Black Sea

Posted on January 29, 2015 at 3:51 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language throughout, some graphic images and violence
Profanity:	Constant strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended, intense, and graphic peril and violence, many characters injured and killed, some accidentally, some intentionally
Diversity Issues:	Diverse cultures
Date Released to Theaters:	January 30, 2015

Two comments made by characters in this film summarize what it is that makes submarine stories so instantly compelling. “Outside is just dark, cold, and death,” says one. “We all live together or we all die together,” says another.

Submarines are the setting for the ultimate locked room story, the purest form of human interaction, with a small group of people (usually all men), cut off from everyone else. You can’t call the cops, appeal to higher authority, or run away.

This submarine story ramps up the conflict. In most cases, the crew may have some conflicts about how to proceed but everyone is literally on board with the task, whether exploration or military action. But “Black Sea” adds the most divisive element of all: greed. This crew, half British, half Russian, is going in search of lost Nazi gold at the bottom of the Black Sea, with 40 percent going to the rich guy who financed the expedition and the rest to go to everyone on board. None of these people are American, but just to make sure we get the message about the value of a huge pile of gold bars, Captain Robinson (Jude Law, with receding hairline and Scottish brogue) counts it up in dollars.

It’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” with a bit of “Moby Dick” and “The Towering Inferno,” plus some Occupy Wall Street thrown in for good measure.

We first see Robinson getting laid off. It has nothing to do with his performance, he is assured. It’s just that they don’t need sub captains or even subs any more. They have better ways of doing marine salvage. They give him a paltry £8000 and the job he has had all his life, the one he lost his wife and son by being away too much, evaporates. “They want me to flip burgers,” he says. Everything he has devoted his life to seems lost.

Then a friend tells him “I think I knew a way not to be like this.” He knows about missing gold, and puts Robinson in touch with the representative of the wealthy man who will fund the operation, at least to the extent of a rusty old tub of a Russian submarine, in exchange for 40 percent.

Robinson assembles the crew, understanding that it is a volatile mix. “He’s a psychopath, but he’s an incredible diver, half man, half fish,” he says about one member of the crew. When the one who told him about the gold commits suicide, Robinson replaces him with an 18 year old who has never been to sea. They also bring along the man who negotiated the deal on behalf of the wealthy American (Scoot McNairy), who has no experience at sea and suffers from claustrophobia. Also arrogance and a highly questionable sense of integrity.

Director Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”) skillfully navigates the narrow corridors of the decrepit submarine as the tension builds, though equipment problems, crew battles, and the overheated impact of all that money. Suddenly, people who would think themselves wealthy with thousands of pounds are calculating how much more their share of the gold would be with a smaller number to divide it among. The political overlay and flashbacks to Robinson’s (possibly imagined) idyll with his family are heavy-handed and at least one of the plot twists is preposterous, but the fundamentals of the story and that irresistibly cramped and isolated setting keep the tension level high.

Parents should know that this film includes constant very strong language, extended and peril and violence with many characters injured and killed, fighting, knives, guns, some very disturbing images, and mild sexual references.

Family discussion: Why was Robinson so protective of Tobin? Do you think he was a good captain?

If you like this, try: “The Hunt for Red October,” “U-571,” “K-19: The Widowmaker,” and “Crimson Tide,” and, for a change of tone, “Operation Petticoat”

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John Wick

Posted on October 23, 2014 at 5:44 pm

This is a movie directed by two stunt men, which means it is pretty much a first-person shooter video game projected onto a movie screen. But that also means that it is directed by people who really know stunts and the kills on screen (reportedly more than 80) are on display for maximum effect. It delivers exactly what it promises, with a couple of surprisingly sharp and witty touches that lift it above the usual bang bang. There aren’t many movies where the funniest line is the way a character says, “Oh.” And I loved the idea of a very high-end, very specialized safe house/hotel just for assassins. Of course the only currency accepted is gold coins. And of course there is a doctor on duty 24/7 to sew up wounds without any pesky questions.

Keanu Reeves plays the title character and we know from the beginning of the film that he is not having a good day. We see him very badly, maybe mortally wounded, lying out in the rain, watching a video of his wife on his phone. And then we go back a couple of days to see what got him there.

His wife (Bridget Moynahan) is dying. At the funeral, he has an cryptic and uneasy conversation with Marcus (Willem Dafoe), a former colleague. That night, alone in his beautiful but spare home, John accepts delivery of a package. It is an adorable puppy, a gift from his late wife, with a note telling him that “you still need something, someone to love.” She urges him, “now that I’ve found my peace, find yours.”

When he goes out to get food for the dog, he stops to fill up his vintage ’69 Mustang with gas. An arrogant, hot-headed young Russian thug (Alfie Allen) wants to buy the car, snarling that everything has its price. His handler/bodyguard apologizes courteously and they go their separate ways. But that night, when John is asleep, they break into his house, brutally attack him, kill his puppy, and steal the car.

But they have stolen from the wrong person. Before he left the business to live blissfully with his wife, John Wick was employed as a killer and he was very, very good at it. “He was the one you sent to kill the boogeyman,” Viggo, the crime kingpin (Michael Nyqvist) says grimly. He has reason to know, as he was John’s employer. Viggo once saw him kill three guys with a pencil. And Viggo has reason to be grim; the hothead who stole John’s car was Viggo’s own spoiled son.

John gets out his sledgehammer to break the concrete floor and get to the weapons and stash of gold coins he had hidden there. He suits up (bulletproof vest and impeccably tailored grey duds), and off he goes, dodging the attacks from Viggo’s goons and then from the open contract Viggo puts out on him for any hitman (or women) who is willing to take him on, mowing down everyone, and I mean everyone (well, everyone male) who gets in his way.

Reeves is well cast as the implacable, unstoppable John Wicks, and Nyqvist (“Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” and the Swedish “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” series) is outstanding as the wily Viggo. There are some nice darkly comic moments (trust me about that “Oh,” and a later reprise), but this is all about the stunts, and as pure adrenaline action fodder, this movie delivers the goods.

Parents should know that this film includes extremely graphic and intense violence with many characters (and a dog) injured and killed, disturbing images including spurting blood, wounds, stabbing, assault weapons, and explosives, strong language, smoking, drinking, drugs, skimpy clothes

Family discussion: Does everything have a price? Why did Viggo decide to make a deal? What did he mean when he said “this life follows you?”

If you like this, try: “Shoot ‘Em Up” and “Point Break”

Related Tags:

Action/Adventure Crime Thriller

Gone Girl

Posted on October 2, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Amy (Rosamund Pike) is watching television, vitally, even viscerally enthralled by what is happening on screen. The look on her face, mingled fascination and calculation, a hint of tooth and claw under her placid, golden girl beauty, is one of the most mesmerizing sights on screen this year.

Pike gives an extraordinary performance in the title role of David Fincher’s film based on the sensationally popular thriller by Gillian Flynn that was carried by just about everyone riding public transportation last year, many of whom became so engrossed that they missed their stops.

Ben Affleck is perfectly cast as the once-glamorous and smooth, now just slightly seedy Nick Dunne. His face is still handsome but his jawline is softening, his eyes are beginning to get puffy, and his smile, still calibrated for a face a little bit handsomer than the one he has not quite adjusted to seeing in the mirror.

On their fifth anniversary, Nick’s wife Amy (Pike) disappears, leaving behind some disturbing signs of a struggle and the front door open. Nick calls the police and spends the night with his twin sister, closest confidant, and business partner, Go (Carrie Coon). He sleeps in his clothes and does not clean up the next morning. He knows he will be a more compelling vision of a devastated husband if he looks like a mess.

That is the first indication of one of the story’s key themes: the gulf between the way we present ourselves and the way we are. We learn through flashbacks and Amy’s diary about how they met and fell in love, or a reasonable facsimile. They were buoyed by ease and that made marriage feel easy, too. They had glamorous writing jobs in those last few moments before print publishing collapsed. They had a charming brownstone, bought with Amy’s money, or, rather, the money her parents earned by publishing a successful series of children’s books inspired by their daughter, the Amazing Amy stories. Her parents set aside the profits for the daughter who inspired them. But then there was the recession. Jobs, gone. Money, gone. The economic downturn eroded the golden couple’s notion of each other, of themselves, of success. It is so easy to be in love when you don’t have to blame each other for everything turning out so badly.

When Nick’s mother became ill, they moved back to the small town in Missouri where he and Go grew up, to help take care of her. With the last of their money, they bought a house and a bar for Nick to run with Go. Amy stayed home and wrote in her diary. And now she’s gone.

If there’s one thing television news loves to cover, it’s a missing blonde woman. The Nancy Grace-ish Ellen Abbott (a dead-on Missi Pyle) is all over the story. Is Nick the tragic young husband, longing for his wife to return? Or, as we have seen too often in this high-profile cases, is he a murderer so heartless that he staged the whole thing? One detective (“Almost Famous'” Patrick Fugit) thinks the simple answer is usually the right one. His partner (Kim Dickens, nicely wry) believes in complications. This case has plenty.

No spoilers here. Either you’ve read the book and already know or you haven’t and deserve to be surprised. I’ll just say there are superb performances by everyone, including Tyler Perry as a celebrity criminal defense lawyer and Neil Patrick Harris and Scoot McNairy as Amy’s former boyfriends. And Fincher keeps the energy taut and the tone deliciously nasty.

Parents should know that this is a crime story with some bloody violence, as well as sexual references and situations, nudity, strong language, and drinking.

Family discussion: What would have happened if Nick and Amy had kept their jobs and money and stayed in New York? What will happen after the ending of the movie?

If you like this, try: “To Die For” and the novels by Gillian Flynn, including Dark Places, soon to be a movie starring Charlize Theron.

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Based on a book Thriller

The Drop

Posted on September 11, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Author Dennis Lehane writes about a world of desperation, fear, and damaged people inflicting further damage. His novels have been filmed as “Mystic River” and “Gone Baby Gone.” And now his short story, “Animal Rescue,” has been turned into “The Drop,” about a “drop bar,” a dingy place with dingy regulars, a bitter former owner still resentful of the thugs who took it over, a soft-hearted bartender and the dog he rescues from a garbage can, and lots of cash, dropped at the bar by racketeers to be picked up by bigger, tougher, racketeers. You know what that means: colorful, highly euphemistic dialog said by top-notch actors doing their best to play hard, hard men. Very little is said in this world but a lot is understood.

Fortunately, here that means we get James Gandolfini in a beautifully nuanced performance that makes us miss him even more sharply. He plays “Cousin Marv,” whose name is still on the bar, but no longer on the deed. Now he’s just the manager, and he quietly but meaningfully tells Bob (Tom Hardy), the bartender, to take down the Christmas decorations (“It’s December 27th!”) and stop running a tab for the flowsy barfly at the end of the counter. Oh, and no more rounds for the boys at the bar, even though they are observing the 10th anniversary of a friend’s death. We will learn later that there is more significance to the last two items than losing the revenue on a few drinks.

On his way home, Bob hears a noise in a neighbor’s garbage can. It is a badly injured puppy. The wary neighbor is Nadia (Noomi Rapace), who insists on taking a picture of Bob’s driver’s license on her cell phone and sending it to four friends before she will even talk to him about the puppy. She helps him clean it up and reluctantly agrees to care for it for a couple of days so he can decide what to do. He adopts the puppy and names it Rocco. And she offers to care for the puppy while he is at work to make some extra money.

For a moment, things are looking up for the lonely Bob. But not for Cousin Marv’s or for Cousin Marv. Marv and Bob are held up at gunpoint by two guys in masks who may not be entirely unknown to them. The owners are tough Chechen gangsters who expect them to get the money back and who give them a glimpse of some guys they are in the middle of torturing just to make sure the message is received. And Cousin Marv’s is set to be the drop bar for the biggest betting night of the year, the Super Bowl. A cop (John Ortiz of “Silver Linings Playbook”) is nosing around. And there is pressure on Bob as well. A very unstable guy in the neighborhood, reputed to have killed a guy, says he is Rocco’s owner and he may have some feelings of ownership toward Nadia as well. Also, there is a body part formerly belonging to someone who was formerly alive, and it will need to be disposed of.

The storyline is all right, but what matters here is the mood, and that is excellent, with Gandolfini, as always, a master class in acting. There are so many layers to his performance, whether he is answering his sister’s question about dinner or refusing to look inside a bag that clearly cannot contain any good news. His expression in his very last scene of the film is particularly compelling.

Hardy’s quiet power is beautifully restrained. Ann Dowd as Marv’s wistful sister and Matthias Schoenaerts as Eric, Rocco’s volatile former owner are also very good. In some ways, Eric is the most revealing character in the story. Asked what he wants, he isn’t sure, except that he doesn’t want Bob to think he has anything over on him. People want money, of course, and power, and to be left alone. But what drives them really nuts is the fear that someone has more than they do and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Parents should know that this plot concerns various crimes and attempted crimes including extortion, robbery, torture, and murder, with many characters injured and killed, as well as some graphic and disturbing images, drinking, smoking, and constant strong language.

Family discussion: The original title of the story this film was based on is “Animal Rescue.” Would that have been more appropriate for the film? Why did Bob stay at the bar?

If you like this, try: “Killing Them Softly” and “Get Shorty,” both featuring James Gandolfini

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Based on a book Crime Drama Thriller

The November Man

Posted on August 27, 2014 at 10:57 am

Pierce Brosnan knows what it is like to play a spy in a big-budget, glamorous, blockbuster. He was the most urbane of Bonds in four movies. He knows what it is to play a seedier spy in a prestige, mildly meta movie, the 2001 film “The Tailor of Panama” (with Daniel Radcliffe in a pre-Potter role). So perhaps he thought it was a good idea to produce and star in “The November Man,” a spy story set mostly in Eastern Europe, based on There Are No Spies by Bill Granger. It was not. “The November Man” barely reaches the standard of a generic throw-away thriller, with a sub-par storyline and painfully tiresome dialog.

It begins in 2008 Montenegro, as a venerable CIA operative named Peter Devereaux (Brosnan) sees his young padawan smooching with a pretty girl at an outdoor cafe and harshly explains that personal relationships are out of the question in their line of work. He indicates a guy with a telephoto lens at a nearby table. “Us or them?” the spy-in-training asks. “How the F should I know? Does it really matter?” the world-weary sensei responds. This brief exchange tells you pretty much everything you need to know, or, rather, will find out whether you want to know it or not. Do you think that Devereaux will have some personal entanglement of his own? Do you think the question of who is “us” and who is “them” will provide the twist so unsurprising that even the idiot with the roller bag who wanders out of the hotel elevator without noticing that everyone around him has guns could figure it out? Are the answers to these two rhetorical questions obvious? Well, so is the movie.

Obvious, that is, when it isn’t just being stupid. Throughout the film, shoot-outs, car chases, and explosions occur almost constantly and yet none of the extras ever seem to notice and no one ever calls the police.

The sidekick trainee is David Mason, played by Australian actor Luke Bracey with a blankness that may explain why he was cast as Johnny Utah in the unnecessary upcoming remake of “Point Break.” Bill Smitrovich is, as always, just fine as Dvereaux’s spy boss. Brosnan, even with all of his movie star charisma, cannot make this tired storyline or pedestrian action scenes hold our interest. It is all as pointless as the explanation for the title — a character explains that was Devereaux’s office nickname because after him, there’s nothing left. Huh? After November is, well, December, and Christmas, and then a whole new year. Pondering the meaning of the nickname, though, was much more entertaining than the film.

Parents should know that this film has extensive spy-style peril and violence including some graphic and disturbing scenes, guns, explosions, chases, torture, with many characters injured and killed, also rape, child prostitution, terrorism, drinking, smoking, drugs, sexual references and situation, and very strong, offensive, and crude language.

Family discussion: How can we balance the need for national security with the need for accountability? How did Mason decide who to trust? What does the reveal about the villain tells us about contemporary geopolitics?

If you like this, try: Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond films and “The Matador”

Related Tags:

Action/Adventure Spies Thriller