The Professional (1994)

In a way, The Professional was exactly the film I was looking for.

The Professional (also known as Leon) was near the top of my "I can't believe I haven't seen these movies yet" list, especially in light of the fact that its writer/director, Luc Besson, wrote Taken, one of my all-time favorite action movies. Followers of this site have already noticed that it's been a while since I rated a film as "to my liking," much less "a great film." The losing streak, dear readers, is broken, because The Professional is both.

Leon (a very subdued Jean Reno) is a hitman, a self-professed "cleaner" who takes in orphan Mathilda (a very young Natalie Portman) after her family is gunned down by drug-addled DEA Agent Nathan Stansfield (a very outrageous Gary Oldman). As Stansfield seeks to tie up the last remaining loose end - namely, Mathilda - in his spiraling descent into drug-fueled madness, Leon struggles with his own paternalistic misgivings about Mathilda's request to be trained to be a cleaner.

The performances are stellar. I've knocked Jean Reno before for being hammy or for simply not trying, but it seems that's a new trend. He's fabulously restrained as Leon. It's a role that could have gone two ways - cold and emotionless or entirely creepy. Somehow, Reno finds a way to create a sympathetic character who's more human than not, a man who never poses a threat to Mathilda, even though the audience may be worried that his intentions with her may be less than pure. Roman Polanski he's not; no one in their right mind could accuse Leon of exploiting Mathilda, whom he comes to regard as a daughter. The key other half of that dynamic is Portman, who proves how talented she really is. She's endearingly gruff, deceptively innocent, and completely in control of her emotional spectrum. Though she's only 12, Mathilda is perhaps the most mature character in the film, and it's because of Portman's gifted acting that the character even succeeds; she's both completely human and a prototype for Kick-Ass's Hit-Girl, a stunning combination. And while we're talking stunning, let's acknowledge Oldman, who's wildly over the top as Stansfield. This is a versatile actor we're talking about; he's played Sid Vicious, Dracula, Stansfield, Lee Harvey Oswald, Commissioner Gordon, and Sirius Black in the same career - and done all in such a way that he's practically defined those characters. Stansfield ranks as one of the best movie villains I've ever seen, downright spooky and at times frightening (especially when he pops his special but unnamed pills) but never cartoonish to the point of improbability.

High praise to Besson for melding a knockout script and dynamite visuals - to him belongs all the credit, since he wrote and directed it all on his own. While he owes a lot to his three fine actors, Besson deserves a hearty pat on the back for a freshly original story (even sixteen years later, it still holds up) which avoids predictability and never falters, even though almost no action occurs between Mathilda's adoption and the final confrontation with Stansfield. For this, we have the directing to thank; Besson is a prince when it comes to inventive camera angles, a master of pacing, and a pro at eliciting good performances out of already solid actors.

One thing I particularly loved about The Professional - aside from the downright stunning gunfight scenes and Jack Bauer-esque escapes - is the way that Besson creates compellingly human characters in Leon and Mathilda while establishing a key divide between them and Stansfield. Leon and Mathilda have backstories which inform their personalities, which in turn inform each other as to why the other one behaves the way he/she does. All of this is done in an entirely clear manner so that the audience never wonders, "Why is Mathilda doing that? Why didn't Leon say this?" Conversely, we have no idea why Stansfield behaves the way he does; he is, like Ledger's Joker, an absolute force of chaos blowing in and out of the movie. He's a DEA agent, sure, but why is he involved in drugs? Is it business or personal? On a scale of one to ten, how crazy is he? The characters that need to be human are, and are entirely, but the villain is more akin to a tornado than a mastermind. The clash of reckless madman and methodical hitman is golden, but it never feels overwrought. Indeed, the real heart of the piece is what is unsaid between Leon and Mathilda.

Simply put, The Professional is one of the best movies of the 1990s. Indeed, if I ever get around to making a "best of the decades" list and The Professional's not on it, call me out, and I'll eat my hat.
The Professional is rated a very hard R "for scenes of strong graphic violence, and for language." It's a movie about a hitman who kills a lot of people in very bloody shoot-outs, and several F-bombs trickle in along the way.

Couples Retreat (2009)

The less-than-fabulous streak continues here at The Cinema King with Couples Retreat, a predominantly joyless comedy marked by beautiful scenery and stars phoning it in.

Dave and Ronnie (Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman) have a marriage that works and a circle of dysfunctionally absurd friends bringing down the ship. Joey and Lucy (Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis) are constantly bickering, and Shane (Faizon Love) is recovering from a divorce by dating a 20-year-old Foot Locker employee. Upon announcing they're mulling divorce, Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell) convince the others to accompany them on a couples' retreat, promising fun, sun, and much-needed time away. The retreat is governed by New Age crackpot Marcel (Jean Reno), who insists on less fun and more feelings. Hilarity, the trailers promise, ensues.

Only, it doesn't. I went into this movie with the best of intentions, fully expecting to like it. After all, out of six main cast members, five of them are near and dear to my heart (nothing personal, Ms. Davis, I've just never seen you outside of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry put your toothbrush in the toilet bowl). I'm not going to go through an itemized listing of why I like each of the people in the movie, but suffice it to say I've got very good reasons. With Couples Retreat, I've been burned.

It's as though all the actors and actresses are holding back their talents - or worse, phoning it in. What's even more frustrating is that we get tantalizing glimpses of the underlying talents, but they remain unfulfilled; Vaughn, for example, only runs wild two or three times, a shame considering how funny he was in Wedding Crashers when he was let entirely loose. Ditto for Favreau, who's earned a reputation for playing gruff yet well-intentioned characters; he only plays the jerk card once or twice here. And though there is meant to be tension between husbands and wives, it seems the ladies are only in the picture to look good; no character has any real depth, but rather they're all flat, one-note cardboard cut-outs.

Pile onto this the fact that Couples Retreat is predominantly uncheery. It's not depressing in the way that some would-be comedies are, but it's hardly the laugh riot it's being advertised as. Oh, sure, there are some funny moments - Dave and Ronnie's youngest son continually mistakes display model toilets for the real deal - but they're like mile markers which only appear every twenty minutes or so. In between, there are some limp attempts at characterization, cheap attempts for laughs at things that just aren't funny, and some downright unforgivable scenery-chewing (et tu, Jean Reno?). But it's such pretty scenery that maybe this shouldn't be counted as a fault.

On second thought - Yes, it should. When I come to a comedy, I expect to laugh, not roll my eyes. Nice try, Couples Retreat, but you're guilty of the same crime your main characters are - complacency. A lazy attempt at comedy, Couples Retreat takes its audience for granted.

After this string of movies I'm just not enthusiastic about, maybe it's me who needs therapy.

Couples Retreat is rated PG-13 "for sexual content and language." This is your basic sex comedy, so act accordingly.

The Pink Panther (2006)

Steve Martin’s done it again. I don’t mean that he’s made another comedy classic – to the best of my recollection, his last great film was 1987’s Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. By “done it again,” I mean he’s remade an old favorite (as he did with Spencer Tracy’s Father of the Bride) and turned it into a degrading spectacle worth less than the film on which it’s printed.

When it was announced that the Peter Sellers comedy classic The Pink Panther would be given the prequel treatment, I was mortified. Sellers was inimitable as the bumbling French Inspector Clouseau, and I feared that Steve Martin was all too American to play the part.

My fears were justified.

After a famed soccer coach is murdered and the Pink Panther diamond goes missing from his finger, the race is on to catch the killer before he – or she – strikes again. Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) wants to put the bumbling Clouseau (Martin) on the case for one of the most hackneyed reasons in film history; while Clouseau stumbles through the case, Dreyfus will investigate and (presumably) solve the case first and become a hero.

In the original Pink Panther, Clouseau didn’t even solve the theft of the Pink Panther diamond. In fact, he fumbled the case so much that he was convicted of the theft himself! One of the funniest moments of the original was when Clouseau, mobbed by shouting women asking how he had become such an attractive cat burglar, told his adoring public that “It wasn’t easy.”

It certainly wasn’t easy to sit through Martin’s interpretation. Whereas Sellers had a naturally exaggerated French accent, Martin’s seems forced, especially in a protracted “English pronunciation” class, where Martin is unable to correctly pronounce “hamburger.” I sat through this feeling like a convicted man waiting for a pardon from the governor.

And, as good of an actor as Kevin Kline is, he doesn’t come close to Herbert Lom, the actor who played Dreyfus in the original movies. Lom’s over-the-top frustration with Clouseau was unrivaled by Kline’s almost too cool for the room sangfroid. Yes, it’s a prequel, but it might have been better served if Kline had played an altogether new character.

Most of the movie felt like an extended episode of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” replete with hits to the groin and embarrassingly predictable pratfalls. After a while, the dumb humor got to me, and I actually chuckled.

That’s not to say that the movie is entirely without any positives. Emily Mortimer plays the part of naïve secretary Nicole well, and her comedic delivery makes me wonder why I’m only just now hearing about her.

By far the highlight of the movie was a surprise cameo by rejected Bond-frontrunner Clive Owen. Owen has a sum total of two scenes as British Agent 006, “one away from the big one.” I’m not sure if this is a jab at Owen’s rejection for the Bond role or a tease for fans of the genre, but I know that after seeing The Pink Panther, I’m less optimistic about Daniel Craig’s upcoming Bond debut in Casino Royale. “You could have done a lot better,” I said after seeing Owen as 006.

“You could have done a lot better” was a recurring theme, as I continually thought the movie could have been improved. Throughout the movie, we’re told that Clouseau is an idiot, and his stupidity is rammed down our throats with gaudy displays of imbecility. In the end, though, Clouseau figures it all out with sangfroid that would make even Sherlock Holmes envious. This character flaw destroys our impression of Clouseau, a man who (in the original film) was not able to tell that his wife was complicit in the Pink Panther theft.

Notice that I’ve not mentioned Beyonce Knowles. That’s because she’s playing the same part she always plays: a foxy singer with something to hide. And she doesn’t play it well, either.

While it’s nowhere near as abominable as the waste of space Son of the Mask, The Pink Panther is just one of those movies that comes early in the year in hopes of turning a profit. Don’t be surprised if the movie’s up for a few Razzies, because it’s certainly not the gem of celluloid that the Blake Edwards-directed original was.

In the words of Inspector Clouseau, “Zis is an outrage!