (Dakota Fanning), a "Watcher" who can see and draw snippets of the future.

Cassie needs Nick's help to locate Kira (Camilla Belle), a Pusher who escaped the Division after proving resilient to the strongest experimental injection. Kira and Nick have a history, but now she in possession of a case with mysterious contents that can bring down the Division and save Cassie's captive mother. In addition to Carver and his goons, a Chinese family featuring the intimidating Pop Girl (Xiao Lu Li) and men who can scream their enemies to death are also chasing the action.

Pushers, Watchers, Movers, Sniffers, Shifters, Wipers, Bleeders, Stitchers, Shadows...whatever. It takes no longer than 10 minutes for Push to collapse in a heap of nonsense overload, writer David Bourla and director Paul McGuigan clueless as to how to assemble a coherent narrative out of assorted hokum. Some of the visuals are impressive, but the film's style and good use of Hong Kong locations don't come close to saving the inept story.

Among the barely explained core elements are the reasons behind the prolonged war between two groups of psychics, the types of experiments being conducted by the Division, and why anyone is supposed to care. If weaponization is the objective, the current abilities on display by all sides, including stopping a hail of bullets with bare hands, influencing enemies to kill each other in a blink of an eye and predicting enemy movements, appear quite effective already.

Meanwhile, the film is riddled with internal inconsistencies related to how and when the psychic superpowers can be deployed. The case everyone is chasing takes pride of place as a most boring MacGuffin, and the bewildering revelation that it contains a serum already developed by the Division adds to the confusion. How or why a single syringe of a drug already in use will change the world order is a mystery abandoned for another day.

Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning are defeated by the material, while the other cast members don't even try and surrender quickly to superficial overacting. All the characters are dropped into the action with barely any background or context, with the notable exception of Cassie's mother, who is evidently central to the plot but never makes an appearance. She was doubtless being saved for the sequel, which was mercifully never pushed out.

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Movie Review: War Of The Worlds (2005)

A science fiction thriller, War Of The World boasts slick special effects, a character-centred story and a sturdy Tom Cruise performance.

In New Jersey, port crane operator Ray (Cruise) has custody of his kids, moody teenager Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and the younger Rachel (Dakota Fanning), for a few days as their mom Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) visits her family in Boston. After a strange-looking storm causes multiple lightning strikes, massive advanced technology tripod war machines burst from below the ground, piloted by evil aliens intent on annihilating humanity and occupying Earth.

Mass casualties ensue, and Ray goes on the run with Robbie and Rachel, generally heading towards Boston. Along the way they encounter other survivors, and have to survive multiple attacks by the rampaging tripods. An attempted ferry river crossing causes a riot and exposes the worst of humanity. Robbie very much wants to join the outgunned army to try and fight back against the aliens, while Ray and Rachel take refuge in the basement of rough survivalist Harlan (Tim Robbins), who causes his own set of problems.

An adaptation of the classic H.G. wells story directed by Steven Spielberg, War Of The Worlds is a consistently exiting and tense science fiction thriller, with a tight focus on a reluctant father suddenly faced with a large dose of responsibility. The CGI is mostly convincing, and the visual scope and ambition are never less than impressive.

Comprehensively breaking away from his previous aliens-are-friendly ethos demonstrated in Close Encounters of The Third Kind and E.T. The Extraterrestrial, here Spielberg has no qualms defining the invaders as pure evil beings intent on literally sucking humanity dry. And the film quickly gets to the point, the invaders emerging from the sky, activating their long-hidden death machines from subterranean hideouts, and carrying out the business of killing with ruthless efficiency.

To maintain a reasonable level of bloodless and gore-free family friendliness (at least for families with older kids), the aliens initially kill by vaporizing the squishy humans. But Spielberg does emphasize the horror in a chilling riverfront scene exposing the extent of the genocide, and later the landscape is colored a sinewy red as the grotesque details of the invasion are revealed.

War Of The Worlds does not get everything quite right. The interlude in Harlan's basement does serve to slow down the mayhem and introduce tension instead of mass and breathless destruction, but it goes on for too long and eventually threatens to spiral into a whole different movie. And the ending is first too rushed and then too Spielbergian, a bittersweet opportunity squandered.

Tom Cruise radiates star presence at the heart of the film. With Ray not asked to accomplish anything other than save his kids, Cruise demonstrates the true meaning of heroism. Dakota Fanning, all of 11 years old, is affecting as the terrified kid forced to grow up in an awful hurry.

War Of The Worlds ponders the potential inconsequentiality of the human species, a vision both nightmarish and undeniably entertaining to imagine.

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Movie Review: The Runaways (2010)

The story of two girls from the wrong side of the tracks who briefly made it to the top of the music mountain, The Runaways is a wistful look back at a groundbreaking band that paved the way for a new era of women in rock.

Directed and written by Floria Sigismondi, based on the book Neon Angel: A Memoir Of a Runaway by Cherie Currie, The Runaways places the focus on guitarist Joan Jett and vocalist Currie, and does not shy away from the dysfunctional family origins, destructive drugs and sheer naivete that conspired to destroy the band.

It's 1975 in Los Angeles and Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) has an unladylike ambition to play the electric guitar in an all-girl rock band.  She meets producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), who connects her with drummer Sandy West.  Fowley then goes looking for a lead singer, and finds 15 year old Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) hanging out at a club.  The group eventually includes lead guitarist Lita Ford, and are named The Runaways. Fowley helps to tutor them and co-writes their hit song Cherry Bomb.

Fronted by the dangerously under-aged sex-appeal of Currie and anchored by Jett's drive, The Runaways enjoy a meteoric rise, international success, and with drugs and jealousies taking their toll, a descent to destruction that is just as spectacular and rapid.  The band dissolved in 1979, having enjoyed success for all of three years between 1976 and 1978.

Dakota Fanning, just 15 herself when The Runaways was filmed, and Kristen Stewart, taking a welcome break from the vampires and werewolves of the Twilight series, produce impressive performances that mix equal doses of toughness, uncertainty and vulnerability. Fanning portrays Currie as fighting a losing battle to survive while out of her depth in a hostile environment that she knows little about, but also desperate to escape her depressing home, with an alcoholic father and a mother who has abandoned the family. Stewart captures the steely-eyed Jett, older than Currie, better equipped to deal with stardom and more success-oriented. Jett went on to independently achieve massive success as a solo artist.

Michael Shannon is also memorable as the conniving Fowley, a key contributor to both the creation and destruction of the band.

Sigismondi allows Fanning and Stewart to shine, and keeps her cameras tilted at interesting angles to match the soundtrack of rock music, and the energy of a group of young women attempting to take over the rock world.  And ever so briefly, they succeeded.

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