It’s an engaging idea — to make a movie about the one sense least able to be evoked by film, the sense of smell. The great triumph of the cinema is the way it unites sound, words, and images to tell a story. Movies evoke our sense of touch. Lips brush a bare shoulder on screen or a CGI creature’s feathers are rendered with an exactness that is palpably tactile. And anyone who doesn’t think that film can convey an enticing taste has not seen many television commercials. But fragrance is the hardest sense to describe. Its subtlety seems to linger just outside the reach of words or images.

And I am sorry to say it also lies outside the reach of this film, which tries to be rapturous and evocative and heady but ends up just plain silly before it topples over into the mire of preposterous hooey. But there’s a lot to look at on the way there.

A baby is born in the middle of a fish market to a mother so used to stillborns that she kicks him under the table without noticing that he has inconveniently been born alive. She does not know that she has just given birth to a child who has the nasal equivalent of perfect pitch. He is better able to understand, appreciate, and sort all the smells of the world than anyone who has ever been born.

His name is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw). He grows up terribly abused and deprived, apprenticed to a cruel tanner, but all he longs for is the perfect scent. He is feral in his focus. One day, he sees a young woman who smells like his idea of heaven. He follows her, he grabs her — and then, trying to capture her scent, he accidentally kills her. And then we lurch from a sort of Dickensian struggle to a sort of 18th century Silence of the Lambs, as he murders young women to collect their essential fragrances into the ultimate perfume.
Director Tom Tykwer has a great eye, especially when it comes to red-heads, and the movie is filled with imaginative and striking images. Dustin Hoffman as a gifted but out of fashion perfumer with a great nose and Alan Rickman as the father of one of the young women Grenouille fixates on do their best to provide some heft to the story. But the dry narration by John Hurt and the essentially un-adaptable nature of the material disconnect us from the story and its characters so that by the end its developments lose any power.

Parents should know that this movie centers on a serial killer who murders young women, one a prostitute, and it includes nudity and sexual references and situations. There are disturbing themes and images. Characters drink and use some of the strong language of the era depicted.

Families who see this movie should talk about the impact that scent has on memory and longing. They may want to read the book, which was an international best-seller.

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy the director’s other films, including Run Lola Run, and Silence of the Lambs and The Great Train Robbery.

If David Ayer the director paid David Ayer the screenwriter for this script, he should ask himself for some of his money back. The screenplay is awfully close to Ayer’s own Training Day, the film that won Denzel Washington his Oscar. Both movies take place mostly in a car, with one character a sociopath and the other too easily led. In both, the two guys drive around, abusing every possible substance, having encounters with old friends and enemies (including women in both categories), get into trouble, create trouble, and create more trouble. In both, characters demonstrate their concept of manliness through violence, substance abuse, mistreatment of women, loyalty to male friends, subversion of any form of rules, nihilism, and destruction. Furthermore, if you took out every swear word and all of the “homeys” and “dawgs,” the rest of the dialogue would fit on a page or two.

Christian Bale plays Jim, a former Ranger in Afganistan waiting to get a job with the LAPD so he can marry his Mexican girlfriend and bring her to the US. Freddy Rodriguez is his best friend, Mike, who is supposed to be looking for a job but would rather drive around with Jim and get high. He is a little in awe of Jim for his experiences (he asks what it’s like to kill someone and Jim says, “Point and shoot. Pop, pop — move on! You do not stop and think!”

Neither one of them stops to think. They have only four modes: elation (when they think they got away with something), fury (when they don’t), stupor (when they’re high), and waiting to be elated, furious, or high.

Christian Bale clearly relishes the showboaty role of Jim, intended to be a tragic figure and an indictment of our culture and our geopolitical arrogance — his behavior seems to be attributable to post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in Afganistan. And the movie isn’t called “Harsh People.”

Jim is torn apart by his incompatible passions for law and chaos. He wants to work in law enforcement, almost as though he believes that being surrounded by rules and structure will keep his uncontrollable nature in check. But he wants the law to give him permission to be lawless. A friend asks if he will toe the line if he gets the job and he says he will but he will also operate something for himself on the side.

It is this very conflict that gets him rejected by the LAPD and makes him a prize catch for the Department of Homeland Security. The special projects section takes a look at the photos of victims from one of his raids and cynically recognizes him as a kindred spirit, just right for their “trigger-time” program in Colombia. That job offer crystalizes his conflict. He wants to go back to the days of pure sensation and power. But it means he will not be able to marry Marta, the woman he loves, in the only place where he is happy. As that choice is presented to him more forcefully, he spins out of control.

Rodgriguez is fine as a weak man who mistakes what Jim has for strength, and Terry Crews and Chaka Forman make strong impressions as, well, homeys. Ayers has a feel for tough talk, though it gets over-“homey’d” quickly. But the movie falters because it tries for meaning it just doesn’t deliver. Ultimately, it is as mesermized by the flash and adrenalin as its hero.
Parents should know that the movie has deeply disturbing images of intense, graphic, explicit, mindless violence. Characters continually use the strongest and crudest possible language. There are crude sexual references and non-explicit situations. Characters abuse alcohol and drugs, deal drugs, and smoke. Characters are nihilistic and macho.

Families who see this movie should talk about how Jim’s experiences in Afganistan affected him. Why did Mike put up with him for as long as he did? Do you agree with Mike’s choice at the end?

Families who enjoy this film will also appreciate Training Day and Journey to the End of the Night.

Brilliantly acted, enthrallingly told, this vast, operatic saga centers on two men, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) and William Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), both Boston Southies. Both are pretending to be the opposite of what they really are. Both are caught between the fear of having their true selves revealed and the fear of hiding themselves so completely they can never come back.

It opens with a voice. A man is telling us how it works, and we can hear in his tone that he expects to be listened to, not just because he knows what he is talking about, but because he is used to power, having it and making the most of it, and especially enjoying it. We see him shaking down a store owner. His crude comment to the man’s young daughter shows more about his power over them and he fear he uses to wield it than the menacing men in his shadow. And we see that he plans to be around for a long time as he tosses a kid some money and plants a seed that there is more money to be had.

When that boy grows up, the man, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) tells him to get a job as a cop so he can provide information and cover from the inside. Sullivan proves to be a top student and is quickly promoted to the elite detective squad assigned to bring in Costello and his men.

Meanwhile, the chief detective, Oliver Queenan (Martin Sheen), has the same idea. He takes Costigan, a promising rookie with family ties to Costello and a history of getting into trouble, and sends him deep undercover in the Costello organization, starting with a bogus guilty plea and a real jail sentence. To protect Costigan, only Queenan and his deputy, Dignam (Mark Wahlberg in a brilliantly fiery and hilariously profane performance) know his identity. So as Sullivan and Costigan circle each other, each trying to find the mole in the other’s operation, they also become involved with the same woman (Vera Farmiga), a therapist.

She is just one of several mirrors that provide Costigan and Sullivan with reflections of themselves. The movie is filled with parallels — Costello and Queenan as well as the two young men they send into danger both psychic and mortal. Scorcese’s muscular mastery of story and action, the themes of loyalty, identity, power, and seduction, and the powerhouse cast make this one of the most compelling films of the year.

Parents should know that this is an extremely intense and disturbing film with frequent graphic violence, mostly with guns but also knives, fists, and slamming people with and into many blunt objects. Many characters are injured and killed and there are shots of bloody injuries. A character holds up a severed hand. There are explicit sexual references, many very crude and insulting, and non-explicit situations. Characters drink, smoke, and use and abuse drugs, street and medicinal. Characters use very strong language, including racial, ethnic, and homophobic epithets. Many characters are criminals and many lie, steal, murder, and betray each other.

Families who see this movie should talk about the compromises the people in the story must make in order to achieve their goals. When do you stop being one of the good guys (or bad guys) because you have to prove yourself to the group you are pretending to be a part of? What qualities are necessary to go undercover for such protracted periods? Why was Costigan chosen for the job, and what does the way he was interviewed tell you about what they were looking for?

Families who enjoy this movie should watch the Hong Kong original, Infernal Affairs. They will also enjoy Kurt Vonnegut’s book about an American who goes undercover during WWII as a Nazi, Mother Night, the BBC series, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and Scorcese’s other films, especially Goodfellas.