The Train (1964)

All war pictures invariably ask at some point if the mission -- and by extension, the war -- is worth it. John Frankenheimer’s 1964 film The Train asks this question in a simple, yet provocative way. In the film, a French rail station manager played by the outrageously swarthy American Burt Lancaster tries to stop a train carrying priceless works of French art from Paris into Germany.

It’s a terrific conceit that leaves aside the standard cliches of war adventures. There is no bond of brotherhood between soldiers here, or subplots involving broken loyalties, or the glory of battle. There are paintings by Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Picasso, and Matisse. There is Col. Von Waldheim, a ruthless German officer who appreciates them, and Labiche, the gruff, no nonsense member of the underground who does not. When the museum curator informs Labiche of Von Waldheim’s plan, he bluntly points out how he’s running low on men and asks if she has copies of the paintings. When told that the fallen members of the underground would’ve wanted to save the art, he responds, “And they're dead. And they'll never know!”

There’s lots of nifty action, with trains derailing and colliding and whistling and squealing, all of which is a childhood dream come true for any outrageously swarthy dude who ever had a train set. In one scene, Lancaster slides down a ladder, gets up a head of steam, and jumps aboard a passing train -- all in one shot by Frankenheimer.

It’s a lean and mean affair that unfolds like one long shell game, with Labiche and his cohorts trying to trick the German officers onboard that the train is en route to Germany when, in fact, it is looping back toward Paris. I enjoyed the tricks the French Underground employed to fool the German officers, and the numerous, sometimes ingenious ways Frankenheimer finds to make a train running along tracks exciting. At one point, Labiche must bring an engine from one station to another in broad daylight, and he soon comes under fire from a British fighter that, of course, does not know a swarthy American playing a French saboteur is at the helm. The ensuing scene becomes a race to a tunnel, with Labiche getting the engine up to top speed and then having to slam on the brakes to avoid being strafed.

Another twist involves Labiche’s having to paint the roof of the train so that future Allied air attacks can identify it and let it be. While the bulk of the film focuses on these and other tactics, what really grounds the action is the constant question: is it worth it? The more Col. Von Waldheim is undermined, the more vicious he becomes. At several points, dozens of civilians are lined up and shot without hesitation. Von Waldheim is a terrific villain, a ruthless man of culture who is a great foil to Labiche. At one point he tells Labiche, “The paintings are mine; they always will be; beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it.”

The film succeeds because it balances the swift action and clockwork plotting with these brief exchanges about the value of art and culture. “This is our pride, what we create and hold for the world. There are worse things to risk your life for than that” argues the museum curator early in the film. Labiche says he can’t help her, but he does. Because that’s what swarthy dudes do during war.

No Country for Old Men

There are swift thematic undercurrents just under the violent surface of No Country for Old Men. From the lean, nuanced writing to the quiet, confident performances and the Coen Bros. restrained direction, the whole film is an exercise in understatement. Yes, there's a lot to digest in this high-minded action/western/thriller. The real question to ask after taking this film in is: really, who gives a shit?

The Coen Bros. can do and have done every type of movie. They have an off-kilter sense of humor, a real mean streak, and an uncanny ability to balance the two. Sometimes they create moments so tense and unnerving that an audience's only recourse is to laugh. Such is the case with most every scene involving Javier Bardem's amoral Anton Chegurh. He's quiet, composed, and sinister, a supremely chilling villain.

Sadly, the rest of the characters exist on another, less involving plane. They are flat, uninteresting people who speak in vague, ambiguous statements, if they speak at all. Tommy Lee Jones' retirement-avoiding sheriff opens and closes the film with two meandering soliloquies that deal with who-freakin'-knows-what. There's man's violent nature, retirement, the conflict in men between staying and going from their chosen lives, the eternal conflict of good and evil, violence begetting violence, and other such high-minded concepts that have fans of Cormac McCarthy's source novel sloppily wetting themselves.

I am a fan of the Coen Bros. and I do appreciate it when filmmakers let their audiences connect the dots. Forcing the audience to figure out what exactly the dots are is another matter, one that I feel should take a back seat to simpleton stuff like interesting characters and emotional thematics.

Make no mistake, I'm not knocking the film for being uniquely literate and intellectual, but strip the rosy prose away from the characters, and No Country for Old Men is a lean thriller about the mechanics of running and hiding with a big bag of money. If the medium is the message, then that is what's happening for two hours. When the Academy Awards do their featurette on this film during the ceremony and someone describes it as a provocative, insightful look into the dark souls of men, please remember that a significant portion of the film's running time is devoted to Josh Brolin screwing and unscrewing air vents.

The presence of Anton Chegurh changes and elevates things. His actions and their curious motivations are in such stark contrast to the film's protagonist that it leaves you craving more. But "less is more" is the theme of the day here, and No Country for Old Men left me underwhelmed. It's tense, involving, and meticulously plotted. I'll even throw in the adjective "diabolical" for good measure. But the hype is too much. If I had stumbled upon this film a few years down the road, I probably would have wondered, "Why haven't more people seen this?" But critics and (gulp) the literati are falling over themselves kissing this film's ass, and all I have to say is, "Really?"

UPDATE: Ask A Ninja agrees with me.

Scorsese's "Key to Reserva"

There's a new nine-minute pseudo-documentary by Martin Scorsese that's actually a long ad for a Spanish wine. It's a funny bit in which Scorsese preserves a "film that has NOT been shot" by shooting a short film in Hitchcock's style. Good times. Have fun spotting all the Hitch references.

Grindhouse

Asking me for my favorite film is an exercise in futility. Even a Top 5 is tough, as it often just depends on my mood. If there's one thing I've learned about the moving picture, it's that movies hit you differently depending on when in your life you've watched them. I used to love Top Gun with every fiber of my being when I was eight, in large part because I had no concept of the French Kiss. Watching Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis tongue-bathe each other in soft blue lighting was an earth-shattering cinematic revelation for me. Nowadays? Not so much.

However, if you ask me why I've pursued a career in film, what movies made me want to MAKE movies, the answer is easy. Pulp Fiction and The Usual Suspects. Hands down, no contest. I watched them and thought, "Wait, you can do that in a movie?" Each flick, in its own way, questions the films that came before it, acknowledges and re-invents genre conventions, and finds unique ways to kick ass.

Which is why it pains me to say that I didn't care for Death Proof at all. Quentin Tarantino's first two films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, along with his screenplay for True Romance, have had an undeniable influence of Hollywood (not to mention me) in the last fifteen years, but in that same time Tarantino seems to lose himself a little more in his passion for movies. Each new QT piece, from his segment of Four Rooms on down, is bloated, self-indulgent, and often just a little boring. For every butt-kicking Kill Bill, Vol. 1, he delivers a drawn-out Kill Bill, Vol. 2.

Death Proof's faults are a lack of storytelling basics. There is no clever reinvention, no freshening up of dusty genre cliches. It's four girls yapping, followed by another four girls yapping. For two hours. And every now and again, Kurt Russell and his death proof mobile drop in to make things exciting.

And don't get me wrong, things get exciting when the titular car makes an appearance. The raucous, road raging finale delivers on the guilty pleasure promise of the whole grindhouse notion. It's genuinely thrilling to watch two types of car fetishes literally ramming into each other on a winding two-lane road. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the film is content to be about girls in conversation. And not the wonderfully sly, lyrical conversation Tarantino is known for. The conversations aren't unique, don't wind back on themselves, don't come up again later, or reveal anything about the characters. It's dreadfully natural chatter, bland in its realism. Oh, sure, there's a vague thematic connection, but who wants thematic mirrors when you've been promised killer cars?

I remember the mid-90s when Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez burst onto the Hollywood scene. Tarantino was the Golden Child, the post-classical Hollywood auteur. He was the trendsetter to Rodriguez's raw, brash director prodigy. The knock on Rodriguez was always that he could direct the hell out of anything, but couldn't write a story to save his life.

Planet Terror kicks unholy ass. Rodriguez has crafted a screenplay that toes the line of awfulness without ever going over, resulting in a marathon of corny dialogue and excessive gore that's an absolute pleasure to take in. He's smart enough to give us characters we care for, and savvy enough to know that what we really want out of Grindhouse is the sweet action/horror stuff. For example, there's El Wray, the classic brooding anti-hero. He's constantly being given a hard time by the local sheriff, who makes vague references to El Wray's dark, mysterious past. After skipping over a "missing reel" that burns out the film midway through the story, Rodriguez jumps straight to all hell breaking loose and reveals a wounded sheriff telling El Wray, "Thanks for telling me about... you know." It's more than just a film buff in-joke. It's Rodriguez telling his audience to hang on, the good stuff's on the way.

The film is a delightfully rich ball of cheese. It's the type of movie that's unafraid to beat a testicle joke to death, to repeat dialogue for melodramatic effect, or to amputate it's heroine's leg and replace it with an automatic rifle/rocket launcher. While Death Proof goes through great pains to recreate certain grindhouse elements (the scratched, dirty film stock, poor editing, etc.), Planet Terror actually relishes in the ridiculousness of action/horror movies. Tarantino delivers a tip of his cap to a by-gone genre of film, but Rodriguez goes all out and makes a film that stands on its own cheesy, gory merits.

Disturbia

I don't want to sound like an old blowhard longing for the glory days of Hollywood's studio system. Disturbia's pretty good. It's an effective suspense/thriller. Shia "The New Dicaprio" LaBeouf is pretty good. But, come on, it's not Rear Window. Shia's kinda sorta cute girl has nothing on Grace Kelly. No one will ever rue the day she marries into Monaco's royal family. Speaking of which: Damn you straight to hell, Prince of Monaco Guy! Who do you think you are, taking Hitchcock's quintessential heroine? F you, a-hole!
Anyway. It's not fair to compare the two. Whether Disturbia is a re-invention or a re-imagining or a contemporary re-telling... it's a different animal. As in weaker. Oops, there I go.

I liked Shia's character, Kale. The opening moments of the film that turn him into the angry troublemaker he becomes are genuinely terrifying, and his resulting petulant attitude is completely understandable. In fact, that's ultimately what holds this story back. Kale's plight is so sad that his voyeuristic tendencies are almost acceptable.

The keen and clever part of Hitchcock's film was the James Stewart character's life of choice was one of distance, through his camera lens. He held everyone, including precious angel Grace Kelly, at bay, but was suddenly thrust into action upon discovering a murderous neighbor. Kale's actions really don't reflect on his character's flaws... he doesn't necessarily want to peek into his neighbor's lives. He got the royal screw and is stuck at home, what else is he supposed to do?

There I go with the comparisons, again. Look, here's the thing, Rear Window is dated. It's long and slow in parts. But it's ultimately more compelling and more harrowing when the chips are on the table. It indicts James and Grace and, gasp, even the audience for peeking through the window curtains, whereas Kale just happens to be bearing witness to evil and ends up going through the whole boy-who-cried-wolf affair.

So, if you've never seen Rear Window, then Disturbia does the job. It's tense and exciting when it needs to be, and surprisingly endearing between the thriller stuff. Kale's wise-ass Asian friend is hilarious. Alas, he has nothing on Grace Kelly, either.

Tony Leung Trio

I was going to recommend the films of Wong Kar-Wai when I had a revelation. I've seen roughly 8 Chinese-language films in my lifetime, and actor Tony Leung (a.k.a. Leung Chiu Wai, if you're of the Asian persuasion) has been in, oh, 7 of them. Whether he's the Kevin Bacon of China or simply an actor whose movies happen to get US distribution, I do not know. What I do know is his presence anchors every film I've seen him in.

The first film I saw Tony Leung in is John Woo's Hard Boiled. Leung plays a cop undercover in a gun dealer's gang who crosses paths with Chow Yun-Fat's hardened (as in a boiled egg) detective on the trail of the very same gun dealer. While that description may sound like an intriguing setup for a gritty drama, keep in mind that this is a John Woo film, which means lots of people shoot lots of guns at lots of other people as they jump and swing and do lots of insane shit, sometimes in slow motion. The opening teahouse shootout sets the kick-ass tone for the rest of the film. Woo has many nameless henchmen kill many nameless civilians, which doesn't really bother Chow Yun-Fat's character so much as when his partner is killed. Angry Chow chases his partner's killer into a backroom, gets covered in flour while dodging bullets, and then blows off the guy's head, thus splattering his flour-white face with blood. Yes, that is the first five minutes. Leung lends some gravity to the proceedings as the morally compromised undercover cop, but it's Woo's bullet-ridden choreography that will forever forgive him his future trespasses, which are called Windtalkers and Paycheck.

In Infernal Affairs, Leung plays another cop undercover as a gangster who is hunted by another cop, who happens to be an undercover gangster. This is the gritty drama take on that premise, and the film is both a clever thriller and an intriguing character study. There is an extended sequence early in the film when the police are waiting for a drug deal to go down and the film details how Leung and his counterpart (played by Andy Lau) are indirectly sabotaging the other's operation. It's a clever, taut, even provocative film that manages to stay focused on the two leads as they slowly but surely lose their grip on their identities. Lau is solid, but Leung stands out as a man who hates himself for what he is only pretending to be, and slowly drowns in desperation because the number of people who know the truth are dwindling. If this all sounds strangely familiar to you, this was the basis for The Departed, so if you want to lord your superior film knowledge above the heads of your Netflix friends, do give it a spin and pretend like it was a secret that the Hollywood Remake Machine let out.

In Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express, Leung gets to stretch his legs and play... a cop. Which is why I will instead be talking about Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love. In it, Leung plays a writer (ha!) who rents a room next door to a lady played by Maggie Cheung. Both are married, and both come to the realization that their spouses are cheating on them with each other. What unfolds is an endearing friendship that threatens to turn into something more, but both vow never to sink to the level of their unfaithful spouses. This is the type of art house fair that I usually dread, but Wong is a romantic through and through. He infuses his films with real heart and, in this case, real melancholy. Loneliness and unrequited love are staples of his work, and what's heartbreaking about Mood is the fact that both emotions are self-inflicted. Both characters repress their true feelings so as not to shame their already broken marriages. Visually, the film is a splendor. Wong is a master at creating atmosphere, and here he recreates a crowded 1960s Hong Kong with rich colors and a penchant for the Nat King Cole song "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas." At first, it is a little odd to hear Cole crooning in Spanish for this Chinese film, but the images are mesmerizing and the repitition of it is sadly evocative... perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Leung won Best Actor at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival for his work here.

So there you go. If you're in the mood for a fun Friday night doubleheader, go with Infernal Affairs followed by Hard Boiled (and stay far, far away from the Infernal Affairs sequels). If you want heartbreak and romance, give In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express (which is delightfully romantic) a spin. If you want a dash of science-fiction mixed in with your unrequited love, pick up a copy of Wong Kar-Wai's 2046, a quasi-sequel to Mood that also stars Zhang Ziyi and follows Leung's character as he becomes a cold womanizer who writes a pulp sci-fi novel that mirrors his hedonistic exploits. Like what you've read about Leung but want some kung fu? There's Hero with Jet Li, a visually stunning and dreadfully boring film, but hey, whatever your cup of tea. Action? Love? Subtitles? Tony Leung is your man.

With a name like Swagger...

Sometimes, Taco Bell just does it for you. Maybe you've only got a few bucks on you, or maybe you're drunk -- which is the preferred state for eating a double decker taco -- but sometimes you don't want quality. Not even McDonald's-level quality. You just want a double decker taco.

Shooter is a double decker taco. It's directed by Antoine Fuqua, whose magnificent Training Day is a whopper of a dirty cop thriller (pun intended, thank you). But Shooter, on the other hand, is dull and workman-like. It's not bad, per se, but you've got to be in a specfic mood to really enjoy something as exceedingly mediocre as this. Drunk, for example. Or up late, eyes buzzing with caffeine while channel-surfing madly through infomercials hoping for something decent at 2 am that isn't Law & Order reruns on TNT. You see what I'm getting at here.

One of Mark Wahlberg's criteria for picking out scripts must be really spot-on character names. There exists no better porn star name than Dirk Diggler, and I really can't come up with a better moniker for a sharpshooter than Bob Lee Swagger. Of course, while I like Wahlberg, the last thing I'd say about him is that he oozes charisma. So, in the misnomer department, Swagger is up there with Pussy Galore from Goldfinger. But it's still a cool name. So cool, it should be written with an exclamation point -- Swagger!

Swagger! is depicted as an earnest, loyal, simple man. During an operation, he and his spotter are left behind. Since the spotter just showed a picture of his girl mere moments before, War Movie Doctrine dictates that he tragically die, and so it goes. Swagger! escapes and moves to the mountains to become a sharp-shooting yokel, and there he stays until Danny Glover (whose character name is so bland I cannot recall it) arrives with a job: Figure out how to assassinate the President and, in doing so, track a rogue assassin plotting to do so. Swagger! is set up but escapes, embarrassing a young FBI Agent (Michael Pena) who begins to suspect Swagger! is just a fall guy.

Fuqua is a confident director who's shown real flair in the past, but he doesn't do much to elevate Shooter above it's generic trappings. The writing is strangely concerned with making Swagger! smart and resourceful, which is Screenwriting 101 for creating character, but the end result is a thriller in which there are few thrills since the bad guys can't match wits with a good-hearted killing machine like him. Swagger's got this. I mean, his name's Bob Lee Swagger!

The film is a throwback to the straight-arrow action films of the 1980s. In fact, substitute the story's post-9/11 government paranoia with communists and you'd have Red Dawn, right down to the sharp-shooting yokels camping in the woods. At the end of the day, I think I prefer Red Dawn's shameless 80s sincerity. That movie at least knew in its heart that the villains didn't really matter, it was the struggle of teenaged kids banding together to survive World War III. Shooter loses it's steam at the most crucial of points, the very end, when the story suddenly shifts from Swagger clearing his good name to the filmmakers wagging their fingers at morally-corrupt capitalist bureaucrats. By the time you realize what they've done for money (no, not for money! Evil!), you'll probably want the credits to roll. There's actually a sequence where Swagger lets the bad guys go so they can be properly shamed in a government hearing. Which they don't, but hey, we're talking about Bob Lee Swagger! Suffice to say, this is the least satisfying comeuppance a villain has ever had.

Yet, I cannot condemn the flick as bad. It's decent. It moves quickly. The action is nifty. Not spectacular, or terribly exciting, but nifty. Sure, Michael Pena becoming Swagger's new spotter is one big ball of cheese, as is the quasi-romance that blooms when Swagger seeks refuge with his old spotter's heartbroken girl. But every time Wahlberg, I mean Swagger!, offs a baddie with his sharp-shooting skills, it's oddly satisfying. Double decker with mild sauce satisfying. And with just as much guilt on my part.