Body of Lies

Body of Lies is a solid thriller and the first war on terror movie of recent years to put entertainment first. That could be problem number one, but the filmmakers are aware of the need for the audience to stay engaged with the material when others have put messages and political posturing ahead of said entertainment. There are politics involved, but most of the heavy-handedness is left behind in favor of a lesser form of Tony Scott's Enemy of the State's satellite views and board rooms and Peter Berg's The Kingdom's street battles. Leonardo Dicaprio acts through his Southern Twang and curiously bushy beard (you get used to it - you shouldn't have to really, but you will) to play the CIA's man on the ground in the Middle East. Russell Crowe acts through his Tom Cruise in Collateral hair, accent, spectacles and protruding paunch (and more effectively than his counterpart) to play the CIA suit back in the U.S. of A.. And the excellent Mark Strong plays a Jordanian intelligence head. All the performers sink their teeth into their parts, adding considerable bravado to their roles. I bought into it, though the push to ACT may irk some. The film, like writer William Monahan's breakthrough The Departed, is an excercise in genre. Unlike The Departed (a film I still declare is overrated), Monahan's Body of Lies script doesn't have any overtly memorable dialogue. In truth, it entertains without being memorable. It's better than a one-watcher, but doesn't hold up to the shadow of the underrated and already forgotten August film Traitor. And after the entertainment ends in Body of Lies, I'm left to wonder what if anything I have learned, or more importantly if I should (given the setting, plot, and current world politics) be learning anything. Well directed, acted, and filmed but not lasting in impact. And then Traitor comes to mind...The problem is that Body of Lies is entertaining in a fun way - all the violence, backstabbing, and spying I appreciate in a CIA thriller...only it's really happening somewhere in the world right now. And maybe I should rethink entertainment in general. Because Traitor is entertaining AND says something more than just the reality of the complexity and difficulty of international intelligence. Plus Don Cheadle is as fine as any other actor out there right now. Here's me asking P.T. Anderson or Steven Soderberg to cast him in another one of their ensemble dramas again.



Traitor ***1/2
Body of Lies ***

Jarhead "When things threaten to happen, I admit I felt what the soldiers in the film felt: a sick anticipation and longing for battle. "

I liked this movie, but it was an overwhelming like when all the elements were in place for a love. I wasn't blown away by this movie. I've seen it twice. The first time I saw it I had high expectations. It didn't meet those expectations. The second time I saw it, I had lowered expectations, but again I was disappointed. But not to the point where I disliked the film. A second viewing only solidified my opinion of the movie.

On the surface, I cannot identify at all with the soldiers in this film. They are young men thirsty for war, for action. When they go to war and it is nothing like the films they saw (an interesting scene takes place during a frenzy at a showing of Apocalypse Now), they feel empty. There is pride in what they are, but a lack of doing what they were trained to do leaves a sour taste in their mouths.

I strongly related once the film took shape. The movie creates an uneasy atmosphere of waiting...waiting to do anything. Things happen, but none of them fit in with the expectations I had from every war film I had ever seen. Jarhead is unlike any war film I have ever seen. The Gulf War is unlike any other war I have seen in film (forget the murder mystery Courage Under Fire). It began and ended in a blur, but the time for the soldiers (at least the soldiers depicted in the film) was slow and tiring. Again, things happen, but they're only stale representations of training, ritualistic lining up and dehydrating, restlessness and bonding for better or for worse. When things threaten to happen, I admit I felt what the soldiers in the film felt: a sick anticipation and longing for battle. Instead, they get showboating officials, men with murdered camels, and the remains of a bombing. It seems they are doomed to narrowly miss the thrill of battle and it makes them stir crazy. And I related watching the film. Like a trained baboon I wished for them to "shoot somebody already".

The performances reflect that restlessness, but the freak outs that occur in opposition to the waiting and disappointments mostly rang false. It was as though the actors didn't know how to get past all that listlessness when they were called to. They tried admirably, but could not raise my attentiveness. Again, I equaled their disappointments.

As a document of that war at that time for those people, it does manage a real sense of authenticity without fully achieving utter truth. A decent film that could have ruled my world if only I wasn't ruined as the soldiers were by the expectations of our popular (and military) culture.

***

The Good German "(Maguire's) adhering too much to the contemporary view of classic cinema - no subtlety, scenery chewing, melodrama."

They don't make 'em like they used to, but that sure doesn't stop them from trying. I am more a fan of contemporary cinema than any of the black and white Hollywood hey day movies. I've tried to branch out in recent years, even making a summer noir series of my own with Laura, The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man, and Casablanca. I mention Casablanca not because it's a great example of noir, but because The Good German wants to be like it so very, very much (only with more swearing). It's a lofty goal it cannot reach.

The Good German is really only an excellent imitation of those melodramatic, love torn, post- and pre-war film noirs. It offers nothing to set it apart from anything that has ever preceded it. Instead, it boldly goes where many, many films have gone before it. Normally, this would be a major detraction (and it still kind of is), but The Good German really wants to be those movies you saw before. It loves those movies. It hopes to Moses you love those movies, too.

I had problems from the start with Tobey Maguire. He must have been told to "explore the studio space" because he's adhering too much to the contemporary view of classic cinema - no subtlety, scenery chewing, melodrama. He plays an unsavory character with constant strain in his voice and face. He can't handle the dialogue or the character. It's outside the realm of his abilities. Hey, I love the guy (Go, James Leer!), but he's pretty awful in this movie. Luckily, he doesn't factor much into the major storyline later in the movie.

Thankfully, George Clooney and Cate Blanchett know what they're doing...most of the time. They handle the dialogue pretty well, save the normal difficulties you'd expect from actors trying to speak old timey/edgy/cool dialogue from a script emulating someone else's script. Clooney and Blanchett's scenes together are the best in the movie and I think everybody knows it because they get tossed in each others way a lot.

Clooney doesn't have to do anything he hasn't had to do before, and he appears to be the most comfortable in the world of the film. And the world of the film and the camera love him...a little too much. The camera almost fetishizes Clooney in that soldier uniform and hat - from behind, from afar, from above, from the ground, from the front (oh, it loves looking at ol' Clooney's dashing hero gaze). Clooney does have trouble in one scene in particular where he has to grab Blanchett by the arms and shake her and say, "Why won't you let me me help you!" in his best noir impression. That's the thing with The Good German - it's more than happy just to be an impression of anything real though its depict real moments in history.

Blanchett has a German accent throughout and it's really only a glaring bump because it's Cate Blanchett speaking in it. The same could be said for her Katherine Hepburn accent in The Aviator. I just think the accents are "so not her" that they remove me from the world of the movie. She does deliver the most consistent performance. She knows how to milk a scene for all it's simmering heat (milk the heat?). I never really think of females as brooding, but Blanchett certainly does brood.

Story stuff: Blanchett plays Lena, this German femme fatale that was so memorable and alluring in a pre-war affair with Jake (Clooney) that he purposefully heads back to Germany after the war to find her. The big problem for me is that she's not really all that great. I can't really imagine what's so great about her that all these men are wanting her so much. For Tully (Maguire), it's clear his thrill is in possessing her; but for Jake, it seems he's helping her out of some nostalgia for feelings that I can't imagine pretty much anyone having for her.
(edit: Perhaps this is the point the movie is trying to make - the woman Jake fell in love with has been ruined by the war.)

Also, Clooney gets involved in three skirmishes in his hunt for a mysterious man everyone's after. He gets beat up pretty bad by his assailants, but they just leave him there writhing in pain or knocked out or what have you. Nobody ever really gets the idea that "Hey, this guy's always turning up and gumming up the works...maybe we oughtta kill the jerk." He dusts himself off and goes back to the search.

Also, that ending! No! Don't do it! It involves a revelation that should have happened earlier, and not so awkwardly spoken or located. The movie should have ending in the crowd of all the people. Whenever I watch the movie again, I'm going to stop it there. That's a decent movie. It's still pretty decent anyways, but it would have been decenter (decenter?).

But, lo and behold, I am recommending this movie. I really enjoyed the entire second act and much of the third. Once Maguire faded into the background and the intrigue really started, I committed to the movie and was mostly satisfied despite all the words above to the contrary. It's a solid movie. I commend its ambition. It's hard to call a movie that emulates other movies ambitious, but it's really quite an undertaking in this day and age to evoke the atmosphere and spirit of another day and age.

Clooney's good. Blanchett's good. Maguire's bad, but the rest of the supporting cast is good in spite of him. I actually even liked the story for its simplistic storyline that masqueraded as a complicated web.

I LOVED the cinematography. If I loved the movie, I'd find a way to make a poster of some of the shots and put them up on my wall. Gorgeous black and white picture.

So...

***

Rendition

Political movies are tricky. If they take a stand too quickly and too strongly, they can come off as preachy. Now being preachy is not necessarily a bad thing. It has its place at public meetings, news shows, debates, editorials, and the like. However, bonkinbg someone over the head with a message in a movie is rough. Leaving no room for interpretation is a bad way to construct a film. Still, taking a side should not lead to a viewer to dismiss a movie altogether, especially if that movie is intelligent and provocative in a necessary way. Rendition is just such a movie.

Rendition is a government policy that started in the Clinton administration. Basically, suspected terrorists can be shipped off to other countries and interrogated without being charged or legal counsel. It surely is a product of the times we live in, but to think that this was enacted before September 11 is an eye- opening look at the state of government actions prior to the War on Terror.

Rendition the movie follows four different story lines that intersect in a way that is popular in movies of the last few years (Babel, Crash, etc.). One story follows Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) a Egyptian family man who has lived in the U.S. for the past twenty years, graduated from an American university, married an American woman (Reese Witherspoon), had a son, and worked as a chemical engineer for many years. He is apprehended on his way home from a conference in North Africa by the U.S. government on suspicions of terrorists activities, flown out of the country, and questioned by Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor) in a interrogation observed by Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal), a U.S. government employee who is promoted after his colleague is killed in a suicide bombing.

The other story follows Fawal's daughter Fatima as she rebels against her father's attempts to marry her off to someone she does not love. She runs away and flees to the arms of her secret boyfriend Khalid (Moa Khouas).

Back in the States, Anwar's wife Isabella (Witherspoon) worries when her husband does not come home. She heads to Washington to seek the help of her old college friend Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard) who works for a Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin). It is from Smith that Isabella and the audience learn (a little too quickly) the meaning of rendition. She works to learn what has happened to her husband and why he was taken away.

Another Senator, Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep), is in charge of the committee that orders rendition. Whether or not she is right in her thinking, she is definitely shown as the film's villain.

The story revolves around the interrogation/torture in the other country, and Gyllenhaal's character provides the eyes through which we see the atrocities. The film's handling of the torture scenes should be commended. Unlike the recent slew of horror films forcing torture into entertainment, there is no torture glorified or glamorized in Rendition. Whether you agree with torture or not, it is displayed with all its violence and pain. Still, it could have been a lot worse to watch. Even though it was tough to take in, we are not presented with horrible blood splatters or close ups that over-accentuate the acts.

Gyllenhaal's character starts out in the movie much like I did. He was aware of the act of torture and saw it as a unfortunate way to receive life-saving information. He knew what was involved, but until he was forced to see it first hand, he was able to turn away and sleep well at night. When he does come face to face with torture, he is not able to ignore it. When you have to think about it, it hurts.

There is a scene that takes place after several days of torture. Gyllenhaal's character has not handled his observation well. He asks to be left alone with Anwar. He starts out asking for answers. Then he snaps and grabs Anwar forceably by the throat and demands answers. It is a harsh scene, but after thinking about it, I understood what was really happening. Freeman (Gyllenhaal) was begging for an answer because he could not stand the torture any longer. He wanted to go home. He wanted to try to forget. Eventually, he found out he could not forget or ignore what was happening any longer.

The film doesn't really allow for any amazing feats of acting. No one is given juicy scenes to show off or play extreme depth or internalization of their characters. That is okay. Everyone does deliver solid performances. A solid performance by any one member of the amazing cast is better than a amazing performance by any number of performers. No goes above and beyond because no one has to. I hope that director Gavin Hood stretches his casts more in future movies.

The multiple story lines are also not handled as well as they could be. Each are shown with equal importance for two thirds of the movie, but Anwar and Freeman's storyline as well Fatima and Khalid's storyline move into more screen time and the foreground of the film in the last third. The Washington storyline moves into the background and dismisses a key character when it chooses much before it should have.

I was not interested in the Fatima and Khalid storyline for most of the movie before its relevance was made clear in the last act. I would have appreciated a more involving handling earlier on by the writer and director.

I did really like this movie. The connection of all the story lines is solidified in the end and satisfies in a way I was not prepared for by the average first two acts. I think I appreciated the movie as a great conversation starter that made me more aware (albeit in a fictionalized/stylized manner) of problems I was not aware of. It is an interesting film in the way that it evokes a reaction, but does not offer any answers that would help the audience in their next steps. That is part of the reason this politically-minded film avoids the preachiness that derails so many other films.

***1/2

The Kingdom

The Kingdom is a politically-minded action film set in the heat of Saudi Arabia. Its mission is to address the situation in the Middle East while pleasing those who watched the trailer and came to see guns fired and cars blown up. It succeeds at both, though when the smoke clears I left the theater unsatisfied and disappointed.

The Kingdom follows a team of F.B.I. agents (Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman) who finagle their way onto Saudi Arabian soil to investigate a terrorist attack on Americans living within an oil industry community.

Upon arriving, the agents are told by their Saudi military liaison played by Ashraf Barhom that they will be playing by his rules. The agents do not like that. They want to go to work immediately. It is apparent that they do not understand the danger their lives are in just for being there. That, or they do not care. Their need for revenge is clear.

We learn that the police investigating the attack are incompetent navel-gazers who do not know how to find and process evidence. It is up to the Americans to set them straight and bring the culprits to justice.

This sets the tone for the film. The Americans are here to "help". That means leading, planning, and shooting a helluva lot of Saudi extremists in a bloodbath in the film's burst of energy approaching the end of the film. The Saudis are seen as
a people who need direction. The F.B.I. team are just the ones to provide it.

The presentation of the Saudi people could be accused of being too one-sided if not for the presence of the liaison. It is hard to praise the characters in this film because there isn't a lot offered in way of development or background. However, deliberate strides were made to make the liaison a more complicated man than any of the other Saudis we meet in the film. While I appreciated this attempt, it made me wonder why this wasn't the case with more of the Saudis we meet. We have the liaison and one more policeman who is brutally interrogated about the attack that present the other side of the conflict in Saudi Arabia. Everyone else is an extremist or a narrow-minded, incompetent, brutal, or oblivious officer, prince, or policeman.

The film also attempts to present a strongly political message about America's foreign involvement, but still stays loyal to the confines of the expectations of its audience. The film has been marketed primarily as an action film of sorts. The filmmakers don't really stray from some of the genre's conventions.

The agents and their liaison are in a terrible crash, the kind that flips a car over numerous times, slams it against the ground and slides it for what seems like forever. It is a mere matter of seconds between the time the car stops sliding and the team and the liaison are out firing at their enemy and hopping into a car to pursue them as they flee. There're cuts, scrapes, and blood, but no one seems to have any broken limbs, concussions, or be in need of medical attention.

The team becomes involved in a firefight in a corner of a village. They are only four of them surrounded by dozens of extremists with rocket launchers, machetes, assault rifles, and grenades. Still the team blasts their way through.

There is an air of authenticity that the film tries to create, but moments and flaws like the ones I mention detract from any maintenance of that air. It cannot survive under the weight of its own illogical entertainment. Some of these complaints are nitpicking, but much of this will be apparent to any discerning audience member who sits down in a theater seat and watches.

There is a scene where someone asks what was whispered to someone to stop them from crying. I was expecting something profound like "this too shall pass," but I heard a more honest answer. He whispered that they were gonna kill them all. There is some quality to the film because there is a look of disgust as the one who said that earlier in the film recounts his prior mindset to his team. The film presents the idea that that state of mind will not end the conflict in the Middle East.

**1/2

Saving Private Ryan

I have a long history with this movie. This is one of the few R-rated pre-17 movies my parents let me watch during my adolescence. They had seen it previously and, like Braveheart before it, deemed it historically important enough to watch despite the language, violence, and adult situations. My aunt and uncle sought to prepare me by saying that I shouldn't eat anything before or during the opening battle scene. So, my parents, brothers, and I ignored them and chowed down on pizza during the carnage of Omaha Beach. I didn't ralph. I didn't even get queasy.

While I was thankful for that, I look back and wonder why. What transpired on screen was a bloody mess. Soldiers dying horrible deaths. Blood coloring the water in the ocean washing against the dead bodies. Lost limbs. People crying out in anguish. Mentally, I knew it was horrible. Physically, I didn't really have an expected response. It's easy to say I had already been somewhat desensitized by violence in the media I took in by that age, and that's true. However, it was because I was distanced from the event. It was happening right in front of me, albeit on a television screen, but it was a moment from long ago. Something which I had never experienced directly or really indirectly at that point. It was only after I had gotten to walk along with the eight men in search of Private Ryan that I felt a gut reaction to the horrors of war. I personally got to know the men. Their conversations, while characteristic of male soldiers (I'm guessing), were familiar enough for me to connect to them. The danger around them began to seem more immediate.

It helps that the cast is incredible. I can't believe more of these guys didn't break into the A-list with their wonderful performances. Giovanni Ribisi, Adam Goldberg, Jeremy Davies, Barry Pepper, Tom Sizemore - all give amazing, career-defining performances.

Then there's the A-list duo of Tom Hanks and Matt Damon. I thought it was a rip off when ole crazy (Roberto Benigni) won the Best Actor Academy Award over Hanks and proceeded to leap onto the seats in the theater and stepped on Spielberg's head on his way to the podium. I liked Benigni's performance in Life is Beautiful, but a lot of his performance was grandstanding. Hanks was more natural in his performance, showing a full range of believable emotion and underplaying big scenes, sometimes allowing his co-stars to share and even steal the spotlight. Damon is only seen in the last parts of the movie, but he makes a great impression in a scene where he recounts to Hank's Captain Miller the last night he and his brothers spent together before the war. He moves through the dialogue cautiously, truly putting together a memory that had been forgotten until that moment. This is one of the scenes where Hanks allows a co-star to shine by employing perfect reactions. It's a wonderful and important scene. The whole movie has been looking at the mission as just that rather than a man, the namesake Ryan. Hanks has to be convinced that staying put and helping save the bridge is a good move when his character had previously said that his goal was to save Private Ryan to get closer to going home to see his wife. He agrees to stay, but he doesn't see how Ryan is a man rather than a mission until that conversation. You can see Hanks warm to him as he tells his story, seeing Ryan is worth saving not only for Hank's trip home, but also for the sake of saving a good man. It's a wonderfully written and acted scene.

Take everybody but Edward Burns and you have one of the best casts of the last ten years. Edward Burns has one mode of acting in all his movies - he coasts through as the macho New Yorker with either a chip on his shoulder or love in his heart, sometimes both. He pushes through dialogue as though he is an actor who has memorized his lines and decided long before shooting how bland and fake he's going to be. For a character exhibiting so much anger, doubt, and wit he has very little believable lines. Close the guy's mouth for the length of the movie and you'd have a better performance. I guess I just get tired of every single thing that he's says being soaked in bravado. I can see that the way his character is written lends itself to bravado, but Burns has no sense of how to temper bravado with a sense of naturally occuring moments. His whole performance seems incredibly calculated, planned to the point that any spontaneity probably died in him during the first read-through.

As I have stated before, the conversations between the eight soldiers are well-written, well-directed, well-acted pieces of cinema. They all reveal so much about the characters without coming right out and saying anything. Take Ed Burns story about the bra and the woman. Take Giovanni Ribisi's story about his mom coming home from work. I love that talk, coming to a realization about something from your past that only materializes in places far from anything you knew. Ribisi is so wonderfully understated, not showy at all in a moment that is his for the taking. It's a quiet moment stolen from the battles and gunfire and explosions. The quiet moments among men telling seemingly meaningless stories end up to be defining moments for the actors. Even Burn's aforementioned scene is well done.

I could gush for a long time about the movie, and all you would really learn is that I am more a loyal fan of the fan rather than an impartial critic analyzing the film. I will say that all these years after the first viewing with the pizza and the family, I have found the final moment to be too heavyhanded. I want to say the movie earned the right to push the moment, heighten the importance. Perhaps it did. All I can say now, a little cinematically smarter since that first viewing, is that it seems forced. I hear all sorts of talk about how Spielberg tacks on those happy, sentimental moments on the end of his movies, but I never really felt bothered by his loyalty to happy endings. This is probably the only time I have been bothered by his final choices. I love the framing of the film with the flag - it's not subtle, but it certainly says a lot with one image, especially at the end of the film after seeing all the horror these men had gone through in response to the call of duty. But the thing right before that (you who have seen the movie know what I mean) is the problem, in large part due to the fact that the old man is the worst actor in the film.

****

Fail Safe (2000)

I imagine that the LIVE factor of the broadcast was meant to add excitement and gain viewers who were eager to see if their favorite stars would mess up right before their eyes. It didn't work. Even with a premise that lends itself to great human drama and emotion, the film is lifeless. Exposition early in the film is necessary but dull and awkward. The film incorporates interesting camera work, providing a technical acheivement for a LIVE telecast. But remarkable technical achievements can't save the actors from muddling through their lines. Wonderful actors like Don Cheadle, Harvey Keitel, and James Cromwell among others don't seem to take well to the confines of LIVE television. Particularly Keitel has trouble making his lines feel alive and of the moment.

The story is interesting enough. I could use a little less of the right-on-the-nose dialogue explaining the situation over and over. Subtlety is thrown to the wolves. Emotion would have been welcome, but it is largely absent from the production. I must admit that I was bored for most of the film's duration.

*1/2

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

The Wind That Shakes the Barley was brutal. It is great movie, but a grave feeling washed over when watching the film. My gut was wrenched with every gut-wrenching scene while the characters fought the good fight against their oppressors and the not so good fight amongst themselves. My gut was all wrenched out by the end of the film. Key phrase: gut wrench.

There is a lot of violence in the film, but it never glorified. It is always awful, even when it seems to be justified. The wages of engaging in violent acts is presented in a realistic light.

The political aspects of the beginning of the Irish Republican Army are not glossed over. All sides are presented authentically, though the British are portrayed as self-righteous, tyrannical bastards. And I guess they were, but I’d have to do the research to make any assured claim.

The brotherly drama that unfolded really hit home for me. I was awestruck at the depth and conflict blood ties were presented with. I was tearing up at the conclusion. I was afraid I was going to have to conspicuously wipe my eyes with my sleeve in front of my friends, but I managed to escape with tear glossed eyes and a wary smile.

The cheers and accolades from Cannes are not unfounded. The Wind That Shakes the Barley is an excellent film.

****