In Defense of Salvation

Well, its been a while since I've done any posting. Not for lack of interest on my part but simply because life interfered, as it has a way of doing, and drew my time and energy toward other, more pressing work.
That said, I'm wading back into the fray with the following piece.

Over the past week I've read all manner of indignant, holier-than-thou reviews about the new Terminator Salvation. Overwhelmed with this negative onslaught I had reluctantly decided to save this one for dvd. "If everyone hates it it must be a piece of trash. Right?"

Thankfully my girlfriend convinced me to give it a shot tonight "You never know for sure unless you see it yourself." Boy was she right and everybody else wrong.

All I could think while walking out of the theater when it was over was "McG must be some kind of a-hole to have so many people lined up to shoot down his work" because the film itself is pretty damned good. In the Terminator pantheon its better than T2 (though that's hardly praise considering what an overwrought, poorly cast, poorly acted, poorly written and poorly edited piece of crap that movie was) and head and shoulders above T3 (which played like sci-fi made for the hallmark channel, and whose ending made me feel like I'd been had). The story is logical and easy to follow, fits in nicely with the established mythology and pads things out here and there to interesting effect.
Speaking of effects, they are first rate, never overwhelming and the job the filmmakers did recreating Ahnuld in pixels is downright creepy.

The only part of the story that needed extrapolation was the opening sequence where Marcus gives his body to science in the year 2003. Its never explained how his parts survived long enough to become part of a Cyberdyne/Skynet infiltration experiment in 2018.

But back to all those negative reviews...

I read in one review that the director sacrificed the notion of 'pleasure' with this film. "Pleasure?" Since when were the Terminator movies anything more than killer-cyborg-come-ta-get-ya? The same reviewer went so far as to criticize the location chosen for Skynet headquarters, despairing that it was too desolate.
Uh, dude, post-nuclear apocolypse.

I read another review where a well respected critic dismisses the film because the plot is too simplistic in his eyes: "Guy dies, finds himself resurrected, meets others, fights". Yeah, if you had a bug up your ass against the film to begin with you could sum it up like that. But you could also sum up Lord of the Rings as: "Guy finds ring, brings it to a volcano and drops it in, thereby saving the world from evil forever. Along the way lots of people fight". But that kind of summation says less about the movie than it does about the critics attitude toward the movie (or perhaps the movie maker?).

Yet another major reviewer takes aim at what he considers a major flaw in the plot: "All three previous "Terminator" villains looked human and were capable of speech. They could infiltrate human society, too. So how is this new model an advance?" Uh, dude, in this film those models that are sent back haven't been designed yet. They're coming, the story tells us, but they're still a few years off. Hell, Reese is still a teenager in this movie. By the time he's an adult Sam Worthington's hybrid will have been perfected and THEN they'll start sending them back. Got it?

I could go on and on.

The point is don't believe what you've been reading about this movie. Its good. Its decent sci-fi and first rate summer action. The performances are by and large excellent and special effects left me wanting for nothing.

Someone associated with the production has obviously got on the wrong side of the brotherhood of film critics though and is taking a lashing for it. But we should not waste our time dealing out guilt by association. The sins of the father should not stain the life of the child.

Go see Terminator Salvation.

The Dark Knight - revisited

Ok. I didn't have an "Ohhhh, I get it!" moment upon seeing The Dark Knight a second time. But, I'm pleased to say I was able to come away with a better appreciation for the film. First, because I went in knowing not to expect anything resembling art direction (since there isn't any), and second because, as will happen with complex stories, little things that are missed the first time become apparent the second time around. So the story made better sense to me, which is good. But gaps, loose ends and omissions remained, which is not particularly good.
So first, the lingering weaknesses...and beware: SPOILERS FOLLOW.
First and foremost is the absence of vision. Much has been made about how determined Director Nolan was to make this a 'realistic' tale, set in a 'realistic' urban environment populated by 'realistic' characters. That whole thesis however is fatally undermined by the turn to the comic the movie takes in the final act when Harvey Dent (a character whose descent into the moral abyss I'm still convinced should have been left for another installment) parades around with half his face gone, apparently immune to the 'reality' of massive infection. Much has also been made about Ledger's portrayal of the Joker, but any actor knows that the over the top parts are always the easiest to play, being devoid of the constraints of nuance as they are. Ledger did a very good job but please hold the Oscar talk. Maggie Gyllenhaal is still the weak link in the cast chain. Aggressively unattractive she's an unwanted distraction every time we're forced to endure her on screen. When the Joker approaches her at Bruce Wayne's fund raiser for Harvey Dent and says "...and you are beautiful" all I could do was laugh. The line DOES serve though to point out just how out of it the Joker really is.
The chase scenes - in particular the scene in which the Joker's crew attempts to kidnap Dent when he's being transferred to jail after he "confesses" to being Batman - do not get better on second viewing. They are lame. Period. And the decision to play out the Dent pursuit without the help of a score made me feel like I was sitting through dailies, not in a movie theater watching a finished product. And then there's the loose ends.
What is the point of having Scarecrow make an appearance at the beginning of this film other than to deliver an admittedly effective and funny line when the Batmobile makes a dramatic, bruising entry into the scene? What happens to the guests at the fund raiser for Dent when Batman chases Rachel out the window after the Joker lets her go? The Joker is still up there with Wayne's guests, but the film simply moves on after Batman saves Rachel. How did Gordon manage to stage his own death? There must have been a lot of people in on that since he his apparent killing was a very public affair. And, to make a long bitch session shorter I'll just cut to the end and ask: what happens to the Joker? He's left dangling (literally) at the end, neither in custody or free.
Okay, enough of the problems. On to the upside.
Most of the performances are first-rate. From Ledger's Joker to Caine's Alfred to Freeman's Fox. Event Eckart's Dent. The best performance, and a real second-viewing revelation though, was Christian Bale's work. He's asked to play 3 parts in this movie and pulls them all off effortlessly. So effortlessly it's hard to notice at first glance. The only time we see the 'real' Bruce Wayne is when he's interacting with someone incredibly close to him: ie Alfred, Lucius Fox or, gulp, Rachel. The rest of the time he's Christian Bale playing Bruce Wayne playing Batman, or Christian Bale playing Bruce Wayne playing the somewhat ingratiating billionaire playboy. Each incarnation of Wayne has its own subtleties that must be respected, its own weaknesses and strengths, its own inner logic. Bale does an amazing job of imbuing each side of his character with these essential qualities while at the same time always maintaining enough commonality to make you believe in the underlying psychological unity. To be sure this triality has always been part of the Bruce Wayne character, but I've never seen another actor come close to pulling it off.
Another upside is the apparent death of the Bat-tank. Good riddance.
For the most part the script is well written and disturbing. Once you get past all loose ends the heart of the story is meaty and develops nicely through to the end. The violence is not gratuitous for the most part and that is good to see. If you need to include a shot that shows in graphic detail what happens to that pencil then you're a desperate filmmaker.
What the filmmakers have given us here is a tale for the times. Morally murky and unambiguously pessimistic its full of references to current or recent developments within our so-called society. There's a promotional poster which has Batman standing at the base of a smoldering skyscraper which has had a Batman logo blasted out. The only possible visual reference to such an image is the horrific signature of the Boeing 767's left in the side of the WTC towers. When the film goes all Matrix in the final act it is a direct reference to the governments using the events of Sept 11 as justification to listen to everybody's personal communications. The empty, sterile streets of Gotham are an indication of what happens to a once vibrant city when you make it nothing more than an upper class enclave. A nightmarish phenomenon that has infected nearly every large metropolitan center in the 'developed' world.

In summation, I think the Dark Knight to be an extremely timely but flawed film. Weighed down by the directors ambition and probably more than a little studio interference. It's clearly the best of the Batman films to date yet its not a home run with the third act serving to cut the runner down at the plate. I hope its not a benchmark film, one that leads to limitless imitators, because it has a heart of darkness and one thing about darkness/pessimism et at is that it tends to become a self fulfilling prophecy, the kind we don't need right now. For that reason alone its not a film to embrace. Though it is one to watch and, hopefully, learn from.

Verdict:

The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is a brooding black hole of a film. By turns mesmerizing, dull, exhilerating, ponderous, thoughtful and confused, the minute you think you've figured it out and are ready for what should happen next it turns in onto itself and demands you shift gears. This constant deflation is hard to figure out. How could a film that was so good a couple of minutes earlier have died so quickly? Contracts perhaps; the kind that state "my client shall be onscreen for no less than X number of minutes in the theatrical cut". Or perhaps it was a post-production schedule that simply didn't leave enough time for the director to make an honest assessment of what he had before releasing it to the general public. Or maybe all the deadly dull exposition was a deliberate device the director used to remind us to always think twice before jumping on any particular bandwagon. If the latter is the case then director Nolan succeeded brilliantly. There's no way I can jump on the hype bandwagon for this movie and that makes me more than a little depressed and angry.
In that sense it is a carbon copy of Tim Burton's "Batman", a film that held promise around every corner but often veered into dead ends. A film that suffered greatly from an erratic and sometimes jarringly inappropriate (and, in the case of TDK, sometimes inexplicably absent) score. A film whose director seemed to know exactly what he wanted but not how to get it. Burton had no clue about directing large set pieces, Nolan seems to have no clue about directing action sequences. Much of the action here is of a type left behind 35 years ago by The French Connection. Shot of car, shot of truck, shot of car, shot of truck, shot of car and truck (all playing out in stony silence as if someone forgot to cue the score), truck pushes car, car spins out, on to next car/truck. I don't want to belabor the point but how can it be ignored? This is supposed to be an action movie isn't it? Great pains are taken to set up the action and then we're left with nothing to sink our teeth into. Perhaps Nolan should have taken a day and watched any of the Bourne movies before concepting his chase sequences.
The film's two saving graces - it's complex and disturbing morality and its solid cast - are pulled into the black hole of its mistakes where they struggle to breath. Ledger's Joker is wacked as the day is long but like Nicholson's Joker 19 years earlier, largely lost in the editorial jungle. Bale's Batman is appropriately dark and torn but I was so put off by the long, tortuous exposition scenes that any feelings of engagement with his character's conflicts had dissipated by the time the film reloaded and I was left to start emotionally again from square one. The rest of the cast did their jobs as well as you might expect from such a talented lot including Aron Eckhart, who played a character who's tale should have been left for another film, much like Danny DeVito's penguin in Burton's second Batman effort.
There doesn't seem to have been any conherent vision driving the film. A somewhat coherent and important tale sure, but this is a motion PICTURE after all and if you can't tell your tale with images then you should't be making movies. Nolan relies way too heavily on words mumbled on numbingly dull sets. It feels at times like they just got a few people together and told them to read the script: "Where should we read it Chris?", "I don't care. Let's go into my office."
Whew!
You'll have to excuse me but I had such high hopes for this effort that to say it was a letdown is like saying it rains here in Bangkok sometimes.

What else?
Well, how about this? Has there ever been a less compelling love interest than Maggie Guillenhall? The woman would come in second runner up in a one woman beauty contest. The fact that Bruce keeps showing up with b-a-b-e-s to various functions makes his unrequited love for this ultra Plain-Jane seem ludicrous. He's one of the richest men in the world for christ's sake! Surely he can find someone who's just as intelligent and emotionally stable as ol' Maggie AND who won't have him reaching for the dimmer switch.
And speaking of switches, the switch from aspiring urban crime epic to the Matrix near the end removed me completely from the street and deposited me squarely into "whatthefuckisthis-ville".

Through it all though I could see that in there somewhere is a movie for the ages. A disturbing meditation on moral duplicity, a first rate action flick waiting for a first rate action director, a 21st century crime epic with an impressive ensemble cast and more. These elements popped their heads out of the hole just often enough to keep me in my seat.
Because of all these things I'm going to make a bottom line prediction.
I think The Dark Knight will do record business in its first week and then drop off sharply as those people who are necessary to turn a successful film into a true blockbuster (the ones who might have been drawn in by positive word of mouth) will think twice when they hear their friends struggle to find superlatives for a film who's most compelling component is the performance of a dead guy.
My recommendation? See it twice.
"Huh?" you say?
That's right, see it twice. I'm going back in a few days when I think I can do so in a more objective frame of mind. Now that my expectations have been so thoroughly trampled maybe I can see the movie a second time for what it really is and report back with an amended review that will be more positive. Maybe the second time around those little diamonds on the dirty beach will shine like the sun and I'll have one of those rare "Ohhhhh! I get it!" moments.
As a lifelong Batman fan I feel I owe that much to the Dark Knight.

Verdict: Court is adjourned pending further review.

Hellboy

What can I say about a movie that put me to sleep?
Hmmm....
How about: "This movie put me to sleep"? That's as good a start as any. In fact its about all I really need to say. But in the spirit of Hellboy I'll slog on anyway even though there's nothing to say.
The words bloated, ridiculous and feeble (boring is a given) come readily to mind when I attempt to conjure adjectives to describe this film. As does the more general term "piece of crap".
Attempting to hide the pathetic script under a barrage of special effects only served to draw attention to the disconnect between the effort taken with the effects and the lack of effort taken with developing an even remotely interesting story.
Basically the story comes down to this: a guy with a big arm (played by a guy who can't act) is called upon to defend the human race from an attack by an evil lord (yawn) motivated by a sudden desire for unlimited power (yawn). The bad guy here is seeking the 3 fragments of a magic crown that when reassembled will give him control over a robot army (currently in storage) created thousands of years ago by his father (yawn). There's some kind of secret council of mystic elders or something (yawn) who apparently care about all this but, in the intervening millenia between the time the army was mothballed and the time of the story they never bothered to learn how to defend themselves from a single guy with a sword.
The robo soldiers are invincible, except that they're not.
The bad guys sister is in love with some fish-faced guy, except that she kills herself for no good reason at the end, thereby denying love to fishy.
Hellboy likes to drink beer.
Every element of the film is designed to set up a half a dozen moments within the film where Hellboy gets a chance to say something to the effect: "Ok, lets get it on so I can have a couple of brewski's". It's a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" moment that works once, sort of. But that's it. Imagine the Terminator saying "I'll be back" every 20 minutes and you get the idea. I attempted to stay awake for the entire film but after my date fell asleep on my shoulder sometime around the one hour mark I couldn't resist the logic of her action and joined her. I awoke in time to see the Battle of the Self-Storage Facility and, out of pure guilt managed to keep my eyes open until the merciful end. I'd give it no stars but I don't have a graphic for that and the cg folks who had to endure working on this deserve something.
Don't go see Hellboy, don't rent the dvd, don't buy the dvd.