Movie Review: One Battle After Another (2025)

Genre: Action Thriller  

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson  

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti  

Running Time: 162 minutes  

Synopsis: Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are lovers and members of the far-left revolutionary group "French 75". They conduct operations to free detained illegal immigrants, and in one of their raids Perfidia humiliates military officer Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). He develops an intense hatred towards the group while also lusting after Perfidia, who is soon pregnant. After giving birth to Willa she is arrested and the rest of the group members flee into hiding, with Bob looking after Willa as his daughter. Sixteen years later Lockjaw has reasons to find Willa (Chase Infiniti), triggering a mad pursuit and forcing the reluctant Bob back into action.

What Works Well: This is a high energy chase thriller, powered by an edgy political and racial premise, memorable characters, spiky humour, and an original, tense and pulsing music soundtrack. Writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson pokes fun at left and right alike, anti-government revolutionaries devolving into potheads and right-wing nut-cases wallowing in contradictions. With no middle ground, the future available to Willa is grim, as she awakens to a mother who turned traitor, a father lacking any motivation, and worst of all, she's the only high school kid not allowed a cell phone. Teyana Taylor is a force of nature as Perfidia, and the film is poorer when she is sidelined, but Benicio Del Toro fills the gap as an unflappable martial arts instructor.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time is beyond bloated, with lax editing resulting in almost every scene running well longer than needed. And all the extra time is invested in stylistic extensions rather than the human condition: the main characters barely progress in outlook, understanding, or self-awareness.

Key Quote:

Lockjaw (in a meeting with white nationalists): Gentlemen, I have engaged the enemy face to face in battle, and in the dark alleys and shadows of espionage. I was once raped in reverse.

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Movie Review: At Close Range (1986)

Genre: Crime Drama  

Director: James Foley  

Starring: Sean Penn, Christopher Walken, Mary Stuart Masterson, Christopher Penn, Tracey Walter, David Strathairn  

Running Time: 115 minutes  

Synopsis: The setting is rural Pennsylvania in the late 1970s. Shiftless youth Brad Whitewood Jr. (Sean Penn) starts a romance with local girl Terry (Mary Stuart Masterson), and reconnects with his absentee father Brad Sr. (Christopher Walken), who leads a hardened gang engaged in industrial scale theft. Eager to raise money to start a new life with Terry, Brad Jr. is drawn into his father's orbit, with unexpected consequences for his dim brother Tommy (Christopher Penn) and their group of friends.

What Works Well: Based on actual events involving the Johnston crime clan, this is a brooding father-son drama bathed in lyrical aesthetics and moody characterizations. The cinematography (by Juan Ruiz Anchía) and artistic lighting create landscapes of forgotten Americana where youth routinely resort to alcohol and drugs to escape adult-created unattractive realities. Christopher Walken dominates his scenes with the dead-eyed charm of a cold-hearted career criminal, and a muscular Sean Penn brings a winning combination of likeability and intensity in search of upgraded prospects. The opening notes of Madonna's Live To Tell provide ominous soundtrack underpinnings.

What Does Not Work As Well: For long durations, the content is sparse and the pace slow. Director James Foley enjoys stylistic immersions in scene after scene of attitude setting, the lack of narrative thrust increasingly apparent. As a result, the exclamatory events in the final 20 minutes are more of an ill-fitting jolt than an enhancement.

Conclusion: Ferocity as a feeling rather than a force.



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Movie Review: Flag Day (2021)

Genre: Drama

Director: Sean Penn

Starring: Sean Penn, Dylan Penn

Running Time: 108 minutes

Synopsis: In 1992, Jennifer Vogel (Dylan Penn) learns that her free-spirited father John (Sean Penn) has been running a massive currency counterfeiting operation. Their history together is recalled in flashbacks. As a young girl Jennifer idolized her dad, even after he walked out on the family and left her mother Patty (Katheryn Winnick) penniless. A teenaged Jennifer is forced to flee her abusive step-dad and reconnects with John, but he is always either concocting far-fetched schemes or engaged in shady criminal activity.

What Works Well: A family production featuring dad Sean directing his offspring Dylan and Hopper (as John Vogel's son Nick), the adaptation of Jennifer Vogel's book is a touching yet frequently grim true story of a daughter letting go of parental hero-worship and coming to terms with her father's reality. Dylan occupies the film's core with a magnetically fragile performance, while Sean wraps her past and present with Americana magic. Wondrous rural landscapes serve as both poetic memories and the canvass for the warped version of the American dream, where scoundrels like John Vogel thrive in their own delusions.

What Does Not Work As Well: Penn the director rarely controls the frequent emotional outbursts of Penn the actor, resulting in a triumph of quantity over quality. The first-act narration creeps towards naive profundity anchored by weighted prose.

Conclusion: A heartfelt, sorrow-filled, and achingly beautiful father-daughter journey to authenticity.



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Movie Review: I Am Sam (2001)

A parenting drama with legal sparring, I Am Sam is sentimental but also well-intentioned and brilliantly acted.

Starbucks employee Sam Dawson (Sean Penn) has an intellectual disability and a mental age of seven. A homeless woman gives birth to his child and immediately walks out on him. Sam manages to raise his daughter Lucy through the infant years with the help of his reclusive neighbour Annie (Dianne Wiest), and a group of friends with disabilities.

Once Lucy (Dakota Fanning) reaches the age of eight, she experiences bullying and becomes aware of her father's condition. She starts to hold back her academic development to avoid embarrassing her dad. Social services move in and declare Sam incapable of parenting his daughter. He turns to high-powered lawyer Rita Williams (Michelle Pfeiffer) to fight the decision. Rita is initially not interested, but eventually accepts the case pro-bono, while Lucy is placed in the foster home of Miranda Carpenter (Laura Dern).

Asking questions about what defines good parenting, I Am Sam is comfortable offering a range of answers. The script by Kristine Johnson and director Jessie Nelson ponders whether love is enough, and the role of intellectual capacity in determining the need for state intervention. The narrative evolution is careful to avoid villains in this debate: everyone is kind, including the lawyer arguing Sam is ill equipped to help Lucy's growth into an adult. To maintain balance, Sam is portrayed as loving and good natured but also often overwhelmed and childlike.

As a result, Nelson is drawn towards a saccharine tone. Almost every scene and all the main characters are propelled by a purity of purpose designed to elicit sympathy. Sam and Lucy are immensely likeable, and lawyer Rita starts on the frantic partner track but is always moving towards her destiny of heroically representing the underdog. All the secondary characters including neighbour Annie, Sam's friends, and foster parent Miranda are manicured into ideal versions.

Sean Penn delivers an unforgettable performance, combining elements of Tom Hanks from Forrest Gump with Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man to create an affecting child-man in Sam. He can function as a coffee shop table server and does just enough to get by, the songs of the Beatles and the movie Kramer vs. Kramer significant influences on his behaviour. Susceptible to awkward tantrums when frustrated, he can read at the level of Dr. Seuss's I Am Sam, but struggles when Lucy's school assignments move beyond the rudimentary.

The supporting cast is stellar, particularly bright-eyed Dakota Fanning as Lucy. She enhances every scene without descending into irony or precociousness. 

At 132 minutes I Am Sam does go on, and the final act features some unnecessary back and forth nighttime trips instigated by Lucy. Any actual parent at any intellectual level would have immediately clamped down on such nonsense. But here all actions stem from love and goodness, positive light allowed to overwhelm any hints of darkness.

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Movie Review: Fair Game (2010)

A politics-and-espionage thriller, Fair Game combines tense spy operations with the sordid world of dirty politics run by ideologues 

In Washington DC, CIA agent Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) is married to Joseph Wilson (Sean Penn), a former ambassador to African countries and now a consultant. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, officials from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney pressure the CIA to find evidence of a non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. 

Plame helps to debunk claims that shipments of aluminium tubes to Iraq are being used to build uranium enrichment centrifuges, and the agency sends Wilson to Niger where he determines reports of a uranium yellowcake shipment to Iraq are fake. Plame also runs dangerous missions to connect with on-the-ground Iraqi scientists to get closer to the truth.

Cheney's adviser Scooter Libby (David Andrews) insists the CIA analysts are wrong and the administration proceeds to build a false case for an invasion based on willful evidence misinterpretation. Wilson is incensed his Niger findings were twisted into a justification for war, and goes public in an op-ed piece, exposing the administration's incompetence. The blowback from the White House threatens to destroy Valerie's life.

Based on real events, Fair Game is a fast-paced gallop through the dangerous dual worlds of spies and politicians, with real people caught in the middle. Doug Liman directs from a script by Jez and John Butterworth, and maintains focus on Valerie and John as a couple believing they are doing all the right things, sacrificing marital harmony to serve their country, only to be betrayed by their own government.

The pacing is brisk but always coherent. Liman covers many angles of the story in quick snippets, capturing the clash between Valerie's hectic career hopping between international hotspots and a domestic life buckling under the strain. The scenes from the White House are just as expeditious, bordering on abrupt, the film relying on historical character familiarity to avoid introducing all the buffoons. 

Liman and the Butterworths do not hide their sympathies, and rather than letting events speak for themselves, Fair Game on occasion drops into preachiness and speechifying. The CIA analysts are dedicated and thoughtful, the neo-conservatives are spectres of evil, and Wilson lectures to college students about the imperative of questioning government actions to safeguard a functioning democracy.

The final act slows down to focus on the personal impact of the crisis on Valerie and Joseph, their lives endangered, their careers and marriage in tatters. This chapter is more intimate and less freewheeling, allowing Naomi Watts and Sean Penn to shine in conveying anguish at a deeply personal level. The quality cast also includes Sam Shepard as Valerie's father, as well as Noah Emmerich and Bruce McGill.

Exposing a government capable of willfully endangering its own dedicated agents to serve crass politics, Fair Game is fair warning.



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Movie Review: 21 Grams (2003)

A drama about life, death and atonement, 21 Grams deploys an unsettling but ultimately rewarding puzzle structure to enhance a story of three lives colliding.

Multiple plot lines unfold non-linearly from the perspective of three key characters. In simplified form:

• Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) may die unless he receives a heart transplant. His marriage to Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is strained, but she is anyway eager to get pregnant by artificial insemination before he dies. 
• Jack Jordan (Benicio del Toro) is a petty criminal and repeat offender trying to go straight. He has embraced religion and now volunteers at the church run by Reverend John (Eddie Marsan). Jack is married to Marianne (Melissa Leo) and they have two young children. 
• Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts) is a recovering drug addict, now happily married to Michael (Danny Huston) and raising two young daughters.

After Jack loses his job as an apprentice golf caddy because of complaints about his tattoos, a horrible car crash disrupts many lives. Paul receives a new heart, but his relationship with Mary appears unsalvageable. He makes a determined effort to get close to Cristina, who reverts back to drug use and now has retribution on her mind.

The opening 45 minutes of 21 Grams dance on the edge between maddening and exhilarating. In a hyperactive editing job, director Alejandro González Iñárritu, working from a script by Guillermo Arriaga, fragments the plot into tiny morsels across time and space, the character connections and event timelines unexplained. The structure presents a concentration and patience challenge.

The dividend is worthwhile. Once the puzzle pieces start to fit, 21 Grams (the title is a non-scientific reference to the supposed weight of the soul) offers a compelling exploration of life's fragility and the often exasperating lines between actions and consequences. Paul bounces from looming death to euphoric reprieve upon receiving his transplant only to encounter another crisis. Cristina has turned her life around and is enjoying domestic bliss when everything is snatched from her. And Jack has made a compact with God to become a better person, and yet is struck by his most massive setback yet. 

The three protagonists merge at the intersection of new starts, old scores and burning passions, their interactions again altering all prior trajectories. With lives hanging in the balance and plenty of reasons for pessimism, children represent hopes and dreams for a better future, and also active resistance against despair. Paul's wife Mary desires his child despite - or maybe because of - his impending death. Cristina's two daughters are her greatest reward for overcoming her past addiction. And Jack's children are a cause to reform and return, more than once. 

Despite sharing the screen time almost equally, Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro all bring a laudable intensity to their roles, with Watts in particular excelling in moments of crisis and uncertainty. Melissa Leo brings working class steeliness to the role of Jack's wife Marianne.

The bravura scene construction and core motifs are marginally stronger than the film's resolution, as the final act opts for a twisty road with a few too many trick turns, Arriaga hammering home the futility of seeking fulfilment through impetuous actions. But while the overall character arcs are mostly grim, 21 Grams allows rays of optimism to shine through. Few individual plans survive, but the convoluted tangle does gestate faint new pathways to a different future.

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Movie Review: Taps (1981)

A military academy drama, Taps explores themes of honour, duty and loyalty through a story of cadets who make a stand. The film is in equal measures intense and stretched too thin.

The kindly Brigadier General Harlan Bache (George C. Scott) runs the Bunker Hill Military Academy for cadets between 12 and 18 years old. Bache selects the idealistic Brian Moreland (Timothy Hutton) to be the next Cadet Major, effectively the leader of his graduating class. Moreland's cohorts include the more pragmatic Cadet Captain Alex Dwyer (Sean Penn) and the militaristic Cadet Captain David Shawn (Tom Cruise). Moreland idealizes Bache and hangs on his every word about honour, duty, and military ethos.

Two tragedies strike the school in quick succession. First Bache is stunned to be informed that the Academy will be closing within a year to make room for a money-making condominium development project. Then during a gala evening, a confrontation between the cadets and a group of local teenagers ends in a calamity and Bache suffers a heart attack. Moreland decides to take matters into his own hands: seizing the Academy's cache of weapons, he leads the cadets in a takeover of the facility, demanding an inquiry into the planned closure. With the parents of the cadets thrown into panic, a long confrontation with local authorities ensues, with the National Guard's Colonel Kerby (Ronny Cox) entrusted with bringing the incident to an end.

Directed by Harold Becker, Taps is a grim but also gripping tale of pushing too far and too soon for all the right reasons. Quickly finding and then sustaining an emphasis on the passion of young men navigating the treacherous years between boyhood and adulthood, Becker infuses the film with a serious tone that fits well with the strict military surroundings. Despite the good intentions and quality execution, at over two hours the film is too long, and the second half begins to drag with more of the same in the absence of new ideas.

The story explores earnest objectives misplaced into the wrong cause. Moreland is trained to embrace the concepts of loyalty, national service and respecting tradition, and deploys all that he has learned to defend his academy against what he perceives as an imminent existential threat. Meanwhile Shawn is on the path to red beret training where killing with ruthless efficiency is all that matters, and whatever the cause he is eager to release his inner demon. Dwyer is the conscience of the group, not as invested in cadet principles but bound by friendship to stand by Moreland's side.

Becker ties the story together with admirable efficiency, and adds expansive cinematography and visuals to allow the film to breathe deeply from the grandeur that contributes to the majestic aura of life in the military for bright and eager youth indoctrinated early into the culture.

Taps does begin to suffer from relying too much on Moreland's descent from well-intentioned leader to a young man in over his head and not knowing when to quit. There is only so much that can be milked out of Moreland's admiration for Bache, and the dysfunctional relationship between Moreland and his father deserved more than one scene.

Taps features a terrific cast of young actors. Timothy Hutton was coming out of his breakout role in Ordinary People and continues to build his quietly tense screen persona, calm on the surface but struggling to control inner beasts. Tom Cruise and Sean Penn were on the cusp of stardom and prove their credentials by drawing out the characters of Shawn and Dwyer into memorable and unpredictable members of the rebellion. Despite top billing, George C. Scott has a supporting but pivotal role and transforms into a symbol rather than a presence after setting the initial stage.

Taps may not perfectly hit every note, but still plays a thoughtfully worthwhile tune.

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Movie Review: Carlito's Way (1993)

A familiar crime drama with a good cast and quality execution, Carlito's Way suffers from an inability to break away from overexposed genre elements.

New York City, the late 1970s. Puerto Rican mobster Carlito Brigante (Al Pacino) is shot at close range at a train station. As he lies between life and death, he remembers his most recent adventures in crime. His lawyer and good friend David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn) helped to release Carlito from prison on a technicality after serving just 5 years of a 30 years sentence on narcotics charges. Carlito vows to go straight, but at every turn, his former associates and reputation drag him back towards a life of crime. He finds himself inadvertently involved in a shootout at a drug deal gone bad, before Kleinfeld helps him settle down to manage Club Paradise, a hangout where assorted criminals and wannabe mobsters flash their money.

Carlito reconnects with former girlfriend and dancer Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), but she is not sure that she wants to restart a relationship despite his dreams of relocating to a quiet life on a Caribbean island. At the club, Carlito is disgusted by a new generation of cocky gangsters, including Benny Blanco (John Leguizamo). Meanwhile District Attorney Bill Norwalk (James Rebhorn) is doing all he can to put Carlito back behind bars, while Kleinfeld develops a bad cocaine addiction and tangles with incarcerated mobster Tony T, sucking Carlito into further trouble.

Directed by Brian De Palma and based on books by Edwin Torres, there is not much wrong with Carlito's Way, but equally, not much that is new or original. This is a standard fare crime drama, delivered with an emphasis on quality and solid-enough performances. It is also several notches below what De Palma and Pacino offered in 1983's Scarface, and on the heels of excellent gangster films like De Palma's Untouchables and Scorsese's Goodfellas, Carlito's Way drops into a no-man's land where predictability meets retreads.

The narration adds little to the narrative, and continuously spoon-feeds Carlito's repeatedly stated desire to steer away from crime. But perhaps the film's weakest element is lack of character depth. Beyond many references to Carlito's "street" upbringing shaping his code of conduct, all the other characters remain flat representations of the girlfriend, the associates and the hoodlums. Even the supposedly central character of Kleinfeld is represented as a coked-up lawyer getting in over his head; the script offers nothing in the way of background for Sean Penn to sink his teeth into.

The action scenes are adequate without ever threatening to raise the pulse. De Palma frequently deploys pleasingly fluid long takes to capture high energy motion, giving the quicker scenes a sense of calm rationality. The main highlight comes early when Carlito stumbles into a seedy barber shop back room and contributes to a bloodbath. Otherwise, a prolonged subway chase teeters on the edge of comic overkill. The climax at Grand Central Station is good, but the film starts with Carlito gunned down, so much of the sting is removed from the tail.

Al Pacino does enough to maintain interest, staying away from excesses but ensuring sufficient intensity when needed. Penelope Ann Miller sticks to an almost spectral representation of the ideal girlfriend for a hoodlum, the dancer unable to find a break away from strip clubs much in the same way Carlito can't escape his destiny as a criminal. Viggo Mortensen appears in one scene as a formerly smooth criminal who has fallen onto hard times.

With a music score filled with mid to late 1970s disco tunes, Carlito's Way recreates an era of decadence and the thugs looking for a shortcut to riches. It's an unremarkable if competent reiteration of an often-told story.

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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: Bad Boys (1983)

A juvenile penitentiary drama, Bad Boys is an uncompromising look at youth gone bad. A young Sean Penn supported by a dedicated cast ensures a compelling experience.

In Chicago, teenager Mick O'Brien (Penn) already has a long record of increasingly violent crimes. His girlfriend J.C. (Ally Sheedy) is sure that he will soon cross the line and end up incarcerated. Paco (Esai Morales) is another teenager getting involved in the drug trade, and his young Hispanic gang runs afoul of another local group of black thugs. A wild three-way street shoot-out at midnight ends with several dead bodies, and Paco's young brother is killed by Mick's out-of-control car as he tries to flee the police. Mick is arrested and sentenced to Rainford Juvenile Correctional Facility. Paco vows revenge.

At Rainford, counsellor Ramon Herrera (Reni Santoni) tries to help Mick change his ways. But Mick is preoccupied with survival within the jungle laws of the facility. He establishes a friendship of sorts with his cellmate Horowitz (Eric Gurry), an impish smartaleck who thrives by outsmarting the goons. The cellblock is run by a hierarchy of prisoners, and at their head are the brutal duo of Viking (Clancy Brown) and Tweety (Robert Lee Rush). As bad as things are for Mick, they are about to get a lot worse, with an enraged Paco targeting J.C. as part of his plan to avenge his brother's death.

Directed with notable fluidity by Rick Rosenthal, Bad Boys embraces many of the clichés expected in prison dramas, but then polishes them to a new shine. Helped enormously by the charismatic Penn and a supporting young cast fully immersed into their roles, Rosenthal does not glamourize the male-dominated violence that rules the detention centre. Rather, Bad Boys presents a jungle behind fences that serves to worsen the lives of kids already caught up in the jungle of the streets. Incarceration simply confirms that violence and cruelty are what is needed to survive.

This is not an easy film to watch. There are no intervals of humour or any form of relief, and the uncut version offers up 123 minutes of ever increasing agony. In the opening 30 minutes Rosenthal effectively sketches in the sorry lives of Mick and Paco, setting up the rest of the drama to unfold mainly within the grim walls of the juvenile detention centre. As Mick struggles to adapt to the new power dynamics now governing his life, the brief interludes back on the outside are just as disturbing: the decline of Paco's revenge-driven life accelerates, with J.C. on the receiving end of his rage.

Bad Boys is true to its title and set in the world of boys who may never have a chance to become men. There are a few adults in the film, but they are almost irrelevant. The mothers of Mick and Paco have already made all the key mistakes and are now ineffective or uninterested in their sons' lives. The men who run the detention centre talk tough but are next to useless. The animals run this zoo, and ironically it is often the zookeepers who are hiding in cages.

Rosenthal succeeds in giving many of the prisoners distinct personalities, with Horowitz emerging as a memorable nerd with a mean streak, while Viking is the sort of brute who will go only as far as his outsized muscles will take him, given the scarcity of any smarts. The detention centre is also filled with the expected assortment of rapists, black market traders, and victims.

Sean Penn, at around 22 years old when Bad Boys was filmed, gives the film its heart and soul. Mick is standing on the crossroads of where life can take him, and at its core this is the story of a young man getting a close-up view of the hell that awaits him down the path that he has so far chosen. Penn gives Mick a sorrowful humanity that strongly hints at the salvation that may lie within. Mick's one advantage is that he has a person who believes in him. J.C. (Ally Sheedy's impressive debut) plays the dual role of the girl who should know better than to hang out with the likes of Mick, while also being his only guiding light to a potentially better future.

Bad Boys aches for the youth left behind in society's sewers, and offers only the slightest hope that one out of many can crawl out of the filth.

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Movie Review: The Gunman (2015)

Sean Penn joins the club of over-50 stars wading into mindless action territory. The Gunman at least offers a mildly interesting backstory involving the shadowy world of corporations funding mercenaries in Africa, but then slips into gratuitous and non-stop shoot-outs across European locations.

It's 2006 and Jim Terrier (Penn) and his colleague Felix (Javier Bardem) are part of an international security organization purportedly providing protection services for aid workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Jim is fully in love with Annie (Jasmine Trinca), a doctor helping the local population. Felix is jealous and also has his eyes on Annie. Meanwhile, she is clueless about the real work that Jim and Felix undertake: assassinations requested by multinational corporations for political purposes.

After acting as trigger man in a high-profile hit to eliminate the Congo's popular mining minister, Jim has to flee the country. Eight years later, believing that he has left his sordid past behind, Jim returns to the Congo in a humanitarian capacity, only to find himself the target of a well-funded assassination plot. He flees back to Europe and tracks down his former employers and partners. He finds Felix now married to Annie, and uncovers a violent plot to eliminate all traces of the team that carried out the Congo assassination many years prior.

Directed by Frenchman Pierre Morel and heavily funded by French and Spanish production companies, The Gunman looks slick but ultimately defaults to a soulless exercise in bland film making. The scenes in the Congo and the mercenary background offer flickers of hope for a more ambitious project, but most of the final two thirds of the movie are of the "man on the run who fights back" variety, a story told countless times before that disintegrates into a blur of set-pieces featuring endless shoot-outs and physical confrontations.

This is the type of film where all the men are muscular ex-special forces, all the villains hiss with evil, the hero has all sorts of military tricks up his sleeve, and is humanized with headaches due to lifetime of concussions. It all plays out at 100 miles per hour and Morel undoubtedly knows his way around action scenes, but beyond the flying bullets and spurting blood, there is precious little else to hang onto.

Sean Penn looks terrific for a 54 year old man, and frequently finds reasons to take his shirt off and display his lean physique. His mere presence adds intensity to the film, and rescues it from the lowest reaches of the action bucket. Bardem is there to further bolster the Spanish box-office. Jasmine Trinca is mostly wasted, while Idris Elba shows up really late in the proceedings as an Interpol agent. Ray Winstone adds an admirable dash of character as a fixer in the mercenary underworld.

The Gunman is trigger happy, and that is all.

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Movie Review: Gangster Squad (2013)

A vivid and violent crime drama, Gangster Squad is gratifying on its own terms as a graphic romp, the strong cast enjoying the freedom to live larger than life, the action a never ending hail of bullets.

It's the late 1940's, and former boxer Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) is a crime boss ruling Los Angeles with an iron fist, paying off the law and scaring off competing cartels with vicious tactics. Chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte) finally decides to act, and empowers Sergeant John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) to create an off-the-books task force to dismantle Cohen's businesses with force. With help from his wife Connie (Mireille Enos), O'Mara selects veteran sharp-shooter Officer Kennard (Robert Patrick), electronics expert Officer Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi), and knife-expert Officer Harris (Anthony Mackie) to join his squad. Officer Ramirez (Michael Pena) tags along as Kennard's side-kick, while O'Mara's colleague and pragmatist Sergeant Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) is a rather reluctant addition to the team.

Wooters makes an advance on Cohen's girlfriend and etiquette coach Grace Faraday (Emma Stone), seducing her and gaining an ally within Cohen's inner circle. Keeler bugs Cohen's living room, giving O'Mara the ability to listen in on Cohen's operations. O'Mara then achieves varying degrees of success leading the squad in frontal assaults on Cohen's fake business fronts, disrupting the flow of money and shipments of drugs and weapons. When Cohen finally learns the identity of the squad members, he plans an ambush and a counter attack, triggering an all out war for control of Los Angeles.

Mickey Cohen: It's like they say, "All good things must one day be burnt to the ground for the insurance money."

With the freedom of only being loosely inspired by real events, Ruben Fleischer directs Gangster Squad with unabashed exuberance. The film is infused with an over the top comic book quality, a willingness to break through all limits, and an excitement to enjoy the expansive view afforded from loosening the shackles and climbing higher. The violence is extreme, the bravado is turbo-charged machismo, while the sardonic hurtling towards bloody showdowns is unstoppable.

Gangster Squad has no dull moments, as the action picks up from the first scene and never flags. With plenty of sharp dialogue, the film feeds on its own spiral of momentum, all the main characters getting ever more desperate, and therefore so much more brutal with each other. There is little room for nuance or reflection, but within the non-stop turmoil Fleischer does manage to provide O'Mara with a family and a war veteran's inability to adapt to a world without war. With beautiful sets and costumes, bathed in nostalgic golds and reds, the film recreates an era as it is best imagined.

Amidst all the beauty, there are a few blank bullets. The relationship between Jerry and Grace never rings true or catches fire, the two brought together and jumping into bed in a hurry seemingly to continue the better romance ignited by Gosling and Stone in Crazy, Stupid, Love. In Gangster Squad the attraction between them is forced, and settles into an excuse to insert Grace as the only woman playing in a world of violent men. It doesn't help that Gosling delivers one of his less engaged performances, and Stone aims for mysterious but seems plainly bored.

Grace: What's your racket, handsome?
Jerry: I'm a bible salesman.
Grace: Want to take me away from all this and make an honest woman out of me?
Wooters: No ma'am, I was just hoping to take you to bed.

Better is the tug of war for the soul of the city between O'Mara and Cohen. Both men are single-minded, ultra violent, and direct in their head-on quest to achieve their objectives. That they happen to work on opposite sides of the law becomes less important as O'Mara and his squad adopt Cohen's own tactics to target the criminal's businesses and men. The line between right and wrong blurs as O'Mara stops at nothing to shake the foundations of a corrupt empire, and in doing so risks corrupting himself.

Mitch (one of Cohen's men): Mr. Cohen, I swear to God...
Mickey Cohen: You're talkin' to God, Mitch, so you might as well swear to me.

Josh Brolin and Sean Penn take turns chewing the scenery, shouting, shooting and delivering large doses of pain. Brolin is the bull unleashed to tackle Penn's rotten syndicate, and the two deserve each other. Penn strips any humanity out of Cohen, giving him the sole purpose of amplifying his own power at any cost. The Will Beall screenplay misses an opportunity to provide Cohen with a bit of a meatier back story. Other than his history as an uncompromising boxer, there is no crusty context to his unconstrained lust for power and control. O'Mara is also coldly brutal, but does get a pregnant and supportive wife who fears for her man, and the emotional scars of combat experience in a world war.

O'Mara: You lose everything and you win the war - you're a hero. You lose everything and you lose the war - you're just a fool.

Gangster Squad may lack some qualitative weight, but makes up for it with a rainstorm of lead.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Interpreter (2005)

A political thriller set at the United Nations, The Interpreter draws good inspiration from the real world of dictators engaged in dirty diplomacy, but also stumbles on too many overlapping coincidences.

Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman) is an interpreter working at the General Assembly of the United Nations. One late night, she inadvertently overhears a whispered conversation apparently discussing the impending assassination of a world leader. She soon determines that the target is likely to be Edmond Zuwanie (Earl Cameron), the brutal dictator of the war-torn African nation Matobo. Zuwanie is being accused of committing war crimes, but is travelling to New York and wants to address the UN to argue his innocence. Silvia alerts the Secret Service, although ironically she herself is originally from Matobo, and in her past participated in movements to oust Zuwanie.

Agents Tobin Keller (Sean Penn) and Dot Woods (Catherine Keener) are assigned to the case, and Tobin is immediately suspicious of Silvia, her background, and her motives. Tobin is dealing with his own recent loss, and it emerges that Silvia has also suffered family tragedy as a result of Zuwanie's repressive regime. Zuwanie's chief of security arrives in town and starts to intimidate Silvia, while outspoken opponents of the Zuwanie regime start to meet untimely deaths. A huge security operation is mounted to protect the dictator, and Tobin races against time to prevent an assassination and uncover Silvia's real motives.

The Interpreter is a smarter than average thriller, with a narrative that echoes real-world turmoil, Zimbabwe and President Mugabe providing the closest parallels to the fictional Matobo and President Zuwanie. And for long stretches Sydney Pollack, directing what would prove to be his final film, generates satisfying tension from the threat of an assassination, the murky history of Silvia, and the unease between her and Tobin, while avoiding the mindless action that bedevils most thrillers.

But gradually the chases and explosions creep into the second half of the movie, as the intelligent ideas run out and the script (co-written in some part by up to six writers) defaults to layering plenty of incredible coincidences. Not only is Silvia from Matobo, she is also a victim of Zuwanie's violence, a political activist against his regime, a freedom fighter, her brother is equally involved with opponents of the President, and she just happens to be at the scene when one of Zuwanie's opponents is assassinated. Nicole Kidman does her best, but the character just descends into a spiral of inconceivability, Silvia's iciness most attributable to not knowing which revelation from her past will next become public, rather than any sense of mystery.

Sean Penn does not stretch too much. His character is packaged with a basic level of personal anguish to give extra emphasis to the grimace on his face, but the role is almost too easy for Penn, his routine scowl sufficient for most of his scenes. Some emotion is generated between Silvia and Tobin, but it's more of a steady low voltage undercurrent than an actual spark.

Filmed at the United Nations and in New York City, The Interpreter enjoys appealing locations and an air of heightened sophistication. While the premise is grounded in familiar headlines, the final execution loses something in translation.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Sean Penn

All movies starring Sean Penn and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Taps (1981)

Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982)

Bad Boys (1983)

At Close Range (1986)

Colors (1988)

Carlito's Way (1993)

Dead Man Walking (1995)

The Game (1997)

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Being John Malkovich (1999, uncredited cameo)

I Am Sam (2001)

21 Grams (2003)

Mystic River (2003)

The Interpreter (2005)

Milk (2008)

Fair Game (2010)

Gangster Squad (2013)

The Gunman (2015)

Flag Day (2021, also Director)

Licorice Pizza (2021)

One Battle After Another (2025)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

The Movie Star Index is here.