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Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Flashy but empty first chapter in an otherwise promising franchise
Guy Ritchie projects are never boring, but they do sometimes get lost. It was perhaps inevitable tackling such beloved material as this would generate mixed reviews, which is probably why his Sherlock Holmes effort seems to be for everyone and no one. Despite being alternately labeled schlocky fantasy or witty caper, the film attempts to cater to every possible expectation. Everyone, that is, who doesn't have a preconceived notion of what the Arthur Conan Doyle stories are - which is, again, everyone. And there's the rub.
If this is big, dumb action, then I have seen far larger and dumber. Other than short, Ritchified segments of Holmes' one-on-one deductive boxing (always shown twice, first deconstructed and then in real-time), the rest of the action is all set pieces. Well-executed set pieces at that, but not memorable ones. Still, they are coherent and well-choreographed, and usually peppered with enough broad humor to get you through it. It's a far cry from either Michael Mann point-and-shoot-outs or Michael Bay visual noise. No, in terms of its action sequences, audiences seem to have more of a problem which movie they're showing up in than anything else. The thing is it is perhaps not quite the departure it seems, as the Holmes character's association with underground boxing or ability to handle himself in a fight has certainly been implied before, just not this heroically, and never on screen.
If punching a given quota of man-meat is the price of getting films made today, the flip side in any Holmes adaptation has to be the cerebral unraveling of a mystery, or what is at least a mystery to the reader/audience. This is where Ritchie's film falls short. In a throwaway story that only serves as a springboard for the next (and better) chapter, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the manipulative Lord Blackwood (Strong) and his (obviously pseudo) supernatural aura of fear attempt a coup of merry old England as Watson (Law) prepares to leave Baker Street for a stabler relationship with a woman we never really meet for more than two lines. It also somehow involves murders, a dwarf, a Francophone giant, a secret society - and well, there I've nodded off again. It's weak stuff; there is not yet a Mycroft or a Moriarty in this story, except by weak acknowledgment, and only Irene Adler's (Rachel McAdams) interest in Blackwood offers any other level to what is essentially a non-mystery. It isn't merely unsatisfying, but morally, inherently wrong that the audience should discover the solution before Holmes does, but that is what happens here. It would be refreshing and too much to hope for if an action film could be produced without the fate of civilization hanging in the balance. Do producers really think audiences worry themselves with the global Realpolitik in their fictional enterprises? The only real positive is it isn't another boring origin story.
Where then, is the film's intelligence I alluded to earlier? It's in the dialogue. I'm not sure whichever one of the five writers working on this project we have to thank for that, but there are some real Sherlockian gems lurking in these lines, to repeat any of which would better constitute a spoiler than the limpid Blackwood plot. I've no doubt each and every one went over the heads of the holiday audience the trailer was marketed to.
The film's humor is in no small part possible but for Robert Downey Jr.'s transformative performance. It may not be the man we're used to, but he inhabits Holmes, proving his talent with some difficult lines, an extinct (if less than perfectly rendered) accent, and double-act with Law, with whom he shares a gift for comedy neither actor really gets to use often enough. The only criticism I have with RDJ's representation is, like the film, it's a bit kitchen-sinky. There is Holmes the neurotic, Holmes the sociopath, Holmes the emotional, Holmes the distant, Holmes the brilliant, Holmes the boxer, and he's intent on capturing them all like so many Pokemon.
Even the sets are middling. A certain ambiance is created through restriction of color to dull greys, whites, and browns, but that shouldn't have generated a nomination for art direction, should it? With static backgrounds consistently out of proportion to anyone standing outside another building and an aura of cleanliness no one would associate with smoggy, grimy 1890 London (or 1891? newspapers read each), I think people are too quick to praise.
I'm not sure therefore who this film can actually succeed in pleasing. It's a prelude of a commercial piece, one its creators certainly hoped would become a franchise, aimed as such at conglomerating every possible portrayal of a Sherlock Holmes story into the same movie. I'm unsympathetic to its most commonly-heard critiques (yes, actually Irene Adler was from New Jersey in the book, no, actually there is real wit here, but you have to pay attention to the mumbling on either side of the big set pieces to find it), but at the same time I'm conscious of its mediocrity. The whole thing is temporarily fun, but it has a lasting silliness. 5/10, but with the promise of things to come.
Beowulf & Grendel (2005)
Worthwhile historical film with postmodern idiosyncracies
Since John Gardner's book Grendel fifty years ago, retellings of the story of Beowulf have enjoyed a certain postmodern freedom from the rigidity of the original Anglo-Saxon verse. If Grendel be more man than monster, can the burly hero still boast about his destruction? Would he still want to? Removing the mystique from Grendel (and his people) calls into question the monster's motives, desires, and even rights. If you guard your fairy tales with religious zeal, if you prefer your monsters black-hearted, your heroes righteous as the dawn, then by gods skip Sturla Gunnarsson's recent entry into this dialogue. If you are instead a student of realism, and the possibility of all actions being unjustifiable, of all decisions being the wrong decision, tickles your inner materialist, then you are sure to be rewarded.
There is so much talk of Beowulf & Grendel's realistic properties, that one aspect must first be overcome. There is no point where this universe of Danes, Geats, and monsters is intended to be our own. Grendel's people, whose depiction in the film belies the creators' mid-production waffling between a race of yeti or relict Neanderthal, are not human, but humanoid. That is all that it is necessary that they be. Likewise the Danes call them trolls, but there is no intention to conjure up images from Asbjørnsen and Moe. It appears they settled on a strange dimorphism, where the females of the tribe are trunk-legged water-dwellers, and the men three meter-tall land ramblers. This is all, as they say, academic; however, I wonder whether it, along with bizarre calligraphic chapter cards at uneven internals, is evidence of an attempt to shoehorn fairy tale properties for a wider audience.
What is realistic is instead the writing, and the limitations and expectations of these brutal, Dark Age characters. These people are frank, superstitious, crude, and violent, but the main achievement is in making them also uncaricatured. They are intelligent but not wise, brave, but not invulnerable. "I p--s the stuff, you know" says Hrothgar (Skarsgård) under-voice to Beowulf (Butler) as the two comment on an increasingly atypical blood-free morning. I'm especially fond of an early scene where Beowulf washes up ashore in Geatland and casually brushes off the minor adventure to a peasant fisherman. "Oh, a hero! Well, don't my s--t stink!" says the peasant. It typifies the period so perfectly - this is 500 CE, long before castles, courts, and chivalry, before class or nationalism. Survival was all, in harsh lands where kings commanded fewer men than a high school basketball coach. For these tribesmen the gods couldn't do what kinship sometimes could, and they would kill what they didn't understand.
And this is what prompts our story. Hrothgar killed a troll, for all intents and purposes, and it's child, Grendel, on reaching adulthood sets upon the Danes so thoroughly, the hero sails from Geatland to fulfill a blood oath after hearing the gruesome tale. Soon he begins to suspect he has become involved not in a war over territory or food, but a personal grudge against just one man who is prepared to let his people suffer for his mistakes. "What is a troll?" he asks a tight-lipped Hrothgar.
This is not to suggest Beowulf is a modern man. He is open-minded, intelligent, brave, and a natural leader, but there are things hidden even from him. The outcast witch, Selma (Polley) has that honor. A postmodern woman who has learned a few tricks to ensure Hrothgar's men leave her - mostly - alone, she has earned a reputation as a mystic who can foretell the deaths of others. Her victimization has given her the only real wisdom in the film, that there is an honor to Grendel worth more than blood oaths, that binds him to Hrothgar through vengeance and to her out of shame. Beowulf, like Grendel, has to first wrong Selma to gain this understanding. 'What is a troll?' One could well ask, 'what is a hero?' The competing elements of the old gods and Christianity are treated in the film comically, in the form of two priests, one of Odin who is a servant of the king, and one of Christ, whose presence is tolerated because of the Grendel crisis. When Grendel's mother comes seeking vengeance, both are washed away with the rest of hope.
The locations are inspired. Filmed in his native Iceland, Gunnarsson marches his cast over shoals and cliffs, places not exactly up to code. I doubt there was any coconut water on set. The wide shots of the landscape are much more than background here, every bit as rugged as when it was first colonized hundreds of years after the Beowulf legend came to be. The horses and much of the cast are Icelandic, which works just fine for dark-age Daneland. The accents, however, are overall confusing. Most of the Geats use a Scottich brogue, while Selma, the outsider, speaks fluent Canadian. Geats and Danes had a common language, making any differentiation artifactual, and, I think, unwelcome. In the acting department there are no miscasts. It is actually a little refreshing how great everyone is (accents aside). For all that, the film has a cheap sort of look, especially in costume and set design. Heorot would probably fall down if anyone shut the door too hard.
Beowulf & Grendel is a quirky, unfaithful historical drama. There is no attempt to include a dragon in the third act, thank gods. Of all the ways this story has been regurgitated, this is perhaps the most experimental, in a way even more distant a retelling than The 13th Warrior (1999), which also replaced myth with men, but without humanizing them. In that film, heroes and villains are still archetypal, whereas in Gunnarsson's, Beowulf struggles with the fact he and Grendel actually have very little to fight about. Arguably, even in the final shots the man just doesn't get it. Neither, it seems, did audiences. 7.5 / 10
Merlin (2008)
How did this last five years?
Let me first say I have no problem modernizing mythologies. And how could I? We don't even have a contemporary account of the Arthur/Merlin legend - Sir Mallory fitted a dark age myth into 15th century clothes, T.H. White inserted 20th century anachronisms and commentary into his Merlin of The Once and Future King. There has never been a version of this story that hasn't had the storyteller's own era stamped all over it, so modernization is not a complaint I or anyone else can make. I'm also fond of the premise; surely there is so much yet unexplored with a character like Merlin.
But you can still go about it half-baked. You can set the thing in the 21st century, like BBC has done with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. You can give your characters postmodern mindsets or tailor plots to current events. You could probably even get away with modern speech, provided it is uniform and consistent - it would be a massive gimmick but you could do it.
What you can't do is adopt the tone/historical period of Mallory's Arthur, make all characters over 35 from the 15th century, and everyone younger from the 21st. You can't make indentured servants BFFs with royalty, and throw class out the window except for the 11 minutes out of the episode the plot calls for it. You can't have people wear chain-mail in the same shot as others are walking out of a Banana Republic catalog - and yes, wearing backpacks, over-shirts and pleated pants. You can have teenagers angsty about their duties, but not in a universe that will publicly execute you if you fail at these duties.
Likewise the reviewers complaining about Guinevere being black are nothing more than ignorant racists. What they should be complaining about is her first line of dialogue: "Hi, I'm Guinevere. Everyone calls me Gwen." she says with a wink as if she's about to hand out yearbook order forms. Which would be fine, if she wasn't saying it to a character in stocks.
I've seen high school theater productions that put the look of this show to shame. The sets are of the squeaky-clean, a-rainbow-has-thrown-up-on-me persuasion. There is a lot of nylon, where did they get all the nylon? It looks like it was shot at that Medieval Times your school drove you three counties away to when you were ten. And every time cardboard shields and swords get thrown to the ground and make the same sounds you hear in line at the post office I went running for rotten vegetables to lob at Colin Morgan's face. There is, thankfully, little CGI in this, but I hesitate to call it that; what is here is appalling for 2008. In all, the production values in Merlin are virtually identical to those in Xena: Warrior Princess, despite 13 years difference. Not that Smallville was far-off, either.
But at least Xena's writers didn't use madlibs to create their scripts. If you've seen one episode, you've seen every episode. Magical Merlin must save dunderheaded Arthur from magical enemy. There sure are a lot of magical enemies running around considering the kingdom has been "magic-free" for 20 years. Maybe Merlin should ditch the page job and get into what is clearly a thriving black market opening up.
Far worse than Merlin and Arthur playing postmodern (I'm sure sarcasm gets you lots of points when you are essentially slaves to dictators), are them playing high school. Every sub-cultural division you wish you didn't remember from 8th grade is on display here - the jock, the dork, even the goth. I'm still waiting for a young Christian Slater to show up as the grunger. These people casually prank, cheat, bully, sulk, and wave their flaccid privilege around at every opportunity. Merlin even gets homework - immortal superheroes have such a hard life. Like, gosh.
Finally even their motivations are illogical. In the pilot Merlin has all these conflicting emotions of being a magical kid who just walked into a town where they put you to death for practicing it. Where can a character like that go? He can leave, he can turn criminal, he can instigate a rebellion against the natural order....no, by the end of the episode Merlin has forgotten all about that and is assisting in the murder of everyone remotely like him.
Most of the acting is predictably sub-par. Bradley James is fine as Arthur, Richard Wilson is just passable as Gaius. Everyone else is awful, especially Morgan (Merlin) and McGrath (Morgana). If you're some sort of John Hurt groupie, and you've looked up Merlin in a fit of completionist OCD, don't bother. He has even less point here than his Doctor Who appearance, as well as miscast, as well as you'll have to look at a poorly digitized dragon the whole time. And not a Smaug or a Vermithrax Pejorative. This is more a Spyro, if he were animated after a lot of beer and made into stock clip-art.
Merlin (2008) is more of the bland, repetitive material we've come to expect from modern teen programming, but with offensively ill-conceived acting, writing, and design. It is only worth watching as a case-study of how little creative effort is required to become successful in our society.
Hanna (2011)
Forced, simplistic plot drowns out notable performances
I really wanted to like Hanna. Sure, the premise is ridiculous, but there was something appealing about a globetrotting female teenage assassin. I thought the fairy tale elements I had heard about sounded original and borderline literary. I thought Eric Bana's agent had finally chosen a decent script.
Of course such indulgent expectations were never met. Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is a young girl living in Finland. All she knows of life comes from her father, with whom she lives off the land hunting and trapping, an outdated single-volume encyclopedia which is the sum of her formal education, and her own instincts. It turns out the pair are hiding from a shady CIA sub-director named Marissa Wiegler (Blanchett) because reasons. The father (Bana) has been grooming Hanna to assassinate this director. It is unclear why. We later learn Hanna has a motive for revenge - but she doesn't learn this until well after she is given the chance to kill Marissa. It could mean they no longer have to hide in an arctic wilderness, but surely data disks and carbon-copied memos and all those willing subordinates? Like actual fairy tales, the why doesn't seem to matter very much.
It would seem, then, it's been left up to the action to carry the film, but where is it? Hanna is given a way to announce herself to a roomful of operatives just waiting for a 15-year-old transmitter to activate, and is brought into headquarters to face Wiegler. Of course, things aren't what they seem, and Hanna must escape the facility. It's an interesting sequence, all two and a half minutes of it. Indeed, the biggest problem in Hanna seems to be pacing, with a lot of eye-candy up front, a drawn out meandering second act that does nothing but maneuver these characters around Europe, and a fizzled finale. There are further shoot-outs, chases, and assassinations, and while I can admire their realism (the choreography and short duration of the fights, not how they relate to the plot), they take up such little time we're back to globetrotting, or exposition, or unusually late and gratuitous opportunities for Marissa Wiegler to kick puppies. Rarely did a scene feel necessary instead of merely discontinuous. Now here is a scene I suppose we're doing so the baddies can find out that she found out that they found out that she's in this city now, and so on. There is an extended sequence in north Africa where Hanna interacts for the first time with a normal human family (somebody's idea of normal, at any rate), and then tags along in their caravan with upbeat song and dance. The whole thing is odd. Our little assassin may have forgotten all about the first act, but the audience sure hasn't. Interlude or plot point? You decide, someone's got to.
Peculiar is the word here. I can't fault its originality, but this is a film where almost nobody's actions make any sense - not Hanna's, not her father's, and especially not Wiegler's. The grand reveal (essentially who and what Hanna is) is figured out by the audience in the first scene of dialogue, but requires two hours of film to reveal it to Hanna - and there are no consequences when it is. The villains are (intentionally) caricatured reconstructions from fairy tales - the evil spinster, the big bad wolf - but the hero doesn't fit the mold. Hanna is emotionless and sociopathic (with good reason, we find out), and therefore doesn't work as a relatable vessel. As for the father, his decisions are among the stupidest ever performed by a fictional protagonist since Police Academy.
And it's a shame, because there is some strong acting here. Ronan, Bana, and Blanchett's characters are inestimably likable (or unlikable, as needed). Blanchett's southern accent breaks in places, but it is a small detail - she's got the timbre of a villain down pat and that's what matters. The film watches like demo footage for Ronan, who doesn't get the chance to emote very often, but is put through a lot of physical activity, deliver lines in five languages, even work with the worst lighting department in the industry (were 70% of this film's outdoor shots done at 6 pm?).
It seems impossible not to compare Hanna to the Bourne movies. The similarities are many: both plots are utterly ridiculous barely serviceable in moving the story forward, both characters are similar having almost the exact same origin story, both are ostensibly action films. Except with Bourne the studios felt comfortable resting the dialogue and viewpoint squarely on Matt Damon's shoulders, where for some reason Ronan gave them cold feet. Instead Hanna is filled to the brim with a long line of friendly adults (cannon fodder, all) who show up to siphon the story momentarily before shoving off again. That Hanna is written to be a loner does not gel well with the attempts to give her people to care about, either.
5/10, because it is a film with very interesting goals, just falling disappointingly short
Sideways (2004)
A tale of two losers
Sideways is a thoughtful, studied, and dryly comic look at two very different kinds of losers. Miles (Giamatti) and Jack (Church), are both approaching middle age with too little to show for it, so they embark on a week-long excursion touring vineyards in Santa Inez, Solvang, and surroundings in lieu of a traditional stag party. Jack, undiscerning, immature, and soon to be married, is still coasting on his waning fame as a television doctor from twenty years ago, while Miles, cynical introvert depressive living down a difficult divorce two years on, awaits the last possible rejection of his unpublished tome of a novel. Surely such polar opposites must really love each other to remain friends this long? Not exactly. You get the sense they are each merely the last best option standing within the social isolation / detritus of their lives. Consequently, the trip they had intended to reaffirm their brotherhood devolves quickly; Miles is just there to get drunk on wine he can't otherwise afford on a middle-school teacher's salary, and Jack's burning urgency is to get laid one or ten last times - at least so they say. Reality is more bittersweet; Jack fears for his freedom while Miles retreats into a pretend world where he's still visiting this beautiful country with his ex-wife. There's a lot to chew on here.
And it is beautiful country. The film employs real vineyards, often keeping their real name, interior design, and occasionally staff, as vibrant background. But rest assured, wine tasting is just table dressing here - Sideways is as much about California wine country as Chocolat is about confections. Miles' encyclopedic appreciation for wine is a cover for his depression-fueled alcoholism, while Jack has no interest in the virgin grape beyond the women pouring it. Maya (Madsen), fellow wine nerd, and Stephanie (Oh), pot-smoking single mother, match the men's personalities, but not their failures. They may not be where they want to be in life, but at least they face it with a certain maturity and without lying about their situations. As much as Sideways is a film about mid-life crises (male menopause if you will), it is a film about lying. Miles and Jack are lying to each other, to the women they pick up, and ultimately to themselves from very nearly the first line of dialogue. By the third act things have come to a head, as expected, with no way out but through. In fact, Jack frequently posits great ideas to turn their lives around, but both men are too self-destructive to follow them up.
Other aspects of the film match the content. The score is ambient, but not intruding. The editing is occasionally flashy, but never at the expense of plot or dialogue, the camera-work is what cinema verite would look like if the camera were always mounted. Nothing in excess seems to be the motto, and it's a good one considering the introspective quality of the story. Where the closest you get to action is pudgy middle-aged men briskly walking around a driveway, the humor is dry as a domestic syrah, we always know our destination and there are no tears when we get there, then why not let the thing alone to speak for itself? That's what Alexander Payne did and we should be grateful.
Sideways is a slice-of-life film, necessarily starting and ending without too much success or failure. It is expected and a bit precarious, but so is real life. It is the film's open-ended nature that makes its bleakness bearable.
10 / 10, by turns darkly funny and sad-making
Out of Sight (1998)
Occasionally clever but mediocre script elevated by Soderbergh's direction and strong cast before they were A-list
If Soderbergh has a style, it's bookish pacing and an undercurrent of realism in hyperbolic situations. His choices of scripts are uneven, if not typically on the bland side, but that's okay, because the writing is usually elevated by his choices in above-the-line crew (editing, cinematography, score) and knack for consolidating their work into a single voice. He also usually gets the best performances he can out of his actors, even if it means long hours or re-shoots. Out of Sight typifies this rocky marriage of stylistic integrity and dime store story. Soderbergh has called this film perhaps the most complete of his pictures, and in a structural self-contained way that might be true, but it is far from his best.
Jack Foley (Clooney) is a man in his third act. A bank robber committed to his lifestyle, who following his third stint in the penitentiary, has lost any wide-eyed preconceptions he might have had about big scores settling all debts and landing him richly propped up on "some island". He drifts from job to job, annoyed but not surprised things are getting harder, looking not for a swansong, but more of the same. Yet the character is underwritten. He's a well-adjusted prisoner confident around and commanding the respect of tougher types, despite never having used a gun (even for show). He's a "good guy", who doesn't have a problem feeling up a woman at gunpoint, and doesn't worry over the safety of his partners in crime, except for Buddy (Rhames). Personality contradictions like these can be realistic, but they can also be bad writing. Karen Sisco (Lopez) has the same problem, a marshal who pursues men as bounties, lays, or if you're Jack Foley, both. Where does her allegiance lie? To everyone, apparently. Contradiction is the theme here, with former enemies in prison collaborating together on the outside, Buddy, whose commitment to a criminal lifestyle is intact only through a compulsion to confess for hours to his spiritual adviser/sister what he has just done, Sisco's investigator father who disapproves of one of his daughter's unsavory conquests, but not a more dangerous one - and so on. Contradictions may better mirror real life, but even in real life they are often frustrating to us pattern-recognizing humans who prefer to blur away such sharpness to make some sense of the world.
The first half is told non-linearly; we see Foley and friends in prison, out, and back in again as we piece together the events that led them to the present, where sadly the story runs straight on until the end. It's a good trick to make an ordinary story more interesting and invests the audience in finding out what is essentially mundane detail, but once it behaves itself it gets far less interesting. There is some plot about uncut diamonds that everyone thinks is true despite telling each other is a lie, but this is secondary to character studies where the characters have no arc and wind up exactly where they were at the beginning.
Still, all would be well if these characters, in the end, still felt like real people. Both Foley and Sisco are for the most part written too soft and fluffy for how hard they are supposed to be. This isn't the fault of Lopez or Clooney, although if they did have a choice which way to play it, both certainly went with cotton candy here. Still, this is some of their best acting, as are the performances from Cheedle, Rhames, Guzmán - at the time none of them exactly A-list, but certainly at their peak. One is tempted to say Rhames and Guzmán have become all but typecast in this kind of role, which is a shame, as are Lopez/Clooney's unfortunate excursions into broad, unsubstantial rom/coms.
There is a tonal discrepancy marring the picture as well. It is an odd choice that nearly all of the humor is delivered by the most despicable characters, and it comes right before or after they do or were to do rape/murder. It worked in Pulp Fiction, where we see everyone both at their worst and their best, but in Soderbergh's film these are tertiary people who we differentiate in relation to each other rather than their actions and whose names we barely remember scene-to-scene, and whose only redeeming qualities are the two minutes they play the clown before going back to playing the monster. It's just jarring.
I'm not sure how much creative control Soderbergh had over the Leonard story, but I wish he had subjected it to rewrites. There is some light entertainment here, but Out of Sight is not so much flawed as rough, like uncut diamonds decorating a fish tank. 6/10
