Movie Review: Butterfly On A Wheel (2007)

Also Known As: Shattered  

Genre: Crime Thriller  

Director: Mike Barker  

Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Maria Bello, Gerard Butler  

Running Time: 91 minutes  

Synopsis: In Chicago, successful marketing executive Neil Randall (Gerard Butler) is on the fast track to career success and living the good life with his wife Abby (Maria Bello) and young daughter Sophie. Suddenly their life is upturned by a mysterious abductor (Pierce Brosnan) who holds Neil and Abby at gunpoint and threatens to harm Sophie unless they complete specific tasks. Neil and Abby frantically try to meet their abductor's demands while trying to understand his motivations and summon help.

What Works Well: Director Mike Barker quickly cranks up the tension and maintains an elevated level of thrills, close-calls, and frantic decisions-under-pressure. The three lead cast members add plenty of quality star power, and the action is supplemented by no shortage of cerebral dueling, the antagonist and victimized couple locked into a game of mental upmanship. The final act features a couple of juicy, if highly unlikely, twists.

What Does Not Work As Well: The plot holds on to its secrets too tightly and for too long. The abductor's identity and cause are stubbornly opaque, confining most of the obstacle course episodes (take item A to location B or else the child dies) into samey treatment with no context. 

Key Quote:

Never pick a fight with someone who's got nothing to lose.



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Movie Review: The Cooler (2003)

A slick drama and romance, The Cooler explores luck and happiness through the fortunes of interdependent characters in a pathetically glitzy environment.

In Las Vegas, Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) is employed as a "cooler" at the Shangri La casino operated by his lifelong friend Shelly (Alec Baldwin). A recovered gambling addict, Bernie only ever experiences bad luck and spreads it to anyone near him. He is deployed near hot streak gamblers to turn the tide back in the casino's favour.

Having worked for years to pay a debt he owed Shelly, Bernie is now ready to quit and leave town. Meanwhile owner representative Larry Sokolov (Ron Livingston) considers Shelly's old-fashioned management style incompatible with the new family-friendly Vegas. Bernie embarks on an unlikely passionate relationship with cocktail waitress Natalie (Maria Bello). But his personal happiness impacts his luck and he becomes useless as a cooler, multiplying Shelly's problems.

Filled with fluid camera work, a nighttime aesthetic and playful symbolism, and drenched in garrish Vegas neon and sickly casino lights, The Cooler explores the ecosystem under the rocks where desperate characters live. And in the script co-written by director Wayne Kramer and Frank Hannah, all the characters are desperately on edge, staring at forthcoming foundational changes and unsure they like what they see.

Bernie functions as a doormat for Shelly and is drowning so deep in a life of misfortune he is actually grateful Shelly busted his knee with a baseball bat to cure his gambling addiction. Natalie is living with her own ghosts of regret and shattered dreams. And Shelly is watching the city pass him by and evolving into a family playground, his hardcore boiler room intimidation tactics and crooner entertainment shows no longer appealing to owners and audiences.

A sharp shaft of light breaks into this grime in the form of an unlikely love between Bernie and Natalie, and suddenly the long-established status quo is disrupted. Neither Bernie nor Natalie could imagine finding a meaningful relationship and don't quite know what to do with it; Bernie's happiness translates to good luck and his value as a cooler plummets; the losses mount for Shelly just as he is trying to fend off Larry's modernization. The Cooler embraces the unhinging of three lives and tracks the ensuing out-of-control trajectories to fitting conclusions.

Other sub-plots enrich the film, although the relatively short 101 minutes of running time limit their depth. Bernie's good-for-nothing son Mikey (Shawn Hatosy) and a pregnant girlfriend Charlotte (Estella Warren) show up looking for handouts and layering additional guilt onto Bernie. Shelly, in his own unique way, is loyal to drug addicted entertainer (Paul Sorvino) long past his sell-by date.

Although the 17 year age difference is grating, William H. Macy and Maria Bello glow at the heart of the film, both creating characters living on dying embers of hope. Alec Baldwin enjoys himself as Shelly, hiding his uncompromising tendencies and dead soul behind expensive suits.

Stylish, engaging, and unpredictable, The Cooler rolls a natural.

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Movie Review: Third Person (2013)

A multi-story drama and romance, Third Person explores themes of loss and trust. While enjoying a spectacular cast in fine form, the pacing is lackadaisical and the narrative commonalities emerge too late.

The film presents three seemingly unrelated stories set in three different cities. At a Paris hotel, Michael (Liam Neeson) is a Pulitzer Award winning writer working on his latest book. He is separated from his wife Elaine (Kim Basinger) as they both deal with a family tragedy. Michael is joined in Paris by his lover Anna (Olivia Wilde), a vivacious aspiring writer. The relationship between Michael and Anna is passionate and tumultuous as she deals with a secret of her own.

In Rome, Scott (Adrien Brody) is an underhanded garment businessman, specializing in stealing and copying haute couture designs. Scott is still grieving a personal loss, and at bar he meets single mom Monika (Moran Atias). She needs money to rescue her daughter from human smugglers, and Scott finds himself irresistibly drawn to her plight.

In New York, Julia (Mila Kunis) is a perpetually late mother desperately working with her lawyer Theresa (Maria Bello) to win back the right to visit her young son. Julia was accused of harming her child, a charge she denies, but her artist husband Richard (James Franco) now has sole custody. Julia accepts a job as a hotel maid to make ends meet and to prove to a court psychologist that she deserves a chance to spend time with her son.

Written and directed by Paul Haggis, Third Person is tantalizingly close to being a good film, but unfortunately lands on the wrong side of emotionally static. The exploration of loss, yearning and the search for healing is worthwhile and handled with sensitivity. But all three stories start saddled with the heavy baggage of guilt, misfortune and grief, and that is where they stay. A few revelations work their way into the narratives, but the overarching cloud of gloom settles in early and never yields.

Given the prevailing lack of forward progression, at 137 minutes the film is too long. Haggis labours towards a final twist knotting the three stories together, but this is a case of genuinely bad timing. The final revelations tumble forth a few minutes before the end credits, and while the resolution is decent, it arrives well past the point of rescue.

Michael's fierce relationship with Anna is the central story, and works its way to the film's one startling moment. Scott's descent into Monika's world is more of a slow burn and a protracted case of who is playing who, and suffers from too much repetition. With more dedicated exposition, both chapters could be imagined as the basis for fine stand-alone films. In contrast Julia's struggle to prove herself worthy of visiting her son is remarkably slight and a relative mismatch in depth and quality.

The cast almost rescues the film, and the one benefit of the long running time is that many of the stars get to sink their teeth into the characters. Neeson and Wilde are most prominent, but Brody, Atias and Kunis all grab the substantive opportunities to shine.

Third Person looks for balms to help heal open wounds of guilt and regain lost trust. Regrettably, the long-winded routes to salvation prove to be tortuously dour.

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Movie Review: McFarland (2015)

A feel-good sports drama, McFarland (also known as McFarland, USA) delivers exactly what it promises, and does so with a glossy professionalism.

Jim White (Kevin Costner) is a high school football coach with a chequered history of ill-conceived temper tantrums. He accepts a last-chance job as the physical education teacher in the nowheresville town of McFarland, California. His wife Cheryl (Maria Bello) and two daughters are none too pleased to be relocated into what appears to be an unwelcoming foreign culture. The McFarland school's population largely consists of Hispanic kids whose main priority is helping their parents harvest the surrounding agriculture fields. School is very much an afterthought.

White is quickly jettisoned from the football team's coaching staff, but notices that some of the kids are phenomenal long distance runners, as they regularly traverse the large distances between the school and the harvest fields. He assembles a rag tag team of seven students, including Thomas Valles (Carlos Pratts) and the three Diaz brothers, into a long distance running squad and they start entering local meets. Under White's guidance the boys train hard, get better and start to achieve good results. Meanwhile, Jim and Cheryl are gradually drawn into the local fabric of the community.

A Disney Pictures production based on true events and directed by Niki Caro, McFarland is a simple story of one man finding his purpose in life in the unlikeliest of communities. Although filled with a healthy dose of the White Savior narrative, McFarland is an irresistible tale of a group of underdogs lifting themselves up to previously unthinkable heights.

The film is largely predictable and devoid of standout moments. Caro keeps the tone even and the pace consistent as White travels along his arc from reluctant outsider to local hero. The scenes of cross country running are delivered effectively despite their simplicity, Caro focusing on White's nervous anxiety at the finish lines as his boys push themselves towards over-achievement and work their way past rivals.

The local colour and warmth comes through in the many scenes of White gradually getting accepted into the community. He experiences the back-breaking agony of what it means to be a field worker, and the hospitality of local families at meal time. The home life of the Diaz brothers and especially Thomas Valles is the lens through which Caro presents inter-familial social tensions and the struggle to make a living that stands in the way of commitment to school and sports.

Kevin Costner delivers a mature performance as Jim White, maintaining level-headed pragmatism and avoiding most cinematic sports coach cliches.

McFarland is a worthwhile if not groundbreaking story of human achievement told with heart, a linear run through the real field of dreams.

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Movie Review: Payback (1999)

A tongue-in-cheek neo-noir film with a throwback 1970s edge, Payback is a rollicking fun time, filled with sharp dialogue, a smooth anti-hero and jarring violence.

A career criminal known only as Porter (Mel Gibson) has been double crossed, shot and left for dead. With his wife Lynn (Deborah Kara Unger) and partner in crime Val Resnick (Gregg Henry), Porter had just stolen $140,000 from a Chinese gang. But Lynn and Val conspire to relieve Porter of his $70,000 share, with Lynn shooting Porter in the back for good measure, upset that he was having an affair with call girl Rosie (Maria Bello). Val uses most of the money to buy his way back into a powerful criminal organization known as The Outfit, run by Carter (William Devane) and Fairfax (an uncredited James Coburn).

Porter recovers and sets about plotting his revenge with violent methods, demanding the return of his $70,000. Lynn overdoses on heroin, and Porter tracks down Val through drug dealer Stegman (David Paymer). But his exploits attract a crowd, and soon the Chinese gang, including S+M dominatrix Pearl (Lucy Liu) are on his tail, as well as two crooked cops. The closer Porter gets to Val, the more he tangles with the leadership of The Outfit, all the way up to kingpin Bronson (Kris Kristofferson).

Porter, narrating: Crooked cops. Do they come in any other way? If I'd been just a little dumber, I could have joined the force myself.

Directed and co-written by Brian Helgeland, Payback is a gritty, aggressive thriller. With a bad-guy hero carrying a kick-ass, dead-already attitude and Mel Gibson at his absolute cool peak, the film oozes danger with extreme prejudice. The story understandably stretches Porter's capabilities beyond rationality, but otherwise the mix of sardonic humour, punchy action and unconstrained ballsiness among bad guys and worse guys is triumphant.

Carter: There's an old expression that's served me well: "Do not shit where you eat."

A big part of the film's appeal is the investment made in Porter as a character. He is humanized both in his sense of honour among thieves, and through his relationship with Rosie, two flawed sinners drifting sideways until they meet each other. The oily Val Resnick is also provided with plenty of latitude to come to life as the antithesis of Porter, a criminal without scruples just looking for his version of the good life.

Carter, to Resnick: Do you understand your value to the organization, Resnick?...You're a sadist. You lack compunction. That comes in handy.

The everything-including-the-kitchen-sink elements work surprisingly well. Lucy Liu has a blast as the dominatrix turned on by violence; her depraved arousal in bed next to Resnick as he is being threatened by Porter summarizes the film's unconstrained wickedness, culminating in Porter's classic let her work quip. The gun-toting Chinese gang, the crooked cops, and the ever mounting layers of sleaze up the ladder of The Outfit all add to Payback's enjoyable insanity. Veterans William Devane, James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson glide in with mounting levels of evil smarminess.

Pearl, seductively: I've got a few minutes.
Porter: So go boil an egg.

The film's colour palette is a mixture of bleached greys, blacks and browns, appropriate for an underworld rife with backstabbing. Payback goes into the sordid corners of criminality, and lands on a pile of misanthropic revelry.

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Movie Review: Prisoners (2013)

A harrowing and intense child abduction drama, Prisoners ratchets up the tension early and never lets up. A magnificent cast and an atmosphere of quiet yet unpredictable dread creates a superlative experience.

In a suburban Pennsylvania community, Keller and Grace Dover (Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello) and their young daughter Anna head over to Thanksgiving dinner at the house of their friends Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) and their young daughter Joy. Keller is a carpenter and a survivalist, a proudly self-sufficient man. Later in the evening Anna and Joy head back to the Dover's house to play, and go missing. Suspicion immediately surrounds an old-model RV earlier seen parked in the neighbourhood.

Missing persons detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is immediately on the case, the RV is located, and its driver Alex Jones (Paul Dano) arrested and interrogated. Loki is unable to get anything out of Jones, who has a child's IQ and is barely able to construct sentences. Regardless, a search of the RV reveals no suspicious evidence, and neither does a search of Jones' room at the house of his Aunt Holly (Melissa Leo). Loki is forced to release Jones, which enrages Keller. Loki sets off to track down and question known former child molesters living in the area, a process which uncovers another shocking crime in the community. Meanwhile, Keller takes matters into his own hands, seizing Jones and embarking on his own quest for critical information to find his daughter

Directed by Denis Villeneuve, with stunning Roger Deakins cinematography and a moody music score by Jóhann Jóhannsson, Prisoners is an expertly crafted piece of mature cinema. The story gets to its central drama quickly, with Anna and Joy disappearing inside the first 20 minutes, creating a challenge for Villeneuve to sustain a 153 minute film. Not only does he succeed, he excels beyond any expectations. Prisoners sets off in unpredictable directions that are at once deeply satisfying and insanely disturbing, as Keller Dover's devastation is exploited to sharply veer the film off the well-travelled path of abduction movies and into a morass of complex emotions and moral ambiguities.

Much of the credit goes to Aaron Guzikowski's smart script, which studiously avoids every opportunity to take an easy out. Loki is far from perfect, his dialogue exchanges with Dover lacking in empathy and helping to inflame the grieving father. The character of Alex Jones remains stubbornly opaque, there are no easy revelations, and mental blockages padlocked by years of damage remain infuriatingly stubborn. Tormented parents behave like human beings, torn between incomprehensible grief and a lust for vengeance, all while surrendering to escapes offered by alcohol and pills.

Prisoners is not for the faint of heart. There are scenes of blunt torture, badly deformed faces, decayed human and animal corpses, bloodied children's clothes, and, for an extra kick of ickiness, slithering snakes. Dank, dangerous basements and holes in the ground are explored, all with a matter of factness that strips away cheap horror tactics in favour of a more insidious sense of evil-lives-next-door, and maybe also behind the door after that one. This is a film that tackles the horror that lives within without being a horror film, and as a result is acutely disconcerting.

Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal take on the two central roles and create unforgettable characters. Jackman in particular excels as Keller Dover, humanizing a traumatized father and finding the justification for unjustifiable actions in the face of personal anguish. Gyllenhaal moves Loki away from stock heroism towards belief in process and old-fashioned investigative police work, but with the pressure mounting with every passing hour even his relatively dispassionate approach will be tested.

Paul Dano is quite phenomenal in his few scenes, creating a broken, exasperatingly non-functioning man-child who may or may not hold all, some, or no answers. Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard and Melissa Leo round out the impressive cast, and despite sharing screen time they all create in-depth individuals.

Prisoners stares at the demons that live in the community and inside the soul, waiting to be unleashed to serve causes great and small, just and deranged, and causing immense societal suffering.

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Movie Review: Coyote Ugly (2000)

A trite romantic drama set in the world of bar top dancing, Coyote Ugly lines up and kicks out tired clichés to fill the time between the many scenes of hot women cavorting on the bar to loud music.

Violet Sanford (Piper Perabo) leaves her New Jersey home and overweight toll booth operator dad Bill (John Goodman) to seek a career as a songwriter in New York City. Violet suffers from stage fright, a condition that also afflicted her late mother, and her inability to perform in front of a crowd hampers opportunities to get her material heard. Meanwhile she can't break through the front door of any of the record companies or talent agencies, and her apartment is robbed to compound her misery. Violet does meet handsome Australian burger flipper Kevin O'Donnell (Adam Garcia), and they start a relationship.

Desperate to find some employment, Violet stumbles onto work at Coyote Ugly, a rough and tumble bar owned by Lil Lovell (Maria Bello, portraying the real-life bar owner), where attractive waitresses including Cammie (Izabella Miko) and Rachel (Bridget Moynahan) rev up customers with seductive bar top dances. The timid Violet can't join the dancing but eventually finds the courage to sing along with the jukebox. Kevin insists that she not give up on her dream to be a serious song writer and prods her to overcome her stage fright. Her dad Bill is crushed when he discovers what kind of bar Violet is working at, and Kevin's pushiness threatens to rupture the one remaining good relationship in her life.

Directed by David McNally and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Coyote Ugly is based on a magazine article by none other than Elizabeth Gilbert, who would go on to write more mawkish material like Eat, Pray, Love. The film is an unapologetic excuse to feature plenty of bar top dancing scenes, micro-edited down to artificially create energy and remove any traces of talent on either side of the camera. With a script apparently penned by an uncoordinated army of eight writers, Coyote Ugly is a standard innocent-girl-in-the-big-bad-city-falls-in-love story, the dancing scenes attempting to chase away the dullness but only adding another layer of asininity.

In this world a hip shake and a shoulder shimmy are inexplicably enough to send bar patrons into a whooping frenzy while the alcohol pumps kick into overdrive. The girls prance up and down the bar, spraying customers with water, juggling bottles and breathing fire, creating a wet dream environment for the young adolescent mind. For everyone else, no amount of gyration can cover up the utter banality of both the story and the action at the bar.

The struggle-to-make-it and romance elements are pulled from the laborious drawer. Every career door slams in Violet's face with a thud, stage fright is a hackneyed emotional hurdle, and lover-to-be Kevin is a remarkably charming and available prince in cook's clothing but of course he hides his own deep dark sob story.

Coyote Ugly is saved from being an utter debacle by Piper Perabo, the relative unknown plucked from obscurity and dropped into the lead role for a big budget production. Perabo is much better than the material deserves, and she somehow rises above the dross to deliver a relatively genuine and empathetic performance. Perabo combines small town smarts with a sharp edge and quick wit, and avoids most of the dopey innocence that typically accompanies the role.

The rest of the cast is more consistent with the sluggish story, with Goodman in particular veering towards obesity in both weight and melodrama. Tyra Banks has a small role as a former bar top dancer and LeAnn Rimes appears briefly as herself.

Coyote Ugly refers to waking up sober after a one night stand, and feeling the urge to gnaw off, coyote style, an arm trapped under a repulsive man. The film is not quite that bad, but does leave behind the sense of time wasted chasing an ill-conceived impulse.

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Movie Review: Assault On Precinct 13 (2005)

A police-under-siege action thriller, Assault On Precinct 13 tries to find some balance between a hail of bullets and character interaction. But by dumping logic into the Detroit snow, the film achieves guff rather than grit.

Undercover detective Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke) leads his small team into a botched drug sting operation, resulting in the loss of two officers. Eight months later, Roenick is still traumatized, killing time at a desk job and making no progress with psychiatrist Alex Sabian (Maria Bello). It's New Year's Eve, Detroit is smothered by a snow storm, and Roenick, secretary Drea de Matteo (Iris Ferry) and veteran Sergeant Jasper O'Shea (Brian Dennehy) are staffing the otherwise abandoned Precinct 13 for the final time before the station closes for good.

Crime boss Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne) is arrested after killing an undercover police officer, and the snow storm forces his prisoner bus to unexpectedly divert to Precinct 13 for the night. Roenick places the high profile Bishop and a bunch of petty prisoners into the station prison cells, and soon enough Precinct 13 is under armed assault. It's not Bishop's men who are out to free him, but rather rogue cops under the leadership of Captain Marcus Duvall (Gabriel Byrne) who need to silence Bishop and all witnesses before he reveals the depth of corruption in the police ranks. With no help in sight, Roenick has to hunker down for the night and organize a defence, which forces him into an uneasy alliance with Bishop.

A remake of the 1976 John Carpenter film of the same name, Assault On Precinct 13 features no shortage of gruesome action. Bullets to the brain and icicles in the eye are just some of the treats director Jean-François Richet throws at the screen for full splatter effect. On the more cerebral level, there is an honest attempt to give Roenick a backstory, but the narrative is not well served by the very tired premise of the hero hiding in a bottle to escape a bad episode in his life.

The third and final attempt to distinguish the film is the complex relationship between Roenick the honest cop and Bishop the master crime lord, two men from opposite sides of the law forced to work together against a common enemy for just one night. Thanks to fine performances from Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne, the dynamic between the reluctant protector and the supremely confidant target brings a trace of depth to an otherwise rudimentary film.

But any good intentions to deliver a quality thriller are severely undermined by the stupid bad guys syndrome, which ultimately obliterates any promise held by the film. Gabriel Byrne as lead villain Marcus Duvall fails miserably in a lame attempt to convey evil intent. Meanwhile his army of heavily armed and fully equipped murderous men are somehow outsmarted in every confrontation by Roenick and his ragtag group made up of prisoners, one beat cop and a couple of civilians.

There is no escaping the sense that the assault could have been over in about three and half minutes had Duvall brought his full force to bear, as any smart antagonist aiming to murder a group of people in cold blood would have done. Matters are made much worse when the equivalent of a mini-war rages for hours at Precinct 13, and no external force responds to all the gun fire. Detroit may be bad; it's not this lawless, yet.

Inside the besieged building Maria Bello gets a couple of good scenes but then dissolves into victimhood when the shooting starts, while Iris Ferry's take on secretary Drea as an oversexed doll seems to be entirely incongruous. The other prisoners offer roles for John Leguizamo and rapper Ja Rule.

Assault On Precinct 13 ends at daybreak with combatants pursuing each other in a forest shrouded by fog. They can't see each other, and neither can anyone see much point in this unnecessary remake.

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Movie Review: Thank You For Smoking (2005)

A workplace dramatic comedy, Thank You For Smoking examines the distasteful careers of those who lobby for industries that knowingly kill people. With biting satire, the story of a cigarette industry spokesperson cleverly humanizes the monsters behind the seemingly heartless statements.

Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) is the charismatic public face for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, an industry-funded advocacy group pumping out dubious science and responding to attacks on big tobacco. Nick is really good at his job, and becomes a well-known and publicly reviled figure, to the point of receiving death threats. His regular lunch companions include Polly (Maria Bello) and Bobby Jay (David Koechner), who hold similar jobs for the alcohol and firearms industries respectively.

Nick's nemeses includes Senator Ortolan Finistirre (William H. Macy), who is leading the charge for more graphic warnings on cigarette packages. With sales figures falling, Nick impresses his boss "BR" (J.K. Simmons) and tobacco tycoon "the Captain" (Robert Duvall) by suggesting that the industry pay for high profile movie stars to start smoking again in big-budget productions. This leads to a surreal meeting with Hollywood uber talent representative Jeff Megall (Rob Lowe).

Nick is divorced, but is nevertheless trying to be good dad to his inquisitive son Joey (Cameron Bright), who joins Nick on some of his business travels. On one trip they visit the actor Lorne Lutch (Sam Elliott), better known as the iconic Marlboro Man, but who is now dying of cancer. Meanwhile investigative journalist Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes) wants to profile Nick, and they start a scorching sexual relationship over a series of interviews. Just when everything appears to be going swimmingly well for Nick, his career is suddenly disrupted on all fronts.

The first major feature written and directed by Jason Reitman, Thank You For Smoking takes a clever look at the distasteful edges of a free civil society. Through the character of Nick, the film explores the themes of freedom of choice, fatherhood in the face of notoriety, and a capitalistic, hypocritical society where politicians and industrialists wage battle. Everything and everyone has a price, cheese can be compared to cigarettes, the dream machine of Hollywood is a giant advertising space, and science is the first casualty amidst the sleaze, spin, and scandal.

Produced on a modest budget, Thank You For Smoking is sly, witty, and compact at 92 minutes. Reitman packs the film with quick vignettes from Nick's life, the film unfolding with a mischievous attitude to match Nick's unapologetic stance. Nick's task is not about proving that cigarettes don't kill; rather, it's about obfuscating his way through the next argument so that the relevant facts are buried in an avalanche of spin.

The film succeeds in turning Nick into not quite a hero, but rather a necessary presence, a product of a system that refuses to curtail freedom and allows every accused the right to buy the best defence. That a smart, handsome and charismatic man is attracted to the job is then simply a matter of matching talent to the professional requirement, no different than a slick lawyer standing up for a seemingly blatantly guilty defendant in court.

Reitman also offers up Nick as a victim. As the face of a reviled industry, Nick not only has to deal with maniacs out to harm him, but his son also suffers the misfortune of having a nationally despised father. Nick is not deterred, and insists on exposing young Joey to the world of lobbying and advocacy. Joey gets to see the behind the scenes world where a dying man gets to choose between a briefcase full of money and freedom of speech, and where movie agents control how many smoke rings will be puffed on screen, and for what price.

Aaron Eckhart picks up the film and runs with it, enjoying one of the most prominent roles of his screen career and maximizing the impish side of his persona to create a man who is likeable in spite of himself. All the supporting cast members get into the swing of events and deliver rollicking support, with Elliott, Simmons, Duvall, Holmes and Macy enjoying their moments despite relatively limited screen time.

Every operator, no matter how slick, has a weakness, and Nick is about to discover his vulnerability in the most publicly humiliating way. He magnetism breeds overconfidence, and he will face his greatest crisis just when his industry needs him the most. However, in a society built on selling without conscience, there will always be welcome space for the modern fast talking, quick thinking confidence man.

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Movie Review: Grown Ups (2010)

A low-brow comedy slapped together with nominal effort, Grown Ups is almost condescending in its minimalist attitude and lack of talent application.

A group of five snotty 12 year old friends overachieve and win a school basketball championship. Thirty years later, their beloved coach dies, and they gather for his funeral along with their wives and kids. Lenny (Adam Sandler) is now a successful talent agent and is married to uppity fashion designer Roxanne (Salma Hayek). Eric (Kevin James) has been less successful in his career and is married to Sally (Maria Bello), who is still breastfeeding their four-year-old son. Kurt (Chris Rock) is a stay-at-home-dad, married to the pregnant Deanne (Maya Rudolph) and having to tolerate her loudmouth mother (Ebony Jo-Ann).

The group is rounded out by Higgy (David Spade), who never settled down and is still chasing women, and Rob (Rob Schneider), who always had a thing for older women and is now married to the much older Gloria (Joyce Van Patten). After spreading the coach's ashes, the group settles down for a countryside weekend of fun and adventure, and they learn a few truths and air out some issues related to the past and their relationships.

Purportedly directed by Dennis Dugan and co-written by Sandler, Grown Ups is as vacuous as it sounds. The project smells of a group of comedians gathering for a week of fun, ad-libbing most of the dialogue, cracking a few jokes, and wrapping the whole thing in the flimsiest of premises to pretend that this is a film worth releasing. Somehow the movie reportedly cost $80 million, while what's on the screen resembles a glorified family vacation video. More remarkably, Grown Ups grossed $270 million, testament to the dumb power of the lowest common denominator.

There is undoubted talent involved, and there are some laughs to be had, all of the really silly variety. But the lame pranks outnumber the good moments by a good two to one margin, and all the scenes involving Rock, Spade and Schneider are more awkward than funny. Sandler and James do better, and they are halfway believable as fathers doing their best to deal with middle-age issues. Steve Buscemi shows up late as a member of the local dimwits who challenge Lenny and his friends to a rematch of that famous grade school basketball final.

The ladies have way too much talent to be involved in this project. Hayek, Bello and Rudolph hide their embarrassment, deliver their punchlines with no conviction, and scurry off to cash their cheques.

Despite offering some laughs, Grown Ups is nothing if not juvenile.

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The Movies Of Maria Bello

All movies starring Maria Bello and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Payback (1999)

Coyote Ugly (2000)

The Cooler (2003)

Assault On Precinct 13 (2005)

A History Of Violence (2005)

Thank You For Smoking (2005)

World Trade Center (2006)

Butterfly On A Wheel (2007)

The Company Men (2010)

Grown Ups (2010)

Prisoners (2013)

Third Person (2013)

McFarland (2015)

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

Movie Review: World Trade Center (2006)

A survival story set beneath the collapsed towers and based on real events, World Trade Center salutes the human spirit but struggles in its second half to build a cinematic experience out of a mostly static personal tragedy.

On the morning of September 11, 2001 in New York City, Port Authority Police officers John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) are among a large group of emergency responders dispatched to the World Trade Center after planes piloted by terrorists strike the twin towers. In the plaza level, McLoughlin is preparing his men to help in the rescue efforts when the South Tower collapses. In an instant McLoughlin orders his men to take refuge near the elevator shaft. He survives along with Jimeno, although both are trapped by the rubble and rendered immobile.

Officer Dominick Pezzulo (Jay Hernandez) also survives and is able to extricate himself, but is unable to free Jimeno and is then killed when the North Tower collapses. Both badly hurt, McLoughlin and Jimeno have to keep themselves alive by raising each others' spirits, while their wives Donna McLoughlin (Maria Bello) and Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and families are consumed by worry and the lack of information.

World Trade Center is a respectful film, director Oliver Stone steering well clear of his tendencies for controversies and conspiracies, and creating an ultimately simple story of courage and rescue. The film also avoids, to a large degree, any spectacular images of airplanes striking buildings, limiting the terrorism acts to small television screens as witnessed by most of the world at the time. The performances match the tone, Cage and Peña creating distinct personalities and teasing out the men's human side as they reveal more personal details of their lives to each other as their ordeal drags on. Bello and Gyllenhaal do all that is asked of them, police wives struck with the panic of the worst possible fears coming true.

The limitations of the film's experience are set by the inherent nature of the story. Once the buildings fall, there is little forward momentum, and World Trade Center is essentially caught in the same rubble as the two officers. There is only so much drama that can be generated from men fighting to stay awake and alive while their families anxiously await any news. Stone has to drag out this phase for close to an hour, and the film suffers from it. In contrast, once the rescue starts, it feels rushed and muddled, Stone and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey unable to coherently reconstruct the arduous work of freeing and pulling out the two men from the tightest of confines.

What the film does do well is present the unfathomably disastrous attacks from the perspective of two men doing their job, getting caught up in the chaos, uncertainty and confusion of events that no one was prepared for, and finding themselves trapped under the rubble of two collapsed buildings and in excruciating pain. A claustrophobic sense of desperation becomes the enemy, the men's only link to the outside world a shaft of light above Jimeno.

They keep each other alive through sheer companionship, clinging to precious life when all around them spells death. Silently, the film forces the question about how many others faced the same fate and were not saved. The impromptu actions of Marines Dave Karnes and Jason Thomas led to the fortuitous rescue of McLoughlin and Jimeno; many others, equally trapped, likely waited in vain before perishing. The impact of the film comes from the realization that for 2,977 families other than the relatives of McLoughlin and Jimeno, the days after September 11 ended very differently, the frantic search for answers met with nothing but silence and ultimately, the most grim of confirmations.

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Movie Review: The Company Men (2010)

A corporate downsizing drama, The Company Men faithfully reveals the trauma caused by a contracting economy. The film works as a straightforward chronicle but without capturing any emotional resonance.

In a suburb of Boston, Global Transportation Systems (GTX) is a large corporation specializing in shipbuilding. With the great economic recession in full swing, business is down, the firm's share price is being hammered, and management responds with plant closures and brutal staffing cuts. CEO James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson) and his HR manager Sally Wilcox (Maria Bello) set their sights on the underperforming division run by Salinger's longtime friend and first employee Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones).

While McClary survives the cuts along with veteran salesperson Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper), the casualties include young and ambitious marketing executive Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), who has an MBA, a large house, a larger mortgage, a Porsche, golf club membership, wife Maggie (Rosemarie DeWitt) and two kids. Bobby struggles to come to terms with the seismic impact to his personal life, and refuses to accept the economic crisis that has descended on his household. But with months passing and no prospects for another corporate job, he has to seriously consider accepting the humiliating offer from his brother in-law Jack (Kevin Costner) to help out on a construction site. Meanwhile, back at GTX, the rift between the considerate Gene and the much more ruthless James grows wider, as another round of cuts looms.

The Company Man has sincere intentions to delve into the human cost of job losses. Writer / director (and co-producer) John Wells does a fine job of looking at the carnage from all perspectives, including the people at the top pulling the trigger (Salinger and Sally); the senior manager caught in the guilt-drenched middle (Gene), the susceptible old-timer (Phil), the young, relatively cheap early victim (Bobby), and the blue collar worker all too familiar with hard times (Jack). The main focus is on Bobby, but The Company Men gives each of the main characters the opportunity to tell a distinctive story.

And through Bobby's story The Company Men does question the priorities of the young and ambitious, as wealth is translated into a mountain of debt that leaves no buffer. A smaller house, a practical car, and less golf would have allowed Bobby to ride out the recession in better shape. At the top, the rich find the ways to get richer. Salinger's reward for initiating deep cuts is an improved share price and the opportunity to sell the company and cash in on a new fortune.

But while the film functions smoothly, it never latches onto an emotional vein. Unlike Up In The Air (2009), The Company Men does not get under the skin of any of the protagonists, and remains a superficial if well-meaning study of people struggling through a crisis. Almost mechanically, Bobby goes through the academic stages of anger, denial, and dejection before being picked up by his wife Maggie once he reaches rock-bottom. Gene demonstrates why he is not the CEO of GTX by displaying too much caring for people rather than share price. And Phil represents the most exposed corporate soldier, the loyal employee who worked his way up, but has been stagnant for a long time and is now too old to be re-trainable. All good stories that unfold with integrity, but in the context of an imploding economy, all also rather predictable, and Wells doesn't find too many new angles to explore.

The cast of dependable stalwarts is consistently good, and while Affleck, Jones, Nelson and Cooper perform admirably with no surprises, Kevin Costner and Rosemarie DeWitt grab the opportunity to shine in excellent supporting roles.

With their company exposed to an economic crisis, all of The Company Men will experience tumultuous losses. For most of the men the pain is raw and visible. And those who emerge from the crisis with much greater material wealth and little empathy for the misfortune of others have actually suffered most of all. They have lost their soul, although they may not know it.

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