Movie Review: Cleaner (2007)

Genre: Crime Investigation Thriller

Director: Renny Harlin

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, Eva Mendes

Running Time: 88 minutes

Synopsis: In Trenton, New Jersey, widowed ex-police detective Tom Cutler (Samuel L. Jackson) now runs a crime scene cleanup business while raising his 14 year old daughter. After he cleans up a murder scene at an upscale residence, Cutler is surprised that the homeowner Ann Norcutt (Eva Mendes) seems to know nothing about the crime and believes her husband is simply missing. Tom turns to his ex-partner detective Lorenzo (Ed Harris) to uncover what is going on at the Norcutt household. He is drawn into an investigation headed by detective Vargas (Luis Guzmán) and possibly tarnished by police corruption.

What Works Well: The production quality is polished, the cleaner profession opens avenues for wry humour, and director Renny Harlin enjoys staging yucky scenes of Cutler mopping-up post-crime blood and gore splatter. Samuel L. Jackson and Ed Harris are always worth watching and here bring a tired knowingness to their roles as aging investigators. The running time is refreshingly crisp.

What Does Not Work As Well: The plot gets progressively worse, starting on a high note with a mysterious murder connected with high-level graft but working its way down to much more mundane territory. Eva Mendes struggles to convince at every stage. Plot points related to Cutler's dead wife, his role in a prison yard death, the complex friendship with Lorenzo, and the strained relationship with his daughter all occupy plenty of space but ultimately bump against narrative dead ends. In a relatively sparse cast, the villain of the piece is easy to spot.

Conclusion: The crime scene is intriguing, but the clean-up is sloppy.

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Movie Review: Out Of Time (2003)

A crime mystery thriller, Out Of Time embraces noir sensibilities but is hampered by a rush of coincidences and shortcomings.

In the small Florida Keys town of Banyan Key, police chief Matt Whitlock (Denzel Washington) has recently completed a drug bust, and the police station safe is stuffed full of seized cash. Matt's marriage to Miami homicide detective Alex Diaz (Eva Mendes) is falling apart, and he is carrying on an affair with Ann Merai (Sanaa Lathan), who is unhappily married to abusive ex-football player Chris (Dean Cain). Matt's one trusted friend is medical examiner Chae (John Billingsley).

Ann Merai is diagnosed with cancer, and designates Matt as her insurance policy beneficiary. Matt unwisely lends her the cash from the police safe to pay for expensive overseas treatment. But a fire destroys Ann Merai and Chris' house, seemingly killing them both, and the cash disappears. Alex arrives to investigate, and with a motive to kill and missing cash to explain, Matt has only a few hours to uncover the truth and avoid becoming the key suspect in a double murder.

Written by David Collard and directed by Carl Franklin, Out Of Time tries hard to combine ticking clock tension with noir motivations. A sun-drenched Florida setting and a vivid colour palette create a too-hot-to-handle sensual aesthetic, and the out-of-the-way small town vibe encourages an anything-goes attitude and nefarious actions away from big city eyes.

And many noir elements ooze from pores of greed and despair. Matt's broken marriage is prodding him into the moral grey zone where alcohol at all hours and an affair with a married woman somehow make sense. Ann Merai is an obvious femme fatale, using sex as a weapon, and always ready to play the victim. Her husband Chris and co-conspirator Paul Cabot are the criminal riffraff using goonery to compensate for a lack of guile. Mysterious fires, insurance payouts, and the lure of easy-to-steal drug money complete the picture.

The film's weaknesses are also on plain view. Apart from Denzel Washington, the acting is sub-par and approaches B-grade status. Sanaa Lathan never sells the trauma of a woman confronting a cancer diagnosis, immediately giving away the conspiracy. Eva Mendes tries hard but also never convinces as a detective. Director Franklin leans on standard frantic action scenes, well-executed but inconsistent with noir intentions, including hang-from-the-balcony fight-to-the-death contrivances.

With Matt afforded just a few hours to extricate himself from a mess of his own making, too many coincidences fall in his favour. Every piece of evidence needed by Alex to connect the dots and suspect her husband is conveniently delayed by happenstance or incompetence. However, Franklin does leverage the general ineptitude to construct an enjoyable and almost Hitchcockian sequence involving a delayed fax transmission.

Out Of Time is never out of ideas, but the ambition and execution are sometimes out of synch.



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Movie Review: The Other Guys (2010)

A buddy cop comedy, The Other Guys combines sharp wit, good character dynamics and wild action.

In New York City, rock star police detectives Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Danson (Dwayne Johnson) grab all the headlines with spectacular arrests of multiple bad guys. Meanwhile detective Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) is known as a paper-pushing dimwit, and his partner Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) will never live down mistakenly shooting baseball superstar Derek Jeter. Their harried boss Captain Gene Mauch (Michael Keaton) does not believe they will ever amount to much.

When Highsmith and Danson are suddenly rendered inoperable, Allen and Terry agree to stop bickering and start doing field work. Allen's dogged investigation of construction scaffolding permit violations leads them to arrest corrupt billionaire Sir David Ershon (Steve Coogan), unknowingly triggering a massive pursuit as Ershon is at the centre of an illegal money transfer scheme involving international criminals. Meanwhile Terry is stunned to meet Allen's knock-out wife Dr. Sheila Ramos Gamble (Eva Mendes) and learns more about his partner's chequered college history.

The oil-and-water buddy cop movie genre is long in the tooth, but director and co-writer Adam McKay injects a large dose of revitalizing energy. By yanking background officers to the forefront and allocating good focus on their backstories, The Other Guys combines familiar bickering with unusual character-driven touches, always accompanied by a steady current of irascible humour.

Much joy is derived from Allen Gamble's unexpected story. From a stunning surgeon wife to a shady college business passing through hidden magnetism, there is more than initially meets the eye with the always happy brown nosed paper pusher. Through the eyes of his tightly would partner Terry, McKay sequentially teases out the always funny surprises. Will Ferrell is in his sweet spot, finding laughs by playing Allen straight, smart, but definitely different.

When it comes to jolts of wild action, McKay delivers with over-the-top panache. The car chases, crashes, and shoot-outs are perfectly paced, never over-used, and always played for exaggerated laughs. Other than some dubious editing, the carnage fits perfectly within the film's ambition.

The Other Guys will never be accused of startling originality or a cohesive plot. Despite Steve Coogan's best efforts to provide villain David Ershon with sophisticated smarm, the bad guys are generic and the money transfer deception barely sketched in. But the film happily skips past its weaknesses, riding a wave of fun with the unlikely partners experiencing the spotlight.

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Movie Review: The Women (2008)

A social drama with a comedy sprinkling, The Women adapts the classic play to tackle 21st century issues.

The film is set in New York and Connecticut. Although she gave up on a fashion design career to look after her family, dedicated mother and philanthropist Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) believes she has the perfect comfortable well-to-do life. But her best friend Sylvie (Annette Bening), a high-powered magazine editor, learns from Saks manicurist Tanya (Debi Mazar) that perfume sales girl Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes) is having an affair with Mary's husband Stephen.

Sylvie and Mary's other friends Edie (Debra Messing) and Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith) are torn whether to tell Mary; she finds out anyway, straight from Tanya. Mary's mother Catherine (Candice Bergen) encourages her to wait before confronting Stephen. Meanwhile, Sylvie is struggling to improve the fortunes of her fashion magazine, and finds her ideas out of touch with popular opinion. Mary eventually confronts Stephen and starts to re-examine her life, unintentionally heaping pressure on her teenaged daughter Molly (India Ennenga).

The play was written in 1936 and the classic film adaptation arrived in 1939. Here Diane English writes, directs and co-produces an update to the story of women navigating the choppy waters of family, relationships, careers, friendships, sacrifice and personal expectations. Once again the film consists exclusively of women in every role, including all the children and extras (and more than likely, all the pet dogs are also female).

The film delves into all the expected topics. Mary is forced to assess her own priorities, and whether she allowed her various roles to subsume who she is as a person. Crystal represents a case study in women who appeal to vulnerable men's most base instincts. Sylvie had one failed marriage and is now happily single and focused on her career, but has to reckon with her values diverging from what is popular, placing all she worked for at risk, including her friendship with Mary.

More superficially, the pregnant Edie is a baby factory, and Alex is a lesbian, the only one among the friends blissfully going through life unconcerned by men. Young Molly is struggling with body image issues and the fallout from her mother's disintegrating marriage.

Not that The Women offers any profound new thoughts, nor is it expected to. This is a polished, glossy and sometimes humorous representation of relatively wealthy and comfortable women, with all the depth of a monthly advertising-dominated magazine. For all the concerns and tensions at hand, self-empowered resolutions will be found for all, and English still finds time for the requisite fashion show montage and a baby delivery scene in a double-headed climax.

The cast members share the screen time, Ryan and Bening most prominent but never being asked to stretch. Heavyweight star power appears in the form of Carrie Fisher and Bette Midler providing single-scene support, while Cloris Leachman as Mary's housekeeper contributes resigned comic relief.

The Women freshens up the challenges, but does not stray too far from cushy and safe film territory.

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The Movies Of Eva Mendes

All movies starring Eva Mendes and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Training Day (2001)

Once Upon A Time In Mexico (2003)

Out Of Time (2003)

Hitch (2005)

Knocked Up (2007, uncredited cameo)

Cleaner (2007)

The Women (2008)

The Other Guys (2010)

The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)

An intense character study spanning two generations, The Place Beyond The Pines takes an in-depth look at the complexities of responsibility, destiny and the lingering impacts of today's actions on the long term future.

In upstate New York, Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) is a low life drifter, good at only one thing: riding a motorcycle. Luke bumps into former girlfriend Romina (Eva Mendes) and learns that her infant son Jason is his child. Although Romina has moved on and is now with another man, Luke is determined to insert himself into her life to try and be a father. To earn an income he accepts a job at the ramshackle car repair shop of Robin (Ben Mendelsohn). But Luke seeks more money to try and impress Romina and buy things for Jason. He forms a bank robbery partnership with Robin, with Luke's motorcycle riding skills helping achieve smooth getaways.

Luke's misadventures with the law eventually result in a tangle with rookie police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper). A trained lawyer and the son of a respected judge (Harris Yulin), Avery is ambitious, and the incident with Luke traumatizes him. He then stumbles onto a police corruption ring led by officer Deluca (Ray Liotta). Avery's career blossoms into power and politics at the expense of his wife Jennifer (Rose Byrne). Years later, Avery's neglected son A.J. (Emory Cohen) is in high school and drifting into a life of drugs, alcohol and parties. He meets and starts to befriend Jason (Dane DeHaan), now also a teenager at the same school.

Directed and co-written by Derek Cianfrance, The Place Beyond The Pines is long, moody and humourless. It is also a gripping drama, singularly focussed on the ambitions and failures of its central characters. Cianfrance creates detailed portraits of two men grappling with what life has to offer, and finds the compelling threads that connect the actions, motivations and destinies of Luke and Avery. And it's stylishly assembled, Cianfrance finding the neon, shadows, perspectives and camera angles to give every shot dynamic potential.

The film runs for 140 minutes, and it could easily have shed 20 minutes with no loss in quality. Cianfrance is a fan of pregnant pauses and gloomy stares punctuating almost every conversation, and while he goes searching for the rivers of anger and frustration boiling under the surface of dysfunctional relationships, he also stretches the ability of his story to carry weighty loads of profound meaning at every turn.

But the themes explored by the film are elaborate and often fascinating. Luke is desperate to find some meaning to rescue his sorry life, and unexpectedly finds it in Jason. His attempts to do good only lead to worse conflicts. Avery is also looking to define himself as something separate from his father, and without looking for it finds himself at a crucial fork in the road of life. He steers towards public good, but falls victim to insidious arrogance. Both men find elaborate ways to damage the most important relationships in their life, and hurt the people they love most. The sons inherit and then amplify the emotional bruises inflicted by their fathers, either propagating or repeating behavioural patterns with the added ferocity of a new generation.

In a movie fixated on its characters the performances have to be good, and the cast delivers. Ryan Gosling has the meatier role and creates in Luke a memorable tragic loser, who will find a way to make the wrong move at every opportunity. Bradley Cooper is more reserved as Avery, but does pull off a smooth transition from shaky rookie police officer to smarmy and power-hungry politician. Gosling and Cooper share just the one scene together, as they sequentially hand-off the first two thirds of the movie.

Eva Mendes gives Romania plenty of spirit while Rose Byrne takes Jennifer to more passive aggressive territory. The final third of the film loses star power and transitions to Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan as sons unknowingly living in the shadows of their fathers, and they are adequate.

Delving into some of the essential predispositions of the human condition, The Place Beyond The Pines is a rare combination of ambitious and intimate.

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Movie Review: Hitch (2005)

A romantic comedy designed to broaden the appeal of star Will Smith, Hitch offers the typical genre ingredients on its way to the genre-mandated conclusion, but benefits from a reasonably original premise and a strong secondary story.

In New York City, Alex "Hitch" Hitchens (Smith) is a relationship consultant, helping hapless guys sharpen their act to stand a better chance of romantically wooing the ladies. His latest client is accident-prone accountant Albert Brennaman (Kevin James), who is desperate to try and gain the attention of wealthy society girl Allegra Cole (Amber Valletta).

With Hitch's guidance, Albert makes surprising progress with Allegra. Meantime, Hitch meets Sara Melas (Eva Mendes), a newspaper gossip columnist who writes about people like Allegra for a living. Hitch begins to fall for Sara, and tries to keep his profession a secret. But when his name is wrongly associated with a relationship-gone-wrong involving Sara's friend Casey (Julie Ann Emery), the very public fallout threatens not only Sara's romance with Hitch but also Allegra's blossoming relationship with Albert.

Hitch mixes some juvenile antics (Hitch suffers a puffed-up face as a result of a bout of food poisoning) with more adult situations, and generally ambles along at a reasonably cheerful pace. Director Andy Tennant captures a sanitized New York at its best, and delivers a competent version of boys-meet-girls, boys-like-girls, boys-lose-girls, and boys-scramble-to-win-the-girls back.

Hitch does not try to escape the genre's hardwired predictability and relies on star charisma to provide the fresh spin. Smith does not disappoint as he rounds out his urban edge, his suave, confident and yet tender portrayal of Hitch infusing the film with a likeable core. While the central multi-racial relationship gives the film a cosmopolitan gloss, its the parallel story of Albert and Allegra that provides Hitch with some welcome depth. Kevin James and Amber Valletta play a strong and funny second fiddle to Will Smith and Eva Mendes.

James deploys his brand of doofus humour to good effect, and his dance moves, as demonstrated to an incredulous Hitch, are the film's highlight. The clumsy and overweight Albert and the rich and sophisticated Allegra make for an odd couple, and credit goes to the Kevin Bisch screenplay for making their relationship almost believable.

Pleasant without ever threatening to be stellar, Hitch is harmlessly genial entertainment.

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Movie Review: Once Upon A Time In Mexico (2003)

Robert Rodriguez concludes his El Mariachi trilogy, but bloat creeps in and the fun factor suffers at the hands of too many characters vying for space in a convoluted plot. Rodriguez is unable to follow in the footsteps of Sergio Leone's "dollars trilogy" and make the jump from enjoyable camp to delicious epic. Once Upon A Time In Mexico aims for grand elements, but never comes close to scaling the necessary heights.

El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) is recruited by CIA Agent Sands (Johnny Depp) to assassinate the vicious General Marquez, who is conspiring with drug lord Barillo (Willem Dafoe) to overthrow the Mexican President. El Mariachi is eager to gain revenge on Marquez, who brutally killed his wife Carolina (Salma Hayek, seen only in flashback) and young daughter. Rattling around the thick edges of the plot are Billy Chambers (Mickey Rourke), who hangs around Barillo's compound; anti-narcotics agent Ajedrez (Eva Lopez); former FBI Agent Ramirez (Ruben Blades), and local thug leader Cucuy (Danny Trejo). Several of these characters will switch allegiances as the plot against the president progresses. And that is not all: Cheech Marin in the local informant helping Sands; the President has a double-crossing advisor; Barillo is planning face-changing plastic surgery; and El Mariachi once again calls on two heavily armed friends, Lorenzo and Fideo, who show up to join the action.

It is a rare for a movie to suffer from being too short, but Once Upon A Time In Mexico, at just over 100 minutes, simply isn't hefty enough to carry everything that is trying to happen within it. Characters are introduced in a hurry or hardly at all, events seem rushed, motivations are barely sketched in, and with so many characters vying to tell their tale, the action sequences now actually get in the way.

Johnny Depp manages to stand out as the conniving Agent Sands, but only by going so far over the top, and having his character meet such a gruesome destiny, that he forcefully etches himself into the memory. Banderas seems disengaged, and most of the other actors have too little screen time to make a lasting impression.

Once Upon A Time In Mexico offers a few moments of enjoyment, but the underground feel and wild abandonment of the earlier El Mariachi movies is gone, replaced by plot congestion caused by character cramming.

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