Movie Review: Hotel Rwanda (2004)

Genre: Biographical Genocide Drama

Director: Terry George

Starring: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix, Jean Reno

Running Time: 121 minutes

Synopsis: It's 1994, and Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) is a manager at the prestigious Belgian-owned Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali, Rwanda. Ethnic tensions erupt into genocide as majority Hutu militias unleash death on the Tutsi minority. Paul and his wife Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo) offer refuge at the hotel to anyone escaping the carnage, eventually sheltering more than 800 people. Paul has to keep his guests safe from a bloodthirsty militia leader and an army general, while the understaffed United Nations peacekeeping mission under Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte) struggles to get the world's attention.

What Works Well: Based on actual events, director Terry George and his co-writer Keir Pearson chisel a story of personal courage out of the horrors of human brutality. Avoiding gore and side-stepping sentimentality, the narrative traces a country's harrowing disintegration and Rusesabagina countering with resourceful kindness in the face of adversity. Don Cheadle bundles audacity and quick thinking into a masterful portrayal of initiative under extreme pressure, and Nick Nolte provides crusty support as the UN commander loosely inspired by Canadian General Romeo Dallaire. The film spares no shame in exposing the value of black African lives in the world's calculus.

What Does Not Work As Well: The depiction of a genocide that took 800,000 lives in three months is primarily confined to bloodless abstract victims.

Conclusion: Delivers individual hope and collective despair in equal measures.



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Movie Review: Devil In A Blue Dress (1995)

A neo-noir crime thriller, Devil In A Blue Dress enjoys exquisite period details and a suitably convoluted mystery.

The setting is Los Angeles in 1948. Recently unemployed machinist Easy Rawlings (Denzel Washington) is desperate to keep up with his mortgage payments. He accepts a seemingly simple job from DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore) to locate a missing woman called Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), who is known to frequent Black nightclubs. Daphne is the girlfriend of politician Todd Carter, who dropped out of the mayoral race when she disappeared.

Easy connects with nightclub regular Coretta, who informs him Daphne is hanging out with a thug called Frank Green. Soon thereafter Coretta is found dead and Easy is a prime murder suspect. His life gets more complicated when Daphne surprisingly contacts him and together they visit the home of the sleazy Richard McGee. Easy also has an unsettling encounter with Matthew Terell (Maury Chaykin), the other candidate for mayor. As the dead bodies start accumulating, Easy calls upon his Texas-based friend Mouse (Don Cheadle) to join him in LA.

Evoking Raymond Chandler's sordid stories, Devil In A Blue Dress adds racial tensions to the familiar mix of sex, blackmail, and murder most foul. Writer and director Carl Franklin dreams up an almost-impossible-to-follow but still captivating story where power, politics, exploitation, and sleaze intermingle, every minor character matters, and everyone is corrupt at heart and working hard to hide it. Action, mood, seductiveness, and hints of humour maintain equilibrium.

In this world Black and white coexist uneasily. Albright specifically hires Easy because Daphne is known to frequent Black clubs. The police pester Easy more than necessary because of his colour, and the difficulties experienced by a Black man trying to ease into post-war middle class prosperity are never far from the surface. More subtle racial prejudices emerge as the layers of the mystery are peeled.

The plot is strong, but the film is also a visual treat. Franklin creates a bustling Los Angeles teeming with activity, the energy palpable in both the exterior and interior scenes. Era wardrobes and autos dress up the sets with impeccable taste, yellow-browns dominating the palette as a reminder of the always nearby desert.

Despite the narrative strength and stellar production design, weaknesses are also on display. A lot of the dialogue is mumbled, and too many key actions take place off-screen and are described rather than displayed. Everyone is willing to pay Easy plenty of money to locate Daphne, but she never seems that difficult to find. Jennifer Beals does not settle in the central femme fatale role, and is rarely able to project the necessary allure.

As an average but resourceful army veteran turned detective, Denzel Washington grounds the action, his acting better than the zing-free narration. Don Cheadle enters proceeding quite late, but leaves a wacky impression as the trigger-happy but none-too-bright Mouse. Devil In A Blue Dress is filled with oddballs up to no good, and looking good doing it.



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Movie Review: No Sudden Move (2021)

A slow-burning crime thriller packed with characters, No Sudden Move delivers a stellar neo-noir mood despite a surplus of plot.

Detroit, 1954. Small-time gangster Curt Goynes (Don Cheadle) has managed to antagonize rival gang leaders Frank Capelli (Ray Liotta) and Aldrick Watkins (Bill Duke). Eager for cash, he accepts an assignment from go-between Doug Jones (Brendan Fraser) for a seemingly simple job. Curt along with enforcers Ron Russo (Benicio del Toro) and Charley (Kieran Culkin) are to hold hostage the family of General Motors accountant Matt Wertz (David Harbour) to force him into stealing a file from the safe of his boss Forbert.

No one is supposed to get hurt, but the plan goes awry. Curt and Ron team-up, determined to find out who intended to double-cross them and why the contents of the safe were so important. Detective Joe Finney (Jon Hamm) gets involved, while Curt and Ron stumble upon high-level corporate secrets and plenty of opportunities to make money, but only if they can survive each other and the many gangsters now in pursuit.

Written by Ed Solomon and directed by Steven Soderbergh with beautiful period details but unnecessary fish-eye lens stunt cinematography, No Sudden Move is a cerebral incursion into multi-layered heist criminality. The film demands and rewards attention and curiosity as competing agendas weave multiple underworld types into a tangle. The abundance of people and incidents deserves a longer running time than the available 115 minutes, and while Soderbergh just about manages to keep the material under control, the final act threatens to over-reach and sacrifices contentment for hurried scampering to the next twist.

In classic noir style, every character has an angle aiming at self-benefit, either obvious or covert, and trust is a rare commodity. Fidelity is in particularly short supply, initial target Matt Wertz acting out a marriage to Mary (Amy Seimetz) while deep into an affair with his boss Forbert's secretary (Frankie Shaw). More marital disharmony is eroding the household of gang boss Frank and his wife Vanessa (Julia Fox), and all the cheating serves as potent fuel for several memorable sharp curves.

Not satisfied with already dense convolutions, Soderbergh injects racial tension between Curt and Ron, and more tangential references to the destructive impacts of the automotive age on Black neighbourhoods. The latter undercurrent deserves more thorough exposition, but here is rolled into the industry's well-worn tendencies to pick the bottom line over health and safety. An uncredited celebrity intervention underlines the theme.

Don Cheadle and Benicio del Toro lead the cast with deep-etched world weariness. Both carry the weight of characters on the far end of long years scratching out a dangerous living, now with a rare chance to win big. Awash in bags of money, malevolent intentions, no-neck thugs, and uncompromising connivance, No Sudden Move luxuriates in ambitious complexity.



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Movie Review: Traffic (2000)

A multi-story crime epic, Traffic is an unblinking look at the illegal drug business on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Law enforcement officials, traffickers, addicts, and their families intermingle in overlapping hard-hitting narratives.

In the US, Judge Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) of Ohio is appointed as the President's new drug czar, leading the government's "war on drugs". Wakefield is unaware his high achieving 16-year-old daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) and her friends are dabbling in hard drugs. When Caroline's addiction becomes obvious, Robert's work and private lives collide and his relationship with wife Barbara (Amy Irving) is strained.

In Mexico, Tijuana police officer Javier Rodriguez (Benicio del Toro) and his partner Manolo Sanchez (Jacob Vargas) are in the middle of a turf war between two drug cartels. Javier is recruited by the powerful General Salazar (Tomas Milian) to help federal anti-drug efforts. On Salazar's instructions, Rodriguez arrests cartel assassin Flores (Clifton Collins, Jr.) who is then tortured for information. Wakefield seeks allies in Mexico and identifies Salazar as a potential force for good.

In San Diego, police officers Montel (Don Cheadle) and Castro (Luis Guzmán) arrest businessman Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer), who uses storefronts as cover for a drug distribution network. In return for leniency Ruiz identifies the wealthy Carlos Ayala (Stephen Bauer) as the powerful representative for one of the Tijuana cartels. Ayala is promptly arrested, stunning his pregnant wife Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who is living the high-society life oblivious to her husband's real business. Montel and Castro have to keep Ruiz alive long enough to testify, while Helena gets only slimy support from Ayala's lawyer Arnie (Dennis Quaid) and turns to the assassin Flores for more potent help.

Featuring an ensemble cast, brisk pacing and enough content to easily justify the 147 minutes of running time, Traffic delves into the high-profit, high-risk, high-damage drugs business from multiple perspectives. Written by Stephen Gaghan and directed by Steven Soderbergh, the core message promotes pragmatism about the depth of the problem and the inefficacy of simplistic solutions. The loosely connected stories shine the light on unlimited supply, insatiable demand and unimaginable profits fuelling a business larger than most governments. Not surprisingly, slogans, blunt initiatives and even good intentions fold under the pressure of corruption, addiction and violence.

Traffic is about an underworld filled with ruthless behaviour, but avoids any traditional action scenes. Gaghan and Soderbergh maintain focus on individuals, personalizing the dilemmas and boiling down a gargantuan industry to a human scale. From Ayala's smug confidence that he is untouchable, to young Caroline throwing away her future in search of the next hit, passing through Rodriguez realizing everything right is wrong, the futility of declaring war on a health crisis made worse by bad laws is laid bare.

As the drama jumps between various stories, Soderbergh (also the cinematographer) uses colour to signal locales. The scenes in Mexico start with an overexposed palette of reds and yellows, while Wakefield's journey of learning about his daughter is bathed in deep blues. Helena's scenes resemble a glossy magazine representing unearned wealth and privilege.

Some narrative weaknesses creep in at the edges. Judge Wakefield becomes an unlikely private investigator, taking to the scuzzy parts of town and barging through doors to try and save his daughter. Helena's transformation from clueless wife to shrewd operator is also remarkably swift.

But with the stellar cast in top form, Soderbergh navigates towards faint optimism within individual moments of hope. One victim is at least temporarily saved and some kids get to play a ball game. In a massive sea of despair, small victories have to matter.

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Movie Review: Reign Over Me (2007)

A drama about friendship and loss, Reign Over Me treats a difficult topic with sensitivity but eventually spreads itself too thin.

In New York City, Dr. Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) is a successful dentist, married to Janeane (Jada Pinkett Smith), although tensions are developing in their relationship. He anyway resists the sexual advances of new patient Donna (Saffron Burrows), and clumsily tries to get advice from therapist  Dr. Angela Oakhurst (Liv Tyler). Alan then spots his old college roommate Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) roaming the streets on a motorized scooter.

Charlie lost his wife and three daughters in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and has withdrawn into a shell of a man, spending most of his time playing a video game and repeatedly remodelling his kitchen. Alan makes a big effort to reach out and spend time with his friend, and as a result drifts further away from his own family. Charlie meanwhile refuses to talk about his personal loss, leaving Alan to wonder how much he should push Charlie to seek professional help.

Written and directed by Mike Binder, Reign Over Me delves into the world of grief and dysfunction caused by immense loss. The subject matter is not easy, but an astute script and two excellent central performances from Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle keep the film grounded while avoiding excessive sentimentality. The film boasts a sleek look, with plenty of nighttime filming as Charlie's owl-like existence draws Alan away from his routine world.

A large part of the film's appeal comes from Dr. Johnson's own troubles, at home and at the dental office. Trivial in comparison with what Charlie is going through, Alan is nonetheless heading towards his own sea of unhappiness, albeit in slow motion. He will also experience changes through his renewed relationship with Charlie, and the film is about two men at individual inflection points helping each other, one more knowingly than the other.

Reign Over Me is enriched by provocative secondary characters orbiting Alan's world. Binder surrounds Alan with three women each capable of swinging his pendulum for better or for worse. Donna may be a predator, a victim or an inspiration; Dr. Oakhurst is either too young or perfectly positioned to help; and Janeane can drive Alan away from their nest or support his need for breathing room. Charlie meets and interacts with all three women, altering their role and dynamic relative to Alan.

Despite Sandler proving again that with the right material he can deliver as a convincing and serious actor, Reign Over Me stumbles and almost falls in its final act. Therapy sessions morph into an ill-conceived mini courtroom drama (with Donald Sutherland making a late appearance as the judge), and suddenly Charlie's poorly defined in-laws (Melinda Dillon and Robert Klein) become central to a story that is not their own. The limp finish is unfortunate, but Reign Over Me is an otherwise courageous scooter ride into men's mental grief territory.

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Movie Review: Volcano (1997)

A disaster action film, Volcano features an overabundance of special effects but no soul - and no volcano.

Los Angeles is hit by a seemingly routine earthquake. Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) is the head of the city's Office of Emergency Management, trying to enjoy his vacation with daughter Kelly (Gaby Hoffman). His second-in- command is Emmit Reese (Don Cheadle). At MacArthur Park, seven city workers are killed after the quake, seemingly burned to death in an underground release of extreme heat. Mike calls on geologist Dr. Amy Barnes (Anne Heche) to try and understand what may be going on.

Amy notices a steep rise in the water temperature of the park's lake, and deduces that the quakes may have caused a release of hot gases and lava. Mike tries to shut down the Metro transit line in the area, but to no avail. Soon lava bombs burst out of the ground along Wilshire Boulevard, followed by an eruption of a sea of creeping magma that incinerates everything it touches. Mike and Amy have to figure out a way to stop the carnage and save Kelly, who ends up helping Dr. Jaye Calder (Jacqueline Kim) at an overwhelmed hospital.

Directed by Mick Jackson, Volcano enjoys a decent opening 30 minutes of ominous scene setting but then falls apart. As soon as the earthquake hits and the lava starts to ooze out, all the drama and tension ironically seep out of the film. The flying fireballs are at first exciting, but there are only so many computer-created scenes of a flowing hot magma river causing fake fires that can be thrown at the screen before the whole premise starts to look ridiculous.

The film's real problems then arrive with the hopeless attempts to give Mike and Amy something to actually do. Other than repeatedly getting themselves into tight corners surrounded by the burning stuff, the heroes here are reduced to childish solutions. Let's topple a bus in the path of the lava! Let's knock down a building in the path of the lava! It's as ridiculous as that, and Volcano never engages in anything resembling smart problem solving.

Jackson equally avoids any investments in his characters, who all appear to be borrowed as a package from other and better disaster movies, including the egotistical developer who shows his true colours under stress.

Tommy Lee Jones tries but fails to appear serious in the face of all special effects, but often he's not quite sure where to look or how to act because all the carnage was added later by the computer guys. Anne Heche does not seem to try to convince as a geologist. Don Cheadle spends the film in a room full of phones and computer monitors, but it's never clear if his character actually contributes anything to resolve the unfolding crisis.

Volcano is an eruption of mundane silliness, not so much a disaster as an intellectually challenged bore.

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Movie Review: Crash (2004)

An ensemble multi-story drama about race relations in Los Angeles, Crash sizzles first with the tension generated by fear, and then the warmth of the irrevocable interdependencies required for a complex society to function.

The film consists of several loosely connected stories. Detective Graham Waters (Don Cheadle) and his partner Ria (Jennifer Esposito) are involved in a car crash as they arrive at a crime scene by the side of the highway, where a dead body has been discovered. Events from the previous 24 hours are then recounted, including:

• Persian shop owner Farhad (Shaun Toub) insists on buying a handgun to protect his store from break-ins, despite the protestations of his daughter Dorri (Bahar Soomekh). 
• District Attorney Rick Cabot (Brendan Fraser) and his wife Jean (Sandra Bullock) are victims of a carjacking, perpetrated by black hoodlums Anthony (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Peter (Larenz Tate). 
• Police officer John Ryan (Matt Dillon) is resentful of blacks, and takes an opportunity to pull-over and humiliate a successful black couple, television director Cameron (Terrence Howard) and his wife Christine (Thandie Newton). 
• Ryan's partner Officer Tom Hansen (Ryan Phillippe) is horrified by Ryan's behaviour and demands a different partner, while Christine is furious with Cameron's inaction in the face of Ryan molesting her.
• Meanwhile, Ryan is trying to care for his ailing father, but finds his health insurance provider agent Shaniqua (Loretta Devine) difficult to deal with.
• Hispanic locksmith Daniel Ruiz (Michael Peña) re-keys the Cabot's household, and replaces the lock on the store of Farhad's door. Jean suspects Daniel of being a gang member, while Farhad is furious when Daniel informs him that the ill-fitting door, not the lock, is the security problem. Daniel's young daughter is afraid of stray bullets, and he comforts her by placing an invisible magical cloak around her shoulders.
• Waters and Ria start to investigate a shooting in which a white police detective killed a black detective, seemingly in self defence. Waters also tries to take care of his mother, a helpless abuser of hard drugs. In her brief lucid moments, she insists that he find his brother, who is in trouble with the law.

As the hours tick back towards that dead body by the side of the highway, the lives of these characters intertwine, collide, and veer off again in different and unexpected directions.

A brilliant exploration of the human propensity to first mistrust and then learn through the pain of mistakes, Crash is a magnetic achievement. Directed, co-written and co-produced by Paul Haggis, The film unfolds as a low key series of unfortunate events, all revolving around overt or covert clashes between people of difference races. In a Los Angeles filled with desperate people looking for evidence of the American dream or just trying to survive its wreckage, skin colour is an immediate reason for knee-jerk hostility and either passive or naked aggression.

Racism's ugly face appears in different disguises. Police officer John Ryan and street thug Anthony harbour resentments as a result of deep-seated convictions and personal experience. Poor shop owner Farhad and rich housewife Jean both turn on locksmith Daniel due to ignorance and superficial stereotypes. And in other cases, racist actions are triggered for all the wrong reasons. In complaining about Ryan, officer Tom Hansen gets no relief from the black police chief who refuses to rock the boat against a white officer. And Waters has to face a twisted inquiry into a trigger-happy white detective with an apparent vendetta against black cops, where the facts about his latest black victim may matter less than the need to mop up the mess as conveniently as possible.

Crash emerges as a masterpiece rather than a message movie by delving into the intricate, interdependent wiring that holds a society together, despite the worst of human intentions. Before the 24 hours are out, all the key characters will experience how much they depend on others of a different colour to simply function, for better or for worse and whether they want to or not.

Some of the dependencies are blatant and spectacular, such as Ryan and Christine meeting again at a crash site. Others, as in Jean and her Hispanic housekeeper, are more subtle, relationships that sustain the soul through sheer presence and loyalty. And when the altruistic police officer Tom Hansen finds himself in the same car with the happy go lucky criminal Peter, they face a most unlikely outcome, far removed from their best intentions.

Most of the mini-stories featured in the film end with open questions and unresolved issues, Haggis resisting any pressure to tidy up the narrative with pat conclusions. Crash is an observer of jarring human encounters between strangers, and after the angry release of energy, the flying pieces can land anywhere.

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Movie Review: Flight (2012)

A modern day tragic hero fable, Flight asks smart questions about heroism and personality flaws. Denzel Washington is admirable as the alcoholic pilot who miraculously lands a stricken plane, but Flight loses some thrust in a second half that circles the runaway a few too many times before landing.

William "Whip" Whitaker (Washington) is routinely consuming alcohol, and has never admitted to himself that he has a problem. Using cocaine to mask his drinking and carrying on a relationship with flight attendant Katerina (Nadine Velazquez), Whip is divorced from a wife who had enough of his lies, and he has no meaningful contact with his teen-aged son. Despite being legally drunk, Whip takes control of a flight from Orlando to Atlanta and expertly navigates through severe turbulence. With the worst seemingly behind him, Whip consumes more alcohol during the flight. He is then startled when due to a catastrophic mechanical failure, he loses control of the plane at the start of the descent into Atlanta.

Clear headed and calm, Whip miraculously glides the plane upside down and crash-lands into an open field. Only six out of 102 passengers and crew die, with Katerina one of the fatalities after she helped to save the life of a child. Proclaimed in the press as a hero but with investigators crawling all over the causes of the crash, Whip knows that it's only a matter of time before his drinking is exposed, and he goes into hiding on his late father's farm. With lawyer Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle) assigned by the pilot's union to help him, Whip starts a relationship with recovering drug addict Nicole (Kelly Reilly), but even she finds it difficult to tolerate his out-of-control alcohol consumption.

Can a man simultaneously be a hero and a villain, and what fate does an alcoholic saviour deserve? The John Gatins screenplay briskly jumps to the point, Whip's harrowing disregard for his health competing with the terrifying plane crash in an exhilarating race to frame the moral dilemma. Director Robert Zemeckis delivers the crash sequence with plenty of adrenaline spilling from the overhead bins, as Flight quickly ascends at a steep angle, the opening 45 minutes rushing by in the jet-stream of Whip's ambivalence and the spectacular crash landing of a non-functioning aircraft.

In the remaining 75 minutes, the movie struggles at times to maintain cruising altitude. Whip's battle with the bottle, whereby he tries to stop drinking through sheer will power only to easily slip back to excessive consumption, stretches for too many scenes.

The relationship with Nicole is full of promise, with the two struggling addicts understandably drawn to each other, and the more determined Nicole fighting a seemingly losing battle in trying to pull Whip out of his alcoholic stupor. Frustratingly the potential for an earthy romance fades in and out of story without being fully explored.

Denzel Washington's performance is never less than first class, and he brings to painful life the internal struggle against denial faced by alcoholics, who first and foremost learn how best to lie to themselves.Washington allows Whip to be arrogant and self-assured in public, brooding and wracked by guilt in private, but never able to resist the next bottle of beer, no matter what is at stake.

Nicole is also an addict but a bit further along in her journey, willing to admit her dependency and seek help for it. Kelly Reilly brings to Nicole the vulnerability of the fragile healing process in a performance of building strength. Cheadle, John Goodman as Whip's colourful friend and drug supplier, Bruce Greenwood as a pilot union's representative and Melissa Leo as the lead crash investigator ensure a high level of quality in all the supporting roles.

Flight does have its moments of turbulence, but the star pilot delivers a stellar performance and the trip serves a meal full of hearty moral questions.

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The Movies Of Don Cheadle

All movies starring Don Cheadle and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Colors (1988)

Devil In A Blue Dress (1995)

Volcano (1997)

Boogie Nights (1997) 

Out Of Sight (1998)

The Family Man (2000)

Traffic (2000)

Swordfish (2001)

Ocean's Eleven (2001, uncredited)

Crash (2004)

Hotel Rwanda (2004)

Reign Over Me (2007)

Flight (2012)

No Sudden Move (2021)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Boogie Nights (1997)

A journey through the heyday of the pornographic film industry, Boogie Nights pays homage and shares a laugh at the expense of an industry transitioning from scummy cinemas to the video players of mainstream America. It is also one of the best films of the 1990s.

It is the late 1970s, and seventeen year old Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) is a working as a busboy in a San Fernando Valley nightclub. Eager to escape from a dysfunctional home and extremely well endowed where it matters, Adams accepts an invitation from porn film director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) to join the industry. Adopting the screen name of Dirk Diggler, Adams quickly becomes the biggest star in porn films. As the seventies turn into the eighties, the industry is transformed by video, while drug addiction and a falling out with Horner trigger a rapid reversal in Diggler's fortunes.

Paul Thomas Anderson's second feature film elevated him to the front ranks of directors. Working from his own script, Anderson creates in Boogie Nights a character-rich environment, with memorable personalities grappling with the changing times within a burgeoning industry. The rise and fall of Dirk Diggler is just the surface story. Anderson builds a rich, multi-layered universe, with plenty of depth to all the assorted weirdos and misfits that congregate around porn manufacturing.

The veteran performer (Julianne Moore as Amber Wave), the nubile next young thing (Heather Graham as Rollergirl), the grizzled director (Reynolds as Horner) still yearning to make art, the loyal co-star (John C. Reilly as Reed Rothchild), the producer (Robert Ridgley as Colonel James) with more money than sense and a weakness for underage girls, the eager gofer (Philip Seymour Hoffman as Scotty J) too dim to do anything else in life except lust after Diggler, the assistant director (William H. Macy as Little Bill Thompson) married to an aging performer who does not hesitate to have sex with any other man, the porn star (Don Cheadle as Buck Swope) who wants to do something better and different in life, and the financier (Philip Baker Hall as Floyd Gondolli) sharp enough to spot the emergence of video and its huge implications to the industry.

Incredibly, these are only some of the people and stories that Anderson makes time for in Boogie Nights. They all come to life naturally, hustling to make a buck, facing their demons or succumbing to them, adapting or dying, in a business that is unforgiving, awash in drugs, enormously popular and yet almost entirely hidden.

The performances from the stellar cast are uniformly captivating, none more so than Wahlberg. Announcing his arrival as a movie star after an initial career as a rapper, Wahlberg portrays Adams with sensitivity, bravado mixed with fragility, Adams' wide-eyed amazement at the surrounding circus balanced by his natural affinity for the role of male porn star. Julianne Moore also delivers a memorable performance, Amber standing at the cusp of has-been status, transitioning to the role of mentor for Adams and mother figure for Rollergirl, while fighting for custody of her son. Burt Reynolds rejuvenated his career with his turn as Jack Horner, a man too old for the profession and refusing to give up on the dream of creating art, but savvy enough to spot raw talent and move with the times when needed.

The sex scenes are dealt with in the matter-of-fact manner that only the porn industry can conjure, and yet Anderson finds the soft seam where real people meet their on-screen personas: Amber guiding Adams through his first ever scene is a triumph of sex-as-work having to overcome vulnerability with sheer courage and compassion.

Despite a running time of 155 minutes, Boogie Nights is breezy, entertaining and often funny. Although the decline and fall of Diggler is less enjoyable than his spectacular rise, Anderson keeps the narrative brisk and the multiple stories progressing, while a deep soundtrack of era favourites provides a vibrant musical backdrop. Boogie Nights dances up an impressive sweat.

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Movie Review: Colors (1988)

A drive through a Los Angeles in the grips of gang warfare resembling civil war, Colors is a fragmented police drama that grinds the gears but can never quite achieve cruising speeds.

Officer Bob Hodges (Robert Duvall), a veteran member of the Los Angeles anti-gang unit, gets a new partner: officer Danny McGavin (Sean Penn) is young, aggressive and arrogant. The police force is unable to control a wave of extreme gang violence gripping the city. The gang members are heavily armed, and frequent drive-by shootings and revenge killings litter the streets with bullets and bodies.

Hodges' style is to try and establish a rapport with gang members, turning a blind eye to minor offences to gain informants in an attempt to stop more violent acts. McGavin is less patient and more prone to breaking bones and taking prisoners. He also develops a romantic relationship with waitress Louisa Gomez (Maria Conchita Alonso), whose family members are involved with the gangs.

Outnumbered and out-gunned, and despite endless patrol duty, neither Hodges nor McGavin are able to stop the violence from escalating. With gang leader Rocket (Don Cheadle) busy preparing retribution, the blood-letting will continue.

Director Dennis Hopper finds the corners of Los Angeles that rival third-world slums, and sets the world of Colors deep within the grime. The aesthetics of the film are its greatest achievement. Hodges and McGavin patrol decrepit streets, depressed businesses, and dilapidated neighbourhoods, with gang graffiti on every wall, household debris cluttering every back lane and hoodlums hanging out on every corner, looking for trouble. It's as far from the American dream as a US city can get, and a most logical place for the breakdown of law and order and the emergence of the reign of chaos.

In the face of a hopeless environment driving young men to violence, the cops are ridiculously ill-equipped to  maintain some semblance of civility, and Hodges knows this. Too wise to pick a fight with every punk, Duvall gives a performance filled with resigned caring. Hodges is not cynical or hopeless, just a realist trying to find the thin streams of humanity among the mounting garbage. McGavin still believes he can make the world better by kicking it around, but all he succeeds in doing is spilling more junk onto the already filthy streets. Penn plays McGavin with belligerence but also a basic willingness to learn, slowly, from Hodges.

Beyond the setting and the two main protagonists, Colors sputters, falling into repetitive patterns, gang members hissing at each other, routine car chases, repetitive drive-by shootings, and basic male behaviour uninfluenced by centuries of evolution. Some parts of the movie feel like a documentary, and attempts to capture the thread of a story or to humanize secondary characters fall short.

Colors mixes vivids with pastels and oil with water. Some patches of the canvass reveal talent, but the overall product is a bit of an unseemly hodgepodge.

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Movie Review: The Family Man (2000)

A modern Christmas fairytale, The Family Man is a fable about what matters in life. Presenting a stark contrast between material wealth and a loving family, there is no doubting where the film's heart resides, but two excellent central performances and a sharp script collaborate to elevate the simple story into a charming experience.

In a prologue set at the airport, Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) and Kate Reynolds (Tea Leoni) are young and very much in love. He is about to board a plane to London for a one year apprenticeship to start his corporate life. Worried that he will never come back to her, she wants him to stay so that they can proceed to start their life together. He boards the plane, and their relationship ends.

Thirteen years later, Campbell is an extremely wealthy New York mergers and acquisitions executive, living the dream bachelor life in a sleek apartment. Campbell believes he has everything he needs in life, including a Ferrari and gorgeous bed partners, but otherwise his life is his work: he forces his team to work on Christmas Eve and calls a meeting on Christmas Day. An unexpected phone message from Kate and a surreal encounter with a burglar (Don Cheadle) trigger a timeshift in Jack's life: he is transported to a messy New Jersey home, and gets to experience the alternate destiny that he abandoned at the airport: married to Kate, he works as a tire salesman and they have two kids and a big dog, living the prototypical suburban life with a mortgage and a minivan. Jack needs to learn to survive in his new surroundings while recalibrating the value of his life's decisions.

Tea Leoni is the figurative heart of the film, and delivers one of her strongest screen performances. Just by being herself, Kate needs to unwittingly convince Jack that his life of New York riches amounts to little. Leoni nails the natural endeavour of the resourceful wife and mother, unaware of how attractive she is, sacrificing a career for her family and able to flood her environment with genuine affection. Jack Campbell is the model Nicolas Cage role, a man struggling with destiny's quirkiness and gradually realizing that he is a lot less in control than he ever anticipated.

Director Brett Ratner sprinkles just a bit of fairy dust on The Family Man, enough to provide the occasional reminder that Christmas is the time for life's magical contemplations. A bicycle's jingly bell, snow flakes at key moments, and serendipitous encounters flutter in and out of Jack's life as he gradually learns that his wealthy corporate life is, in fact, desolate. Ratner delivers a stunning punctuation mark when Jack returns to his apartment after living the lovingly cluttered New Jersey life: the same condominium that was stylish and expensive now just looks bleak and bare.

The Family Man mixes a warm heart with gentle humour. It may be a tad predictable, but it carries a lovingly tinged message worth reliving.

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