Opening today at nearly every multiplex in Raleigh and the Triangle area:
THE DEBT (Dir. John Madden, 2011)
How can a film that features impassioned performances from such acting heavyweights as Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and Sam Worthington among others, be such a dreary drag?
I believe it has something to do with the plotting. THE DEBT goes back and forth from 1966 to 1997 to tell the story of 3 Mossad secret agents (Mirren, Wilkinson, and Ciarán Hinds) who have been keeping a secret about the fate of a Nazi war criminal (Jesper Christensen) they had once kidnapped in East Berlin.
Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas play the agents in the '60s who track Christensen who is known as the Surgeon of Birkenau. When he escapes after a brutal fight with Chastain, they agree to lie about his death. 30 years later they learn that Christensen may still be alive, so Mirren travels to the hospital he's reportedly in to finally finish him off forever.
The movie miserably goes through the motions, with no sense of a compelling narrative. It's perplexingly tension-free especially considering the subject matter. There is a strand about a love triangle between the 3 leads, but it's handled in such a murky unaffected manner that it feels like it doesn't matter. Maybe that's because it doesn't.
It also has one of the most unsatisfying endings of a drama that I've ever seen.
The premise of revenge on an aging Nazi war criminal is really tired at this point too. I sure hope it was handled better in the 2007 Israeli film that this is a remake of. As gritty as it is with solid work by a fine cast, THE DEBT adds nothing notable to the genre.
The studio (Focus Features) must have known that too by dumping it into theaters now (on a Wednesday for some inexplicable reason) instead of waiting for closer to Christmas when movies dealing with monsters of the holocaust usually drop.
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Out today on Blu ray and DVD:
THE PERFECT HOST (Dir. Nick Tomnay, 2010)
As the affluent, refined Warwick Wilson, David Hyde Pierce can't help but bring a healthy bit of Niles Crane to the character. The major difference is Warwick is a demented psychopath who has dinner parties with his many imaginary friends - who just might be his hallucinations of the people he's murdered.
A very Ray Liotta-resembling Clayne Crawford, as a fugitive being hunted by the police for robbing a bank, accidentally crashes one of Pierce's parties in order to get off the streets.
This is a huge mistake Crawford soon learns as Pierce drugs his wine ("It's a cheeky little drop, isn't it?"), and he wakes up tied up at a table set for 6. We see the guests Pierce sees in some shots played by actors including Cooper Barnes, Tyrees Allen, and Annie Campbell, and they disapear in others.
A pyschological power play is at hand, with Pierce looking like he's having a blast as the cunning host who delights in showing off his scrapbook of polaroids of former party guests, and dancing in a non-existant conga lines.
In his drugged up stupor, Crawford flashes back to strained moments with girlfriend (Meghan Perry) where we learn she was an accomplice in his crime, and the film film randomly checks in with the Detectives (Joseph Will and Nathaniel Parker) who are on the trail.
Funnily enough, "I Am Woman" singer Helen Reddy has a cameo as a noisy neighbor.
For most of its running time "The Perfect Host" has an enjoyably wicked wit, mostly due to Pierce's sharp confident performance, but it breaks down a bit towards the end.
To say how would be too much of a spoiler, and this review has already had too many of those so I'll just say that there may be one twist too many.
No matter, the fun that Pierce haves with this juicy part is contagious, and the film is a promsing debut for writer/director Tomnay. It has "worthwhile rental" written all over it.
Special Features: A "Making THE PERFECT HOST with Writer/Director Nick Tomnay", the Theatrical Trailer (which you can watch above on the left), and "HDNet: A Look at THE PERFECT HOST.
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This sci-fi tinged indie drama is now playing in the area at the Colony Theater in Raleigh, and the Galaxy Cinema in Cary:
ANOTHER WORLD (Dir. Mike Cahill, 2011)
Director Mike Cahill and actress Brit Marling's feature film debut, which they also co-wrote, has an intriquing premise: what if a dupicate world to ours, one that contains doppelgangers of every single person on the planet, was revealed after hiding behind the sun all this time?
Marling plays a young woman just accepted into MIT's astrophysics program who hears about the phenomenal discovery on the radio driving home drunk after a party. She looks to the sky to see it, causing a major automobile accident which kills a woman and her child, while putting the father (William Mapother) into a temporary coma.
After Marling is imprisoned for involutary manslaughter for 4 years, she is released and takes a job as a janitor at a local high school, as news about what is now called "Earth 2" blares from every radio and television in her radius.
Wracked by guilt, Marling tracks down Mapother (best known as Ethan from Lost) to apologize for her tragic crime, but she freezes in the moment at his country home, and tells him she's from a cleaning service. Oblivious to her identity, the despondent Mapother hires her, and a bond forms between the two, despite the stickiness of the situation.
The stretches stretches dealing with these lost souls' egg shell existence are lengthy enough to almost make one forget the fantastical Earth 2 scenerio, but many shots of the mirror earth looming in the sky above keep reminding us (the film is low budget, but this effect is fairly convincing).
Marling enters a contest to win a seat aboard a shuttle to Earth 2 as she struggles with how or when to confess to Mapother. Things get more tangled as a possible romance blooms between them.
ANOTHER EARTH can be ponderous as it pussyfoots a little too much about getting to the meat of the matter, but its not pretentiously contrived. It's thoughtfully engaging at its best, and just drags slightly at its worst.
Through their touching on-point performances, the leads' fascination with the lives of their doubles can be sincerely felt in such moments when Mapother says: “I can't stop thinking about it; another me up there.”
You won't be able to stop thinking about it either. Well, at least for a day or two. And these days moviewise, that's a very good thing indeed.
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