Movie Review: House Of Gucci (2021)

A family-and-business saga, House Of Gucci is an engaging but notably ovelong romantic drama-comedy. 

In 1978, Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) is the daughter of a truck company owner. At a party she meets Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), a law student and heir to 50 percent of the luxury brand. She pursues him romantically and they are soon married. Maurizio's father Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) does not approve of Patrizia, believing she is just a golddigger, but Rodolfo's brother Aldo (Al Pacino) is more welcoming. Aldo's son Paolo (Jared Leto) is the family fool.

The ambitious Patrizia has a sharp business mind and befriends psychic Pina (Salma Hayek). Patrizia then inserts herself into the family's affairs by manipulating Maurizio and Paolo. After Rodolfo's death she tries to manoeuvre for full control, but Maurizio eventually tires of her antics and their marriage heads into trouble, leaving Patrizia vulnerable and deeply resentful.

Inspired by real events, House Of Gucci has the perfumed gloss of a high-end fashion magazine. The screenplay by Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna finds plenty of material spanning more than 15 years in the cocooned world of the wealthy, and maintains admirable energy. Romance, business, connivance, and family feuds ensure a steady stream of narrative twists. Director Ridley Scott stages the Gucci clan antics with bravado, embracing the aloof glamour of wealth. 

And it's a lust for wealth and power that drives Patrizia. The Gucci's themselves are relatively boring, and it's left to an outsider to burst into their world and shake it up, igniting a delicious clash between classism, social ladder-climbing, and eurotrash. It's all fun and games until someone dies, although for better or worse, the film steers towards violence with a silly grin.

The cast is simultaneously captivating and caricaturish. Almost unrecognizable under layers of makeup, Jared Leto is simply out there as Paolo, milking the role of pathetic idiot for all it's worth. Pacino is more restrained but still flamboyant. Lady Gaga and Adam Driver hold the centre of the circus together with assured performances, Gaga's take on Patrizia underlining her demands for a place in the sun, while Driver tracks Maurizio's meandering journey from withdrawn young man to ruthless business tycoon.

At 158 minutes, House Of Gucci is inexcusably too long, Scott's lazy editing allowing every scene and sequence to go on. The characters are over-the-top entertaining, but they could have been hustled along with better discipline.



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Movie Review: The Little Things (2021)

A serial killer investigation mystery, The Little Things aims for a dark and depressing vibe. Despite a stellar cast, the mood is undermined by a frequently shaky script.

The setting is California in 1990. Bakersfield Deputy Sheriff Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) drives to Los Angeles to collect evidence and finds the city gripped by the case of a serial killer targeting young women. The case reminds Joe of an unsolved triple murder from years prior that ended his career as a star Los Angeles detective. When another woman is found dead in her apartment, Deacon prolongs his stay and teams up with detective Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) to try and apprehend the killer.

A known sexual predator is arrested but proves to be a dead end, while another woman disappears after a jog and is feared to be the latest victim. Deacon's sleuthing leads him to suspect appliance repairman Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), who is interrogated but reveals nothing. Under increasing pressure to stop the killings, Deacon and Baxter initiate round-the-clock surveillance to try and find evidence connecting Sparma with the murders.

Written and directed by John Lee Hancock, The Little Things is a collection of good ideas that don't quite gel. Deacon's troubled background and obsession with the case that broke him provides good contextual fuel, his complicated relationships with ex-colleagues, including coroner Flo Dunigan (the actress Michael Hyatt), providing an organically shredded texture. With this solid foundation the plot threatens to spark into a good psychological thriller, but unfortunately never ignites. 

Hancock is unable to meaningfully push deep into any of the avenues available to him, starting with a poor definition of Baxter's character. Rami Malek appears lost in the role, Baxter somehow an ace detective yet apparently incompetent when it comes to making deductions, finding evidence, and targeting suspects. He is too quick to welcome Deacon onto his turf, and later disintegrates with alarming speed into a mess of bad decisions.

Meanwhile Leto's Sparma takes a long time to join proceedings as a primary suspect, but is then not menacing enough, speaking in circles and happy to lead the detectives on a merry dance of non-confessions. Not enough is known about the killer's frame of mind or motives to build a threatening profile, and the victims remain abstract. Hancock lingers at one murder scene but does not generate empathy for any of the women, past or present. The climax is a particular let-down, all the narrative weaknesses coming together and sinking into literal and metaphorical holes. 

Despite a tendency to over-exaggerate mouth gestures, Denzel Washington is in stellar form and almost rescues the film. But when many little things don't work, everything suffers.



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Movie Review: Requiem For A Dream (2000)

A journey into the abyss of addiction, Requiem For A Dream combines dazzling style with morbid subject matter for a triumphantly exhausting experience.

In Brooklyn, Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn) is an elderly widow with not much to live for. She spends her days watching television, in particular a crass self-help infomercial. Her son Harry (Jared Leto) is into drugs, along with his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) and best friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans). Sara is ecstatic to receive a phone call then a mail package promising her an appearance on television. She is determined to lose weight to fit into a red dress and look dashing on camera. 

She starts to diet, then resorts to a prescribed cocktail of weight loss pills. Harry and Tyrone go into business reselling hard drugs and start to make a lot of money, with Harry helping Marion start a small business and buying a new television for his mother. But the diet pills start eroding Sara's mind, and a turf war among drug gangs disrupts the street supply, forcing Harry, Tyrone and Marion into desperate measures.

An adaptation of the book by Hubert Selby Jr., who co-wrote the screenplay with director Darren Aronofsky, Requiem For A Dream is at once daring and depressing. Using split screens, rapid editing, hypnotically repetitive representations of drug ingestion and a dizzying array of camera tricks, Aronofsky visually portrays lives on the rollercoaster of addiction. In stark terms remarkably laced with dark humour, the film charts harrowing descents to obvious outcomes, and Requiem For A Dream is eventually terrifying in drawing obvious parallels to broader societal carnage. And while heroin, cocaine and diet pills are the obvious dependency sources, Aronofsky is also interested in broader themes of a society addicted to various self-destruction pathways.

Sara is hypnotized by trash television, which morphs into a weight loss addiction and an obsession with a promise of 15 minutes of small screen fame. The doctor who prescribes her pills is a victim of the all-consuming rush to profits: he barely looks at his patient before scrawling out his ruinous prescriptions. Meanwhile, Harry and Tyrone are inexorably drawn to the get-rich-quick lifestyle offered by unchecked capitalism. Later, sexual addictions crash through the door, money and sex interchangeable currency in the rush to satisfy here-and-now cravings.

In other contexts Aronofsky's flashy style would be deemed over-the-top and bordering on conceited. But here the restless editing, phenomenal sound effects, and masterful alterations of time and space capture the psychotic high and lows, the film's pacing mimicking the characters' wild rides. The seminal Clint Mansell music score is apocalyptically grandiose, amplifying the demolition of four small lives to Wagnerian tragedy.

All four of the lead performances are fully invested, with Burstyn a particular stand out. Enduring everything from fat suits to elecrtoconvulsive therapy, she combines the pathos of an old lonely woman with the trials and tribulations a chemical ride from hell.

Requiem For A Dream is ultimately exceptionally sad. Despite a society brimming with positive opportunity, for some the race to oblivion is unrelenting.



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Movie Review: Mr. Nobody (2009)

A thought-provoking drama exploring the nature of life itself, Mr. Nobody is visually stunning and full of ideas about human interactions, dependencies, and the far-reaching consequences of everyday decisions.

It's the year 2092, quasi-immortality is the norm, and 118 year-old Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto) is the last mortal on earth. With his health failing and memory fading, a doctor hypnotizes Nemo to help draw out his memories, and separately a young journalist conducts an interview.

Nemo's life stories are non-linear, scattered and often contradicting. He describes various outcomes as if they were separate lives lived, dependant on different crucial decisions he could have made. A critical juncture occurred at nine years old, when his parents separated and Nemo had to decide whether to join his departing mother (Natasha Little) or stay with his father (Rhys Ifans).

With his mother, Nemo falls in love with his soulmate Anna (Juno Temple at 15 and Diane Kruger as an adult), the daughter of his mother's new partner, although finding happiness will be difficult for the young lovers. With his father, Nemo is infatuated with the unstable Elise (Clare Stone at 15 and Sarah Polley as an adult). In one branch, their marriage is challenged by her mental state. In other iterations, an explosion wrecks their life together before it can start, or Nemo lets Elise get away and instead marries Jeanne (Linh Dan Pham), without much forethought.

In many instances throughout his possible lives, Nemo faces serious accidents and near-death experiences, including a motorcycle crash and a car-in-the-lake accident. Another thread features Nemo writing about a man traveling to Mars to spread the ashes of his lost love, an experience that Nemo also possibly lives through.

Written and directed by Jaco Van Dormael, Mr. Nobody is aesthetically stunning and mentally exhilarating. Tackling no less a topic than the meaning of life and the role of the individual in crafting its trajectory, Mr. Nobody uniquely articulates a brand of answers. Everything matters, every decision counts, every outcome is a gateway for more choices, and the destination is a lot less important than the road traveled.

Van Dormael's achievement resides in packaging thoughtful philosophy into a coherent narrative. The film never sits still and jumps around in space and time, Nemo's various versions and stages of life intermingling. But the film quickly gets into a rhythm, and it's relatively easy to follow the divergent trajectories. Mr. Nobody can be accused of almost stuffing too much into its 141 minutes (a longer 157 minute director's cut also exists), but the questions being asked are profound enough to justify the investment.

The film captures Nemo's key highlights, the moments in life which resonate eternally. The decision point between mom and dad at the train station is a stark fork in the tracks. Later, the first love between Nemo and Anna is soulful and poignant, and contrasted with the heat and turbulence of Nemo's relationship with Elise. The chapters with Jeanne offer a further contrast, but are relatively shortchanged in terms of screen time.

Jared Leto delivers one of his most impressive performances, finding resigned emotion even under a ton of makeup as a 118 year old man confined to bed. Tony Regbo and Juno Temple as the 15 year old versions of Nemo and Anna are also notable.

At every turn, Van Dormael crafts his film with loving attention to detail and an eye to dazzling visuals, imaginative transitions and expressive use of colour. Mr. Nobody is as rich as life, full of mysterious opportunity and possibility, waiting to be steered by ironically fleeting whims.

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Movie Review: Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

A magnanimous science fiction epic, Blade Runner 2049 expands on the original with a rich quest for private and collective identity.

It's the titular year, and Agent K (Ryan Gosling), a replicant working for the Los Angeles Police Department, is a "blade runner", an expert at tracking down and retiring older generation rogue replicants. He uncovers the whereabouts of replicant Sapper Morton (David Bautista), a farmer who puts up a fierce fight before K gets the upper hand. Buried deep under a tree on Morton's property is a strong box. K's boss Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright) and her team unearth the container and find it filled with the bones of a deceased replicant harbouring a shocking secret.

Joshi assigns K to track the origins of the bones, a journey that starts at the Wallace Corporation, the massive company that took over the assets of the replicants' original designer and manufacturer Tyrell. Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) suspects that the answers being sought by K could give him enormous additional influence, and instructs his chief enforcer replicant Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) to track K's movements. Helped by his holographic girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas), K's inquiries lead him to replicant dream creator Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri) and retired blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), hiding in the radiated wasteland of Las Vegas.

Set 30 years after the events of the first film and released 35 years after Ridley Scott's flawed and multi-versioned classic, Blade Runner 2049 is an unequivocal masterpiece. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the sequel breathes deeply from the world created by Scott and original short story author Philip K. Dick, and creates an absorbing, thought-provoking story about the evolution of what is real and what ultimately matters.

Villeneuve combines regular doses action with stunning visuals to bring Agent K's search to life, and the film is a lavish feast for the eyes. Every scene features an exposition of a future world offering little to celebrate but enthralling nonetheless. Crowded markets dominated by garish and holographic neon signs on imposing buildings, garbage disposal wastelands, the sleek innards of colossal corporations, and the ruins of a gaudy Las Vegas all flicker to life in visions both harrowing and unmistakably compelling.

In addition to playing with colours, contrasts, mists and glowing nighttime environments, Villeneuve frequently shoots through partially transparent surfaces, rain-covered windows a favourite technique, both to add artistry and heighten the sense of receding-but-still-there barriers between humans and machines. As a quibble, some of the sets are notable for their lack of animation, Agent K incongruently often the only presence at locations away from the central marketplace.

The music is co-composed by Hans Zimmer, and is jarring in its exquisite discordancy. Loud, synth-driven and often overbearing, Zimmer adds to the film's sensory texture but also frequently intrudes rather than complements.

Plotwise Blade Runner 2049 is a proper sequel, and it's well worth recalling Deckard's adventure from the first film to properly enjoy the rich continuation of the story. Agent K picks up snippets of the physical and emotional dangers Deckard encountered a generation prior, and 2049 collects the echoes and builds upon the themes of core identity at the individual and collective levels.

Agent K's quest quickly becomes deeply personal and yet carries boundless implications. This is an imaginative science fiction film where the threads of the future are already present. A coming era where robots are more prevalent and integrated into a deeply damaged society appears well within reach, and the screenplay by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green is as strong as all the visual splendor. Blade Runner 2049's abundant plot rewards concentration, and effortlessly expands into the 163 minutes of running time.

And while 2049 finds the safe harbour of elegant resolutions, it also offers an abundance of fertile material introduced and parked for future films to perhaps pick up upon. The Wallace Corporation is a menacing behemoth that deserves further investigation, while an entire subplot featuring working girl replicant Mariette (Mackenzie Davis) and her colleagues appears to be more about set-up than resolution. And the enigmatic dream scientist Dr. Ana Stelline has stories that can feature in subsequent episodes.

The performances are competent without needing to be more. Gosling, Ford and Wright are generally appropriately monotonal, although Gosling does ride some emotional ups and downs as his journey veers into more than one unexpected valley. And the characters intermingle with extrapolated science beyond the replicant premise. Ana de Armas is surprisingly effective as the holographic girlfriend, and instigates a very different kind of high-tech lovemaking scene. Sylvia Hoeks is icy cold as the chief villain, doing the dirty work of the blind Niander Wallace, who overcomes his disability with miniature drones connected to a chip implant.

A hypnotic showpiece, Blade Runner 2049 expounds on the premise of humanity as its creations begin to meld in a bleak, haunting and potentially prescient version of the future.

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Movie Review: Lord Of War (2005)

An exposé drama about the international arms trade, Lord Of War is a highly enjoyable romp through the business of selling the tools of death.

The son of Ukrainian refugees, Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) grew up in a rough Brooklyn neighbourhood and learned from personal experience the value of guns. In the early 1980s Yuri starts his own business as a gun dealer, before teaming up with his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) and quickly expanding into the international trade. Yuri becomes an expert in finding loopholes to break arms embargos, and particularly skilled in locating and reselling abandoned weapons caches around the world. His initial attempts to partner with Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm), the world's most renowned weapons dealer, are rebuffed.

Staying one step ahead of dogged and incorruptible Interpol agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke), Yuri sells weapons in all the world's hotspots including Liberia where dictator André Baptiste Sr. (Eamonn Walker) becomes a favoured client. Yuri also wins the love of glamorous fashion model Ava Fontaine (Bridget Moynahan) but Vitaly falls victim to a drug addiction. The fall of the Soviet Union results in a flood of new product on the market, and Yuri uses old family connections in Ukraine to expand his business and join the ranks of elite weapons traders. Weisz now needs Yuri's help, and Valentine remains in hot pursuit.

Written and directed by Andrew Niccol and co-produced by Cage, Lord Of War is an irreverent but sharp-eyed take on the world of independent gun smuggling inspired by real world characters such as Sarkis Soghanalian, Oleg Orlov and Viktor Bout. Touching down in the rubble of some of the world's worst conflict zones, the film pokes away at the double standards of an international system that places sanctions and admonishes dictators while ensuring men like Yuri carry on with the business of supplying rifles for child soldiers.

Although the story is undoubtedly episodic and over-narrated, Niccol finds a groove in the adventures of an antihero who uses every excuse in the book to justify his profession, and has every trick at his disposal to skate past international laws. The film moves briskly and with plenty of panache, Niccol finding memorable set-pieces in places as diverse as the rubble of war-torn Beirut, on the high seas off the shores of South America, in a derelict Monrovia hotel, in Ukrainian warehouses crammed with weaponry, and most effectively on a dusty road in Africa. A forced cargo plane landing results in a real-time lesson in third world armament distribution efficiency and recycling economics.

Meanwhile back home Yuri builds a life of wealth and comfort for his family. Ava and his parents turn a blind eye to the source of all the money until the glare of the obvious becomes impossible to ignore. But just as Vitaly is addicted to cocaine, Yuri is addicted to the thrill of the weapons deal, and with no shortage to the number of buyers, sellers and dirty wars, his services are always in demand. Nicolas Cage delivers a pragmatically laid back central performance built on an advanced intellect thriving in a despicable profession, his dead eyes concealing layers of self-delusion.

Lord Of War is a gut punch to the concept of a world at peace. As the guardians of morality profit from war, killing is Yuri's business, and business is good.

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Movie Review: The Thin Red Line (1998)

A lyrical World War Two drama, The Thin Red Line explores the psychology of soldierhood in the context of the Guadalcanal campaign. The film mixes intense battle action with slow moving, narration-driven introspection scenes to create a unique but not always successful experience.

A collection of soldiers are thrust into battle when the United States mounts an invasion of Guadalcanal to halt the Japanese plans to control the south Pacific. The men include Witt (Jim Caviezel), who is thoughtful and philosophical about the war's purpose and always one step away from wandering off on unauthorized leave; Welch (Sean Penn) a no-nonsense down to earth soldier's soldier; and Staros (Elias Koteas), a Captain who cares about his men, perhaps too much.

The hard-driving Lieutenant Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) is the local commander, and he is eager to make up for lost time after being passed over for promotions throughout his career. Captain Gaff (John Cusack) is Tall's loyal second-in-command. The soldiers engage in fierce combat to dislodge the Japanese from a strategic hilltop, and then push on towards the Japanese rear positions. But territory is gained at a high cost, and each man has to deal with the chaos of war in his own way.

At times, The Thin Red Line represents war as wall paper with a soundtrack of pensive poetry. The visuals may be impressive, and the narration a morose and thoughtful reflection of soldiers' thoughts, but the pace, particularly in the opening and closing 45 minutes, is as close to watching paint dry as a movie can get. Terrence Malick directs with his trademark disregard for what may be popular, opting instead to focus on the beauty of a Pacific paradise being invaded by the ugliness of war. With a running time of close to three hours, the film occasionally rewards patience, but also tests it to the limit.

The action scenes, when they come, are heart-pounding, all the more so thanks to the contrast with the languid pace of the set-up. The middle of The Thin Red Line is an absorbing, meat-grinder of a battle in three phases. The US soldiers are first pinned down and picked off by unseen Japanese troops dug into the hillside. The middle phase finds a small group of soldiers charging at the key Japanese fortification to try and force a breakthrough. The final phase involves a rout of the Japanese
rear lines.

Malick matches Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (also from 1998) in capturing the agony and ecstasy of war, the pulsating kill-or-be-killed calculus quickly disposing of human pauses once the battle is joined. This is a war film that is not afraid to show fighting men as confused, terrified and error-prone. When heroes do step forward, they do stand out, although in their rush to claim glory, commanders like Tall also find ways to cheapen the achievements earned on the battlefield.

Less successful is the attempt to humanize the soldiers. Despite the mammoth running length, there are just too many individuals cluttering up the front lines, and too many actors given too little to do. With Malick endlessly focusing his cameras on wildlife and still life, the soldiers are shortchanged into insignificance. The likes of Adrien Brody, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly and Jared Leto are reduced to little more than extras in the context of a three hour film. John Travolta and George Clooney are each on screen for about 30 seconds. Nick Nolte, Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn and, to lesser extent, John Cusack are treated marginally better, but the film is definitely stained with the mark of name actors slipped into meaningless roles to try and salvage box office.

The movie offers up two half-hearted character conflict points, and they are both overdrawn. Tall and Staros clash about battle tactics, with Staros refusing  to obey orders that would have put his men in harm's way. The stand-off between the two men is prolonged to the point of exhaustion. Meanwhile, in a bizarre chase for dramatic tension that goes nowhere, the loyal Gaff dares to demand from Tall that the men be supplied with water as they fight. Ponderously spouted narration about the futility of war does not make up for the lack of genuine narrative substance.

Flawed as it is, The Thin Red Line is a worthwhile and cerebral addition to the catalogue of war epics that care more about damage caused than territory gained. The film may choose aesthetics over content, but it never loses sight of the losses on all sides.

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Movie Review: Panic Room (2002)

A women-under-siege suspense thriller, Panic Room is a competently delivered film with a committed Jodie Foster performance and fluid directing from David Fincher. Despite all the polish, many predictable elements of the home invasion sub-genre do creep in.

Recent divorcée Meg Altman (Foster) and her mouthy 11 year old daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) purchase a swish four-story townhouse in tony Upper Manhattan, previously owned by an ailing millionaire with secrets. The home features a reinforced panic room designed to protect occupants against home invaders. On their first night at the home, Meg and Sarah are awakened by three intruders: Junior (Jared Leto), Burnham (Forest Whitaker), and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam).

Meg and Sarah make it into the panic room and lock themselves in. But Junior and his crew are after money hidden in a safe within the panic room. With Meg unable to call for outside help and the invaders struggling to break into the panic room, a tense standoff ensues. As the night progresses, Meg learns that Junior has a connection to the previous owner of the house, while Burnham's occupation places him at an advantage in trying to gain access to the panic room. Raoul, meanwhile, is a violent wildcard, and Sarah suffers from a condition that will make it even more difficult for her to survive the ordeal.

With the well-worn premise easily describable in three words, it's up to Fincher to create an entertaining drama and stretch proceedings while maintaining interest over almost two hours. He digs deep into his bag of tricks and finds enough pizazz to give Panic Room a decent shine. With the townhouse itself stepping in as the alternative star of the film, Fincher adopts a philosophy of fluid camera movement and long takes, often simulating the point-of-view passing through walls and ceilings. The break-in scene is a masterpiece of assumed continuity, the cameras tracking the invaders' movements outside the house, testing multiple entry points at various levels before finally achieving access.

In terms of content, the film settles down to the two women in the room gathering their courage and trying to plot an escape or a rescue, and the three men outside the room trying to breach the panic room's defences. That there is bickering on both sides of the wall is a given. Meg and Sarah are dealing with the debris of Meg's divorce and are often barely civil with each other. Junior is obsessed, Burnham is circumspect and Raoul is simmering with the threat of violence. The men are the furthest thing from a well-oiled criminal trio, and the fissures between them are established early. The squabbling throughout the house allows the David Koepp script to delve into the characters during the frequent lulls in action, and the film finds a modest balance between suspense scenes and background context.

The final act reverses occupancies and powers into more mindless action territory, as the guns and sledgehammers swing into action, an additional character is brought into the house, there are typical Ramboesque heroics, he's-still-not-dead! surprises and bodies that start to pile up. In short, the more calculable, less cerebral elements are brought to the fore. And as is usual for this fare, the bad guys find ways to become especially incompetent when it matters most.

Jodie Foster delivers a grim performance filled with reluctant courage, giving Meg the inner fortitude to fight on all fronts. A young Kristen Stewart matches Foster, and does her part to create inner family tension while also hinting at the maturing young woman within the girl trapped in the panic room. The three invaders are brought to life with a good mixture of hesitancy and menace by the quite watchable Leto, Whitaker and Yoakam.

Panic Room may not find too many new corners to explore, but the film at least looks good treading over the reasonably familiar real estate.

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Movie Review: Switchback (1997)

A serial murderer action mystery, Switchback dips its toes in a multitude of genres and ultimately fails to find a firm foundation.

At a typical suburban home, a babysitter is murdered and a child abducted. Separately, in Texas, Sheriff Buck Olmstead (R. Lee Ermey) is dealing with a nasty double murder at a motel room, plus an impending election challenge from his rival Jack McGinnis (William Fichtner). Meanwhile, on lonely rural backroads, Bob Goodall (Danny Glover) picks up mysterious hitchhiker Lane Dixon (Jared Leto), and then saves him from a beating at a redneck bar. FBI agent Frank Lacrosse (Dennis Quaid) shows up to investigate the motel murders, believing them to be the work of an elusive knife-wielding serial murderer that Frank has been chasing for a long time.

After initially clashing, Buck gradually believes Frank's hunch that the serial killer is nearby, and the connection to the babysitter murder and child abduction is revealed. Bob and Lane strike up a friendship, with Lane demonstrating his sharp abilities with a knife to save the life of a choking restaurant patron, and Bob seemingly on friendly terms with every bar owner, motel keeper and train engineer in the Texas backwaters. With Buck heading for a defeat in his reelection campaign, Frank revealing his true agenda, and more FBI agents descending on the scene, the killer strikes again as a showdown on board a train looms large.

Written and directed by Jeb Stuart (best known for writing Die Hard and The Fugitive), Switchback is character rich and has no shortage of ambition and ideas, but is never able to pull together a cohesive, compelling narrative. Combining slasher-horror scenes, a serial killer mystery, rural small-town politics, agents following their personal agenda plus an action-packed (but mindless) climax on-board a speeding train, Switchback bounces around looking for a theme or structure, and instead finds fragments of ideas which don't quite fit together.

It does not help that there are plenty of critical plot holes. This is a script that demands plenty of coincidences to work, with the final, supposedly carefully planned showdown between killer and pursuer only taking place after frantic and unlikely stumbling through the snow by all parties, with several spectacularly overturned cars thrown into the bargain.

Worse is the absence of any meaningful backstory for the serial killer. Switchback is to be commended for spending plenty of time with the perpetrator of all the murders, both before and after his identity is revealed, but it is time mostly wasted. Why this man kills is never explained.

With no shortage of intriguing characters populating rough and ready Texas locations, the performances oscillate between miscast and intriguing. Dennis Quaid appears rather uninterested as the sombre agent Frank Lacrosse, tortured by dark secrets of his own. Danny Glover is almost too jovial but certainly memorable as Bob, the traveler who knows everyone by name. Jared Leto is intensely magnetic as the young hitchhiker Lane with a disproportionately dark past. R. Lee Ermey and William Fichtner add plenty of colour as sheriffs dueling in both law enforcement and politics. For whatever reason, Stuart does not come up with any major roles for women in his sprawling script.

Switchback is not bad; just unfortunately clumsy, a case of too many ideas backing into each other.

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The Movies Of Jared Leto

All movies starring Jared Leto and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

How To Make An American Quilt (1995)

Switchback (1997)

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Fight Club (1999)

Girl, Interrupted (1999)

American Psycho (2000)

Requiem For A Dream (2000)

Panic Room (2002)

Alexander (2004)

Lord Of War (2005)

Mr. Nobody (2009)

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

The Little Things (2021)

House Of Gucci (2021)

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

Movie Review: American Psycho (2000)

An edgy societal satire, American Psycho takes a cold look at the destructive impacts of an insular culture dominated by avarice and egotism. Laced with cynicism and sly humour, the film creates a surreal world where twisted extremes are the jaded normal in damaged minds.

It's the late 1980s in Manhattan, and the me decade has transformed a generation of young men into soulless, greedy, narcissistic and shallow coke-snorting machines. Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is an investment banker at a mergers and acquisitions firm, one of many vice presidents interchangeable to the point that their own superiors cannot tell them apart. The VPs compete with each other by boasting about the most arcane details of their business cards.

Patrick lives in a spotless apartment, hangs out at the trendiest restaurants and clubs, goes out with his fiancee Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon), and murders people for sport. He has slipped from detached to purely psychotic, killing for the thrill because nothing else excites him. His victims include a homeless man and a conceited banker called Paul Allen (Jared Leto). Detective Donald Kimball (Willem Dafoe) starts to investigate the Allen murder and suspects Patrick of hiding something. Meanwhile, Patrick enjoys a threesome with two prostitutes before turning violent and bruising them both. His assistant Jean (Chloë Sevigny) knows nothing of Patrick's violent tendencies and seems to have a crush on him; he takes her out on a date, and her life hangs in the balance. With Kimball closing in, Patrick's carefully protected secret life threatens to break into the open and out of control.

American Psycho shocks with its detached violence and sex, human emotions truncated to nothingness within the cold soul of a man reduced to the equivalent of roboticism. When Patrick is engaged in sex he is focussed only on admiring his own image in the mirror, and he sets the mood for murder by boasting about his music knowledge, relaying canned commentary about the likes of Huey Lewis and the News and Peter Gabriel. In short Patrick cares for nothing and no one, but is fully obsessed with himself. It's a chilling vision of psychosis, and the frostiness permeates every aspect of the film.

Director Mary Harron creates a sanitized aesthetic where the men look alike, sound the same, dress in the similar clothes and are generally indistinguishable from each other. It's an environment where everyone is rich and there are no individuals. Patrick's quest to carve out an identity and find genuine feelings leads him to the darkest corners of his damaged brain, where threesomes with prostitutes and the casual murder of the poor and the rich, men and women, acquaintances and strangers are the only remaining acts that promise satisfaction.

American Psycho benefits from the cool vibe of the pervasive aloofness and also suffers from it. When nothing matters to Patrick or his colleagues, it's difficult to care for any of them, whether through irony or genuine empathy. Harron and her co-writer Guinevere Turner also leave large voids where Patrick's work resides. A highly-paid vice president must do something worthwhile other than ogle his assistant for a living; the film misses the opportunity to colour in the soul-sucking world where deals are plenty, the money flows and it all means nothing.

Christian Bale delivers a forceful performance, alternating between laid back and murderous, the dichotomy of tidy relaxation and bloody violence creating the chasm sucking Patrick's life into the abyss. The supporting cast members are adequate but not memorable, Willem Dafoe particularly suffering from an underwritten role.

American Psycho delivers its message of lost souls seeking solace in serpentine surroundings with frigid efficiency. The emotionless brutality is effective, but also creates a film that can be admired from afar but hardly embraced.

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