Movie Review: Four Brothers (2005)

Genre: Revenge Crime Action  
Director: John Singleton  
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin, Garrett Hedlund, Terrence Howard, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sofia Vergara  
Running Time: 109 minutes  

Synopsis: In Detroit, well-loved Evelyn Mercer is killed during a violent convenience story robbery. Her four adopted sons Bobby (Mark Wahlberg), Angel (Tyrese Gibson), Jerry (Andre Benjamin), and Jack (Garrett Hedlund), all of them rescued by Evelyn from foster homes, convene to grieve. The brothers soon spot inconsistencies in the official police narrative about Evelyn's killing. Their probing uncovers evidence of police and political corruption and involvement by gang boss Victor Sweet (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

What Works Well: This is a rough-and-tumble story of brotherhood, director John Singleton looking for the ties that bind misfit siblings shaped by Detroit's tough streets. Bobby (audacious and two-fisted), Angel (more cerebral), Jerry (business-oriented), and Jack (withdrawn and most traumatized but likely the smartest) are a lively set, and together they unleash unconstrained mayhem, as much on each other as on their enemies. A strong cast is augmented by Sofia Vergara as Angel's girlfriend (and imagine the toughness required to co-exist with his brothers), Terrence Howard as police detective Green, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the cold-blooded villain.

What Does Not Work As Well: The tone and balance are never quite right. Banter, hijinks, and voluminous shouting threaten to overwhelm the convoluted plot and routinely over-the-top action scenes. The final double-headed showdown is both logically muddled and lackluster in execution.

Key Quote:

Green (to Bobby): You keep knocking on the devil's door long enough and sooner or later someone's gonna answer you.

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Movie Review: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016)

Genre: War Drama  

Director: Ang Lee  

Starring: Joe Alwyn, Steve Martin, Vin Diesel, Chris Tucker, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart  

Running Time: 113 minutes  

Synopsis: After performing heroics during a firefight in Iraq, 19 year-old US Army Specialist Billy Lynn (Joe Alwyn) is on a two-week publicity tour of the United States along with his Bravo company members. In the lead-up to an appearance at the glitzy half-time show of a Dallas football game, Billy recalls the war experiences that led to death of his Sergeant "Shroom" (Vin Diesel). In the meantime a publicity agent (Chris Tucker) is trying to secure a movie deal for Bravo, the football team owner (Steve Martin) is eager to share in the glory, Billy's sister Kathryn (Kristen Stewart) wants to convince him to avoid re-deployment, and a cheerleader (Makenzie Leigh) shows a romantic interest.

What Works Well: This reflective drama delivers a blunt anti-war message with impressive visuals, while simultaneously saluting the soldiers dispatched to do the dirty work. Director Ang Lee seeks a sense of geographic disorientation among the Bravo team members, paraded onto a stage where they don't belong and exploited by wealthy men willing to underbid for unearned glory. Despite the surrounding razzmatazz, the clock is ticking towards the men's redeployment back to the hell of war, not that anyone on the home front cares beyond Billy Lynn's sister.

What Does Not Work As Well: More a message than a movie, the plot is directionless and never gains momentum. The Billy Lynn character provides insufficient weight to carry the narrative, and the collective group of soldiers is not much more than a compilation of banter and hijinks. The two most interesting characters are the mythology-inspired Shroom (already dead) and the grounded Kathryn (reduced to a couple of scenes).

Key Quote:

Billy: It's sort of weird, being honored for the worst day of your life.



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Movie Review: Triple Frontier (2019)

Genre: Action  

Director: J.C. Chandor  

Starring: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Garrett Hedlund, Charlie Hunnam  

Running Time: 125 minutes  

Synopsis: American military advisor Santiago "Pope" Garcia" (Oscar Isaac) provides his services to government forces in Colombia. He learns through an informer that drug lord Lorea is living in a jungle hideout with a massive stash of money. Pope recruits former military colleagues, including Tom "Redfly" Davies (Ben Affleck) and brothers William and Ben Miller (Charlie Hunnam and Garrett Hedlund), for an audacious mission to invade Lorea's fortress and steal the money.

What Works Well: Director J.C. Chandor and his co-writer Mark Boal cover the basics well, with a straightforward story, good action staging and editing, high production values, a variety of scenic settings, and plenty of local colour. The second half carries echoes of no less than The Old Man And The Sea, the catch of a lifetime tested by an epic masculinity-past-its-prime trek fraught with unforeseen challenges.

What Does Not Work As Well: With character backgrounds kept to a minimum (or skipped altogether), the performances are of the plastic variety. Ben Affleck and Oscar Isaac go through the motions with no sense of conviction, the other squad members are interchangeable, and the antagonist Lorea barely gets any screen time. When the going gets tough, the attempts to convey suffering and moral dilemmas fall flat.

Conclusion: The star power is dimmed by lackadaisical treatment.



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Movie Review: Burden (2018)

A racism drama, Burden explores a small community plagued by white supremacists and one man's personal struggle to build a different life.

The setting is the small town of Laurens, South Carolina in 1996. Local Klu Klux Klan leader Tom Griffin (Tom Wilkinson) opens The Redneck Shop as a museum to celebrate white supremacy. His protege is Mike Burden (Garrett Hedlund), an army veteran abandoned as a child and raised by Tom. Black Reverend Kennedy (Forest Whitaker) is the head of the local Baptist Church and resists the supremacists with a message of love.

The Redneck Shop heightens tensions between the black community and Klan members, including incidents of racial abuse and violence. In the meantime Mike meets single mom Judy (Angela Riseborough) and they start a relationship, with Mike providing a father figure to Judy's young son Franklin. But Judy cannot tolerate being in a relationship with a Klan member, and asks Mike to make a choice, leading to grim consequences.

Based on a true story, Burden ventures into forgotten small town America bypassed by education, employment and economic prospects, where the white population refer to themselves as white trash. Writer and director Andrew Heckler creates a working class milieu devoid of hope and ambition, with the KKK's Tom Griffin and Reverend Kennedy engaged in an ongoing battle for a community's soul. Emotions are always close to the surface and Burden is never subtle, mirroring Laurens as a town stuck between a past that never left and a future that never arrived.

Here a man like Griffin can hold sway over all businesses and the police, and is free to openly practice his virulent form of hatred. He is a master at poisoning hearts and minds at a young age, then wields financial influence to exert continued control. Tom Wilkinson combines cold with smiley, oozing a pure representation of menace. In the opposite corner Forest Whitaker juggles faith with pragmatism as the Baptist reverend Kennedy, his family's patience running thin as he defies naked hate with gestures of kindness.

Caught in the middle is Mike Burden, and Heckler crafts a forceful arc for a simple man confronting deeply instilled demons, helped by internal fortitude and external support. Barely educated, functionally raised by the Klan and physically damaged during his army service, he is trusted enough by Tom to hold the lease to The Redneck Shop. But Burden's soul awakens once subjected to influences exerted purposefully by Judy and innocently by young Franklin and his black friend. Garrett Hedlund conveys Burden's fatigue as he questions all he was raised to believe, just as his gaunt frame wearily navigates odd angles caused by army injuries. 

Burden offers a spark of hope but also clear-eyed realism. One man does stumble upon a moment of reckoning, but a detestable movement remains deeply rooted.



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Movie Review: Georgia Rule (2007)

A drama with some humour about three generations of women, Georgia Rule creates a good ambience in exploring cascading emotional damage, but mishits some key notes. 

Wealthy Californian Lily Wilcox (Felicity Huffman) has just about had enough of her troublesome teenaged daughter Rachel (Lindsay Lohan), and as a last resort sends her to spend the summer before college with Lily's mom (and Rachel's grandma) Georgia (Jane Fonda) in small town, Idaho. Georgia runs her life according to strict rules, which had caused Lily to resort to alcohol and flee her childhood home at the earliest opportunity. 

Now the rebellious Rachel delights in finding ways to break her grandma's rules, although she does accept a summer job at the office of veterinarian Simon Ward (Dermot Mulroney), a widower who once was Lily's serious boyfriend. Rachel will attempt to seduce any man, and sets her flirtatious eyes on the town's hunky Harlan (Garrett Hedlund), although he already has a girlfriend. But when Rachel suggest to both Simon and Georgia that she was a victim of sexual abuse by her stepdad Arnold (Carey Elwes), the summer takes a serious turn.

Written by Mark Andrus and directed by Garry Marshall, Georgia Rule benefits from the dynamic of three women coping with various degrees of damage caused by missteps and unmet expectations passed on over the decades. With grandma Georgia enjoying the home field advantage of a quaint small town setting, Marshal mixes pathos, emotional scars and inter-generational conflicts to good effect.

The first two thirds maintain a high engagement level. Rachel as a mouthy fish caught in a backwater rocks the town, with Lindsay Lohan revelling in an attitude of unfettered rebelliousness to agitate as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. In contrast Fonda's Georgia is suitably subdued, satisfied with imposing her rules and letting the world revolve around them as it may. Huffman's Lily is caught in the middle between insufferable mother and uncontrollable daughter, and her exasperation is about to turn to disbelief with Rachel's revelations about sexual abuse.

Here Andrus and Marshall lose some control, the final act revolving around a series of lies and counter-lies, the truth lost in a flurry of accusations and denials. While the turmoil is consistent with Rachel's personality and Lily's determination to willfully ignore discord, the focus settles on a search for honesty, the crime of child molestation somehow confined to the narrative backseat but still clashing with the dramedy structure.

Despite overextending towards topics incompatible with the intended bittersweet tones, the refreshingly imperfect women of Georgia Rule do bloom by challenging the norms.



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Movie Review: Country Strong (2010)

A musical drama in the vein of The Rose and A Star Is Born, Country Strong hits a few high notes but also offers up some blank measures containing little that is memorable.

Country music superstar Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow) is released prematurely from her latest stint in rehab. Her husband / manager James (Tim McGraw) is eager to get her back on stage to try and salvage her career and reputation, damaged due to an abortion caused by excessive drinking. To open for Kelly on a quick tour of Texas, James selects up-and-coming Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester), a former beauty queen with potential but little experience, and rough-and-ready Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund), a down-to-earth singer who prefers the realism of Saturday night performances at the local watering hole to the glamour of performing in packed arenas.

James wants Beau to make sure that Kelly stays away from the bottle to get through the tour, but Beau and Kelly are already entangled in a relationship that prevents them from acting rationally. Beau also thinks little of Chiles' talent, but gradually she proves herself to him. With Kelly struggling to pull herself together, Beau and Chiles emerge as the new darlings of the country music scene, and James has to struggle to save his marriage and source of income.

Country Strong deserves recognition for steering clear of obvious endings. Not much goes right for Kelly Canter throughout the movie, and it would have been most predictable to reward her with a promise of a better future. Similarly, Chiles and Beau find the country music world at their feet and clamouring for more as events unfold, and the requisite denouement is to lavish them with increased grand adulation as the credits roll. Writer and director Shana Feste avoids the facile crowd-pleasing ending, and stretches instead for echoes of the heartbreak that lies at the core of every country music song.

But Country Strong does struggle with a long, saggy middle. Once the four main characters are introduced and established early, the film lurches along re-emphasizing what has already been said. Developments are stunted and slow, and the performances mixed.

Garrett Hedlund leans on Beau to carry the musical component for most of the movie with a series of concert performances mixed in with a pre-set angry-at-the-world stare.  The wait for Gwyneth Paltrow's Kelly to belt out some emotion-filled music is unnecessarily long. Leighton Meester allows Chiles Stanton to go through the film with a coquettish look-at-me-I'm-a-Southern-belle batting of the eyelids, trying to attract the attention of any male in the general vicinity. Tim McGraw's James Canter is only interested in his wife as a source of income, and his eyes carry the desperate intensity of a man frantically trying to milk the last few dollars from a struggling venture.

Country Strong features passable music, and a story that, if not realistic, has reasonable approximations of reality. The film sometimes stumbles, rarely soars, but never falls down either, and most surprisingly impresses with an ending more dour than triumphant.

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