Sicario

Released:  September 18^th, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Lionsgate

Starring:  Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Daniel Kaluuya

Directed by:  Denis Villeneuve

Written by:  Taylor Sheridan

Personal Bias Alert:  anesthetized to violence, big Emily Blunt fan

8.2 of 10

            Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival and having already earned the most money per-screen of any film in 2015, Sicario has been riding a masterful rollout that’s united critics and audiences alike.  Boasting an impressive pedigree both in front of and behind the camera, it’s no wonder people are itching to see this drug war thriller.  Those familiar with director Denis Villeneuve’s body of work, including Prisoners and Enemy, will not be surprised by the film’s beautiful grit, but Sicario seems poised to launch the director’s signature style into the mainstream.

            With Emily Blunt’s Kate acting as the consummate audience surrogate, viewers are sucked into the bleak tale of the US government combating a ruthless Mexican drug cartel.  Kate is no novice when it comes to the drug war; she’s worked in the trenches leading a kidnap response team, but when she’s recruited to join Josh Brolin’s Matt and Benicio Del Toro’s Alejandro in a joint task force, she quickly finds herself in over her head.

            As the two men taking her down the rabbit hole, Del Toro and Brolin feel as if their parts were written for them.  Brolin does his serious goofball shtick, making Matt the unnerving kind of man who will crack jokes as he’s kicking your butt, while Del Toro is more traditionally mysterious; a man of quiet, reserved fury.  Brolin fades into the background as the film wears on, leaving Del Toro and Blunt to battle it out in an undefined game of cat and mouse.  Neither of them trust each other and their reasons for not turning their back on the pairing is what forms the film’s most hard-hitting arc.  The pair worked together previously on 2010’s Wolfman, and they nail the relationship’s uneasy camaraderie.  However, it’s Blunt’s character alone who comes to embody the message of the film.  How Kate handles the horrific things being thrown at her is emblematic of American society as a whole, her final scenes forming a scathing indictment of how Americans handle a war that’s so close to our border.

            As an emblem, Blunt’s character works, but the weight of that metaphor flattens her into a sketch of an actual person.  All the characters suffer from being representations of ideas, which first-time writer Taylor Sheridan never finds a way around.  This would be forgivable if the observations Sicario comes up with were more unique, but the brutal messiness of the drug war should be no secret to anyone.  As the film wraps up, these familiar ideas and thin characters become more apparent, and the final scene hinges on a note that rang false.  The setup for this moment is there on paper, but watching it play out didn’t seem true to character and serves as the largest hint of the film’s near-miss at combining large ideas with a blistering plot.

            Even with this minor letdown, Sicario remains one of the top films of the year thanks to its expert execution of the slow burn.  This is a graphically violent film, but its action is decidedly not packed.  Each set piece milks the audience’s expectations, hinting at the horrors to come until you find yourself begging for the violent release.  It’s astounding work by Sheridan and Villeneuve, backed up by an expertly pushy score by Jóhann Jóhannsson and gorgeously emblematic cinematography by Roger Deakins. 

             You would be hard-pressed to find a better made thriller than Sicario, but its morality tale is ultimately too cumbersome to pull off, leaving it as a frustratingly near-perfect film.

Other Notes:

Ø  This film suffers from the ‘I know this character will be important because I recognize the actor’ syndrome.

Ø  This comes down to personal taste, but I found the visual style to be a tad distracting.

Ø  A thesis could be written on the displays of physical dominance in this film.

Ø  I swear that Josh Brolin’s characters in both this and Everest both talk about loving Texas.

Everest

Released:  September 25^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Universal Pictures

Starring:  Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Michael Kelly, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Jake Gyllenhaal

Directed by:  Baltasar Kormákur

Written by:  William Nicholson, Simon Beaufoy

Personal Bias Alert:  fascinated by Everest climbers, likes the cast

5.3 of 10

            Just before all hell breaks loose, the journalist in Everest poses an infamously unanswerably question to his fellow climbers:  Why.  Why pay tens of thousands of dollars, why put yourself through the hellish grind, why risk losing fingers, toes, or even your life?  The real question is why do you need to touch the top of the world, but that’s far too grandiose, even for a writer.  Still, the question hangs over every story featuring the looming mountain, even one that only aspires to disaster-epic greatness.

            This dramatization of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster finds itself torn between answering this question and delivering high-altitude thrills, never finding the right balance to satisfactorily deliver either.  Director Baltasar Kormákur, whose previous films include the lackluster thrillers 2 Guns and Contraband, certainly relishes the opportunity to induce vertigo on his 3D-viewing audience.  A handful of scenes will leave you pressing back into your seat as the camera pans down a seemingly endless fall, but the effect is fleeting, and Everest stumbles when it must move the audience with its own two feet.  The film, for obvious logistical reasons, had to do much of it’s shooting on the stage.  Instead of employing green screens to give a sense of scale, Kormákur keeps most of the shots pretty tight, narrowing much of the film’s tension down to don’t-stop-or-you’ll-freeze instead of don’t-stop-or-you’ll-freeze-and-then-stumble-off-a-cliff.  It’s not that the film lacks tension; the back half delivers some mild thrills, but the potential that’s left unused is as massive as that mountain.

            On the flip side, the film’s cookie-cutter characters prevent it from exploring why this group of people converged on the mountain that fateful day in May, 1996.  You know you’re in trouble when the film introduces a loud-mouth Texan within the first few scenes, and the rest of the characters are either that broadly drawn or don’t get enough screen time for you to really care.  Granted, they have a lot of ground to cover here keeping track of the two key climbing expeditions, which each put more than 11 people on the mountain.  But this lack of depth, even with its most prominent character, Adventure Consultants leader Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), makes the long buildup to the disaster seem a bit tedious.  Kormákur and writers William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy simply don’t provide us with a reason to get interested in the ragtag group as they shuffle around the mountain, slowly acclimatizing and preparing for their summit push.  This lackluster buildup culminates in the aforementioned infamous question scene, which falls flat on its sappy face.

            Even with all this meandering, there’s a certain affability to the whole proceeding.  Nearly everywhere you look is a solid actor, be it big names like Jake Gyllenhaal and Kiera Knightly (with an overdone Australian accent) or recognizable faces like Clarke and John Hawkes.  These are people that, even phoning it in like they are here, have that magical watchability factor that makes their putzing seem mildly pleasant. 

            All this mediocrity spreads itself out over two hours, which feels even longer when you’re sitting in the theater.  The story itself follows all the familiar genre beats, and you’ll find yourself waiting for long periods for the next obvious shoe to drop.  When it eventually does, it lands with a slap instead of a thud, and you never quite get the satisfying thrill you were really hoping for.

Other Notes:

Ø  I would recommend the TV show Everest:  Beyond the Limit or the movie Touching the Void over this.

Ø  It’s just not very cinematic to watch people walk around and freeze.

Ø  I swear they reused a shot of the mountain and just added in CGI people climbing for the second go-around.

Ø  They didn’t really bother tracking the Sherpas, because who cares about the Sherpas, right?

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Released:  August 22nd, 2014

Rated:  R

Studio:  The Weinstein Company

Starring:  Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, Eva Green, Powers Boothe

Directed by:  Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez

Written by:  Frank Miller

Personal Bias Alert:  didn’t like Sin City, gets distracted when the background exists in a different universe than the actors

5 of 10

            Like the original, Sin City:  A Dame to Kill For is less a feature than a series of shorts.  It’s only tied together in the sense that it takes place in the same town at roughly the same time, allowing the characters to move in and out of storylines.  Also like its predecessor, it’s packed with stars, guns, leather, unique coloring, terrible dialogue, and poor plots.

            This is a guess, but I think Mickey Rourke had the most screen time, making him the de facto star.  His character, Marv, fits in so well with the city that he’s almost bound to pop up in every story.  He’s big, tough, and always looking for a fight, which isn’t a difficult search in Basin City (Sin City?  What is this town’s name?).  He starts one in the opening story Just Another Saturday Night and gets recruited in A Dame to Kill For and Nancy’s Last Dance.  In between, he sucks booze and cigarettes, lusts after Nancy (Jessica Alba), and laments in clunky noir-style narration his meaningless life.  I think he just needs to put down the booze and take his pills on time, but this isn’t that kind of world.  As a summation of the city, and by extension the movie, he’s a natural fit.  He even has a good leather coat.

            Perhaps the only thing Marv’s missing is some good curves, because to go without mentioning the hyper sexual nature of this film would be a disservice.  It’s incredibly preoccupied with the female body, whether entirely naked or bound in leather.  Eva Green’s Ava, the titular dame to kill for, stars in the largest section of the film, often naked, using her extreme powers of seduction to get what she wants.  The catch is, she is neither the main character nor the good guy in the story (both go to Josh Brolin’s Dwight).  Her powers are portrayed as evil, driving men to do the things they are otherwise able to resist.  It’s a sexist slant that runs through the entire film, as much of the action seems to spawn from the strip club Nancy works at.  Tsk-tsk.  We women and our sexuality are always causing problems.

I know you’re shaking your head at me for pointing out Sin City’s sexism, because hey, it’s a selling point.  It’s on par with criticizing it for its cinematography, which is arguably the most distinctive look in modern cinema.  When you see a still from this series, it’s instantly recognizable.  You will never mistake it for something else.  While I’m not a massive fan of the style, it is interesting if only for its novelty, so when the story started to drag I remained moderately entertained by its looks.  The hyper sexuality is a natural extension of this desire to visually entertain, and it’s ultimately successful.  Green does look good, as do all the ladies in the film, so even though it’s appealing to a base desire, I have to give the film credit for delivering what it promises.

As I mentioned, the stories do drag at times, with certain ones working better than others.  A Dame to Kill For is by far the most complete story, even if everything in it is very one-note.  Nancy’s Last Dance manages to give fans of the first movie a gratifying ending, and Just Another Saturday Night is over so quickly that it’s hard to have a strong opinion.  By far the worst is The Long Bad Night, featuring Gordon-Levitt as a talented gambler taking on Senator Roark.  The plot outcome is so preordained that the story seems pointless, and it adds absolutely nothing to the tone or overarching themes of the story.  Why it exists is a mystery to me.

If I thought this film was trying to be anything other than pulpy noir, then I would give it a much lower rating.  For what it is, it works adequately well, and there’s no way you can accuse it of false advertising.

Other Notes:

Ø  No joke, an anti-smoking ad played in front of my screening.

Ø  Throughout most of Eva Green’s scenes, I imagined her turning to the camera, pointing to her face, and saying “eyes up here.”

Ø  I feel like a lot of these character’s problems would be solved if they just shot people in the head faster.