Movie Review: Jane Got A Gun (2015)

A traditional western but with a female protagonist, Jane Got A Gun does everything right but nothing too special.

The setting is an isolated home in New Mexico of the 1870s. Bill "Ham" Hammond (Noah Emmerich) is shot-up by the Bishop brothers, but makes it back to his wife Jane (Natalie Portman), warning her the Bishops are continuing their pursuit. With Ham now bedridden, Jane turns to her ex-fiance Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton) for help. He is still sore about how their relationship ended and reluctant to get involved.

As Jane steels herself to confront John Bishop (Ewan McGregor), his brother Vic (Boyd Holbrook) and henchman Fitchum (Rodrigo Santoro), in flashback her history with Dan, Ham and the Bishops before and after the chaos of the Civil War is revealed.

Overcoming a troubled production history, Jane Got A Gun is a sturdy western, checking off many prerequisite elements without necessarily shining in any. Director Gavin O'Connor delivers an auspicious tale with multiple layers of revenge, a love triangle, a looming backs-to-the-wall showdown featuring outnumbered heroes, and a post-Civil War backdrop contributing to unmet expectations.

The film attempts to invest in characters and avoids headlong rushes into action. Pleasing Mandy Walker cinematography, judicious use of flashbacks, and a level-headed tone convey a cautious approach to frontier-inspired human struggles.

The feminist perspective is appropriately modulated for the era. Natalie Portman is in suitably humourless form and the Brian Duffield story sustains its intent for a headstrong woman to drive the narrative. Jane's story pulls together the threads between Dan, Ham and John Bishop, but O'Connor avoids any jarring anachronisms and Jane eventually receives crucial help to improve the odds.

The compact running length of 98 minutes is admirable, but a couple of areas fall short. The nighttime climactic confrontation between good and evil suffers from jerky camerawork, frustrating editing and a general sense of confused visuals. The clipped definition of lead antagonist John Bishop is the most obvious shortcoming. O'Connor does conjure up impressive if illogical vistas of the Bishop gang riding aimlessly enmasse in hostile desert terrain, but Ewan McGregor gets precious few scenes to make an impact, leaving the movie with a dark side void.

Jane not only gets a gun, she also gets herself a satisfyingly old-fashioned if not wholly inspiring western.

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Movie Review: Super 8 (2011)

A science fiction thriller, Super 8 borrows freely from the legacy of producer Steven Spielberg to create an engaging monster mystery with plenty of character texture.

It's 1979 in the small town of Lillian, Ohio. Middle schooler Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) loses his mom Elizabeth to a workplace accident, straining his relationship with his father Jack (Kyle Chandler), the sheriff's deputy. Four months later, Joe is helping best friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) film a Super 8 zombie noir thriller for a school competition. They recruit the aloof Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) to be a member of the acting team.

Joe has a crush on Alice, although her father Louie (Ron Eldard) has a dark history related to Elizabeth's death. While out filming at midnight near the rail tracks, the students witness a massive train derailment caused by a pick-up truck driven by science teacher Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman). A monster is unleashed from the train, and soon US Air Force types under the command of Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich) are crawling all over the landscape, while the angry monster unleashes destructive mayhem.

Super 8 draws direct inspiration from Spielberg's alien and monster classics including E.T., Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Jaws and Jurassic Park. Common Spielbergian themes of coming-of-age in contexts of parental loss, incompetent authority figures, misunderstood beings, and peer friendships are prominent. Director and writer J.J. Abrams pays frequent but respectful tribute to his producer, but nevertheless crafts his own version of kids solving a mystery in an adult world gone mad, while a misplaced monster suffers mistreatment.

The carnage and special effects in the train crash scene are overdone to childish levels, and the snippet views of the monster are distractingly over-edited and continue too deep into the movie. But otherwise Abrams constructs a satisfying story with plenty of human interest. The dynamics between the kids alternate between spiky and sweet, but always anchor the film, while the two dads, both fighting against the same demon from the past, add to the spice. 

The small town feel and late 1970s vibe provide the film with a warm glow of nostalgia for the Spielberg generation. And while the Super 8 film-within-a-film is mainly deployed for comic effect, the drama of an evasive monster on the loose with its own emotions of fear and longing for home gradually builds intensity. 

Late in the film the characters start to understand and interact with the alien, and here Abrams relies on the familiarity of his core themes to take advantage of narrative shortcuts and charges at full speed towards a climax that is at once rushed, familiar and over-reliant on special effects. Nighttime falls, music soars, lights flash, characters stare in awe, and one final poignant moment punctuates a finale that follows every detail of Spielberg's template. When the formula is tried and tested, studious application is a simple path to success.

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Movie Review: The Truman Show (1998)

An astute commentary on television culture's evolution, The Truman Show also explores the limits of human tolerance for the ordinary. The film is an engrossing examination of the societal condition, and as fascinating as its central show.

Television producer Christof (Ed Harris) has created a monstrously successful live, perpetual television show, tracking the minute-by-minute life of Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), the only non-actor. Inserted from birth into a custom-built community of Seahaven, which is one humongous dome-enclosed and climate-controlled film set, Truman has no idea that every second of his life is being broadcast live to millions of viewers, using more than 5,000 hidden cameras.

Truman think he works as an insurance agent, and believes he is married to Meryl (Laura Linney, as actress Hannah Gill), that his best friend since school is Marlon (Roland Emmerich, as actor Louis Coltrane), and that his father died in a boating accident. Over the show's remarkable 30 years of continuous broadcast, various outside activists have tried to infiltrate the set to free Truman. He has never forgotten Lauren (Natascha McElhone, as actress Sylvia), an extra hired to play a high school student who tried to help him escape before she was bundled off the set. When the actor who played his father unexpectedly reappears in his life, Truman starts to suspect that something is not quite right and starts to question the world around him.

Directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol, The Truman Show expands the reality television concept to an unsettling edge, and in the process contemplates human boundaries of control, comfort and compliance. The film is thoughtful, often profound, but also tackles its serious issue with humour. The act of viewing and enjoying Truman's story is itself part of the societal guilty-pleasure dilemma. The film is also unsettling enough to raise doubts about any life: if Truman is so deluded about his reality, who is to say what is defined as real and what is not?

Everything in Seahaven is designed to be idyllic, and to convince Truman that he has no reason to want to leave. Ironically, Christof's attempts to instill the emotional fear of leaving and segregate Truman from the outside world create the most compelling moments of drama for the viewers of the show. And once Truman starts to suspect that everything is too perfect, it becomes increasingly difficult to convince him to settle for his artificial surroundings.

The film plays on the parallel themes of obsession with other people's lives, and the essence of the human condition. The viewers of the show are transfixed, immobile, living their lives vicariously through the television set and following Truman's ups and downs rather than getting on with creating their own memories. The further Truman pushes to escape his sad life, the more entrenched the viewers are in front of the television. It's a sad indictment of the culture, where society cares more about an artificial world labelled as reality than actual existence.

Also permeating through the film is Christof's relationship with Truman, presented as a surrogate for the mysteries of the bond between God and man. Christof loves Truman like a son, and wants him to be safe and content. But Truman has free will, and eventually learns to use it. As much as Christof will try and send cosmic signals about what may be the appropriate path, it will ultimately be man's actions that will govern his fate.

The Truman Show is one of Jim Carrey's most complete performances. Staying as far as he can from the elastic mugging and physical comedy which made him famous, Carrey as Truman conveys innocence, curiosity and ultimately a willingness to question and confront. In addition to excellent supporting performances from Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich and Natascha McElhone, the cast also includes Paul Giamatti as Christof's chief control room manager.

What is comfortable is not what is necessarily right. The Truman Show finds the spirit of a simple man yearning for a challenge, part of the never ending quest to self-define happiness.

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The Movies Of Noah Emmerich

All movies starring Noah Emmerich and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Beautiful Girls (1996)

Cop Land (1997)

The Truman Show (1998)

Frequency (2000)

Pride And Glory (2008)

Fair Game (2010)

Trust (2010)

Super 8 (2011)

Blood Ties (2013)

Jane Got A Gun (2015)

The Good Nurse (2022)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Pride And Glory (2008)

A police corruption procedural drama, Pride And Glory flirts with a promising premise, but fails to deliver any new angles and dissolves into sub-standard territory.

The New York City police department is thrown into turmoil when four officers on the anti-narcotics unit are killed in a shootout with criminal Angel Tezo and his gang. The slain men all reported to Francis "Franny" Tierney Jr. (Noah Emmerich), a well-meaning commanding officer and the son of Police Chief Frank Tierney Sr. (Jon Voight). Frank Sr. convinces his other son Ray (Edward Norton) to help in the shooting investigation. Ray previously was involved in the drug wars, but grew disillusioned when he was embroiled in a false testimony scandal.

Officer Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) is a member of the anti-drug squad, and is also the brother-in-law of Franny and Ray. Jimmy is the informal leader of a group of corrupt officers receiving large payments from drug dealers. The four officers were killed because Jimmy was trying to squeeze out Tezo in favour of Casado, another crime king. Ray reluctantly starts his investigation, and it does not take him long to uncover the ring of corruption within the police department, triggering a moral and familial dilemma involving Ray, Frank, Franny and Jimmy.

Treading over the well-worn territory of honour, deep-seated corruption, and the police officer's unspoken code of conduct, Pride And Glory adds the interesting twist of multiple members of the same family embroiled in a swirling controversy triggered by the slaughter of four officers. But the promising start slowly but surely gives way to sideways drift, and eventually the movie arrives at a complete stall.

The screenplay by Gavin O'Connor and Joe Carnahan fails to capitalize on the set-up, leaving the characters undeveloped and the actors struggling with plenty of tough words but little context. The film defaults to a series of scenes with men angry at each other and doubling up on threats, but the details of the corruption, the motivations and the backstories are at best hinted at and more commonly just ignored.

There are a few action scenes but these are more muddled than effective, director Gavin O'Connor proving incapable of adding any zest to the proceedings. The frazzled ending, once it arrives after an overlong 130 minutes of running time, is a disastrous mano-a-mano fist fight followed by a botched robbery and a flash mob that just happens to be at the right place at the right time to tidy up the plot in a most unsatisfying manner.

Edward Norton is the one actor to emerge with any credit, and he tries to infuse Ray with some self-reflection and evidence of a troubled past to round out the character. Jon Voight, Colin Farrell and Noah Emmerich are sturdy but hampered by the unimaginative writing. The women in the lives of the police officers are reduced to the bittiest of meaningless roles, the opportunity to properly delve into family pressures once again registering as a bad miss.

Pride And Glory flickers early, but is then extinguished into blandness and is ultimately as forgettable as its title.

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