The Da Vinci Code

Posted on May 17, 2006 at 3:45 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for disturbing images, violence, some nudity, thematic material, brief drug references and sexual content.
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drug user, drug joke
Violence/ Scariness:	Frequent peril and violence, including shooting, punching, slapping, graphic scenes of mortification of flesh
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie, some characters and situations that may be viewed as heretical or offensive
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2006
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00005JOC9

A character in this movie’s version of the Catholic organization Opus Dei explains that their mission is to follow doctrine very strictly. That was director Ron Howard’s secular mission as well with this adaptation of the world-wide best-seller. He and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman knew that the fans of the book would want to see every word up on the screen. And that’s pretty much what they give us, a color-by-numbers adaptation of the book instead of a movie.

Indeed, the book was more cinematic than its on-screen version, with little description, a lot of dialogue, and short, propulsive scenes with a lot of cliff-hangers. The very act of adapting it throws it out of balance. What is left to the imagination in the book comes across as heavy-handed and over the top on screen, from the very first appearance of Paul Bettany as Silas, with a sit-com-style Italian accent. The gossamer-thin plot is even wispier on screen and the book’s eneergetic pacing is slowed down by overly cautious and respectful direction. Its equally thin characterizations give even talented and charismatic performers like Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Bettany, and Alfred Molina too little to do. Only Ian McKellen as scholar Leif Teabing brings his character to life.

Hanks plays “symbolgist” Robert Langdon, in Paris to speak about his new book. Policeman Bezu Fache (Jean Reno) asks him to take a look at a recent homicide victim, a curator at the Louvre who had been scheduled to meet with Langdon that day. As Langdon observes the body, naked and arranged in a peculiar way, and the message he wrote in his own blood, they are interrupted by a police cryptographer, Sophie Neveu (Tautou). Soon after, Langdon and Neveu find themselves on the run from the police and some bad guys as they try to solve a mystery that is hundreds of years old.

It is fun to see the real locations portrayed in the book and there are some good twists in the plot. But Hanks looks tired and distracted and Tautou (of the lovely Amelie) does not seem comfortable with the English dialogue. The same is true for some of the Americans and Brits in the cast, though and it’s tough to blame them as some of the lines must have felt like chewing on wood: “We cannot let ego deter us from our goal.” “The mind sees what it chooses to see.” The historical flashbacks are overdone, with the exception of one subtle flicker between present and past that works nicely. Fans of the book may find what they are looking for, but everyone else may feel that it is a watered-down and dragged-out version of an Indiana Jones movie.

Parents should know that the movie has a good deal of peril and violence. Characters are shot, punched, killed in a car crash, and poisoned. There are also explicit scenes of a character hurting himself as an expression of his religious commitment. A character is an intravenous drug user. There is some strong language (spelled out in subtitles when characters swear in French). The movie also has themes that some audience members may find disturbing, even heretical. While the film-makers have stated clearly that the incidents depicted in the film are fantasy, some audience members may be upset by allegations of illegal activity on the part of some church members or the challenges to traditional doctrines.

Families who see this movie should talk about different groups through history that have believed that information needed to be kept from others. They may also want to talk about the views of different religions and cultures and eras about the role of women.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy reading the book. They will also enjoy movies like National Treasure, Die Hard 3 (very strong language), Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. They should learn about the real Opus Dei (whose response to the movie is here) and the real-life characters and locations, including Leonardo da Vinci and the Louvre. They may also want to explore some responses and critiques like this one and this one. Author Dan Brown responds here to questions about what is fact and what is fiction in the book and why he believes his book should not be considered offensive but an invitation to exploration and dialogue.

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Poseidon

Posted on May 10, 2006 at 4:18 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense prolonged sequences of disaster and peril.
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking, character is inebriated
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense and graphic peril and violence, characters injured and killed, many dead bodies
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters, including gay character
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2006
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000R209NY

This remake is so stripped down it doesn’t even have time for two of the three words of the original: this isn’t The Poseidon Adventure — it’s just “Poseidon.” If they remake it, it will be called “Pos.” Top-notch action director Wolfgang Peterson (Air Force One, Das Boot) gets the two most important things right in this thrill ride of an update on the corny classic.

First, the special effects are stunning. It is astonishing how far the technology has come even since Peterson’s The Perfect Storm. The effects are the star of the movie and, with a couple of exceptions, they are so powerfully vertiginously believeable that audiences looking for the roller-coaster sensation of controlled chaos will happily spill their popcorn.

Second, Peterson is a master of pacing, knowing exactly how much tension to string out before a crash or a laugh or a twist is needed to let audiences catch their breath, even if it’s a gasp. The characters and plot are stripped down to the basics to keep the action center stage.

It operates like a well-designed wind-up toy. A few cranks of the plot key efficiently introduce the characters and the story shoots out in a straight line retaining its top speed until the end. Here is the entire movie: an enormous ocean liner hit with a “rogue wave” flips over and just about every character played by an actor whose name is in the opening credits, each with some knowledge, experience, ability, or tool that will prove crucial, spends the next 90 minutes trying to find a way off the ship, while a lot of stuff crashes, explodes, floods, and ignites all around them.

Peterson wisely relies on the appeal of his cast rather than the script to carry our interest. All we need to know about each of them is (1) what he or she has to contribute, and (2) what he or she has to triumph over. All of that is neatly laid out and just as neatly tied up without getting in the way of (1) the special effects and (2) the action, though some insensitivity to diversity issues is careless and distracting.

An architect (Richard Dreyfus), a fire fighter-turned mayor (Kurt Russell), a Naval veteran-turned gambler (Josh Lucas), a single mom (Jacinda Barrett) with her son, a steward (Freddy Rodriguez) and a stowaway (Mia Maestro) — for tonight’s performance their skills play the role normally played by those gadgets that Q hands out to James Bond. We know what they can do. The fun is seeing how each of them will be required.

A character who contemplated suicide will find why and how much he wants to stay alive. A character who can’t let go of what matters most to him learns that letting go can be the best way to hold on. Characters learn what they are capable of — whether it means great sacrifice on behalf of the group or devastating choices to ensure survival.

But mostly, it’s about the special effects and the stunts, which are, for all the good and bad that implies and with the significant and jarring exception noted in the spoiler below, the best of what Hollywood has to offer when it comes to summer action films. As for the dialogue — well, someday I forsee a college drinking game that will require everyone to take a swig every time someone says something like, “Do it or we DIE!”

Parents should know the movie has non-stop intense peril and violence, some quite graphic. Characters are injured and killed and there are many dead bodies. Characters drink and at least one gets inebriated. There are sexual references, some crude, including the exchange of sexual favors for other benefits. SPOILER ALERT: A serious problem with the movie is its portrayal of the minority characters. While the white leads are professionals, the two Hispanics are a steward and a stowaway, both sacrificed to move the plot along and keep the white characters alive. A strength of the movie is the low-key, positive portrayal of a gay character.

Families who see this movie should talk about the decisions made by Nelson and Ramsey — what went through their minds as they evaluated their options?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the original, as well as disaster film classic The Towering Inferno.

Mission Impossible III

Posted on May 10, 2006 at 3:55 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of frenetic violence and menace, disturbing images and some sensuality.
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense and graphic peril and violence, including torture, graphic injuries and death
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2006
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000HRMAPE

At this point, the impossible mission may be finding some way to make this story work once more.

That Lalo Schifrin score still jumps and in this version there is a propulsive shot of percussive adrenalin. The idea of super-spies who speak every language, are in superb condition, and know every aspect of spycraft from shooting to fighting to explosives to computers to physics to finding the coolest sunglasses — that still works pretty well, too, and it’s always a treat to see who the new bad guy will be. But making it more than ever-bigger explosions and chases? That’s where this mission self-destructs long before it’s over.

This time, it’s personal — the script tries to turn up the heat by giving the hero a love interest and the movie begins with both of them tied up and man threatening to kill her if Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) does not give him something called a rabbit’s foot. She is Julia (Michelle Monaghan), a nurse. Flashback to their engagement party, where he is explaining his boring job with the state Department of Transportation monitoring traffic patterns.

The men find him snoozerific, but the women in essence, say, “Hey, he’s Tom Cruise! We’d marry him even if he jumps on sofas.”
Hunt has given up spying for love, and now has a nice, safe, teaching job underneath that boring Transportation Department office building. But his best student (“Felicity’s” Keri Russell) has been captured, so he’s quickly back on board with old friends (Ving Rhames as computer whiz Luther) and new ones (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Maggie Q).

The bad guy at the center of all this is Owen Davian (“Capote” Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman). And that rabbit’s foot is some kind of end of the world device (“the anti-God”) locked away in some kind of impenetrable building blah blah blah. And maybe one of the good guys isn’t good all the way through. And maybe there will be some of that face-and-voice switching we always expect from the MI series.

That’s the problem. It’s just what we expect. It’s been a long dry stretch since last summer’s bang-bangs, and all those months of Oscar-bait dramas and winter doldrum leftovers have left audiences so parched for blow-em-ups that they might not notice the under-written script. Just don’t try to think.

The bright spots are Hoffman, who gets more out of the word “fun” than Cruise gets out of his big dramatic reaction to seeing his fiancee at gunpoint, Laurence Fishburne, as a superspy boss-man, who dryly points out that his reference to The Invisible Man is “Welles, not Ellison, in case you want to be cute again,” and the Q-equivalent, “Shaun of the Dead’s” Simon Pegg. Decidedly unbright spots are Cruise, who seems to have suffered charisma-extraction, the bantering about getting married in the middle of split-second calculations, chases, and explosions and seeing a character disguised as another doing stunts that even by the low standards of probability for this genre just seem silly.

Same with all the just-miss bullet dodging. For a bunch of characters who are supposed to be the world’s most accurate shots, they miss a lot. And with the “make the explosions really loud and they won’t notice” plot omissions and inconsistencies.
The real problem that keeps interfering with what would otherwise suffice as popcorn pleasures of the movie-as-thrill-ride is that in the midst of all the faux resolute jaw clenches and corny banter there is something genuinely troubling — the specter of torture of prisoners and Machiavellian corruption. Intended to give the movie a jolt of “Law and Order”-style ripped-from-the-headlines electricity, instead it throws the movie fatally off-kilter.

Parents should know that this movie features extensive and explicit peril and violence with many explosions and chases, torture, and many injuries and deaths. There are some sexual references and brief, non-explicit sexual situations. Characters drink, smoke, and use brief strong language.

Families who see this movie should talk about the conflict Ethan faces between doing what makes him happy and doing what he thinks is right and between telling Julia the truth and protecting her from it. They should also talk about one character’s comment that you can always tell people’s characters by the way they treat someone they don’t have to treat well.
Families who see this movie will enjoy the two earlier films and the James Bond series and Lord of War. They might also enjoy taking a look at the original television series, which is available on DVD.

The Sentinel

Posted on April 21, 2006 at 5:39 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some intense action violence and a scene of sensuality.
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	A lot of peril and violence, shooting, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2006
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00023P4UQ

What this movie gets right is the dry, cynical, slightly gallows-ish humor of people who spend their lives on constant alert, knowing that 999 out of a thousand of the “suspicious” activities they check out will be nothing. They are the guys in the corner of the picture in the paper during the President’s speech. When everyone is looking at him, they are looking at them, deciding whether the man over there is reaching for a cell phone or something more dangerous. For years at a time, they watch to make sure perameters are secure and routes are clear. They are always alert and always ready to die to save the President and his family. The script may be thin, but the performers don’t seem to notice, plowing ahead with the same dogged, somewhat humorless determination real-life agents bring to the job.

Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas) took a bullet when someone tried to kill President Reagan. He’s still on the job, not enough of a rule-follower to be promoted to a management position, but trusted enough to be assigned to guard the President (David Rasche) and the First Lady (Kim Basinger).

Garrison gets evidence from an informant that there may be a traitor within the Secret Service. To make the investigation even more difficult, Garrison is having an affair with the First Lady and his former best friend David Breckendridge (Kiefer Sutherland), the chief investigator now despises him, believing Garrison caused the end of his marriage by having an affair with his wife. Can Garrison protect the First Lady and his informant while finding the mole before he can put the President at risk?

It’s a pretty solid thriller, not worth rushing out to see but worth a matinee or video rental. The transfer from book to screen is uneven. The script does not always show instead of telling — or assuming — what we need to know, especially when it comes to the relationship between Garrison and the First Lady (or between the First Lady and the President), Garrison and Breckendridge, and Breckendrige and rookie Jill Marin (“Desperate Housewives'” Eva Longoria). The characters are underwritten but the stars’ natural charisma holds our attention and keeps us on their side, the action scenes are crisply filmed, and the location shots provide an authentic feel.

Parents should know that this film has a great deal of peril and violence, with a lot of shooting. Characters are wounded and killed. There is blood, but the injuries are less graphic than some other PG-13’s. It includes a non-explicit sexual situation and references to adultery. Characters drink alcohol and use some strong language.

Families who see this movie should talk about the Secret Service and how its training and duties differ from other law enforcement agencies. Did Garrison violate his duty or his oath?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of a Secret Service agent in In the Line of Fire. They will also enjoy the superb miniseries Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, about a mole within Great Britain’s spy agency, based on the real-life case of traitors Philby, Burgess, and McLean.

Lucky Number Slevin

Posted on April 2, 2006 at 12:15 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong violence, sexuality and language.
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, references to drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Extremely intense and graphic peril and violence, many characters killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters, some homophobic comments
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2006
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000FKO5QK

Slevin (Josh Harnett) is not having a good week. He lost his job and his girlfriend. He was mugged and his wallet and suitcase were stolen. He decided to visit a friend, who seems to have disappeared. But the door was unlocked, so he lets himelf in and takes a shower.

A pretty girl named Lindsay (Lucy Liu) from across the hall comes over while he is still wearing nothing but a towel. Some very nasty types arrive, convinced that he is the missing friend, who owes them a lot of money. They have a boss who wants to talk to him about it right away, still wearing the towel.

Slevin has landed in the middle of a war between two crime kingpins, The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) and The Boss (Morgan Freeman). They each live in huge glass towers, facing each other. And they both believe Slevin is the man who owes them money and he gets caught in the middle of their efforts to destroy each other.

Slevin seems to take all of this in stride, never getting ruffled and tossing off wisecracks as people keep threatening him with the most violent and painful consequences for failing to take them seriously. He explains to Lindsay that he has a condition that keeps him from getting scared. But there are a few things he does not tell her that make for complications — and quite a body count.

There’s more style than substance here, but the style takes us pretty far, with some wicked wisecracks, some nicely twisty plot turns, and some very twisted characters. Harnett and Bruce Willis coolly underplay in contrast to Freeman and Kingsley, enjoying themselves with a bit of grand guignol. They achieve an immediate rhythm that has us on their side. The violence is gruesome, literal overkill, and as a result the effort to tie it all together at the end just doesn’t work. But the scenes with Liu and Hartnett have real sparkle — though she is tiny and he is very large, the two seem just right together that we want it to, and that’s close enough.

Parents should know that this movie is filled with adult material that is not appropriate for children or teenagers and for many adults. It has constant extreme and graphic violence with many characters injured and killed, including a child’s parents. Characters use constant extremely strong and profane language. There are sexual references and situations. Characters are criminals, involved in drug dealing and murder for hire. A gay character is the subject of some homophobic comments. Diverse characters are all equally vile, but a strength of the movie is the inter-racial romance.

Families who see this movie should talk about the different characters’ ideas about justice and where they came from.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy The Usual Suspects.

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