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Undisputed

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:18 am

D
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
Profanity: Very strong prison language including racist language
Nudity/ Sex: References to rape and prison sex
Alcohol/ Drugs: Mild
Violence/ Scariness: Prison fight violence, boxing violence
Diversity Issues: Diverse characters, even racist characters, show respect and loyalty
Date Released to Theaters: 2002

There is more plot and character development in Michael Jackson’s music video for “Beat It” than in “Undisputed,” a forgettable prison boxing movie.

“Iceman” (Ving Rhames), the world heavyweight champion, is convicted of rape and sent to a maximum security prison. Monroe (Wesley Snipes), a former heavyweight contender, is the undefeated champion in the inter-prison division. They fight each other. That isn’t a summary of the movie – that is the movie. There is some flash and attitude, but it is all on the surface.

The boxers fight in a cage rimmed with barbed wire. That makes for some cool shots through the swirls, but it doesn’t make any sense. There’s an escape risk in the middle of a boxing match with all the guards standing there watching? The movie avoids having to show us anything about the characters by just telling us everything we need to know about them with words superimposed on the screen. When the prisoners start banging their cups in the mess hall, the oldest of prison movie clichés, one guard says to another, “These dumb ****s have been watching too many prison movies.” If only they had been paying attention, they could have learned how to make this one better.

Sports movies (and prison movies, and, come to think of it, most movies) work well when they show us a metaphorical journey involving risk, learning, sacrifice and growth. There’s none of that here. Iceman and Monroe are unchanged from beginning to end. We hear that Iceman is a strong offensive boxer, so we expect to see Monroe develop a strategy to put him on the defense. Nope. Iceman says he is not guilty of the rape, so we figure he’s going to have to accept responsibility. Nope. Monroe says that he has learned to live entirely inside himself, rely only on himself, and stay in control at all times, so we expect to see him have to rely on someone else. Nope. Some big deal is made about having the big fight according to the old rules from the bare-knuckle days, but then the guy organizing the fight changes his mind and decides they will use gloves. Except for one guy who dies, everyone ends up pretty much where they started.

All that’s left, then, is the boxing. There are some powerful moments, but they, too, are flash without substance, and show no real understanding of the sport.

Parents should know that the movie has extremely strong language (including the n-word in the soundtrack), violent confrontations, references to rape and prison sex, and corrupt officials. Some viewers will be concerned about implications that a rape survivor may be lying about what happened.

Families who see this movie should talk about what it meant to Monroe and Iceman to be the champion. How were their ways of coping similar and how were they different?

Families who enjoy this movie will enjoy some of the classic boxing movies, like “Body and Soul,” “Golden Boy,” “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” “Rocky” and “Raging Bull.”

Unfaithful

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:18 am

C+
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
Profanity: Strong language
Nudity/ Sex: Sexual situations and references, including adultery
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking and smoking
Violence/ Scariness: Violence and suspense
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: 2002

This is a story of obsession, betrayal, and jealousy, based on Claude Chabrol’s “La Femme Infidel.” It is about a happily married couple who seem to have everything until the wife is drawn into an affair. It is not for kids, but some adults will consider it a worthwhile portrayal of emotional suspense, told with director Adrian Lyne’s characteristic visual flair. It’s a shocker, so read no further if you don’t want hints of what is to come.

Richard Gere and Diane Lane play Edward and Connie, a couple thoroughly enmeshed in married life. He manages a fleet of armored cars (metaphor alert!), and she stays at home, looking after their precocious son (Erik Per Sullivan, “Dewie” on TV’s “Malcom in the Middle”) and doing charity work. One day, in the city to hunt down some items for the school auction, Connie is literally thrown into the arms of seductive Frenchman Paul (Oliver Martinez). He’s young and charming, and while their first meeting comes to nothing, she can’t stay away.

None of the plot elements are novel, but the seduction is handled very smoothly, without a lot of the emotional short-hand that would leave the story hollow. In fact, the strength of this film is its very down to earth emotional perceptiveness. Paul may be a polished Lothario, but even he can’t help but champ at the bit while preparing coffee for the lovely Connie, scalding himself and leaping around coltishly. When Connie shows up at the office unexpectedly (after an assignation), Edward is just as jumpy, mugging around in an inside-out sweater while his wife suspects every word he says. The movie makes us constantly aware of the currents of affection that run between the characters.

Back at home, Edward knows something is wrong. As his wife primps in private and shies away from his advances, his suspicions mount. Finally, after Connie is spotted in a restaurant with Paul, he cannot avoid the truth. A private detective produces all the details, and Edward goes, broken- hearted, to the apartment of his rival.

The best scene in the film is this confrontation. Neither knows exactly what to do, and it’s in this strange emotional limbo that a tragic choice is made.

Parents should know that this film contains a number of elements which may be upsetting to children. The theme of infidelity runs through the movie, and it creates some tense scenes of home-life. Connie’s seduction is quite overwhelming, and the sex scenes are intense and graphic. There is also a violent scene that results in murder.

Families who see this movie will want to discuss the title. The film is symmetrical–the wife is unfaithful in the first half, the husband in the second. To whom is the husband unfaithful? What “happens” in their final conversation? What is forgivable?

Families who enjoyed this movie will also enjoy the movie that inspired it, “La Femme Infidel,” the recent hide-the body thriller “The Deep End,” and the same director’s “Fatal Attraction.”

XXX

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:18 am

B
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
Profanity: Some strong language
Nudity/ Sex: Sexual references and non-explicit situations
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking, smoking, and drug use; hero does not do any
Violence/ Scariness: Peril and action-style violence, not too graphic
Diversity Issues: Black character is respected and capable
Date Released to Theaters: 2002

Every summer needs an esplosion movie, and for the summer of 2002 it is “XXX,” with Vin Diesel as an extreme sports enthusiast recruited by the CIA. Yep, this is a movie about extreme spying.

That means that this is not a movie about plot or character. It is a movie about gadgets, girls, and “golly, did you see that?” They have taken the essence of 14-year-old boy fantasy and put it up on the screen. This is “The Dirty Dozen” with one guy playing all twelve parts.

Vin Diesel plays Triple X, an underground superstar for stunts like stealing a fancy car from a right-wing politician and filming himself driving it off a bridge, riding it down like a surfboard. The problem with filming yourself doing something illegal is that it makes it pretty easy for the cops to make a case against you, though. So when spy chief Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) offers him the chance to work for the good guys instead of going to jail, X takes it. But never fear, he doesn’t take it because he is afraid or because he feels any kind of soft emotion like patrotism. He takes it because he gets a taste of some of the terrifying tasks involved, and, as he puts it, “I live for this .”

In the first scene, a James Bond-type takes off his wet suit to reveal impeccable black tie and ends up getting killed at a rave instead of retrieving the crucial computer chip. The big shots at CIA central conclude that it is time to “stop sending a mouse into a snakepit and send in our own snake.” So they seek out a man who is trainable and “expendable.”

In training exercises, X reveals that he is not just fearless but smart and loyal — at least, loyal to anyone he thinks of as being like him. He says, “If you’re going to send someone to save the world, make sure they like it the way it is.”

The CIA needs information about a group in Prague that seems to be involved in more than the usual nastiness of drugs, stolen cars, and very loud music. Of course, after an exchange of a few lines of very tough dialogue (“If you’re going to shoot anyone, shoot whoever sold you that suit.”), they immediately take to X and invite them into their little group and into their headquarters, a sort of Playboy mansion if Hugh Hefner was the editor of Vibe, where the bad guys convieniently speak English to each other.

X likes “anything fast enough to do something stupid in,” which is a good thing, because he gets to work down a checklist of fast and stupid things as he incorporates every extreme sport into his efforts to stop the bad guys from sending out a lethal biological agent (with oddly 1970’s control boxes) to random cities. It is clear who this movie is aimed at — X shouts to an accomplice, “Start thinking Playstation – blow up!”

There are some great stunts, especially a snowboard race with an avalanche that would be scarier if it didn’t recall the similar scene with Scrat at the beginning of “Ice Age.” It is too bad that the bad guy is not as interesting as X — he’s just a generic post-communist era guy with an evil plan, a big mouth, a remote control, a girlfriend who is too smart and pretty for him, and a getaway speedboat. But this movie is clearly designed as the first of a series, and it is all about X. Diesel is just the guy for the part, delivering the lines, the kisses, and the action scenes with attitude to spare.

Parents should know that the movie has a lot of intense action sequences and strong language for a PG-13. Characters use drugs, drink, and smoke. In one scene, a number of people are killed in a particularly heartless fashion, while others watch and make fun of them. There are implied sexual situations, including a character telling his girlfriend to have sex with someone else and a woman given to X as a sexual favor, but nothing explicit is shown. A character explains his plans for world anarchy in a manner that is worth discussing with teenagers who see the film.

Families who see the movie should talk about the different definitions of “freedom” that bad guy Yorgi, X, and Gibbons mean when they use the term. What is your own definition? Why? How does X decide who deserves his loyalty? How does Yorgi? How does Gibbons?

Families who enjoy this movie wll also enjoy a brilliant documentary about the origins of the very first extreme sport, Dogtown and Z-Boys and Vin Diesel’s breakthrough performance in The Fast and the Furious. They might like to see Diesel do some fine acting in a very different role in Boiler Room.

Windtalkers

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:18 am

C+
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
Profanity: Very strong language including racist comments
Nudity/ Sex: None
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking and smoking
Violence/ Scariness: Extreme, intense, graphic, frequent battle violence, character deaths
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: 2002

“Windtalkers” is not the right name for John Woo’s new film. A more apt title would be “Sergeant Enders and the Windtalkers,” because the film mainly focuses on the complicated, half-crazed main character rather than the Navajos recruited as Marines in World War II to use their language as a military code that was vital in the allied victory. The movie does a disservice to the men it is intended to honor by perpetuating their marginalization and making the much less interesting Nicolas Cage character the main focus of the story.

We meet Sgt. Enders (Nicolas Cage) in the midst of battle. He is injured and witnessing the deaths of his friends is slowly driving him mad. His hearing loss could get him sent home, but he stays to keep fighting. He and Sgt. “Ox” Henderson (Christian Slater) are assigned to protect newly enlisted Navajo fighters Pvt. Ben Yahzee and Pvt. Charlie Whitehorse, (played superbly by Adam Beach and Roger Willie, respectively) whose abilities with the Navajo code are essential in the war. Enders is noticeably disgruntled at his new duties, but through a series of events he gains a mutual respect for the men he must protect, often in entertaining but predictable fashion. The dialogue is not very memorable with lines from the Navajos like “I’ve never seen so many white men!”

“Windtalkers” follows suit of most post-“Saving Private Ryan” war films and tries to make its point by dousing us with relentless violence. As in too many war movies, there are soldiers who talk about their dreams for when they get home and say things like, “If I die, tell my wife…” and whose purpose in the plot is to help the hero learn something when they die. There’s a tough, bigoted soldier (“The Truman Show’s” Noah Emmerich) who learns that the Navajos are actually good people when one of them saves his life. There’s the doe-eyed girl next door nurse (A.I.’s Frances O’Connor) who loves her stoic, tough but somehow likeable man at war.

Cage, Slater, and a solid supporting cast of character actors are all dependably good, and it’s interesting to see John Woo’s distinctive action style put into a war film. The culture clashes are never boring, and scenes where a peace pipe ritual is carried out on a cigarette and Henderson duets on a harmonica with Whitehorse’s wooden flute are handled with sensitivity.

Parents should know that there is a great deal of graphic battle violence and very strong language, including racial epithets. The Navaho characters are portrayed as patriotic, brave, and dedicated.

Families who see this should discuss the way that Enders and Yahzee change during the course of the movie. Anyone who enjoys this movie will probably also like recent WWII films like the aforementioned Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Enemy at the Gates, and this year’s overlooked Hart’s War. Fore more on the real story of the Windtalkers, see this article.

White Oleander

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:18 am

B+
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
Profanity: Some strong language for a PG-13
Nudity/ Sex: Sexual references and situations, including predatory sex with foster parent
Alcohol/ Drugs: Alcohol and drug use
Violence/ Scariness: Intense and painful family situations, murder, shooting, drug use, suicide
Diversity Issues: All major characters are white
Date Released to Theaters: 2002

Like all Oprah-selected books, White Oleander is the story of a girl who has to overcome the most severe trauma and abuse. The book’s language was both vivid and lyrical, making the terrible events more epic than sordid. The movie tries to achieve the same standard, going for prestige drama over soap opera. But even the an exquisite performance by Michelle Pfeiffer and powerhouse appearances by Robin Wright Penn and newcomer Alison Lohman cannot keep the endless series of tragedies from melodrama.

Pfeiffer plays Ingrid, an artist who prides herself on her strength and independence. She murders her lover with poison from white oleander blossoms, and is sent to prison, leaving her daughter Astrid (Lohman) to a series of foster homes. First, she lives with Starr (Wright Penn), a former topless dancer who has found Jesus and is trying to hold on to her own rebellious daughter. Starr is kind to Astrid until she begins to see her as a rival for the attentions of her live-in boyfriend. Astrid protests that she has no designs on the boyfriend, but she cannot resist his attention and they become involved. Jealousy and insecurity cause Starr to begin drinking again and in a drunken rage she shoots Astrid.

Astrid’s other foster homes include Claire (Renée Zellweger), a weepy actress with a distant husband, and Rena (Svetlana Efremova), a money-hungry Russian who presides like Fagin over a ragtag group of orphans. In between, she stays at an institution, where she is beat up by tough girls but befriended by a sensitive boy named Paul (“Almost Famous” star Patrick Fugit).

Each setting provides Astrid with a new identity to try and a new opportunity to be hurt. Through it all, she visits her mother in prison, and it becomes clear that the woman who killed the man who tried to leave her would also do anything – and destroy anyone — to hold on to her daughter. Whenever Astrid seems happy or at home, Ingrid finds a way to poison her environment. Finally, Astrid is so determined not to allow herself to be vulnerable again that when she has a chance for a home with a kind, loving couple, she insists instead on going with Rena, where she is sure not to be disappointed again. She even turns away from Paul. Finally, though, she learns that even then she is reacting to Ingrid, and that to be fully her own person she must find her own way to intimacy and expression.

A Jungian analysis might suggest that the story is a metaphor for the inevitable separation in all mother-daughter relations. All of the mother figures, including not just Ingrid, Starr, Clare, and Rena but also the foster mother Astrid rejects and the social worker responsible for placing her are like one mother splintered into many extreme versions, as though reflected through a prism. All children find their mother to be many things, from the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving figure of their earliest memories to the extremely demanding and ultimately rejecting caricature she can appear to a teenager struggling to know herself.

Parents should know that the movie includes brutality of a modern-era Dickensian quality. Astrid is seduced by one foster parent and shot by another. A third commits suicide. Astrid is subjected to physical and emotional abuse. Ingrid murders her lover. There are non-explicit sexual situations and references. Characters drink, smoke, and use drugs. Characters use strong language and mock religious faith.

Families who see this movie should talk about how Astrid changes her appearance and manner to reflect each of her “homes,” while Ingrid seems almost untouched by her surroundings.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the book. They may also like to see some other classic dramas of difficult mother/daughter relations, like “Terms of Endearment” and “One True Thing.”