DavidGHeiser.com » Drug/Crime

Seven Mini Movie Reviews

David Heiser — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 04:04:00 +0000

So, I’ve had time to watch a few movies recently. Unfortunately, with exams and the holidays I haven’t been able to write reviews. I’ll use this post to get you all caught up on what I’ve been watching and whether or not it’s worth your time and money.

When Did You Last See Your Father?

This is my favorite of the films that I haven’t had a chance to write about. It’s the story of a son (Colin Firth) dealing with the sudden impending loss of his father (Jim Broadbent). It’s about coming to terms with the fact that you might not have time to answer all of the questions and address all of issues that result from a lifetime of conflict. Director Anand Tucker expertly captures the quirks and struggles of the father-son relationship in a way to which many will be able to relate. Firth and Broadbent are both excellent in this story that is heart wrenching without succumbing to melodrama. I highly recommend checking this out.

City of Men

The sequel to the critically acclaimed Brazilian film City of God had a tough act to follow. While it didn’t impress me as much as its predecessor, City of Men was still very enjoyable. The story, which follows two of the younger characters from the first film (with the same actors), is energetic and action packed. The themes of fatherhood and friendship within this impoverished, gang-ridden landscape are explored in a way that delivers more emotional resonance than you might suspect. It’s stylishly shot and draws added realism from true-to-life shooting locations in the slums of Rio de Janiero. If you enjoyed HBO’s excellent series “The Wire,” then this is going to be right up your alley.

Married Life

I went into this film with mixed expectations. I really like Chris Cooper, but Pierce Brosnin has never done much for me (with the exception of The Matador). In the end, however, the story just wasn’t enough to keep me interested. Almost everything unfolds precisely as you would expect, with the exception of the very end, which struck me as totally implausible. Cooper’s performance was solid, but none of the other characters seemed particularly authentic. It’s not awful, but there are much better options currently occupying your local video store’s “New Releases” shelves.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

I never saw the first Hellboy, but after seeing Pan’s Labyrinth and loving what Guillermo del Toro did with that film, I decided to give The Golden Army a chance. Like Pan’s Labyrinth, this film is visually very cool. The creatures are interesting and the action sequences are entertaining. Unfortunately, the film stars Ron Perlman and Selma Blair, neither of whom are likely to ever draw much attention from the Academy. It’s based on a comic book, however, so I guess a bit of campiness has to be expected. Overall, it’s certainly a better film than Hancock or any of the new Spiderman movies, so if you’re looking for 90 minutes of somewhat low-brow entertainment, go ahead and give it a shot.

Taxi to the Dark Side

If you weren’t already fed up with the current regime, then this stirring documentary is sure to put you over the edge. Taxi to the Dark Side draws its title from the story of a young Afghan man who was wrongfully arrested, without any evidence, and sent to an American prison. There, the young man, who was never charged with a crime, was interrogated for hours, tortured, and eventually dies. The documentary delves into the culprits and causes behind America’s current policy of torture. It’s especially disheartening once you realize that if any other country was doing to Americans what we are doing to Iraqis and Afghanis, we would have charged them with war crimes long ago.

Tropic Thunder

Back when Tropic Thunder was nearing its theatrical release, I really couldn’t see what the big deal was. Ben Stiller has never been one of my favorites. I feel like he plays essentially the same character in almost every movie he does. Jack Black can be funny (e.g., Orange County) but he can be pretty awful too (e.g., Envy). Robert Downey Jr. has talent, but I’m more than a little skeptical of any modern movie that includes the use of black face. Still, it received generally positive reviews so I decided to give it a chance once it was released to DVD. Stiller and Black were as ridiculous as I expected them to be, but the movie is saved by the mind-bogglingly hilarious performance of Tom Cruise. Cruise steals every scene that he’s a part of and single-handedly saves Tropic Thunder from mediocrity. Rent it without too high expectations and you’re in for a treat.

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan

Yes, I actually rented You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. No, I don’t really have a defense for why I did it. Actually, I was lured in by the fact that it received a 75 percent or above from Roger Ebert and seven other critics on MetaCritic. I should have trusted my better judgement, but I can’t say I didn’t laugh. There are some scenes that are so ridiculous that you won’t be able to help yourself. Even still, if I could have the hour and a half of my life that I spent watching Zohan back, you can bet I’d jump at the opportunity. Pass on this one.

Pride and Glory - Movie Review

David Heiser — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:08:00 +0000

MetaCritic score: 45

These days, it’s pretty difficult to make a really good cop drama. Nearly every conceivable storyline has been played out on screen about a million times. Still, Hollywood keeps churning them out. Every once in a while we get a treat, but more frequently the audience leaves the theater feeling like they just spent $8 watching an extended mediocre episode of Law & Order.

That being said, I had to give Pride and Glory a chance. Edward Norton is my favorite actor, bar none. Ever since I first saw American History X, I’ve been willing to shell out my cash for any movie he’s a part of , regardless of how skeptical the previews made me.

From a plot standpoint, Pride and Glory is pretty standard fare. All the cliches are present, with the most obvious ones being good cop / bad cop, the blue wall of silence, and family loyalty versus morality. The story centers around the Tierneys, a multi-generation Irish NYPD family, and their brother/son in law Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell). The movie begins with our main characters being called to a grisly scene where four cops have died in a shootout with some drug dealers, one of whom managed to escape. The four cops, it turns out, were all part of the unit Francis Tierney Jr. (Noah Emmerich) commanded, and Jimmy was a part of.

Edward Norton’s character, Ray Tierney, was once a rising star in the department, but has relegated himself to desk duty for several years after growing unable to work in the moral gray areas that he was required to as a narcotics officer. Still, his father Francis Sr. (Jon Voight) recognizes that his talent remains, and manages to convince him to join the case’s task force.

Tensions begin to rise as it becomes apparent that the cops who died in the shooting went into the apartment looking for drugs and money, but not on official police business. Things get even more difficult when Ray begins to suspect that Jimmy was a part of the same ring of dirty cops.

Ray finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, he has a responsibility to the public to serve and protect. On the other hand, if he exposes Jimmy it will not only leave his sister and her children without a husband and father, but will also bring down his brother Francis, who looked the other way while Jimmy and his crew got away with whatever they wanted.

Pride and Glory, like most other genre driven movies, suffers from a serious lack of character development. Writer/director Gavin O’Connor gives us bits and pieces of back stories for the characters, but always stops short of fleshing them out adequately. It was frustrating because some of these elements, like Ray’s recently defunct marriage, could have really added something to the story.

I also wish that O’Connor would have trimmed some of the film’s side plots. There were several times when I felt like an entire scene should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Despite these criticisms, Pride and Glory has some redeeming characteristics. Norton is predictably excellent throughout, delivering a nuanced performance that the ham-handed Farrell could learn from. Voight is also fantastic, showcasing his skills in a way he hasn’t done in several years.

Overall, if you’re a fan of the crime dramas and haven’t grown weary of the police movie cliches, you will probably really enjoy Pride and Glory. If you’re looking for something original, or a2008 version of The Departed, you’re destined to leave the theater disappointed.

Righteous Kill - Movie Review

David Heiser — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:42:00 +0000

MetaCritic score: 37

The Godfather, Raging Bull, Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, Scent of a Woman, and Goodfellas. These are six of the reasons why, against my better judgment, I went to see Righteous Kill, a film that earned almost entirely scathing reviews. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are legends. They’ve starred in many of my absolute favorite movies. So, even though they’ve dropped a few duds in the last several years, I’m willing to take a shot on almost anything they’re in. For those of you who don’t know much about Pacino and De Niro’s filmography, although they are given a lot of similar roles and are frequently mentioned in the same breath, they’ve only been in two movies together (The Godfather Pt. 2 and Heat) and shared the screen for a total of one scene. This is why, when I first heard about Righteous Kill several months ago when it was still in production, I was instantly excited; both men are getting up there in years and there was beginning to be some doubt as to whether we would ever get the opportunity to see them star in a movie side by side.

In Righteous Kill, Pacino and De Niro play Rooster and Turk, a pair of grizzled New York City police detectives. They’ve got 30+ years on the job and are getting close to retirement when one last major case falls into their laps. A serial killer is taking out the murderers, rapists, pimps, and pedophiles who have managed to avoid facing justice for their crimes. As a sort of calling card, the murderer has made a habit of leaving a four line poem justifying the murder at each of the crime scenes. As the body count rises and the pattern continues, the police become increasingly suspicious that the killer is one of their own. Specifically, the attention begins to fall on Turk. As the movie progresses, Turk and Rooster continue to work the case while, behind the scenes, another pair of cops are working to tie Turk to the killings. All of this builds toward a “shocking” twist ending which even the least astute viewers should be able to see coming from a mile away.

The flaws of Righteous Kill are numerous. First of all, the whole premise of the movie is tired and overdone. Aging cops trying to solve the last big case before they call it quits isn’t anything new. Neither is the idea of the vigilante killer. Still, the film could have been saved by a top notch script or great acting. Unfortunately for the film’s two stars, they aren’t given the dialogue or supporting cast to rescue this flop.

Any time 50 Cent (excuse me, Curtis Jackson) gets tapped for a speaking role, you know things aren’t going to turn out well. The bad rapper turned even worse actor plays a stereotypical club owner / drug dealer. He delivers his lines in a way that sounds so painfully forced and uncomfortable that it reminded me of Hillary Clinton’s first few half-hearted endorsements of Barack Obama after she dropped out of the Democratic presidential race. In addition, anyone who has the slightest hint of feminism in them will shudder at the horribly offensive role played by Carla Gugino. Gugino essentially serves as nothing other than the film’s obligatory sex object, a forensic analyst with a rape fantasy who apparently has a thing for men almost 30 years her senior. She turns in the kind of performance that would make Susan B. Anthony roll over in her grave.

In addition to the screenplay being horribly predictable and formulaic, the dialogue is totally flat. Pacino and De Niro both have an uncanny ability to deliver lines in such a memorable fashion that they stick with you for years. Somehow though, writer Russell Gewirtz, the mind behind the 2006 hit Inside Man, manages to produce an hour and 40 minutes of dialogue with almost nothing worth repeating.

I’d list the positives for Righteous Kill, but I don’t think any part of this film registers as anything above mediocre. Pacino and De Niro aren’t bad, but their performances are dragged down by the 10 ton anchor that is the rest of this work. If you’re like me, a big fan of both of these icons thinking that Righteous Kill can’t really be that bad, I implore you to take me at my word. Use the $7 you’d shell out going to the movies to go rent The Godfather Pt. 2 and start praying that Al and Bobby D get another chance to prove what they can do together on screen.

Street Stars: Game Over - Movie Review

David Heiser — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:43:00 +0000

Game Over is supposed to be a documentary about three drug dealers (AZ, Richard Porter, and Alpo) who dominated the Harlem narcotics scene in the mid-late 1980s. The three guys who the movie focused on were the inspiration for the 2002 Mekhi Phifer / Wood Harris (The Wire, Remember The Titans) movie, Paid In Full. I liked Paid, so I was interested to see the non-fiction version of the story. Unfortunately, the original movie was about 10 times more informative and complete than the documentary, a pretty rare occurrence.

This “documentary” was terrible. There is really no other word for it. It was only 45 minutes long and looked like somebody made it for a high school level video editing class. The camera work was ridiculous. Sometimes, during an interview, the cameraman would seem to get bored and would start zooming in and out on random things in the background.

The film is narrated by Jadakiss (yea, the rapper), and that is our first sign that things aren’t going to be pretty. Game Over is a compilation of interviews with mostly random people that either knew or simply knew of AZ, Alpo, or Rich. It doesn’t seem to be too illogical that some of the people who are interviewed would be narcotics users themselves, given the subject matter of the film, but there was one guy, who was never really identified, who was missing half of his front teeth and really looked like they had just pulled him out of a crack house. It made me question his reliability just a tad. A lot of the interviews seemed to be comprised of people just recalling neighborhood gossip and tall tales they heard 20 years ago. I thought about including an example of this ridiculousness, but this movie was riddled with so many N-bombs that it would be more than a little inappropriate for a white guy to post it on his blog.

One of the lone strengths of the film is the series of interviews done with AZ, the only one of the three who isn’t in prison or dead. It is interesting to get his perspective on what went down, even though he really just focuses on a couple of events rather than a broader spectrum of their era of control, which I think would have helped the film’s depth and organization tremendously. Also, I think they missed on a really good opportunity in their interviews with Rich Porter’s sister. About a third of the movie is footage of an interview with her, where she recalls the kidnapping of her little brother (Donnell) and the death of her older brother (Rich). She spends about 10-12 minutes talking about her little brothers kidnapping, then just throws in at the end about 30 seconds on Rich’s (one of the three focuses of the movie), death. The story about her little brother was an important anecdote to include, because it shows the danger that the jealousy of those close you can pose to people of power, but it really took up WAAAYYY too much of the movie.

All in all, if you’re interested in this sort of thing, go rent Paid In Full. Even if you like Paid, stay away from Game Over. I felt like I wasted 45 minutes of my life and one of my rentals from Blockbuster.

We Own The Night - Movie Review

David Heiser — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:30:00 +0000

When I first saw previews for We Own The Night back when it was about to hit the theaters, I had big expectations. I’m not sure if I was really expecting it to be an Oscar quality film, but I’m admittedly a sucker for any movie that revolves around organized crime and drugs. I think one of my parents must have left me in a room where Scarface or The Godfather was playing when I was a baby and it got ingrained in my subconscious.

I’m also a big fan of Robert Duvall (The Godfather Trilogy), Marky Mark Wahlberg (even though I’ve decided he’s an honorary member of the Ben Stiller/Nicholas Cage Club for Actors Who Play Basically the Same Character in Every Movie They’re In), and Eva Mendes (Hitch, Training Day - I’m also a sucker for Latin women).

All that being said, I thought the movie was entertaining and had some really good looking scenes from a directorial standpoint, but wasn’t really anything to write home about.

The basic plot of the movie is as follows (only very limited spoilers): In the late 80’s in New York, Robert Duvall is the chief of police and the father of Marky Mark and Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix, sorry, that role in Gladiator is what he will always be remembered for in my mind). Wahlberg is the golden boy of the family. He is quickly rising through the ranks of the police department and is destined to follow in his fathers footsteps. Phoenix is the black sheep of the family, running a club for a reputed Russian mob family and using his mother’s maiden name as a business decision to avoid ties to his family. Eva Mendes plays his girlfriend and is basically around to look sexy and work the room (Quick note: There is a pretty unexpected and pretty graphic almost sex scene in the first 30 seconds of the movie. I didn’t go into this movie expecting much of any nudity, let alone from Mendes, but apparently they wanted to get that out of the way right at the beginning so they didn’t have to actually work it into the plot later on. Regardless, she is one of those women who is just obscenely gorgeous, so thanks James Gray!). The trouble begins when we learn that the nephew of the owner of Phoenix’s club is using the club as a base of operations for his drug trafficking business. Marky Mark and Robert Duvall know this and want Phoenix to help them catch the Russian. Fully aware that informing on the nephew of his employer is a poor career choice he declines. Marky Mark and Duvall respond by raiding the club anyway. We then learn that the Russian is a little bit upset by this recent inconvenience and has decided to order a hit on Marky Mark. He tells Phoenix this, not knowing they are brothers and the moral dilemmas ensue.

The best aspects of this movie were its action scenes. My personal favorite was a car chase / shootout scene which took place in a driving rain. The cinematography here was really excellent and added to the hectic nature of what was going on without bouncing the camera around and giving you motion sickness. There was another intense and pretty well done shootout scene about halfway through the movie as well.

The acting was for the most part decent, but unspectacular. Like I mentioned earlier, Wahlberg is essentially playing the same character he does in every movie, but with slightly less of an edge, so he does a fine job. Phoenix was solid, but it was far from his best work. Duvall was mediocre compared to what I’ve come to expect.

The plot really picks up the closer you get toward the end of the movie. There are a few unexpected twists and solid moments of suspense to keep you hooked. The strongest parts of the movie’s plot though are the internal dilemmas that Phoenix faces as more and more chaos enters into his life. He has rejected the “family business,” but now that his family’s well being is threatened should he reconsider? How much must he consider his girlfriend’s pleas for him to keep himself out of danger if the wrong decision may cost him his relationship? There are a couple others that he has to work through that would give too much away if I expressed them here.

Anyhow, like I said earlier, I found We Own The Night pretty entertaining, so I’d put it into the “Definitely Rent It” category if you like crime/drug movies like I do, and the “Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Run to the Store” category if you’re just picking something up for a movie night and aren’t preferential toward this genre.