The Mule (2018)

At 88 years old, it’s a wonder anyone is calling Clint Eastwood a lazy filmmaker. Despite his notoriety for eschewing multiple takes, Eastwood remains a workhorse, turning out two films this year when his contemporaries are browsing leaflets for retirement homes. The Mule is classic late Eastwood, brisk and deliberate without any pretense of political correctness; one can almost hear Eastwood from behind the camera, growling that any young whippersnappers in hearing range ought to take a look and see how it’s done.

Clint Eastwood stars as workaholic horticulturalist Earl Stone, who’s lost his family after years of throwing himself into his work. Short on cash, Earl finds himself a mule for a drug cartel, shuttling contraband across state lines in his dilapidated pick-up truck. The film is complemented by parallel narratives involving a trio of DEA agents (Bradley Cooper, Michael Peña, and Laurence Fishburne) and the cartel’s decadent leader (Andy Garcia). 

There is something quite methodical about Eastwood’s directing here, an unshowy pacing that doesn’t descend into cliché; there’s little cat-and-mouse in the DEA subplot, for example. It’s a little like Heat if the classic showdown were set in a waffle house – we get there when we get there, with a minimum of glamour. Indeed, if memory serves, the only firearms discharged are on Garcia’s skeet-shooting range. Eastwood is more interested in a character sketch than an octogenarian Sicario, and his cantankerous Earl is very much of a piece with The Mule’s spiritual predecessor Gran Torino.

Gran Torino shares screenwriter Nick Schenk with The Mule, and it shows. Though Earl Stone isn’t as extreme in his prejudice as Walt Kowalski was, Eastwood is unafraid to show him as a sympathetic throwback, someone surprised to meet a lesbian biker gang but more interested in helping repair their engines than in talking down to them. Walt might have thrown a few slurs their way, but Earl greets them cheerily. It seems Earl is more perplexed by texting and the internet than by issues of difference, scratching his head at a generation raised by search engines instead of fathers. As cantankerous yet genial, Eastwood shines, a commanding if doddering heart to the film.

As good as Eastwood is and as well-developed as his character is, I couldn’t help but wish the rest of the movie were as thoroughly fleshed-out. We don’t know very much, for example, about the DEA agents on Earl’s trail. There’s a gesture toward a parallel with Earl about putting work before family, but much of that rings shallow when it’s told but not shown. A throwaway line about Peña’s five children, for one, never materializes into something meaningful because the movie is almost wholly disinterested in anyone else’s interiority. Similarly, the cartel plotline doesn’t land as forcefully as it could because, as even the film’s characters readily admit, it’s hard to tell one drug lord from the next. The only criminal with a semblance of a personality is Garcia as Laton, though I wonder how much of that comes from the page and how much comes from Garcia’s own magnetic, underrated capabilities. 

The Mule is a wholly unique flick, resembling others only tangentially. It’s itinerant in scope and methodical in temperament, quirksome and curious. It can’t be a big-budget blank check, but it’s certainly a creative blank check in that the premise is something so curiously specific that it takes the clout of Clint Eastwood to assemble it in this particular fashion. It’s also a healthy indicator that Eastwood in all his peculiar specificity shows no signs of slowing down, which is for this reviewer a very good thing.

The Mule is rated R for “language throughout and brief sexuality/nudity.” Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Nick Schenk. Based on a true story. Starring Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Taissa Farmiga, Michael Peña, Alison Eastwood, Andy Garcia, Laurence Fishburne, and Dianne Wiest.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)

After a surprise encounter with Sicario a few months back, I was delighted to learn of an imminent sequel, even without the presence of Emily Blunt and director Denis Villeneuve (the latter of whom gave us Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 in the interim, which I’d say is a fair trade indeed). Here we have Sicario: Day of the Soldado, which many critics are calling an “unexpected” or “unlikely” franchise – though in the age of shared universes, can we really be surprised? And while Villeneuve’s absence is felt, to Soldado’s detriment, it’s only a detriment that exists in hindsight, as Soldado continues to be that curious kind of action film that relies successfully on overtones of dread.

When the United States government (represented by Catherine Keener and Matthew Modine) suspects that Mexican cartels are aiding Islamic terrorists in illegal border crossings, DOJ operative Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) cooks up a scheme with attorney-turned-hitman Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) to turn the cartels against each other. The plan, as most of Graver’s are, is all sorts of morally ambiguous, leading to violence on both sides of the border when a cartel princess (Isabela Moner) is kidnapped.

The first thing one notices about Soldado in comparison to Sicario is likely the result of Dariusz Wolski replacing Roger Deakins as cinematographer. Deakins, first among his profession, gave us a Sicario with lush color-washed landscapes and dusty interiors. Wolski is capable, though his images are much more washed-out and dusty to the point of being sandy. It is, I would say, the difference between Deakins on Blade Runner 2049 and Wolski on the Pirates of the Caribbean films – one a sprawling epic and the other a poppy genre flick; both engaging and visually appearing in their craft, but one with infinitely more depth (and the other with infinitely more Depp).

This is not to say that Soldado is shallower than Sicario, though it is perhaps less overwhelmingly potent. With the absence of Blunt’s Kate Macer as a moral compass, Brolin and del Toro are untethered, though incoming director Stefano Sollima smartly places that morality debate squarely in the audience’s hands; where Kate Macer might have been on screen to interrogate the wisdom of crossing lines, Sollima and returning scripter Taylor Sheridan find room for those questions between the silences. I think most of us came away from Sicario wanting to see more of what these two men could do, how far they were willing to go, and on that count Soldado is a hearty success. While there is perhaps nothing as shocking as Alejandro’s last-reel dinner incursion in Sicario, there are a number of opportunities when a more unwavering hero would have balked at the choices presented. Moreover, there is a fascinating arc about the relationship between Graver and Alejandro, one that these two silent men of stone would never acknowledge but one which undeniably affects the way they conduct their business.

If there is a difference between Sicario and Soldado which underscores the latter’s inferiority in the face of a latter-day American classic, it’s that Soldado ends with much less finality than its predecessor, punting a fuller conclusion for a Sicario 3 (a real pet peeve of mine). Where Sicario ended with Kate Macer confronted with a full understanding of Alejandro and a simultaneous inability to reckon with the horror of that knowledge, Soldado concludes by revisiting and deepening our sense of just what this man can do, and in that task del Toro is brutally terrifying, cold and dispassionate in pursuit of his own unique goal. That the film expects its audience to remember the translation of “sicario” (hint: “hitman”) to fully grasp the ending may be more my shortcoming than the film’s, but it is almost Empire Strikes Back-ian in its promise that there is at least one more story to be told with these characters.

If I didn’t enjoy Soldado as much as I did up to that point, it might have rankled me more than it actually does. But as compelling as the preceding two hours were, I found myself charmed by the promise of a Sicario 3. Likely none of us expected a Soldado, let alone a third, but this “unlikely” franchise carves a place for itself by filling its world with uncompromisingly gray characters in impossible situations, which escalate into dreadful stakes until the blood runs like a staccato rainfall. You’d think it’d get old, that we’d be numb to the dread and the shock of death, but Soldado finds a rhythm where that danger never fades. For two different directors, absent collaboration, to achieve that same Hitchcockian anticipation of the bang, the franchise that might not have needed to be ends up finding a very good identity for itself in the midst of blockbuster shared universes of much larger scale. (Never mind that Brolin figures prominently into at least three, counting this one.)

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is rated R for “strong violence, bloody images, and language.” Directed by Stefano Sollima. Written by Taylor Sheridan. Starring Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner, Jeffrey Donovan, and Catherine Keener.

Monday at the Movies - March 12, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Today’s installment is one of those “how’d he miss that?” reviews.

Sicario (2015) – If Denis Villeneuve isn’t already one of my favorite working directors, Sicario ought to cement that reputation. I’ve loved Prisoners and Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, so Sicario fills in a gap with a movie that combines the seat-edge tension of Prisoners with, well, Blade Runner 2049’s fascination with dust. Emily Blunt plays an FBI agent whose safehouse raid goes wrong, leading her to take a new role in the war on drugs alongside two Department of Justice operatives (Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro) who redefine playing their cards close to the chest by keeping her in the dark about their ambiguous, ultra-violent mission. From the film’s opening scene, which takes several brutally unexpected turns, Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (he of Hell or High Water) keep the audience guessing as Blunt’s Kate Macer tries to find her own footing in a plot that is never quite transparent about its goals. Indeed, for a film that doles out its cards so slowly, it’s almost alchemical how Villeneuve keeps the audience on his side for the duration of the film; he’s helped ably, one should note, by cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has been the cinematographer for many of the most gorgeous films of the last twenty years (favorites: Skyfall and No Country for Old Men, whose visual influence is acute here). Points also to Benicio del Toro, who gives a riveting, largely silent performance as Alejandro, the man who “If he says to do somethin’, just do it” – and you buy it from del Toro’s quiet intensity. Hours after watching Sicario, I was elated to learn that there’s a sequel, Soldado, due in June of this year. And as a moviegoer, I don’t know if there’s a better feeling than discovering a delight you’d missed along your way, only to be told that there’s more coming just around the corner.

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

Licence to Kill (1989)

Where I thought The Living Daylights was a welcome return to form for James Bond if a little unmemorable, I have much nicer things to say about Timothy Dalton’s second outing as the British superspy.  Although Licence to Kill isn’t a perfect Bond film, it does make me wonder what a third Dalton entry might have looked like.

After his old pal Felix Leiter is attacked on his wedding night, James Bond (Dalton) springs into revenge mode against the man responsible, drug lord Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi).  Cut off from official British support and on the run from his own friends as well as Sanchez’s, Bond teams up with Sanchez’s pilot Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) to bring the kingpin’s empire down around him.

If The Living Daylights was a throwback to the Sean Connery era, Licence to Kill is definitely a precursor to the current Daniel Craig incarnation.  Dalton’s Bond is dead serious here, more so than in his debut film.  In fact, Bond only starts cracking one-liners at the very end.  It’s entirely consistent with the tone of the film, which is really quite grim, though it does seem a little less like James Bond and more like a generic action hero.  Either way, Dalton is an infinitely compelling lead; his determination and moral outrage is very well played, and it’s great fun to watch him scheme against Sanchez.

That level of intellectual sophistication is another very welcome tonal shift in Licence to Kill.  Where some Bond films have been content to let Bond blunder into the plot (or, more frequently, have the plot assigned to him), Dalton’s Bond takes charge almost immediately, shooting out when necessary but also – and this is something I’d love to see Bond do more often – setting up dominoes and tricking Sanchez into knocking them over.  It’s nearly impossible for me to reconcile the fact that this film is directed by John Glen, who previously inflicted Octopussy upon us.  It’s probably Glen’s best directorial outing; he keeps the pace moving for the entire runtime with no real dead spots.

In a weird way, Davi fills the humor void left by Bond with a litany of droll puns; for example, after feeding a man to a shark, he notes wryly, “He disagreed with something that ate him” (a line from Fleming’s Live and Let Die novel).  Elsewhere, he carves out a romantic rival’s heart and calls it “my little valentine.”  Davi and/or the screenplay is obviously trying to set Sanchez up as Bond’s true opposite number, though the comparison doesn’t quite work with such a humorless Bond.  It does make Sanchez a memorable villain, a nice change of pace from the world-domineering evildoers who’ve preceded him in this franchise.  (Keep your eyes peeled for a very young Benicio del Toro as Sanchez’s creepy crony Dario.)

Licence to Kill is a very gritty Bond, and for me that’s really not a bad thing.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this film is actually quite underrated in the Bond canon.  True, it’s not an honest-to-goodness Bond film without the punchlines, but it melds enough of the Bond trappings – including a much-enhanced role for Desmond Llewellyn’s gadget-happy Q – with classic late-80s action flair to create an entertaining and enjoyable Bond film.

Licence to Kill is rated PG-13 for “for action violence and drug content.”  This is definitely the bloodiest Bond to date (and maybe still is to this day):  men are fed to sharks, exploded in compression chambers, ground up in a shredder, shot, impaled, exploded, and lit on fire – all in unflinchingly graphic detail.  (I cringed twice, and I’m made of relatively stern stuff.)  Drugs are mentioned, sold, and processed on screen, though none are used.  As far as sexual content goes, this is probably Bond’s least libidinous outing.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of Goldeneye (1995) on June 7, 2014! 

Flight (2012)

No question about it, Denzel Washington is one of the finest actors around, one of that rare remarkable breed of performers whose work is always worth the price of admission, no matter the vehicle.  Fortunately for Flight, Denzel is on board; it’s difficult to imagine this film being as compelling with a less gifted actor in the pilot’s seat.

In Flight, Denzel stars as Captain William “Whip” Whittaker, a star airline pilot with a major substance abuse whose life is thrust into the eye of the media after miraculously saving a plane from mechanical failure.  On his road to recovery, Whip strikes up a bond with fellow addict Nicole (Kelly Reilly), while his lawyer (Don Cheadle) and union rep (Bruce Greenwood) try to save him from prison.

Flight could have been disastrous.  The marketing touts this film as an intense thriller about finding the truth behind a mysterious crash-landing, but what you actually get are two very depressing hours in which Denzel drinks and refuses help from everyone close to him.  This should not be a pleasant moviegoing experience.  But, like Whip, Denzel manages to save the movie from catastrophe by being so good at what he does.

Denzel plays drunk better than anyone in recent memory, recalling the Oscar-winning performance by Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart but with more fearless sophistication.  The key, he says, is that intoxicated people pretend they’re not drunk, and Whip’s continual rejection of his problem coupled with his insistence that he’s “good” give us a subtle depiction of a man who’s almost always toeing the precarious line between sobriety and jeopardy.  The film is so very nearly exclusively Denzel’s that I’m wondering if we’re looking at another Oscar nod for the man, who commands the film in ways very similar to Daniel Day-Lewis’s highly engaging work in Lincoln.

Indeed, you could strip away much of what else works in Flight and still have a central performance successful enough to carry a film on its own.  Cheadle and Greenwood are solid in supporting roles that require their patience with Whip’s frustrating regressions, but their characters never really pay off in the way that John Goodman’s cocaine dealer does; equal parts Walter Sobchak and The Dude, Goodman struts to the sounds of “Sympathy for the Devil” in two key scenes that advance the plot but introduce tricky moral choices that might leave the audience wondering just what’s being sanctioned.  This is to say nothing of the curious and nameless cancer patient played by James Badge Dale (you know him as Jack Bauer’s partner from Season 3), who’s introduced as a man potentially with all the answers, but the film never revisits him, neither physically nor thematically; it’s a shame, because the character is charming and memorable, and he says some particularly pointed themes on which the film ought to follow up.

Disappointingly, the biggest supporting role – one that’s almost set up as a featured co-lead – is Reilly’s turn as Nicole.  Introduced in an opening that pairs her personal rock-bottom with Whip’s midair emergency, Nicole never quite accomplishes anything other than serving as a kind of billboard for Alcoholics Anonymous.  She’s set up as a voice of reason, an exit for Whip from his disastrous lifestyle, and some of the scenes where she’s unable to save Whip are heartbreaking.  But the film’s investment in her dissipates when she exits the film without casting an eye back; at the film’s end, Whip’s hollow reunion with his estranged son might have rang truer had the film made peace instead with Whip’s unresolved relationship with Nicole (something the film only alludes to in photographs, a blatant storytelling cheat).

But where director Robert Zemeckis wisely allows the film to be Denzel’s, the disproportionate balancing act he plays with the supporting cast doesn’t carry over to his competency in the film’s crucial airplane scene, which is as viscerally terrifying as recent aerial trauma films like United 93 or even some of the less schmaltzy scenes of the Final Destination franchise.  As much as I deplore the shaky cam technique, Zemeckis makes it work here, helping us to forget that we’re watching a soundstage filmed upside down.  If there’s a complaint to be had about this scene, as successful as it is, it’s that I never quite felt in danger with Denzel at the helm.  Forget what the trailers gave away; I’d let Denzel pilot my airplane, substance abuse or not.

Ultimately, Flight is a movie that by all accounts shouldn’t work as well as it does.  There are several filmmaking missteps, including the fact that the movie never quite lives up to its highly compelling opening act.  But this is as much a Denzel Washington vehicle as anything else, and in this respect Flight earns high marks for allowing a star performer to wield his craft with as much dignity and dexterity as he possesses.

Flight is rated R “for drug and alcohol abuse, language, sexuality/nudity and an intense action sequence.”  As mentioned above, Denzel drinks, smokes, and ingests cocaine several times in the film, almost always to excess.  The film begins with Denzel in and out of bed with a fully nude stewardess, but after that the film is mostly chaste; the old buttocks/hospital gown gag is trotted out once more but is played for a weak laugh.  And most viewers will probably find the midair catastrophe distressing, as is its somewhat bloody and wrecked aftermath.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Has a Terry Gilliam movie ever made complete sense to anyone? Probably not, but I think we can all agree they're at least intriguing when it comes to visual spectacle.

Gilliam's 1998 adaptation of the famous novel by Hunter S. Thompson is an optical tour de force, as close to an actual acid trip as one could come without skirting legal boundaries. Johnny Depp is Raoul Duke, Thompson's fictitious alter ego, assigned to cover motorcycle races and "dangers of drugs" conventions in Las Vegas. Duke brings along his questionable lawyer Dr. Gonzo (an off-the-wall Benicio del Toro) and a suitcase full of every controlled (and potentially uncontrollable) substance known to man. The results are, shall we say, mind-blowing.

Both Depp and del Toro turn in career-capping performances, among the best in both their respective canons. Depp is spot on as Raoul Duke, mastering every one of the little quirks - the walk, the talk, the hair - that make Hunter S. Thompson such an identifiable figure in American culture. And del Toro is so far out there that you'll wonder how much of that is acting and how much of that is "method" acting; the fact that Dr. Gonzo is often brandishing a deadly weapon doesn't hurt. There are fun cameos from Cameron Diaz, Gary Busey, Christina Ricci, Penn Jillette, and Gregory Itzin along the way, but the show belongs to Depp and del Toro all the way.

Of course, the film has a third star - the eye-popping visuals. Since much of the film finds its two protagonists on one bender or another, the look of the film is extremely important to capturing this mood. Fortunately, trippy and surreal imagery has never been a particular weakness of Gilliam's; between the brutally slanted camera angles, the dramatically off-kilter lighting, and the oddball props and lizard costumes that appear at random, the film is as unsettling as it is riveting.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, then, is a little like Barton Fink - it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense, but it's gripping in a way that it shouldn't be. A film this nonsensical, this non sequitur, this irrational, shouldn't be as interesting as Gilliam and his acting crew make it. It's incoherent, sure, but it's a lot of fun! Nothing happens for vast periods of time, and while this complete lack of plot, exposition, or even substance can be a little irritating, it's nonetheless something from which you can't tear yourself away.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas got the gift of an "R for pervasive extreme drug use and related bizarre behavior, strong language, and brief nudity" from the MPAA. Drugs and their side-effects are in every scene of the movie, as is pretty harsh language. I don't remember nudity at all.

Pineapple Express (2008)

These are the cats that brought you Superbad, the poster declares, and, with much of the same cast and exactly the same sense of humor, it's not hard to believe. It's also not hard to have a great time with a movie that couldn't take itself less seriously.

I'm an unabashed fan of these Judd Apatow "Frat Pack" comedies (You Don't Mess with the Zohan aside, which I couldn't even finish), but something about the premise brought a skeptical Cinema King to the sofa for the DVD run of this one. Seth Rogen plays Dale Denton, a stoner who witnesses a murder and runs to his dealer, played in top form by James Franco, to hide out. The pair end up fleeing into the woods to avoid Ted Jones (Gary Cole, the father of film's Brady Bunch and Ricky Bobby) and his feuding henchmen (Kevin Corrigan [Cousin Sean from The Departed] and Craig Robinson [Darrell from The Office]). Meanwhile, Dale tries to save his relationship with his high school girlfriend (literally, she's 18), played by Amber Heard, though this subplot fades in and out with only a hilarious appearance by Ed Begley, Jr., as Heard's father, to redeem it.

This is another in a famously uncomplicated line of comedies from Apatow & Co., but it's one of the funniest - perhaps even more so than Superbad, which I loved. Pineapple Express takes everything I loved about Superbad - silly characters, rapid-fire dialogue, and a race to... somewhere (Franco says something along the lines of the splendid line, "I wish we could run away to... nowhere.") - and adds things Superbad didn't have, like the inimtable rising star Danny McBride and plenty of gunfights & explosions. If there's one thing I can never have too much of, it's explosions.

I praised the dialogue earlier, similar praise being offered for Rogen and Evan Goldberg's previous screenplay (Superbad, for those not paying attention), especially because this movie really finds its niche in the kind of dialogue that's becoming popular these days - quick, hysterical, and occasionally mumbling. Rogen and Granco in particular do a masterful job of handling their lines, in which their characters frequently find themselves digging themselves into a verbal hole, often ending their scenes with self-conscious reflections like "That was too far" or "I shouldn't have said that, that was mean." It's also a credit to director David Gordon Green that he knows when to cut the scenes and how best to pace them so the laughs keep coming.

There's not a whole lot more to say about Pineapple Express except that it's a lot of fun. There's no heavy message - except maybe something about the nature of friendship (platonic friendship between males being a central tenet of Apatow flicks) - so it's really about having a good time. The movie won't appeal to everyone, of course; there's bound to be accusations of it being a "stupid" movie or condemnations for its drug culture backdrop. But for those who have enjoyed the Apatow train thus far, Pineapple Express might prove addicting.

The MPAA rated Pineapple Express "R for pervasive language, drug use, sexual references and violence." The violence is exceptionally cartoonish and only occasionally bloody, and the sexual references aren't as explicit as they have been in the past. Drug use, though, is all over the film, as is crass language some might not care for.