Movie Review: Promised Land (2012)

An environmental drama, Promised Land applies a pleasingly soft and reasonably balanced touch to the fracking controversy.

Rising star Steve Butler (Matt Damon) is dispatched by his employer Global Crosspower Solutions to secure gas exploration leases in a small Pennsylvania farming community. Steve has a stellar reputation for convincing landowners to sign quickly, and now he sets about ingratiating himself with the locals, assisted by his business partner Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand). 

But their progress stalls when local high school teacher Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook) raises health and environmental concerns about the fracking process, and convinces the residents to hold a community-wide vote. Soon environmental activist Dustin Noble (John Krasinski) arrives in town to harden opposition to Global's plans. Steve and Sue have to improvise new methods to advance their cause, while Steve and Dustin compete for the attention of local farm owner Alice (Rosemarie DeWitt).

With a deft structure, Promised Land tackles the clash between economic development, resource extraction, and environmental impacts. While the plot leans - slowly but surely - towards arguing for protecting a traditional way of life, the screenplay by co-stars Krasinski and Damon at least gives all viewpoints a fair shake. Placing Damon's likable persona on the side of fracking is a wise move to stimulate debate, and Krasinski provides a solid counterweight, the two men sparring on opposite sides of a heated topic.

Both points of view carry weight. Damon's Steve Butler is provided a rural upbringing and a vantage point on the importance of industry. He speaks with personal conviction when putting forward his case for the farmers to accept and enjoy the riches coming to them from gas exploration, because otherwise their way of life is coming to an end. Krasinki's Dustin Noble is the scrappy but resourceful underdog, making life difficult for Steve and Sue by simply displaying blown-up images of dead cows on his family farm. Both performances are steady without requiring stand-out moments. Holbrook, McDormand, and DeWitt could all have been provided with more to do.

Director Gus Van Sant adopts a patient approach, matching the restrained attitude with a small and scenic community where not much changes from one generation to the next. Moments of quirky humour lighten mood: Steve and Sue organize a community fair that does not go as planned, and the puzzle of small horses is a running source of amusement.

The battle for a community's soul ramps up to a couple of juicy-good late twists. However, the subsequent denouement is a clumsy let-down, a moment-of-triumph transformation landing with an unconvincing thud on the gym floor. Promised Land is attracted to the greener option, but is better when contemplating both sides of the fence.



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Movie Review: The Hollars (2016)

A comedy-drama about a family brought together by a serious illness, The Hollars offers an agreeable mix of laughs and tears.

New York-based graphic novelist John Hollar (John Krasinski) is suffering from writer's block, and his moodiness is straining his relationship with pregnant girlfriend Rebecca (Anna Kendrick). Upon learning his mother Sally (Margo Martindale) has a brain tumour and needs surgery, John travels to his home town to support his father Don (Richard Jenkins) and brother Ron (Sharlto Copley). 

Sally's illness has turned Don into an emotional wreck, while his plumbing business is near bankruptcy. Ron is jobless and stalking his ex-wife Stacey (Ashley Dyke). Sally's flippant nurse Jason (Charlie Day) is married to John's high school sweetheart Gwen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Despite being in bed at the hospital, Sally is doing her best to hold the family together. As the surgery date approaches, John is drawn back into his family's affairs, and Rebecca shows up to provide support.

An amiable romp through typical family dysfunctions, The Hollars benefits from a mean streak of humour, colourful characters, and a willing cast. While originality and sterling moments may be in short supply, Krasinksi directs Jim Strouse's script with an eye to small-town charm and cinematic efficiency, packaging up the film in 89 minutes.

Many laughs come from Ron's jumbled life, now reduced to living in his parents' basement after suffering the ignominy of being fired by his dad. Ron is also nowhere near over the break-up of his marriage and is desperate - too desperate - to participate in the lives of his young daughters. Comedy nuggets are found within Ron's tangles with his ex-wife's new boyfriend Reverend Dan (Josh Groban).

Meanwhile, at the hospital nurse Jason is on a singular mission to redefine health care standards with his own brand of judgemental cynicism. His insecurities are also justifiably close to the surface but he anyway invites John to dinner and a reunion with Gwen. Strouse and Krasinksi display a deft touch by unleashing an undercurrent of lust and animal attraction, then cleverly redirecting it.

As for the tears, Sally's tumour and Don's emotional brittleness provide opportunities for sombre moments and reflections about loss, hardship and kindness. John adds his insecurities to the mix, working through the highs and lows while learning plenty about Rebecca's mettle. In this comfortingly familiar family, everything is far from perfect, and that's just fine.



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Movie Review: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi (2016)

A recreation of the 2012 attack on the US embassy in Benghazi and the response by a small group of military contractors, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi (also known more simply as 13 Hours) demonstrates battlefield anarchy.

In 2012, Libya is in a chaotic political void after the overthrow of the country's dictatorship. Various militia groups, loyal to different causes and some of them holding extremist Islamist and anti-American views, attempt to control intermingling neighbourhood patches. 

In the second largest city Benghazi, the CIA maintains a secret Security Annex led by the Chief (David Costabile) and staffed by a combination of agents and Global Response Staff (GRS) contractors. Contractor Jack Silva (John Krasinski) reluctantly leaves his family and arrives in Benghazi to join the GRS at the request of his buddy Tyrone Woods (James Badge Dale). Other GRS members include Oz (Max Martini) and Tig (Dominic Fumusa).

US Ambassador Chris Stevens (Matt Letscher) announces a visit to the city. Jack and Tyrone assess the embassy compound, about one mile away from the Annex, and deem it difficult to secure. But State Department officials are confident a deal with a local militia will deter any attacks. The Ambassador's visit coincides with elevated unrest, the embassy is soon under attack, and the CIA is caught flat footed. The GRS team has no clear orders but is determined to intervene to try and save American lives.

Directed by Michael Bay and based on the book by Mitchell Zuckoff, 13 Hours is a potent combination of Black Hawk Down and The Alamo. After setting the stage in the opening 45 minutes through the eyes of new arrival Jack, the focus is on a small group of outnumbered men facing a rampaging enemy force in a thick fog of war. With no help on the way they have to rely on their own experience and resources, fighting as much against fatigue and eroding hope as they do against their foes.

At 144 minutes, the film is substantively longer than needed. And try as he might with pictures of family members and some quiet interludes of conversation, Bay is unable to define the GRS men as individuals: burly and bearded, they all look the same, talk the same and behave the same. But given the prolonged running time, perhaps the most frustrating weakness is the complete absence of "other side" context. The men storming the embassy and then the Annex are all faceless villains, obviously willing to die but for an unknown and seemingly unimportant cause.

The combat scenes compensate, and once the shooting starts with the assault on the embassy, 13 Hours is essentially one prolonged battle in multiple chapters for the best part of 90 minutes. First the GRS men head to the embassy to try and rescue the ambassador, then they retreat to the Annex and have to defend the compound for several long hours from successive attack waves. Bay excels at recreating the uncertainty, anxiety and turmoil of battle from the defenders' perspective, always with an eye on the camaraderie and unique brotherhood bonds forged under fire.

The events at Benghazi represented multiple preparedness and response failures. 13 Hours' most biting commentary is in finding quasi-independent contractors forced to improvise their own mission as the only US heroes of a sad day.



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Movie Review: Aloha (2015)

A romantic comedy with convoluted but irrelevant sub-plots, Aloha never shakes the impression that a bunch of actors took a dream vacation and cobbled together a platitudinous project to write-off the expenses.

Army veteran and now private contractor Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) returns to Hawaii to negotiate a land access agreement with a native chief. Brian is working for tycoon Carson Welch (Bill Murray), who is operating a satellite business with murky ties to the military. Air Force Captain Allison Ng (Emma Stone) is Brian's liaison, and he also reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Tracy (Rachel McAdams), now married to man-of-few-words Major John "Woody" Woodside (John Krasinsky).

The land negotiations go reasonably well, with Allison (who is one quarter Hawaiian) entranced by the natives' spiritual connection to the sky, whereas Brian remains more grounded. Allison's all-business facade starts to melt in the presence of Brian's charisma, but he is more intrigued by the potential of rekindling the passion with Tracy. But when the real cargo of Carson's latest satellite project is revealed, Brian has to decide where his loyalties lie.

A lacklustre outing by writer and director Cameron Crowe, Aloha meanders in and out of several storylines with no conviction. Riding on the laid-back star power of Cooper, Stone, McAdams, Murray plus Alec Baldwin in a glorified cameo, the plot has traces of romantic comedy, a barely-there side-story about evil corporations desecrating the sanctity of the land, and an overly familiar damaged and cynical man making half-hearted attempts to right past wrongs.

The talented cast and decent island scenery offer some enjoyment, and to give Crowe his due, he pulls out a final father-daughter scene that belongs in another, much better movie. But the rest of the narrative never justifies itself as a story that needed to be told. The script lacks wit and edge, and gets worse at it goes along, choking on cliches of women falling for a flawed man they want to fix in between unconvincing debates about spirituality and pragmatism. By the time a kid's photograph reveals a weapons secret and one guy with a laptop reprograms a satellite on the fly, all credibility is lost.

The big familial reveal is telegraphed in the opening five minutes and comes as no surprise among all the other no surprises. It is left to John Krasinski to try and salvage a few moments of humour as a stoic husband who says plenty by not talking. He's a man who knows who he is, whereas Aloha suffers from  both an identity crisis and impostor syndrome.



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Movie Review: A Quiet Place (2018)

A monster horror movie, A Quiet Place explores themes of survival and family dynamics under extreme pressure.

In the near future, exceptionally strong and fast alien monsters have ravaged Earth, leaving few survivors. Lee (John Krasinski), his wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and three children survive on a remote farm and by rummaging in abandoned towns. They need to remain exceptionally quiet all the time, communicating by sign language as the monsters are known to be blind but have exceptional hearing and are attracted to kill by the faintest sound.

After a tragedy besets the family, Lee and Evelyn do their best to look after their deaf teenage daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and younger son Marcus (Noah Jupe). Lee is eager to teach Marcus survival skills, while Regan is going through a moody phase and a strained relationship with her father, although he is doing his best to develop a hearing aid for her. Meanwhile Evelyn is pregnant, and having to plan on giving birth and protecting a newborn without making a sound.

Directed by Krasinski, A Quiet Place is an exceptionally effective exercise in horror. The natural human condition of screaming when danger beckons is suppressed, and the smart screenplay (by Bryan Woods, Scott Beck and Krasinski) features hardly any dialogue or human-made sounds of any kind. Survival depends on finding ways to exist silently, a challenge that proves remarkably difficult and involves resisting urges that start literally at the moment of birth.

The film reveals the family's daily routine, actions that are otherwise mundane but made vivid by having to be reinvented in silence. Lee and Evelyn share an intimate dance with music that only they can hear. Cooking involves no cutlery or noisy plates. The board game Monopoly is modified to feature no clacking sounds. What would be loud arguments and expressions of emotion are orchestrated in sign language.

And the domesticity is punctuated by short and sharp moments of pure terror. When mistakes are made and sounds emitted, the monsters pounce to kill in a hurry. Krasinski drops these moments into the first half of the film at regular intervals, reminders as to why there are so few humans left on Earth.

The film's underlying theme is the duress that accompanies the responsibilities of parenthood. The monsters represent whatever the danger is that parents need to protect their children from, and A Quiet Place distills the roles of Lee and Evelyn down to elemental guardians in a new kind of wilderness. Despite the external dangers, internal family dynamics are eternal and imperfect. Mistakes are made, blame is subconsciously assigned, unnecessary rules and restrictions are imposed but life must find a way go on. Evelyn negotiating labour in silence and under extreme hardship is a stunning sequence, viscerally encapsulating a mother's anxiety and the miracle of life's persistence.

Thought-provoking and terrifying, A Quiet Place is an alternative view of the end and the beginning cloaked in a shroud of tense silence.

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Movie Review: Away We Go (2009)

A movie with its heart in the right place, Away We Go is operating with material so thin it ultimately floats away in the sweet breeze, barely noticeable among all the other happy bugs and crisp leaves.

Verona (Maya Rudolph) and Burt (John Krasinski) are a couple in their early thirties, still relatively unsettled and not established in any city or clear careers. They discover that Maya is pregnant, and six months into the pregnancy, Burt's quirky parents, the only family nearby, announce that they are leaving town to resettle in Belgium. With nothing tying Verona and Burt down, they decide to visit various friends and family members across the US, in the hope of finding a place to call home.

They visit Verona's flaky old boss (Allison Janney) in Phoenix; Verona's unmarried sister (Carmen Ejogo) in Tucson; Burt's highly irritating college friend (Maggie Gyllenhaal), now a married and condescendingly perfect mother, in Madison; other college friends (Chris Messina and Melanie Lynskey) with many adopted kids in Montreal; and Burt's married but just-dumped brother (Paul Schneider) in Miami. None of these locales or people resonate with Verona and Burt, but the visits bring them closer to each other and eventually Verona reveals a sad piece of family history, through which they discover where they belong.

A road trip movie with not much of a road and an undefined destination, the only thing Away We Go has going for it is a relatively convincing strong central relationship between Burt and a very pregnant Verona, with Maya Randolph and John Krasinski appearing pleasingly effortless in portraying a deep and sturdy love.

Otherwise, the script by David Eggers and Vandela Vida provides little for director Sam Mendes to work with. The humour is either fake or forced, the secondary characters are conventional visitors from other movies, and the attempts at pathos with the whole seemingly hastily appended story of Verona's parents smacks of desperation.

Away We Go departs quickly, its light weight leaving barely any impression.

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