I Finally Saw GLADIATOR So I Could Be Properly Disappointed By GLADIATOR II

GLADIATOR II (Dir. Ridley Scott, 2024)

Nearly a quarter of a century after Ridley Scott’s historical epic GLADIATOR ruled the box office, and swept the Oscars, comes this highly anticipated sequel, opening everywhere today. But it wasn’t highly anticipated by me as, despite all the hoopla, I never got around to seeing the original until earlier this week. When I got an invite to an advance screening of GLADIATOR II, I decided it was time to catch up. I found it on a streaming platform (Paramount Plus), and finally got to see what all the fuss was about.

 

I can’t say that the 2000 GLADIATOR will make any dent in any of my mental lists of greatest movies, but I could see why it was an award-winning crowd pleaser. Highly enjoyable was its intense turn by Russell Crowe coming up against Joaquin Phoenix in another break-through performance in a richly shot ancient Roman revenge adventure enhanced by a stunning Hans Zimmer score. It didn’t matter that it was a pretentious presentation with weak dialogue, and obvious plotting, it worked as overblown epic entertainment, and I’m glad to have now caught up with it. 

 

Sadly, all the elements that made the first film so successful are sorely lacking in Scott’s GLADIATOR II, which opens with an animated sequence laying out the basic story points of the original, which, because of the many call-backs, I’ll call GI for the rest of the review. I really don’t think it’s a spoiler to say the sequel concerns the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus, but an actor I was previously unfamiliar with, Paul Mescal plays the lead, Lucius, who was played as a kid in GI by Spencer Treat Clark. The only folks from GI to reprise their roles are Connie Nielsen as Lucius’ mother, Lucilla; and Sir Derek Jacobi as a much more minor Senator character, Senator Something.

 

As the film follows the story beats of GI – big opening battle, hero’s wife gets killed, slave becomes lauded gladiator, colossal Colosseum fights, family drama, and final showdown – we get the new characters, Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a Roman general who is married to Lucilla, and appears to be inwardly tortured; and, more interestingly, Macrinus (Denzel Washington), who at first, seems to be simply rehashing the blustery former slave turned wealthy merchant part Oliver Reed played in GI, but he turns out to be the film’s central baddie here.

 

Since sequels are programmed to attempt to top the original’s highlights, the Colosseum set pieces are even more over the top with scary CGI baboon, rhinos, and most ridiculously sharks when they fill the venue with water to re-stage a naval battle with two warships facing off. Now historical record does show that the Romans did have outlandish events like this, but that the water in the Colosseum wasn’t deep enough for sharks. Since this was one of the movie’s most engrossing scenes, I’m going to let it go. It's hard to complain about unnecessary CGI sharks when the entire affair is unnecessary.

 

Anyway, as the lead Lucius, Mescal just doesn’t have anywhere near the gravitas or the charisma of Crowe’s Maximus; and as the antagonist, Washington has swagger aplenty, but his role is underwritten, giving the audience little to grab onto. Same could be said for Pascal, who brings what he can to his worried warrior persona, but again, like every other player here, doesn’t have much pull. 

 

Despite that it shares the same cinematographer with GI, John Mathieson, the look of GII is far less spectacular. Gone is the crisp panoramic imagery, replaced by a washed out less engrossing landscape for which us to go through a lesser telling of the same story. GI had memorable movie moments – Maximus yelling “Are you not entertained?” at the crowd, Phoenix’s Commodus sneering, “It vexes me. I’m terribly vexed” -  but I can’t remember a single line from GII just two days after seeing it. And unlike Zimmer’s work on GI, I can’t recall any of Harry Gregson-Williams’ score either!

 

So this uninspired sequel is director Scott’s third collaboration with screenwriter David Scarpa after the mixed bags that were ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (2017), and NAPOLEON (2023), and apparently the third time isn’t the charm. I doubt GII will leave much a mark on pop culture after it gets chewed up and spitted out this weekend, but since I’ve been wrong about the masses not wanting big, flashy empty machismo before, I won’t be surprised if it hits big. 

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At Long Last, Film Babble Blog’s 2021 In Review

So I’m finally getting around to appraise the films of 2021 – just under the wire, in fact, as the 95th Academy Awards ceremony is this coming Sunday (March 27).

It’s nothing new for it to take a few months into the new year to do this as many movies aren’t accessible until well into the awards season, and there’s a lot of films to catch up with. However, there are a lot fewer than in years past for obvious pandemic reasons. In the Before Times of 2019, there were 792 films released in the U.S. and Canada; in 2021, there were 403. I haven’t crunched the numbers to calculate how many movies of those that I’ve seen, but I think I’ve seen enough to say that it was a good, not great, year for film.

Like last year, I’m not posting a Top 10, but if I were, I would pick Paul Thomas Anderson’s LICORICE PIZZA as my #1 movie of the year. The film resonated with me as it matched my memories of being a kid with acting aspirations in the ‘70s, and delighted me with its radiant, real-feeling turns by its leads, Cooper Hoffman (son of Phillip Seymour Hoffman), and Alana Haim. A brash Bradley Cooper steals the show as producer Jon Peters (the inspiration for SHAMPOO!), which made much more of an impression on me than his performance in NIGHTMARE ALLEY.

Speaking of Guillermo del Toro’s NIGHTMARE ALLEY, that was one of a number of movies from the last year that I admired more than I enjoyed. Likewise, I found Jane Champion’s THE POWER OF THE DOG, a front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar, to be a fascinatingly weird western with a masterful performance by Benedict Cumberbatch, but I didn’t connect with it in any great, emotional way.

Same goes with DUNE. Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the first half of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi bestseller is amazing looking, and powerful in its presentation, but I felt a bit distant to it when I wanted to be more inside the action.

That’s not to say that it isn’t a worthy epic as it boasts a strong ensemble headed by “it boy” Timothée Chalamet, eye-popping visuals, a primo Hans Zimmer score, and a solidly intriguing storyline, yet I was still left somewhat cold by it. DUNE received ten Academy Award nominations for good reason, but I’m just hoping that PART TWO, due for 2023, will resonate more greatly with me.

2021 films that did speak me include Joel Coen’s spare black and white Shakespeare adaptation, THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, which earned Denzel Washington a Best Actor nomination (he deserves it for his intense handling of the “Is this a dagger which I see before me” soliloquy alone); Joachim Trier’s THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD, which should’ve gotten Renate Reinsve a nom; Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST (read my review here); and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s elegantly poignant DRIVE MY CAR, which I bet will win the Best International Feature Oscar on Sunday night.

James Bond movies usually don’t make my year-end best lists, but Cary Joji Fukunaga’s magnificent NO TIME TO DIE certainly deserves such accolades. Daniel Craig’s swan song as 007 is one of the series’ best, and you can read my reasons why in my review from when the film hit theaters. 

One category that flourished in 2021 is the musical documentary genre. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s SUMMER OF SOUL leads the pack of pop infotainment with its colossal concert footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. How an event that featured such iconic performers as Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, The 5th Dimension, The Staple Singers, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Sly and the Family Stone (among other luminaries) could linger in obscurity for so long is baffling, but thanks to Questlove, we’ve got an essential, and joyous addition to the roster of classic concert festival docs that includes WOODSTOCK, MONTEREY POP, and SOUL POWER. 

Second to that in the rock doc division is Edgar Wright’s THE SPARKS BROTHERS with its loving breakdown of the eccentric career of Ron and Russell Mael’s Los Angeles-based band, Sparks. It’s one of the most entertaining, and funny rockumentaries I’ve ever seen, and since I’m a big fan of the genre, I’ve seen a lot of them. Wright’s film really should’ve been nominated for Best Documentary - I’d say instead of Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s FLEE. Not that FLEE is undeserving, it’s just that it’s also nominated for Best Animated and Best International Feature too, so it’s pretty well covered.

Also worth seeing is Todd Haynes’ THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (read my review), Dan Lindsay and T. J. Martin’s TINA, about legendary singer, Tina Turner; and Garret Price’s WOODSTOCK 99: PEACE, LOVE, AND RAGE, which scarily depicts what’s been considered the worst music festival ever.

Finally, the musical documentary event of 2021 was THE BEATLES: GET BACK, Peter Jackson’s eight-hour exploration of the fab four’s sessions for their next-to-last album, Let it Be. We witness John, Paul, George, and Ringo rehearsing, joking around, arguing, and working on new material, capturing the band’s creativity as never seen before. The Apple Corps rooftop concert by itself makes for one of the year’s best docs as it’s been shown at IMAX theaters as a standalone film. Read my review of GET BACK here.

So there’s my overview of cinematic highlights of 2021. Friday, I will post my Oscar predictions for this Sunday’s broadcast. Hope to see you here.

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Film Babble Blog’s Top 10 Movies Of 2016 (With Spillover)

I usually try to post my Top 10 before the Oscar nominations, but January has been crazy y’all! With everything going on – the daily ridiculousness of the newly installed Trump administration, having to get one of our cat’s legs amputated because of cancer, and editing my long in the works book project – it’s been hard to sit down and finalize exactly just what are my favorite films of 2016.

It hasn’t helped that I found the last year to be a pretty weak one for film, with an abundance of bad sequels, a run of epic fails (THE BFG, ALLIED, RULES DON’T APPLY) and many movies that were just meh, so picking out the gems was more difficult than in previous years. So here goes my picks, in descending order, with a little bit of annotation, and some links back to my reviews (click on select titles):

10. GREEN ROOM (Dir. Jeremy Saulnier)

Sadly, this largely overlooked indie about a punk band who find themselves trapped in the backstage green room of a hardcore club in the woods of Oregon, was one of the last performances of Anton Yelchin, who died in a freak automobile accident in the summer of 2016. Yelchin, as the fraught leader of the punk group, excels in this grimy, gritty, and extremely chilling thriller as do Imogen Poots and a sinister Patrick Stewart.

9. 20TH CENTURY WOMEN (Dir. Mike Mills)

I think Annette Bening should’ve gotten an Oscar nomination for this over Meryl Streep for FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Streep’s performance in FFJ, but Bening put in an exemplary portrayal as Dorothea, the put upon matriarch of Mills’ cinematic loveletter to the women who raised him. Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, and newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann round out the rest of the fine ensemble. 20TH CENTURY WOMEN somehow simultaneously captures how it felt to be a mixed-up kid in the ‘70s and how it felt to be a mixed-up mother living during the same era. Glad that Mills’ superb screenplay got the Academy’s attention.

8. O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA (Dir. Ezra Edelman) It’s amazing how riveting every minute of this 5-part documentary miniseries is, considering that it’s 10 hours long (467 minutes). But the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson from famous football running back to infamous alleged murderer as seen through the filters of race and fame in the American system never slows down or falters in its engrossing pace. Edleman’s opus, created for ESPN Films’ 30 for 30 series, is a masterpiece that not only deserves its nomination for the Best Documentary Oscar, it deserves to win it.

7. MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (Dir. Kenneth Lonergan) 

This is an achingly sad story about an apartment complex maintenance man (Casy Affleck) who, while still reeling from a tragic incident that killed his two daughters, and destroyed his marriage to his devastated wife (Michelle Williams), is asked to take care of his nephew (Lucas Hedges) after his brother (the boy’s father played by Kyle Chandler) dies. This is a stirring experience, and an oddly funny one at times, that’s hard to shake long after it ends, and that’s largely due to how real these people feel.

6. FENCES (Dir. Denzel Washington)

Denzel Washington’s third turn in the director’s chair is a filmed play, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t play as a great film. Based on the Pulitzer Prize, and Tony Award winning 1983 play by August Wilson, the film concerns Troy Maxton, a working class Pittsburgh garbageman played by Washington, and his family's struggle through the late ’50s to mid ’60s. Along with the nominations the film got for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Viola Davis), and Best Adapted Screenplay (August Wilson), Washington deservedly earned a nom for Best Actor as his energy makes many of his monologues more memorable than dozens (maybe hundreds) of other actors’ pontifications this last year. Davis holds her own against Washington, and really should’ve gotten a Best Actress instead of Supporting nomination, but at least she was recognized. 

5. NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (Dir. Tom Ford)

I can never unsee the imagery of this twisted yet impeccably stylish psychological thriller which revolves around the sordid contents of a novel that Jake Gyllenhaal sends to his ex-wife (Amy Adams), and, I bet I can never unthink it either. It’ll really be hard for sure to choose between rooting for Michael Shannon in this over Jeff Bridges (in #4 on this list) for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for their portrayals of two vastly different Texas lawmen.

4. HELL OR HIGH WATER (Dir. David Mackenzie)

This is a modern day western heist thriller that runs with the theme of robbing-the-banks-because-they’re-robbing-us. Chris Pine and Ben Foster play the robbers; Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham play the cops on their trail. It’s also starring a wide West Texas landscape sparsely decorated with billboards advertising debt relief, rundown ranches, and yellow fields stretching to the horizon. If it’s not a deserving Best Picture nominee, it’ll do till the next deserving nominee gets here.

3. PATERSON (Dir. Jim Jarmusch)

I haven’t posted a review of this film because it never came to my area, and that’s a shame because more people should see this lovely film starring Adam Driver as a bus driving poet named Paterson, who lives in Paterson, New Jersey. It’s the week in the life of our protagonist who fills a secret notebook full of his poems as he goes about his daily routine of driving his bus route, eating dinner with his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and having a beer at his neighborhood bar. It doesn’t sound like much happens, sure, but by the end I was cherishing every bit of the minutia that made up Paterson’s poetic existence.

2. LA LA LAND (Dir. Damien Chazzelle) Although this has been highly acclaimed by critics (it stands at a 93% on the Rotten Tomatometer), there has been a considerable amount of backlash against this modern musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as starcrossed lovers/Hollywood hopefuls. While I loved it, I can see the points of people who say it mansplains jazz, its leads aren’t the greatest singers, and that, despite the appearance of John Legend, it’s a pretty white movie. Still, I thought it soared far above most of last year’s releases with its wonderfully bouncy soundtrack (Gosling and Stone aren’t that bad as vocalists), sharp screenplay, and its colorfully inventive cinematography. As it’s nominated for 14 categories, it’ll take home a bunch of Oscars for sure come February 26th.

1. MOONLIGHT (Dir. Barry Jenkins) 

Right now, it looks like the Best Picture race is going to be a duel between MOONLIGHT and LA LA LAND, both of which are my two favorite films of the year. MOONLIGHT takes the #1 spot because it made more of an emotional dent on me with its realism over the pure fantasy of my #2 choice. Jenkins’ film, which tells the Miami -set story of a young African American male named Chiron who is played by three different actors (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes) representing different ages of the character as he struggles with his homosexual identity. It’s fearless in its harrowing honesty, but I bet it will be more remembered for its simple beauty. This definitely deserved every Oscar nom it got.

Spillover (click on the bold faced titles for my reviews):

HAIL, CAESAR! (Dirs. Ethan Coen & Joel Coen)

SILENCE (Dir. Martin Scorsese) Yeah, I gave this a really mixed review but I think Matthew Zoller Seitz was right when he wrote: “This is not the sort of film you ‘like’ or ‘don't like.’ It's a film that you experience and then live with.” I'm definitely still living with it.

EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! (Dir. Richard Linklater)

GIMME DANGER (Dir. Jim Jarmusch)

WEINER (Dir. Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg) 

HACKSAW RIDGE (Dir. Mel Gibson) 

A MAN CALLED OVE (Dir. Hannes Holm)

POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING (Dir. Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone)

ARRIVAL (Dir. Denis Villeneuve) This is another film I give a mixed review, but, what can I say? It’s growing on me.

HIDDEN FIGURES (Dir. Theodore Melfi)

HUNT FOR THE WILDER PEOPLE (Dir. Taika Waititi)

LIFE, ANIMATED (Dir. Roger Ross Williams)

THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK – THE TOURING YEARS (Dir. Ron Howard)

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THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN: Not The Most Magnificent Remake But A Purty Good Time

Now playing at a multiplex near everyone:

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

(Dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)

How much of a remake exactly is Antoine Fuqua’s new familliarly titled western?

Well, it shares the same name with John Sturges’ 1960 American classic, which was itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 Japanese classic SEVEN SAMURAI, and it has basically the same premise, but the names have been changed and one of the film’s principal leads, Chris Pratt, has said that “it’s probably a lot more ‘Wild Bunch’ than ‘Magnificent Seven.’

And there’s also that Washington, the film’s star in his third collaboration with the director, has said that he’s never seen the original.

So, after taking it in, I consider Fuqua’s film to be a re-imagining of an established title in the wake of more modernist takes on the western genre, like say Quentin Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT, but despite its black lead, it’s a pretty old fashioned affair without a single N-word in ear range.

In its prologue, we are introduced to the villain, industrialist Bartholomew Bogue, perfectly played by Peter Sarsgaard at his most sinister, as he crashes a small town meeting in the fictional Rose Creek which is supposed to be in the desert of Texas, but we know it’s Louisiana with a bit of Arizona mixed in because you’ve got to have Monument Valley in every Western. Bogue’s goons kill people, including the protesting husband (Matt Bomer) of Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett), the film’s only female lead.

Seeking revenge, Emma rounds up a posse made up of Washington as bounty hunter Sam Chisolm, Pratt as gambler Josh Farraday, Ethan Hawke as the grizzled sharp sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux, a delightfully drunk Vincent D'Onofrio as tracker Jack Horne, Byung-hun Lee as assassin Billy Rocks, Martin Sensmeier as Commanche warrior Red Harvest, and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Mexican outlaw Vasquez, to take down Bogue.

The crew outfits the town by digging trenches, rigging explosives, and equipping the townspeople with guns in a way that heavily recalls ¡THREE AMIGOS! more than its actual source material, for the movie’s massive shoot ‘em up climax.

That’s basically it plot-wise. It’s ultimately a Denzel Washington indestructible bad ass scenario crossed with a Chris Pratt action comedy under a commercial western banner. Not that there’s anything wrong with that as there are plenty of laughs and quickfire thrills on screen.

Fuqua and Washington have done good work previously in the 2001 cop drama TRAINING DAY, which also featured Hawke and won Washington a long deserved Osccar, and in the 2014 action thriller THE EQUALIZER (another remake!), and the third time definitely has its charms here, but don’t expect any awards season activity this time.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN ’16 is a good not great update * of one of the principles study subjects of Westerns 101. It’s a solid piece of pop entertainment, but it doesn’t go very deep – don’t go looking for fully fleshed out characters or new takes on time worn plot devices - nor does it justify political interpretations (don’t give me any the villain symbolizes Trump tripe). “I just wanted to see Denzel Washington on a horse” Fuqua has been quoted as saying in more than one interview.

Maybe more than anything else, this film succeeds as a forum for that sure to become iconic image, but the rest of it is a purty good time as well.

* “Good not great update” is a registered trademark of Film Babble Blog (see the GHOST BUSTERS ’16 review for one of many examples).

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FLIGHT: The Film Babble Blog Review

FLIGHT (Dir. Robert Zemeckis, 2012)

With its disaster movie tension and tone, Robert Zemeckis’ first live action film since 2000’s CAST AWAY (and first R-rated movie since 1980’s USED CARS) comes on at first like it could be a reboot of the ‘70s AIRPORT series. Albeit a more edgy version, as we witness pilot Denzel Washington snort a few lines of cocaine before take-off, and drink vodka while in flight.

Despite the drinking and the drugging, when the airplane’s machinery malfunctions Washington is still able to successfully make an emergency landing, after the stunning maneuver of flying the jet upside down to halt the dive. Washington’s skills saves 96 of the 102 lives (or “souls” as he says it), and he’s initially hailed as a hero, but his hospital toxicology report could get him lifetime imprisonment for manslaughter.

As he’s recuperating, Washington tries to quit drinking and throws out all his liquor and beer. This can’t help but be comical as the supply of booze at his family’s farmhouse in the countryside of Georgia, where he’s hiding from the media, is so huge that he keeps finding more to dispose of.

Washington’s sobriety doesn’t last long; he drops off the wagon right after a morning meeting with Bruce Greenwood as a airline union rep, and Don Cheadle as a Michael Clayton-esque fixer-lawyer who is a little concerned about a certain blood-alcohol-level report. Although Cheadle is confident that he can suppress it, Washington relapses big-time.

Again, the scenes with Washington dealing with his alcoholism can’t help but be comical as we see him guzzle from a big bottle of liquor in the parking lot of a liquor store, and driving around Atlanta with a can of Budweiser in his hand. It seems like Washington spends most of the movie trying to out-drink Nicholas Cage in LEAVING LAS VEGAS.

Washington falls in with Kelly Reilly, who he met at the hospital, as a recovering heroin addict/hooker, but it’s obvious that she’s on a better path to getting her life back together than he is by getting a new job and going to AA meetings. Reilly tries to get Washington to attend a meeting with her, but he walks out half-way through. Our disgraced hero’s behavior gets even worse when he pays a drunken visit to his ex-wife (Garcelle Beauvais) after Reilly leaves him.

While Zemeckis, actually a longtime pilot himself, is a former Steven Spielberg protégé his use of music here has a Martin Scorsese-style specificity. This is most on display in the cameo by the always hilarious John Goodman, who should cameo in every movie, as Washington’s drug dealer who struts through hallways to the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil.” Washington gets Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright” as his strutting song when all he’s coked-up yet still smooth, and Reilly gets the Cowboy Junkies’ cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” to serenade her when she shoots up in an early scene. 

I dug how gutsy FLIGHT was for most of its lengthy running time (2 hours and 18 min), and was highly amused by Washington’s cocky manner of talking around people (“Don’t tell me how to lie about drinking, I’ve been lying about drinking my whole life!”), but the film hugely falters in its concluding scenes that contrive to give this appealingly un-redemptive character redemption.

Sorry if this is a Spoiler!, but in the climatic hearing, in which Washington gets questioned by Melissa Leo as an understanding federal inquisitor, I was rooting for the guy to get away with it all, like folks often do in this cruel world. Is that what screenwriter John Gatin (REAL STEEL - that’s right) wanted folks to feel? Like, yeah we know Denzel has substance abuse issues, but, da-ham! Look how good he looks even after a rough night, and he did save the majority of passengers on that doomed flight, so why not let him off the hook?

In the end, the well made FLIGHT enjoys partying with Washington so much, that its punishment of him doesn’t really fly.

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THE BOOK OF ELI: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE BOOK OF ELI (Dirs. Albert and Allen Hughes, 2010)


Here we go again with another cinematic rendering of a post apocalyptic world - apparently for those who thought THE ROAD didn't have enough action.


A bearded grizzled Denzel Washington walks the ashy terrain listening to Al Green on an old beat-up iPod and avoiding Road Warrior-ish highjackers hiding in the rubble.


When he is confronted by a crusty crew of them, we see that he is a machete-brandishing bad ass who leaves his attackers in a pile of their own limbs; SAMURAI ASSASSIN-style.


We only get a few hints as to what happened to the Earth. Washington mentions "the wars", "the flash" and at one point says "the sky opened up, the sun came down" so obviously they want to keep it vague. I can go along with that fine, but after hearing that it's been 30 winters since this all went down I couldn't get over wondering how he recharges that iPod battery.


On his journey west (post apocalyptic folk are always traveling to the Californian coast) Washington comes upon the supposed king of the crud covered thugs - an oily Gary Oldman (one of the only lively elements present) who chews the sleazy scenery as he seeks "the Book". The book is, of course, the Bible (The King James Version) and Washington has the last copy on his person and he ain't sharing it. He'll quote from it to Mila Kunis as one of Oldman's slaves, but he will not give it up to anybody.


Suffice to say this causes some friction. Friction in the form of gun battles with heavy artillery and yep, big explosions. Washington is determined and seemingly indestructible in his efforts to protect "the Book", but his real strengths as an actor are buried here.


Though Washington is one of the executive producers on this project, his role as the stoical Eli is stiff and passionless. He's one of the finest actors working today, but here his charisma is literally missing in action.


Despite this the movie itself should've gone for more mindless spectacle instead of the religious pretension it tries to pull off. Its hokey thematics bring to mind another post apocalyptic anomaly - THE POSTMAN. In Kevin Costner's notorious 1997 flop, a drifter finds a mailbag and sets about delivering the letters inside which in turn helps to rebuild society.


The Bible in THE BOOK OF ELI fulfills the same purpose - it's a glorified MacGuffin, but unlike most MacGuffins, it's importance grows in the last third of the film. Washington and the Hughes Brothers are reaching here to tell the story of a righteous prophet, and there are a few times where its sepia-tinted tones are appealing, but mostly the underwritten yet overdone enterprise loudly falls flat.


As a beginning of the year B-movie THE BOOK OF ELI is sure to make major bank from movie-goers looking for diversion. But stone cold boredom is what they're really going to get. 


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AMERICAN GANGSTER #1 - Take that, BEE MOVIE!

Nice to see this country gets something right for a change. Ignoring the gigantic marketing blitz for BEE MOVIE moviegoers instead chose a gritty violent crime drama and I doubt there are many regrets for it. So let's take a look at that choice:

AMERICAN GANGSTER (Dir. Ridley Scott, 2007) In this fictionalized account of real events Denzel Washington portrays Frank Lucas, a real life Harlem heroin kingpin in the late 60's to mid 70's who was originally from my home-state (he was born in Washington, North Carolina and there are scenes set in Greensboro). Lucas rules the streets by smuggling drugs from Vietnam in soldier's caskets therefore eliminating the middleman and turning a huge profit. Detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe - not as good as in 3:10 TO YUMA but solid nonetheless) is hot on Lucas's trail and desperately trying to keep his "honest cop" status afloat in a sea of corruption. Rounding out the cast is one such corrupt cop played by a slicker than sin Josh Brolin, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Lucas's brother, Cuba Gooding Jr. in a juicy bit-part, and Ruby Dee as Mama Lucas. Being that it's Ridley Scott you've got to expect at least one shining rain drenched street at night and it's there in a effective drive-by shooting scene.

There has been criticism of Crowe's character being given too large a part just so that he could function for audiences as a white counter point to Washington but I think that's too cynical. Roberts is a necessary real-life figure and he provides us with a lot of the inner-working background while relieving us of an entire movie dominated by Lucas's scary presence. Not that that would be so bad - Denzel Washington is excellent as ever; all polite power and laid-back cunning confidence but to be honest it's the kind of performance he could do in his sleep. AMERICAN GANGSTER is getting a lot of unfair comparisons to other mob movie classics such as THE GODFATHER, SCARFACE, and even Blaxploitation touchstone SUPER FLY (the New York Magazine article that the film was based in part on was entitled "The Return Of Superfly"). But these are easy cheap shots though I'll say as those films go this is more along the lines of DONNIE BRASCO than GOODFELLAS. I don't predict any Oscar nominations for this film and it most likely won't make my top ten films of 2007 (there's too much strong competition) but it's well crafted, extremely well acted, and offers lots to sink one's teeth into. So forget that silly Seinfeld-voiced animated bee flick and join your fellow Americans at the multiplex.

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