Review: Now You See Me

The last movie that I saw featuring a magician as the protagonist was The Incredible Burt Wonderstone; a comedy that wasn’t funny and wasn’t a whole lot of fun.  Now You See Me is a whole lot better.  It’s not an apples to apples to comparison because while the former set up as a schlocky joke fest, the latter is a caper film wrapped up in deception and misdirection.  Still, Now You See Me is a fun fast-paced film that combines deception and good comedic relief with grand chase scenes to ensure that the tone of the rapidly paced film remains light. 

The plot of this movies features a strong ensemble cast in Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson, and Dave Franco portraying a quartet of magicians who have been brought together to perform the ultimate set of illusions; illusions that seemingly involve the robbery of institutions.  Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent portray two agent charged with bringing the quartet to justice.  Along the way, they repeated find themselves butting heads with Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) – a former magician who makes a living revealing the secrets of his peers.

As you can see from the synopsis, there is a lot going on in this movie; a series of threads that comprise this narrative.  A lot of credit has to go to director Louis Leterrier for bringing these threads together in a way to tell a comprehensive story.  At no point does the movie feel like it’s gone askew or sacrificed pacing to flesh out one of these plot lines, so kudos to him for maintaining that balance.  Likewise, a lot of credit has to go to writer Ed Solomon (writer and inspiration for Chuck DeNomoles from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey) for crafting a fun narrative.  I have no doubt that upon closer inspection, the plot has many holes, but like a magician Solomon’s script utilizes some slight of hand and misdirection to entertain.

Ultimately, the biggest strength of this movie though has to be the ensemble cast.  It’s a group of actors who for the most part are very accomplished and are clearly having fun with what the source material.  Here is how each fared:

Jesse Eisenberg as J. Daniel Atlas is the defacto lead of the film, though it never truly feels that way.  Eisenberg sticks to his usual twitchy performance with staccato delivery but it works as a control-freak-of-a-magician.  Say what you want about his range, but Eisenberg has the smug, holier-than-thou act down to a science and that lends a serious layer of credibility to his character.  What makes his performance pop is the complimentary work of Woody Harrelson as mentalist Merrit McKinny.  Harrelson is flip, sarcastic, and sleezey – the comic relief to Eisenberg’s OCD vibe.  Harrelson always shines in this capacity, as the wildcard supporting player, and his work here is no exception.

Rounding out the criminal quartet are Isla Fisher and Dave Franco.  I like Fisher a lot as an actress, but liked her a bit less in this film.  Of the entire cast, her turn was the least believable.  It doesn’t mean that she was terrible as she did share strong chemistry with Eisenberg and Harrelson, but there are distinct points in the movie where her scenes fewl lacking.  As for Franco, he is satisfactory and nothing more.  He’s looks and feels like a junior version of his brother and I suspect that his casting was more a stunt to broaden the target audience than anything else.

As for the cops’ side of the equations, I really enjoyed the performance of Melanie Laurent.  She is tasked with the most difficult role; that of an Interpol agent who is a believer in magic and mystic myth.  It’s not an easy line to toe for a movie that attempts steep itself in realism, but she does it with a nice touch.  It helps that she shares good chemistry with Mark Ruffalo as FBI agent Dlyan Rhodes.  While it wasn’t one of my favorite Ruffalo performances, he does a good job of pulling off the embattled agent vibe.  He is grizzled, angry, and obsessed, which is precisely what the script calls for.  While his work falls apart a bit for me at the end, Ruffalo does enough good in this movie to keep the proverbial line moving.

As for the rest of the cast, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman could go back and forth reading entries from WebMD and make it entertaining without breaking a sweat and that’s what it feels like they are doing in this film.  Are they giving it their all?  Probably not.  But are they entertaining?  Yes.  Also lending a hand in the narrative are Common and Michael Kelly as FBI Agents.  Their respective performances certainly won’t make their highlight reels, but in very limited screen time they do a nice job of making the film that much better.

Despite all the platitudes, I don’t think it is a perfect film, and I’m sure that people with too much time on their hands could probably go in and pick at some plot holes and logic leaps.  Still, the film is fast, fun, and entertaining.  That’s a good trifecta of qualities for any movie to have.  I would not run out and purchase the DVD because it will not hold up for multiple viewings, but I would definitely recommend this as a rental.  Not every film has to change your life, tell an epic story based on historical events, or set up a franchise.  Some can just provide you with amusement for two hours of your life and Now You See Me is precisely that kind of movie.

Standout Performance:  Woody Harrelson.  Good actor with great comedic timing and it shows well in this movie.

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Review: Olympus Has Fallen

I meant to catch Olympus Has Fallen at the local cinema during its theatrical release, but with two assaults on the White House slated for 2013 (the other being White House Down), I decided to take a pass on this one.  Because it featured a C-level star in Gerard Butler and was being released during the first quarter or 2013, I felt like it would probably be the lesser of the two much the same way Deep Impact was a (very) poor man’s Armageddon.  Having finally had the chance to watch the action vehicle, I can tell you that it is not a good movie.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is completely un-fun to watch.

The plot of the movie focuses on Butler’s Mike Banning – an expert secret service agent who is forced to make a tough on-the-job decision and is thus removed from his spot on the president’s detail.  Despite his banishment, he manages to get involved when a group of Koreans manage to infiltrate the White House and unleash an all out attack on the most secure building in the United States.  Butler thus spends the rest of the filming trying desperately to save President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) before the terrorist brigade can achieve their ultimate goal.

The director of this film, Antoine Fuqua is fondly remembered for the fantastic job he turned in with Training Day – a very solid movie that helped Denzel Washington earn his first Oscar.  What most people should remember though is that after said film, Fuqua failed to impress with movies like Tears of the Sun, King Arthur, and Shooter – a most lackluster trio of films.  Still, I went into this film hoping that Fuqua could pull a good narrative from what seemed would be a complete mess.  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Olympus Has Fallen, has some fun sensationalized action sequences that are large in scale but completely defy logic.  Still, that’s not the point.  Realism gets thrown out the window pretty early on.  This film is geared towards those who are jonesing for straight up action.  Guns, rocket launchers, helicopters, nuclear warheads – there’s no shortage of fisticuffs and explosions.  In fact, had the film been comprised of two straight hours of non-stop action, it would have played better. Sadly though, Butler and his fellow combatants have lines to speak and every time one of them opens their mouths, the movie gets worse.  The blame for that goes to writers Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt.

I think we’ve seen enough of Gerard Butler to know that he is not the caliber of actor who can overcome terrible lines.  In fact, he almost basks in them, especially when you put a bulletproof vest on his chest and an assault rifle in his hands.  He’s not terrible in this role – as there are junctures in the film where he is actually decent, but whenever he has to sell something more than grand machismo, it falls apart.  Aaron Eckhart as President Asher fares even worse.  He single handedly turns the Commander-in-Chief into a walking set of clichés with hammed up expressions and tired sentiments that feel like they were ripped off from a Successories poster.

As for the rest of the cast, Morgan Freeman turns in the stock Morgan Freeman performance.  It feels like one of his past performances could have just as easily been copied and pasted in this film and completely saved him a trip to the set.  Radha Mitchell, Dylan McDermott, and Angela Bassett fail to impress in this film though it’s not entirely their respective faults as each were cast as paper-thin characters with no depth whatsoever.  They could have been replaced with unknown actors and the movie would have been no worse off.  Theirs represents a very disappointing waste of talent.

My biggest beef with this film though comes in the form of Rick Yune.  He, of Snow Falling on Cedars, The Fast and the Furious, and Die Another Day fame, has never been able to act and apparently still cannot.  That he still gets cast in anything defies all logic.  It’s painful to watch him speak a line or cast a look; there’s just no acting talent there whatsoever.   And his ability to speak Korean (ditto for those cast as his cohorts) is so jarring to the reality of this film that it strips whatever shred of credibility this film has left.  It’s amazing to me that in this day and age, the producers of a one hundred million dollar project can’t manage to find someone who can provide proper voice over work. 

So as you can see, there are a lot of issues with this movie.  Despite this, I am not willing to completely cast it aside.  Sure, most of Olympus Has Fallen’s action stretches your disbelief, but that’s what works best about it – that it basks in the nonsensical as if it were straight out of the mid 90’s.  For those who like this kind of unabashed action, there’s always a place for another bombastic adventure short on the merits of storytelling, but long on cool visuals and logic defying stunts.  If you are this type of person, then you should definitely rent this film.  It will provide you with two hours of moderate entertainment.  However, if you require dialogue, coherent plot points, and real acting, then you will want to take a pass on this one.  It will fill you with regret at about the twenty-minute mark.  The choice is yours.

Standout Performance:  Ashley Judd.  She gives the movie exactly what it demands from her.

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Review: Oblivion

If you have seen Tron: Legacy, then you know that director Joseph Kosinski has a very good eye for visual flair.  For all of Legacy’s narrative shortcomings, it was indeed a visually stunning film worthy of an IMAX and/or 3D viewing.  In his latest film, Oblivion, Kosinski brings that same panache and combines it with stark post apocalyptic imagery reminiscent of films like The Day After Tomorrow to paint an intriguing backdrop against which the plot of the film unfolds.  Unfortunately that narrative, billed by some as a mind bending sci-fi plot in the vein of Inception and Looper, is slower, less complex, and less intelligent than the aforementioned films.  The result is a product short on substance wrapped in sleek packaging.

The plot of the movie finds us in a post apocalyptic Earth ravaged by war with alien Scavs.  Forced to abandon the planet, the human race has large machines mining the planet for water in order to facilitate their relocation to Titan – a moon of Jupiter.  The film focuses on Tom Cruise’s Jack, a tech officer who has been left behind with Andrea Riseborough’s Victoria to maintain drones, charged with protecting the machines from the remaining Scavs.  When an unknown spaceship crashes to earth, it leads to a series of events that forces Cruise’s Jack to take a hard look at everything he believes to be true.

If the movie simply aspired to be a post apocalyptic sci-fi romp with humans and aliens squaring off, there are enough plot elements and stunning visuals to successfully accommodated this.  Unfortunately, after a number of writers and re-writes, the desired direction was something a bit more intellectual – not your average run of the mill action movie, but rather a clever tale with one or two big reveals designed to send your mind into a tizzy.  Unfortunately, the clever part may have been lost in one of the re-writes or perhaps on the editing room floor.

The best parts of the film are when there is motion, movement, and action.  There is a rich visual landscape to support this type of narrative.  The worst parts of the film are when they are setting up the more “intellectual” aspects of the plot.  Too much time is dedicated to the painstakingly slow exposition that is not as nearly clever or engaging as Kosinksi and crew believe.  Despite this, what ultimately dooms the film is its inability to engage on an emotional level.  The way it is framed and unfolded, I couldn’t help but feel like I didn’t have a dog in this fight, which is odd since it was a fight for the survival of the human race.  It just never felt like the stakes were that high.

As for the work of the cast, it felt like it was Tom Cruise and then everyone else. Cruise will never be recognized as a great character actor and really only has two different gears, but he’s a workhorse who is dedicated to his craft.  He isn’t great in this movie as he spends stretches of this movie in cruise control (pun intended), but the work he does in scenes evoking isolationism and nostalgia are some of the best in the movie.  It’s not nearly his best work, but I walked out of the theater feeling he did about as much as he could considering the script.

The same cannot be said for Morgan Freeman and Olga Kurylenko.  Kurylenko has an excuse.  She is a not-particularly-gifted actor, who is hard to connect with, as she seems nearly incapable of genuinely emoting on screen.  I don’t think it is a stretch to assume that the reason she gets cast in movies is that she is very easy on the eyes.  Morgan Freeman on the other hand has no excuse for his poor showing.  He is a very good actor (Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Knight) with strong screen presence, who completely mails in his performance.  It’s a lazy disappointing turn that cripples the plot at a crucial juncture of the film.  To say that Freeman’s star faded significantly for me after watching this film is an understatement.

As for the rest of the cast, Andrea Riseborough as Cruise’s tech partner Victoria is satisfactory.  She does a descent job of portraying a detached and oblivious pawn, while Melissa Leo shows herself a bit better as Sally – the face of mission control.  She is cold and robotic with just the right amount of creepy to hint that something is amiss.  However, neither of these performances is impactful enough to elevate what is completely pedestrian work from start to finish.

If the preceding seven paragraphs have said anything, it’s that Oblivion is a mixed bag that is not nearly as clever as the creative team believes it to be.  I liken this project to Icarus, the mythological figure who dared to fly too close to the sun.  In aspiring for too much, Kosinski and crew crash and burn what could have been an entertaining (albeit vacuous) action flick.  I don’t think you should go out of your way to see this film in the theater or add it to your movie library at home, but a convenient cost-effective viewing at some point on your own terms probably won’t leave you feeling completely burned.  My guess here is that Oblivion is just the first in a series of movies that over the next few months will garner this same reaction.

Standout Performance: Melissa Leo.  Her character hits just the right pitch to hint that things are amiss.

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Review: The Dark Knight Rises (With Spoilers)

My review of The Dark Knight Rises in no way panders to that segment of comic book fans who have far too much invested in and an odd sense of entitlement over iconic superheroes such as Superman, Batman, Spiderman, et al.  Those fans are nearly impossible to please unless filmmakers deliver the exact film that these zealots have envisioned in their minds’ eyes.  Most often this does not happen and those individuals are left to rant and rave across message boards about how director X,Y, or Z epically failed to remain true to original cannon.  But no matter what BatFan5789 posts online or John Doe at the local comic shop tells you, the truth is that while the general structure of origins may exist, there truly is no one right version to any of these heroes.  Over the last seventy plus years since Batman’s first appearance, the character has been brought to life in many different incarnations with each storyteller lending their own respective creative nuances to the character.  So in considering the final chapter of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, it is not about whether he got things right in this movie, but really about whether you enjoyed the final chapter to his version of that story

The short answer for me is that I did.

I am not a Nolan apologist though I am a huge fan of most of his work.  I did not walk out of the The Dark Knight thinking it was on par with The Godfather Part II, but I thought it was a very entertaining movie.  So I did not go into The Dark Knight Rises expecting a movie that would redefine the genre and sweep the Academy Awards.  And while the movie is not perfect, it is an incredibly well shot and extremely entertaining story that finds Bruce Wayne a recluse 8 years after his last appearance as Batman.  Gotham is enjoying prosperity in his absence under the watchful eye of Commisioner Gordon and the false memory of Harvey Dent.  But a new threat is rising up that threatens the city’s newfound prosperity that requires the return of Batman.

So what doesn't work in this movie is that it falls victim to the “3rd Leg of a Trilogy” syndrome.  So often it seems that directors feel compelled to stuff as much as possible into the last leg of a three-part story even to the point that film’s plot seems metaphorically to be bursting at the seems (i.e. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Spider-Man 3, et al).  In a lot of ways, I think this is born from the creative team’s desire to leave its loyal fan base completely satisfied.  What happens though is that the bloated plot begins to feel loose, the focus drifts, and the pacing gets thrown off.  The Dark Knight Rises suffers this a bit during its transition into the third act, but at the same time I cannot fully complain as I could not think of a set of details that I would absolutely have wanted removed from the film.  Still, it did make the film feel less lean and less nimble than its predecessor. 

As for what works, there are many things.  As you watch the film unfold, Nolan’s cinematic style is operating at its best and this is evident by the cuts between scenes, the attention to detail, and the devotion to character development.  Nolan has a distinct way of telling stories and as you watch the frames unfold, you know that you are watching a master at work.  The brilliance of this particular story is that while on the one hand you are watching the last chapter of Bruce Wayne’s Batman, at the same time you are unknowingly witnessing the origin story of John Blake.  And as much as this is a Chris Nolan/Christian Bale movie, it is almost equally a Chris Nolan/Joseph Gordon-Levitt film.

Speaking of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he stands out from the cast by delivering the strongest performance of all.  As detective John Blake, Gordon-Levitt's presence in the movie is very much like the young and up and coming star on a basketball team of aging veterans, who injects youthful exuberance into the proceedings.  Gordon-Levitt has shown himself in the past to be a performer with great range, and in this film it seems as though he has elevated his game to a new level.  There is an interesting mix of anger, defiance, faith, and hope in his performance that makes it fitting that he is the last person you see on screen in the movie.

The second standout performance in the movie is delivered by Anne Hathaway.  It is no easy task to portray a character that has to be alluring and at the same time a legitimate physical threat, but she does so with flying colors while exuding the moral ambiguity that defines the character of Selina Kyle.  We have seen curious portrayals of Catwoman (Michelle Pfeifer) and we have seen what it looks like when the performance goes terribly awry (Halle Berry), and in understanding how difficult it could have been to make this character fit properly into Nolan’s Gotham City makes Hathaway’s perforamce all the more admirable.  She truly delivers some of the best scenes of her career.

The third standout performance belongs to Tom Hardy.  He has already established himself as a dynamic actor with his performances in Bronson, Warrior, and of course Inception and his work in this film is another notch in the belt.  It is no easy feat to deliver a compelling performance onscreen with much of your face concealed, but Hardy expertly leverages posture and other forms of non-verbal communication to bring the menacing character Bane to life.  His physical transformation into this bruiser is admirable.  Over the course of the film he allows the layers of his character to peel away culminating with a single touch of his mask from Miranda Tate.  It is a masterful performance.

It feels funny to have gone this far into the review without discussing the man beneath the cowl, but Christian Bale is solid as Bruce Wayne.  He slips into the character the way most of us slip into an old pair of sweat pants from college.  It is not an exceptional performance, but it is a very good one.  The same can be said for Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman – the men who have played the heart and moral compass for Bale’s Batman.  The three very accomplished actors finish the trilogy as they started – expertly applying their craft in a way that elevates the movie from a very good movie to a great one.  In a lot of ways, they represent the viewers in the film, watching the exploits of Wayne/Batman and emoting in the ways that we the fans react.  As for Marion Cotillard, hers was the performance amongst the principle cast that left me a bit underwhelmed.  This is partly due to the fact that she has set the bar so high in some of her other performances (Inception, Midnight in Paris), but also because of the nature of her role and the various other mechanisms that exist in this film.  She is not bad.  She just is not great. 

I have already been asked a number of times how I feel this movie stacks up to The Avengers.  It is not a surprise question because of the proximity of their respective releases and their shared genre but it is not an apples to apples comparison.  The Avengers is an incredibly fun movie that celebrates all that is good about the comic book genre while also acting as a groundbreaking venture combining a number of franchises under one umbrella.  Nolan’s Batman trilogy has always been an attempt to ground a comic book character in the “real” world by telling a narrative that demands to be viewed (and not disregarded) as something more than a genre film.  However if I had to make a choice, I think I prefer The Dark Knight Rises ever-so-slightly over the The Avengers.

The best compliment I can pay a movie is to say that while leaving the theater, I found myself wishing it did not come to an end, and that's how I felt as Joseph Gordon-Levitt stood on that platform as the screen drew to black.  The third act of the movie is amazing and the last ten minutes of the film are the best ten minutes I have seen on the big screen all year.  It truly is a fitting end to one story and a fantastic beginning to another.  We know that there are no more sequels no matter how the movie may leave one asking for more.  But then the point of Nolan's movie has always been (As Bale's Wayne eloquently reminds us) that anyone can be the person behind the mask because the Batman is more than just a man – he is an ideal.  For Nolan, his story to tell was Bruce Wayne's participation in this enduring ideal and thus, the story will live on in whim and imagination...or at least until 2016 when WB reboots the franchise.  My guess here is that if you read this review, you have probably seen the movie, and if so my advice is to see it again.  I guarantee that you will see something you missed the first time and that it will make you love the movie a little bit more.

Standout Performance: To the director Christopher Nolan for having a vision and seeing it all the way through with each film surpassing its predecessor.

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