Miss Sloane

Nothing but a wall of granite

Miss Sloane comes at both the perfect time and too late.  It’s realistic, sharply written, and full of speeches we need right now – in fact, I suspect if everyone took to heart the words of Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain) during a live-TV debate with arch-nemesis Pat Connors (Michael Stuhlbarg) in the center of the film, I mean really took them to heart, maybe the conversation about gun legislation (and whom it’s for) would be different.  But it’s also worth mentioning that the character herself might not mean all of it, that it’s all part of a carefully engineered campaign to pass a bill, the very passing of which is ultimately for the satisfaction of the lobbyists pushing for it.  And while the film peels back some curtains about political games and machinations, it’s more of a character study than a movie about guns.

The film is a frame story that begins in the present with Liz Sloane on trial for something we’re not yet privy to, judged by overzealous senator Ron Sperling (a very impressive John Lithgow). Liz’s beleaguered attorney advises her to plead the fifth on every question, but once Sperling starts nitpicking Liz’s personal business (specifically prescription drug habits) and deliberately mixing up facts about a certain deal with Indonesia, Liz explodes, and is now obligated to answer the remainder of the tribunal’s questions lest she perjure herself.  Cut to a few months earlier.  Liz, a highly successful and sought-after lobbyist in D.C., is given a rather insulting directive by the Gun Lobby: use sophomoric fear tactics to get more women to buy firearms.  Smug, superior Liz shrieks with laughter.  Not only does she fully understand how irresponsible this approach would be, given the progressed crime rate, but she adores a good challenge.  She quits working for Connors, taking a skeleton crew of her best subordinates along with her, but leaving her protege, Jane (Allison Pill), who refuses to jeopardize her own career for Liz’s idealism.  Liz is soon hired by Rodolfo Schmidt (Mark Strong) in support of a bill that would require universal background checks, and the battle begins.

As has been said about Jessica Chastain more than once, she carries this film.  Much of the script’s indulgent, snappy, Gilmore-Girls-esque dialogue is given to her, and she never wastes a word of it.  Gone, though, is the charm that many of Chastain’s characters are required to exude; Liz is ruthless, manipulative, and unapologetic.  She’s self-possessed, but not infallible, which is what makes studying her so fascinating.  Small fissures are visible when she’s alone.  Bits of her background come out in conversations with male escort Forde (Jake Lacy).  When one of her two long cons in the film – an ingeniously devious exploitation of gun-violence survivor Esme Manucharian (the amazing Gugu Mbatha-Raw) – becomes more personal than expected, we get a very real look at what happens when trust is violated.  This is a world where the protagonist can be one step ahead of everyone, hit rock bottom and still win, but not where people magically become friends again.

The grandest manipulation of all involves the film’s ace-in-the-hole, Jane, who is far more than an ambitious would-be grad student who looks up to Liz.  Allison Pill plays her with an inscrutability that we aren’t even aware matters until the final minutes of the film.  Stuhlbarg once again plays an antagonistic bureaucrat, and accomplishes that amazing feat of performance that allows you to steadfastly root against a character whose actor you love (maybe that’s my own compartmentalization issues talking, but it is what it is).  Mbatha-Raw’s Esme is probably the only character in the film fighting for what she actually believes in for a pure and good reason, and she becomes the most important character when she causes Liz to realize that people actually do things for reasons other than their own ego, and that self-sacrifices are sometimes necessary (and let’s face it: Liz is far overdue for one).  Lacy’s character, the escort, helps catalyze the “defrosting” process, as it were, and Liz gets some surprisingly meaningful moments out of him.  Besides Lacy’s superb performance, it’s pretty cool to see a man finally play the Hooker with a Heart of Gold role.

Liz is asked, “Were you ever normal?”  It’s difficult not to wonder how she ended up the way she is.  But the film is less about that (and not at all about guns), and more about whether this kind of character can be anything else, whether one can untangle themselves from the moral web of the political system and the toxicity that comes with power.  And Jessica Chastain is the only actress who could answer these questions in such meaningful ways.

Literally the only thing that doesn’t make sense about this film is a certain photo of George W. Bush.

Miss Sloane (2016); written by Jonathan Perera; directed by John Madden; starring Jessica Chastain.

The Imitation Game

The Big Bang Theory, ca. 1941

People love underdog stories, especially when the underdogs are eccentric loners, so I don’t begrudge screenwriter Graham Moore and director Morten Tyldum for embellishing details of Alan Turing’s personal life – you have to do some invention when it comes to his relationship with Joan Clarke, because we need Keira Knightley to be in it a lot, and the film needs to “say something” about her situation.  You need to trim the Bletchley Park cryptographers down to a ragtag band of misunderstood do-gooders, because it makes people think of Star Wars and El Dorado and everything else they like.  You need to create conflict amongst this group, because a bunch of coworkers getting along for two full hours is 1) boring; 2) not analogous to the real-life experiences of the current working class.  But portraying Turing as being somewhere on the autism spectrum (when by all accounts he was not) does something interesting: because of series like The Big Bang Theory and other popular media that employ the cutesy, popcorny method of depicting people with Asperger’s as asexual geeks who happen to be geniuses, and whose personal struggles (common TV/movie ones include inabilities to understand jokes and sarcasm, lack of interest in socializing, and complete immunity to romance) make them adorable and endearing, plenty of laypeople think they know everything about an extremely varied mental condition that affects people differently depending upon myriad factors, including personality.  On the way out of the theatre, one of the chatty people in the row behind me made this comment: “I think he was just confused about what he was.”  Mind you, Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the film) utters the line “I am a homosexual” several times to several different people, says “I prefer men, not women” and “I have had affairs with men,” is shown in an almost-romance with a boy during adolescence, and does not deny his sexuality when he is criminally prosecuted for “gross indecency” (i.e. happening to love the company of the same gender).  So it’s partly a basic comprehension problem, but it’s also media damage: how many Emmys has Jim Parsons won for playing the lovable nerd upon whom so many now base their “knowledge” of Asperger’s?  True, the people in the row behind me are not a very large sample size, but these micro-cases illustrate the larger problem: passive, casual media being taken as fact, and dangerous ignorance about serious subjects as a product of a popular TV show.

The Imitation Game follows Turing and his team’s attempt to break Nazi Germany’s Enigma code, thereby shortening World War II and saving millions of lives.  The story movement involves slightly-higher-than-garden-variety mystery stuff, and is buffered by a very personable cast: Matthew Goode plays Hugh Alexander, Turing’s main foil in the group, which includes Peter (Matthew Beard), Jack Good (James Northcote), John Cairncross (Allen Leech), and most importantly, Joan Clarke (Knightley), who shows up to Turing’s all-but-impossible mass interview for a new cryptographer, resists sexist comments, and aces the test more efficiently than even its creator can.  All the while, the group combats antagonism from their commanding officer, Alastair Denniston (Charles Dance doing what he does), whose motivation is to have the last word, no matter what, even if it allows the Nazis to destroy the world, apparently.  Soon, Turing and Joan become engaged so that she can stay and continue her invaluable work on the Enigma project – her overbearing parents are concerned about her being a single career-woman – and despite reservations on both sides, they care for each other and have each other’s backs in every way.  From there, as Turing puts together a machine named after his childhood almost-boyfriend Christopher, who died of tuberculosis, the team grows closer.

Despite the minor female presence in the film, interestingly enough, Turing’s biggest epiphanies occur as a result of female influence.  Joan’s ideas fuel much of the anti-Enigma project’s success, and it’s a passing comment from Helen (Tuppence Middleton), a friend of Joan’s who flirts with Hugh, that causes a major turning point in Turing’s thinking (which allows Cumberbatch to do the always-fun “Epiphany causes main character to rush out of room, crashing into as many people and breakable things as possible in the process”).  Knightley controls all of her scenes, and one of the toughest things about watching the film is that her Joan Clarke could be the protagonist of her own film (and she’s layered enough that we get the sense that she’s leading an offscreen film we never get to see).  The scene wherein she obliterates all thought that a woman can’t do this job is triumphant, but these scenes can be problematic in period pieces, and I’m not talking about her victory as much as the language used (and this was also a big issue in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire): filmmakers create these spectacles with the intention of looking smugly upon the awful ways the patriarchal/Christian power structures treated certain people in the past, without thinking about the ways in which these are still issues for us in the present.  Add to that the fact that the target audience for many of these narratives (adolescent boys) are still feeling things out (i.e. largely clueless to the struggles of women and people of other cultural backgrounds), and when they’re being constantly fed this stuff, this type of language becomes normalized now.  It isn’t enough to just show things “how they were” when you’re attempting to illustrate how far we’ve come, or how certain revolutionaries and hero(ine)s were crushing the status quo: in art, in order to say something, you have to actually say it.

The crown jewel of The Imitation Game, unsurprisingly, is Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance, which all at once honestly portrays the struggles of a gay government employee in the ’40s (and respects the real-life Turing by not showing sex scenes or taking sharp turns into conjecture/invention) and the difficulties of being that fish out of water, taken to the extreme with the personality prescribed to him by the filmmakers.  His last scene with Knightley, highlighting the development of their friendship and trust over the years of (and following) the war, is amongst the most emotional of the year.  It’s incredible that a story like this can be buried for fifty years, while borderline propaganda like American Sniper gets greenlit to glorify violence and accessorize women within a few years of its supposed real-life events.  With The Imitation Game, we have a rarity: a war drama that does not suggest that a sainted soldier – rugged, white, heterosexual, male, American – was responsible for the greatest heroics.  It’s responsibly told, well-characterized, and has the only end-title “where are they now” sequence at which I’ve ever teared up.

The Imitation Game (2014); based on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges; screenplay by Graham Moore; directed by Morten Tyldum starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, and Mark Strong.

Zero Dark Thirty

Assault & vinegar

I don’t need the Academy to tell me.  I’ve been saying it for two years: Jessica Chastain is the Best Actress.  I’ve gushed enough about her prolificness, her unrivaled collection of characters, and her steadfast dedication to the craft (which has, as far as what I can gather from her own words, taken precedent over anything worldly, including personal relationships and romance).  Here is an actress who believes in the importance of empowered women in the movies, and in powerful characters to be played by them (not to mention a cultivated understanding of what “strong” means in that context).  Here is an actress who can be interviewed on television and say insightful things you haven’t heard before.  Here is someone who radiates originality, maturity, and independence every step of the way.  A year ago, she wasn’t recognized in public.  Look at her now.  If we need role models from our visual entertainment industry, I’ve got one for you.

“This is a very rare lead role in cinema,” she said to Time about the role of Maya in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. “Women, I find, we’re defined a lot by men and thus defined by our gender, who we are through our relationship with men, be it as a victim or a love relationship. The idea that this is a woman who defines herself by her work and by her brain and doesn’t try to sleep with her superiors, that to me is really inspiring. I’m in a very different business. As an actor, there are a lot of women around. Not as many women as men, but there are more women around than in a field like the CIA. I don’t experience that [numbers difference], but I do experience that in our society we are still labeled by our gender.”

Isn’t it the truth?  Just look at the filmmaker.  How many viewers and interviewers define Bigelow by the fact that she was married to James Cameron, a far inferior filmmaker?  Add the fact that the couple were only married for two years (’89-’91), long before Bigelow was a juggernaut on the directing scene, and long before she trounced him for Best Picture (2008), an accomplishment in itself, since only four female directors including Bigelow have ever been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and only three for Best Director.

Zero Dark Thirty, a sort of spiritual successor to The Hurt Locker, is introduced with the promise that the story we’re about to see is based upon true events.  Which events?  We are left to judge and believe as we will.  The protagonist, played by Jessica Chastain, goes only by the name Maya; whether or not this is her real name (most characters in the film go by first name only) is also left to us.  Maya is based upon a real person, labeled in the news as the “Girl Who Got bin Laden,” a CIA officer with incredible confidence.  This introduces a conundrum in the process of storytelling: Maya, just like her real-life CIA counterpart, has little or no personal life.  Every bit of her time is dedicated to her work.  In the movie, we watch her chase down leads on Osama bin Laden over the course of several years, and her unbridled drive is something we are never allowed to understand.  We get tidbits of her old life in the background of shots (a screensaver and so on), but if you take your eyes away from Maya while watching this film for the first time, your scrutiny is misplaced.

Jason Clarke appears as Dan, a CIA muscleman who tortures prisoners for info.  There’s plenty of onscreen waterboarding.  Maya observes and even assists with Dan’s torture operations in the beginning, appearing slightly disgusted at the idea but not quite feeling sorry for the people who aided in the murder of thousands of American people.  As in The Big Lebowski, a film to which I never expected to compare this one, there is a pattern of dialogue repetition.  As the Dude more or less plagiarizes other people’s pearls of wisdom for the sake of sounding smarter, characters in ZDT take what they can from each other and pass on ideas.  Maya takes the torch from Dan when the job becomes too much for him (“I’ve seen too many guys naked,” he says), and introduces herself to prisoners in the same intimidating way he once did.  Once she gives some great advice to CIA Director George (Mark Strong), he repeats some of her terminology to his superiors.

I’ve had some trouble deciding whether the characterization of Maya works.  In a traditional sense, it doesn’t, because we know nothing of her personal life, whether she has friends and family, what she thinks of being unable to tell anyone what she does, what she feels at any given time.  She is propelled only by the action of the narrative.  However, the evolution of the parts of her personality we see, which essentially amount to two versions of her work personality, are handled in a very interesting way.  When she interrogates someone (post-Dan), she wears a dark wig.  At first, this seems like an understandable precaution: you don’t want too many enemies of America to be able to identify someone with starkly unique characteristics (bright red hair, for one) by memory, or to be able to figure out who she is on sight.  But consider the garb she wears when speaking to prisoners in daylight and when convincing them to give in with words instead of torture: a white headscarf.  The dark wig enables Maya, who doesn’t truly believe torture is the best way, to play a character, a woman who doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty and ordering brutish goons to beat the hell out of a defenseless person.  Every time she peels the wig off at the end of the workday, she absolves herself of the fact that she’s skirting war crimes – granted, her most effective methods are verbal, and she doesn’t go halfway to where Dan went.  He even seemed to enjoy it before losing the stomach.

Over the years, Maya finds leads, and several quiet (and some unintentionally explosive) operations are undertaken in order to find bin Laden.  She gains a reputation for being ruthlessly efficient and always spot-on in her hunches and assessments.  She works in Pakistan with Joseph Bradley (Kyle Chandler), the CIA’s Station Chief in Islamabad, until his identity is compromised and he is replaced by a relaxed boss who lets Maya do what she wants.  Jessica Chastain’s scenes with Chandler are her best opportunities to let loose her intensity, and will certainly be the ones shown in every reel meant to convince viewers that she deserves this year’s biggest performance awards.

Eventually, Maya’s exploits lead to the discovery of bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, and she is able to convince everyone, even President Obama (not played by anyone in the film), to 100% certainty that bin Laden is there.  A squadron of Navy SEALs led by Justin (Chris Pratt) and Patrick (Joel Edgerton), unremarkable bearded goofballs who could be anyone (maybe a wise move since the identities of the actual SEALs who performed the operation cannot be released), raid the compound and take down bin Laden in a scene that takes, perhaps, as long as the real-life operation did (a far too long stretch of time without Maya onscreen, one of the film’s only structural missteps).

The film features an interesting slew of bit parts, but the characters are utilized much better than those of The Hurt Locker, which often jarred me not with its tense bomb-diffusing scenes, but with its striking misuse of Ralph Fiennes and Evangeline Lilly.  James Gandolfini appears as Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, who has a bit of a Jabba-the-Hutt vibe when trying to verbally intimidate Maya.  Jennifer Ehle is Jessica, a fellow CIA officer and friend of Maya’s who has un-spoilable involvement in the 2009 Camp Chapman Attack.  Stephen Dillane, Harold Perrineau, and Mark Duplass also appear here and there, and their time is well-used.  Mark Strong plays a convincing American (not to mention an effective possessor of hair).

The film has been accused by Those Who Want Attention as being pro-torture.  I can’t agree.  In fact, a film with so many opportunities to be as red-white-and-blue as Argo almost completely forgoes them. The film does not ignore the fact that war crimes, including vicious torture, were implemented in order to get information (although the people at the top swear up and down that good results were never obtained through waterboarding, which is somewhat reflected in the film).  Also note that Maya does not think torture is the key to finding bin Laden, and must play a role that disgusts her in order to do what she thinks is right.  We also see the SEAL team kill unarmed people, including women, in the raid: Bigelow chooses not to give into the “we can never be anything but good guys” myths involving bin Laden firing upon the SEALs before they killed him.  She even chooses to show a news clip of President Obama (the only time he is seen in the entire film) denying that the United States uses/condones torture, immediately after a scene of Dan brutalizing a prisoner.  None of this is presented with bias or deliberate irony; it’s all very matter-of-fact, and for that, I have to concede some artistic respect.

The film also has two image patterns: one is Maya’s Converse shoe (watch how it’s used each time it’s onscreen), and the other, also touched upon twice, is a tear rolling from someone’s left eye.  This is first seen when Ammar (Reda Kateb) is being tortured despite supposedly not knowing anything, and once again at the very end when Maya is all alone on a plane home.  Could this be read, maybe, as a comment on the commonalities between people (and their reactions to figurative solitude), regardless of alignment?  Maya, after all of her work, after she was right, is relieved to finally leave this behind her, and we are relieved for her.  A step towards a normal life, maybe?  But there’s something that stings – she’s still referred to as “the girl” in a radio transmission asking for confirmation that bin Laden (“Geronimo”) is dead.  Will Bigelow receive the same label within the mix of filmmakers up for Best Picture at the Oscars this year (all of whom are male)?  If she snags Best Picture a second time (and even if not, considering this film and its lead actress’s accomplishments, and overall, how little award ceremonies mean in regards to art), I think she’ll have given a good start to shedding a long-standing stigma concerning women in movies.  We’ll have gotten to a good area, maybe, and as Jessica Chastain’s Maya says as she speaks out in a room full of all-important men, “I’m the motherfucker who found this place.”

Zero Dark Thirty (2012); written by Mark Boal; directed by Kathryn Bigelow; starring Jessica Chastain.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

No, it’s not Men in Black III

As the Oscars continue to push me toward my inevitable aneurysm, great films continue to release on the tail end of awards season.  2012 doesn’t (so far) look like it will be quite the year for film as 2011 was, but there are glimmers of hope here and there.  I’m currently playing tag with the final films of 2011, many of which are still available to see.

Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a quiet spy film in the tradition of Three Days of the Condor and The Good Shepherd.  Based upon a complex spy novel by John le Carré and perhaps inspired by the seven-part TV series from many years ago, the film features a prize collection of male actors, including Oscar-nominated Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Stephen Graham, Colin Firth, Simon McBurney, Tom Hardy, and Ciarán Hinds.  The story follows a few characters, centering around George Smiley (Oldman), whom, after being forced into retirement from the Circus (the British secret service), is tasked with uncovering the identity of a mole.  From the beginning, we know that the mole is sitting at the table, but the filmmakers don’t so much invite us to decode the mystery for ourselves as they do urge us to tag along with Smiley.

What follows is essentially a two-hour series of interviews, through which Smiley and his sidekick, Peter Guillam (Cumberbatch) ingeniously smoke the mole out.  Contrary to the usual, I won’t go into detail about the plot, as its movement doesn’t lend itself well to this type of piece.  However, the film contains inspired performances, convincingly suspenseful situations (at the expense of obligatory gunfights, which the less experienced spy-film-viewer may expect here), and some great use of image patterning (keep track of every shot of dripping liquid, if you can).

To the film’s detriment, perhaps, is the uniformly consistent direction by Alfredson.  The cinematography is always solid, but rarely surprising.  In addition, the underuse of music throughout and explosive overuse of “La Mer” at the end is a bit jarring.  Only one female character shows up in the film (Irina, played by Svetlana Khodchenkova), and once Ricki Tarr (Hardy) gets involved with her, there’s not much hope that she’ll last until the denouement.  Perhaps most striking is the lack of characterization for Smiley.  Rather than receiving character-deepening scenes (apart from one, during which he relates a story about meeting Karla, an enemy of Britain), Smiley acts as the linchpin for the movie’s forward action, and the story’s ancillary characters orbit him without ever allowing us to be too curious about him.  We’re not even allowed to see the face of his estranged wife, Ann, who cheats on him with Haydon (Firth) in one of the film’s important subplots.  The film’s other major draw is Mark Strong, who plays Jim Prideaux, a British spy-turned-schoolteacher who has a good relationship with children and a hell of an aim with a .22.  It’s a nice change from his usual villain roles.

Spy movies like this only come out every so often, and it’s just as well, since their quiet nature turns the average American filmgoer’s brain into pudding.  It’s refreshing, however, when a film of this type not only turns out well, but gets a bit of recognition.  Oldman’s Best Actor is coming.  Not this year nor for this film, but soon.

 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011); written by Bridget O’Connor (adapted from John le Carré’s novel); directed by Tomas Alfredson; starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Mark Strong.

The Guard

Well, that’s pretty f*ckin’ rude.

The Guard is the newest film by Irish director John Michael McDonagh, brother of Malcolm McDonagh (director of In Bruges).  It’s a crime comedy in the vein of “Like Guy Ritchie, but…”, though the “but” is in this case indicative of the fact that it isn’t much like a Guy Ritchie film at all.  It has Mark Strong, as did Ritchie’s RocknRolla, but aside from that, the well-timed black humor, and the fact that there are nearly zero prominent female characters, it’s McDonagh’s creature through and through.

The film is carried by the lovable Brendan Gleeson (who may be on his way to becoming the Irish John Candy).  Gleeson plays Sgt. Gerry Boyle, an unorthodox member of the “garda” (Irish cops in Gaelic-speaking Galway).  He’s not a bad person, he just doesn’t take his job seriously.  When he’s not taking hits of acid from drug-dealers’ corpses and keeping them for himself, Boyle spends time with his dying mother (Fionnula Flanagan) at a retirement home.  In these scenes, which are equal parts madcap and surprisingly tender, we see where Boyle gets some of his traits (his language, for one).  When Boyle’s new partner (in whom he has no interest) is whacked for almost no reason by a trio of infamous drug-runners (Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham and David Wilmot), Boyle’s unit is visited by FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle, the one Yank in the film).  Through one thing and another, Boyle and Everett are partnered up in order to solve a series of crimes involving these villains.  The scenes between Gleeson and Cheadle feature the classic Odd Couple character development, but McDonagh allows the characters to retain multiple lines of tension with one another and also to spend time by themselves.  From their second scene onward, we can tell they sort of like each other, but have fundamental issues with the other – Everett’s issues with Boyle’s erratic on-the-job behavior and his sheer laziness, and Boyle’s seemingly innocent ignorance about black people, the FBI, and pretty much anything but Galway.  The latter leads to some wonderful scenes between the two, during which we hope with all our hearts that Boyle won’t say something that completely ruins the already strained friendship.  (“I thought black people couldn’t ski.  Or is that swimming?”)  Cheadle’s reactions to Boyle’s comments are priceless, both in facial expression and dialogue.

Cunningham, Strong and Wilmot play the villains as people who know they’re the bad guys in a movie.  They stand perfectly still in immaculately-framed shots of beautiful scenery and talk about being bad.  Strong, also a fish out of water character, plays the film’s sole Englishman, and behaves so harshly that his partners must warn other characters, “Eh, he’s English.”  Cunningham plays the de facto boss of the three, and comes close to the fourth wall a few times.  Wilmot gets a great one-on-one scene with Gleeson, during which McDonagh employs the Fallacy of the Talking Killer (the old movie ploy in which the bad guy, about to kill the hero and need only pull the trigger, foolishly explains all of his plans, giving the hero time to plan and execute an escape).

EDIT (2014): I wasn’t happy with the rest of what I typed here, so I deleted it.  Just watch the film.

The Guard (2011); written and directed by John Michael McDonagh; starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Fionnula Flanagan and Mark Strong.

Robin Hood (2010)

A pox on the phony King of England

Yes, it’s been a long time since the Disney version of Robin Hood, which I still maintain to be one of the best adaptations.  It had all that clever and witty fun that has come to be associated with folk tales of the type, and most of all, it was okay for the little ones.  No deaths, no innuendo (just mild talk about “kissing”), etc.  Then we had Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men in Tights, a brilliantly farcical satire on the story (“Locksley and Bagel: can’t miss!”).  Not quite as innocent, but all sorts of fun just the same.

Ridley Scott’s new film, originally titled Nottingham, has got to be the best “serious” adaptation of Robin Hood since Errol Flynn first drew the bow.  It’s mature and gritty, but retains that wit and charm we’ve all come to associate with the story.  It’s also the most violent of the lot – the MPAA’s rating is PG-13, but I suspect that someone got fooled at the last second.  People get shot through the neck, stabbed in the back, drowned, crushed between the bows of French sailing ships, and dragged through the woods by horses.  There isn’t excessive bloodspray, but I’d probably have the old “movies aren’t real” chat with the kids if all they’ve seen is the Disney version and they’re begging you to see this one.

The story is a re-imagining, much like the earlier discussed Alice in Wonderland.  This is intended to be a prequel of sorts to what becomes the Robin Hood legend.  We see how he meets Marian (according to Ridley Scott, anyway) and how he comes to be such good pals with his merry men, as well as the solidification of his outlaw status – I’m sure everyone has seen the epic wailing of Oscar Isaac in the trailer by now.  If not, I commend you for how little television you watch.

The film itself is something to behold.  The set-pieces are incredible, and the wide shots really illustrate the work that went into recreating 12th century England.  From the nighttime scuffles in Sherwood forest to the legions of loyal Englishmen percolating out from the high bluffs as King Philip looks on in terror, it’s all real when you’re in the theater.  Never did I once scoff at the CG; if there is heavy use of computer imagery in this film, I was too immersed to notice.

The cast is an excellent ensemble.  Oscar Isaac dominates his scenes as the bratty (yet knowledgeable and calculating) King John.  Mark Strong plays the main villain for the third time in a row as the treasonous Sir Godfrey, a character completely made up for the film, and he does it with complete professionalism.  Though most of his dialogue is standard “villain” and we never get to know Godfrey as a person, Strong avoids playing it “arch,” which is refreshing.  He got to do more in films like Guy Ritchie’s fantastic RocknRolla, last year’s Body of Lies and the recent Sherlock Holmes, but perhaps this film will bring him to a wider audience.  Also in this film is the amazing Cate Blanchett, who plays Marian as a down-to-earth widow rather than a lovestruck girl, and she surely doesn’t need any compliments from me that haven’t already been said.  Kevin Durand plays Little John, the first good-guy role I can recall him ever playing, and he does it with style.  This is his second film with Russell Crowe, the first being the remake of 3:10 To Yuma in which he had a bit part, and in this one he actually gets to spend a good amount of time acting with Crowe.  I hope this role helps break him out of being typecast as a bad guy, which after his definitive evil role as Martin Keamy on ABC’s Lost (which will almost inevitably be the “Mr. Blonde” of Durand’s career) makes this seem like an impossibility. Friar Tuck: Why do they call you Little John? Little John: What exactly are ye gettin’ at? The film also features Alan Doyle, frontman of Celtic band Great Big Sea, in the role of minstrel Allan O’Dayle.  Another truly inspired piece of casting on Scott/Crowe’s part, and it’s magic to see such talented people working together.  A bearded and scruffy-haired William Hurt also makes an appearance in a very nice role as William Marshal, the 1st Earl of Penbroke, who battles with words, and his scenes with Isaac and Strong are terrific.  Matt Macfayden appears as the Sheriff of Nottingham, who turns out to be the comic relief of the film, which is an interesting twist (and a more accurate one – sorry Kevin Costner).  The immortal Max von Sydow also appears, this time as the blind Walter Locksley, who becomes something like a father to Robin as the story goes on and makes you want to give him a big hug every time he’s on screen.

Crowe himself plays Robin as what I like to call the “boring hero.”  That is to say, a protagonist whose only aim is to advance the plot.  Despite being surrounded by wonderful characters, the boring hero has to do what the screenplay decrees.  To his credit, Crowe does his best to break his character out of this mold, although there are scenes where his eyes seem to glaze over and he just says “Fine, I’ll do it, even though it defies all logic.”  For examples of the boring hero, see any movie Sam Worthington has ever starred in, or any American film with Jason Statham.

Scott makes great use of his characters.  No one seems to just be added for the hell of it.  Everyone you see has something to do that couldn’t have happened without them.  Even King John’s trophy wife, Isabella (played by the gorgeous Léa Seydoux) has something to do besides sit next to Isaac and look nice.  She is charged with informing John that his best friend is a traitor: one of the most important moves anyone makes in the film, and the resulting scene between them burns with passion and skill.

The film contains a lot of Russell Crowe gliding past the camera on horseback, whether in slow motion or otherwise, with his mouth hanging open.  I lost count around ten.  It’s always good to see, as Crowe is incredible and Scott knows his massive battle pieces, though I wonder if Scott thought, “How many angles can I shoot this from?”  The film also contains several bald villains, including Strong, who seems to collect head injuries as the film goes on.  Why do the bald have to be portrayed as such slimeballs?  I wonder if there is some sort of statistic about this.

Robin Hood (2010); written by Brian Helgeland; directed by Ridley Scott; starring Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong and Oscar Isaac.