Monday at the Movies - September 16, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, the closest we come to reviewing TV shows (at least, for now).

In the Loop (2009) – Leave it to the Brits to turn the run-up to the Iraq War into a madcap update of Dr. Strangelove.  Not quite a movie version of the brilliant BBC series The Thick of It (the same cast appears, albeit most playing different roles), In the Loop finds spin doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) very much out of said loop, struggling to contain the press frenzy surrounding the offhand remarks of a Cabinet minister (Tom Hollander) who said that war in the Middle East was “unforeseeable.”  When the minister’s perpetual verbal blunders go viral, the pair find themselves drawn into the orbit of Lt. General Miller (James Gandolfini) and Linton Barwick (David Rasche), two American politicos on opposite sides of the dove/hawk aisle.  In the Loop is laugh-out-loud funny, even when the characters aren’t trying to outswear each other; the kind of satirical buffoonery that made Dr. Strangelove gets a refreshing modern spin (pun intended) where the political world is a Baudrillardian nightmare of know-nothings and power vacuums.  The film is not the fastest paced movie you’ll see all year, but the real delights are to be found in the dialogue (most courtesy of writer/director Armando Iannucci’s Oscar-nominated script).  But as often happens in films like this, the incredibly talented cast is given free improvisational rein, lending the film flourishes like Capaldi’s practically melodious profanity-laden tirades or a delightful cameo from Steve Coogan as a disgruntled constituent.  In short, In the Loop is one of the smartest and funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time (and if I reviewed TV shows on here, I’d say the same for The Thick of It).

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!  

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

If you're not familiar with the oeuvre of Tony Scott, he's the guy whose movies always look like they were filmed from a moving train (Domino, Man on Fire, and Déjà Vu, though not so much True Romance). So it's only appropriate that his latest film, both a remake of a 1974 classic and the novel that inspired it, is centered in the New York subway system.


The Taking of Pelham 123 is a fast-paced, near-realtime thriller with a simple core: Walter Garber, a civil servant thrust into the shoes of being a hostage negotiator (Denzel Washington) matches wits with a troubled and somewhat unstable criminal named Ryder (John Travolta) on the other end of the microphone. The demands are simple: $10,000,000 within an hour or hostages start dying. And the supporting cast is fairly simple: an actual hostage negotiator (John Turturro) coaching Garber as the Mayor of New York (James Gandolfini) scrambles to get the ransom money in time amid his own personal scandal.


I can't do much by way of comparison with the original (and a 1998 version starring Edward James Olmos), which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I can't provide the kind of commentary I'm sure some of you are seeking, but on the other hand, I'm free to concentrate on the film that Tony Scott has made without any distractions. As updates go, this one compensates well for technology not extant when the originals came out, but I'm just speculating there. Not knowing anything about the original versions, this one kept me guessing and held my attention during the whole thing, and the 106-minute runtime flew by... well, like a subway train.


Despite being a high-stakes plot with 19 lives in the balance and despite Scott's brutally flashy direction (which is entertaining if a little distracting), there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of urgency behind the film; it's as though at times there aren't lives on the line. But that's all right. The heart and soul of the film is the interaction between Washington's charismatic everyman and Travolta's unhinged hostage-taker. Like Sam Jackson, these two are just plain fun to watch, especially Washington, who disappears behind his klutzy character while bringing us in on every small tic and mini-grin Garber carries with him. Travolta isn't exactly menacing - that is, when he's not brandishing a gun in a hostage's face (there, he's downright spooky) - but he's a great foil for Denzel, and the two are clearly having a great time playing off of each other.


That these two are such magnets for the audience's attention compensates for the fact that no one else really does anything in the movie. Turturro stands over Denzel's shoulder, Mayor Gandolfini squawks his way past a Tony Soprano impression (having learned his lesson, it seems, from Lonely Hearts), and the rest of the terrorists in Ryder's crew pace the length of the car with their guns drawn but never actually have to fire. Even the hostages are fairly cookie-cutter.


But again, none of that really matters. When Garber is on the screen, I couldn't look at anyone else - even though I'm a huge fan of the other major hitters in the cast - because Denzel Washington is just that good. Perhaps I should stop before this turns into an overwrought love letter to one of the best actors of our time... oops, too late. Simply put, this movie is fun, refreshing for its simplicity in spite of its own crafty direction and seemingly involved plot (yes, I learned by the end of the film, it's really that straightforward).

The Taking of Pelham 123 is rated "R for violence and pervasive language." Violence is quick and sprinkled throughout the film, though bloody after-effects linger in the cramped subway car, and the language is standard F-bomb fare dropped casually and occasionally intensely about 50 times.

Lonely Hearts (2006)

Lonely Hearts tries hard, but it's no LA Confidential. Instead of being a gritty period piece (this time modeled on a true story rather than a James Ellroy novel), Lonely Hearts is ultimately little more than a limp cop thriller with a cast that's seen better days.

This was a true story that was unfamiliar to me, but someone out there must know of the Lonely Hearts Killers - Raymond Fernandez (Jared Leto) and Martha Beck (Salma Hayek) - who answered personals ads and swindled WWII widows of their "hero's pay." The film also follows the cops (from right in the image: John Travolta, James Gandolfini, and Scott Caan) on the killers' heels.

I like cop films - the fact that I've reviewed four Dirty Harry movies in less than a month should be testament to that. And I like period films - I'm often nostalgic for a 1930/40s that probably never was, and Glenn Miller's on my Top 100 Most Played in iTunes. And I'm a huge fan of most of the headliners in this movie. Why then doesn't director/screenwriter Todd Robinson's film about his own grandfather (Travolta) work?

Though this isn't Robinson's debut film, parts of Lonely Hearts feel amateurish. There's a lot in here that doesn't work, and the screenplay isn't among the strongest. Perhaps I've been jaded by Brian Cox's stellar cameo in Adaptation ("God help you if you use voiceover in your work, my friends! God help you!"), but I've been so badly brainwashed against the concept of a narrator that even Morgan Freeman is an unlikely-at-best antidote. Gandolfini's narrative is confusing, suffering both from stylized diction and an equally heavy accent that feels like a holdover from the days of The Sopranos. Consequently, most of the important exposition is lost in the squawking swamps of Gandolfini's voice, and so the film can be a touch inaccessible.

Gandolfini's certainly not at the top of his game, nor is Travolta, who I usually enjoy in almost anything. Here Travolta seems weary, as though he's not putting his heart and soul into this one. In fact, one might invoke the old cliche and say that Travolta seems to have phoned this one in. It's almost as though Robinson was afraid to ask too much of his actors. Lynch-muse Laura Dern floats in and out without much consequence to the plot, and Leto looks too much like Zac Efron with a mustache to be truly intimidating. Indeed, the only performance in Lonely Hearts that seems to succeed (other than Scott Caan, who is entertaining but neither is given much time nor seems to fit in at all) is Salma Hayek, who does a more than adequate job of bringing the simmering psychosis of her character to a brutal boil throughout the film.

The film, though, lacks a grounding stability that would have made it feel more coherent. The film isn't sure if it wants to be a cop film or a criminal film and can't manage to strike a happy balance between the two. Near the tail end of the film, things spiral out of control, and the audience's heads starts spinning when characters behave irrationally and the plot starts taking "How did that happen?" turns. Furthermore, Lonely Hearts isn't a terribly good period piece, either; the sets, cars, and wardrobes look the part, but none of the actors really fit into the mold of the late 1940s and so the film feels unsettlingly anachronistic. A few moments look good (Gandolfini in the barn at the end of the film is well-shot), but on the whole the film doesn't feel right.

Perhaps in the hands of a more able director (Michael Mann, perhaps?) with a more coherent screenplay (no one writes crime like William Monahan), Lonely Hearts might have been a better film. As it stands, though, the film disappointingly falls flat despite tremendous potential from its otherwise-golden cast (and the tremendous hope this reviewer had going into the picture).

The MPAA rated Lonely Hearts "R for strong violence and sexual content, nudity and language." The violence is brutal, gory, and sprinkled throughout the film in liberal doses. Nudity is less frequent but still present, frequently surrounded with sexualized situations (as well as unsettling concepts of incest), and the language is standard F-bomb fare for a cop film, albeit one set before I like to believe people talked like that.