Movie Reviews - new films reviewed

Jack Mosley (Bruce Willis) is a drunkard with a bad leg, a potbelly and a depression. He is the guy who is called for the jobs where you need someone who is expendable. He is one of New York’s Finest.
When he just wants to go home after a night-shift, he is assigned one more job - to escort motormouth Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) to the courthouse. Eddie is a pain in the neck, and all Jack really wants is a drink. But when he stops at a liquor-shop, the day starts getting really ugly. Somebody is trying to kill Eddie before he reaches the courthouse, and Jack can save him only in the last second. Jack and Eddie seek cover in a bar, but when Frank Nugent (David Morse), Jack’s ex-partner for 20 years, appears as reinforcement, things get even uglier. It turns out that Eddie is a witness who shall testify in court within the next two hours - and he shall testify against Jack’s colleagues and friends. The cops want Eddie dead before he can make his testimony.
Frank wants to convince Jack to do what he usually does - have a drink, go home and forget about everything. But Jack does have a conscience - he turns against his friends and escapes from the bar. Now it’s the limping, hard-drinking cop and gabber Eddie on the run from the NYPD and against time. They must reach the courthouse in time or the case will be closed and Eddie’s testimony will be useless - and the cops know Jack and they know his destination, and they will do whatever is necessary to stop him and Eddie.

Bruce Willis is an aging, overweight cop with a bad leg, not running through the city in his undershirt (so he is not John McClane and this is not DIE HARD), with a drinking problem and a bad attitude (Stop! Or is he?). Bruce shows us something more than his McClane-schtick, but this might be McClane in 10 years, and he’s still outnumbered and fighting.
Mos Def is convincing as the hyperactive nag, and together they make a nice couple, but not as funny or with the chemistry of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Richard Donner’s legendary LETHAL WEAPON series. Maybe he’s just getting too old for this sh*t.
The plot is OK and the action is there, but Bruce Willis’ presence doesn’t help to amplify the suspense - he is Bruce Willis, so you can be quite sure he won’t snuff it, but despite this there’s still a mildly surprising finale.
A solid buddy-action movie (a bit short on the buddy-thingy), but not a truly great one.

When Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) catches Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) trying to steal her mother’s car it is love at first sight. Clyde tells her he is doing armed robberies, and without further ado she joins him to exchange her dull life as a waitress for a life of adventure, excitement, love, wealth and crime. Adventure and excitement they have, and Clyde’s impotence doesn’t wreck their love, but there is no wealth for the couple. Clyde is bragging a lot about his criminal endeavors, but he’s more shop lifter and car thief than bank robber, and not always lucky in choosing his targets. The company and admiration of a beautiful woman make him more daring, but not luckier - the first bank Clyde wants to rob has gone out of business already.
It’s the Great Depression era, and it’s easy for Bonnie and Clyde to find accomplices - young C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) happily joins them when they boast about their crimes, and Clyde’s brother Buck Barrow (Gene Hackman) and his wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons) complete what will soon be known as the ‘Barrow Gang’.
The newspapers celebrate the outlaws as heros, and the poor sympathize with them, but when Clyde commits his first murder, the law closes in on the gang, and their escapes get ever bloodier and narrower. Bonnie and Clyde know the end of their criminal career is near, but they will rather die than go back to a dull life or to prison.

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty

The real Bonnie and Clyde

A classic tale of crime and love, Bonnie and Clyde was the first movie where it was OK to sympathize with the criminals. The film is based on the true story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow who were criminal celebrities during their short, violent ‘career’ in the 1930’s. Not very successful as robbers, but good in escaping the law, and brilliant in public relations: they sent pictures of themselves posing with their weapons to the newspaper who printed them, and they were enjoying their fame while it lasted.

It’s ‘live fast and die young’ for Bonnie and Clyde, and the beautiful Faye Dunaway and the handsome Warren Beatty are the perfect actors to make you feel for them regardless of their actions. Bonnie and Clyde is the movie that made criminals look cool and sympathetic and is the direct ancestor of films like NATURAL BORN KILLERS or BADLANDS.
Set in the 1930’s but made in 1967, it’s a film about a new era. While the Vietnam war is raging, the youth at home is rebelling. Bonnie and Clyde are the young who rebel against the establishment, and their rebellion is bloody and violent like war. In the end they still get ‘what they deserve’ - they are lured into a trap and gunned down without warning, but it’s not only a new era for the USA, BONNIE AND CLYDE is also one of the classic movies that marked the beginning of a new era for Hollywood.

Dalton Russel (Clive Owen) tells the audience he has the perfect plan to rob a bank, and it seems he is right - masked as painters, he and his accomplices go into a Manhattan bank, take the customers and clerks as hostages and start negotiations with police negotiator Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington). Russel has everything under control, and it takes some time until Frazier realizes this is not a normal bank robbery. Mysterious Madeline White’s (Jodie Foster) intervention, authorized by the mayor, doesn’t help but just increases Frazier’s confusion.

Why does the obviously highly intelligent Russel demand an airplane for his escape when he must know he will never get one? What does Madeline White know that Frazier doesn’t know? And why are the robbers digging a hole in the ground of a storage room? And if this is a bank robbery, who are the robbers and why isn’t any money missing?

Thanks to Spike Lee for giving Clive Owen a part in a movie that does not suck! Masked for the most part of the film, Clive is convincing and a pleasure to watch as the cold and smart mastermind of a masterfully planned heist. Denzel Washington is Denzel Washington - reliable, but not shining in the only role that’s characterized and not a cliche. Jodie Foster is not a victim in INSIDE MAN for a change, and she obviously enjoys it, even if her character is in fact superfluous for the plot.
The setup is great - it’s another heist movie, but that’s OK because we have a convincing bad guy and we want to know more about the ‘perfect’ plan. Good camera-work (Matthew Libatique), acting, and a neat use of flash-forwards keeps us interested, but - such is life - we want more, we want the tension to rise and we want a climactic ending!
Unfortunately, we are let down - there is no ‘grand finale’, and what we get is neither convincing nor satisfying. It’s not Spike Lee’s nor the actors’ fault, it’s first-time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz’ script that’s just not as well-planned as Dalton Russel’s heist.

The not-so-distant future. A fascist government rules England, and all people who are ‘different’ (muslims, homosexuals, non-white skin colored, people with dissenting opinions, people who just disregard the curfew) are being persecuted, imprisoned, and killed. Like other oppressive regimes, the government came to power through a democratic vote - thanks to expertly stoked fears. The media are in cahoots with the government - shallow entertainment sedates, and manipulated news reports instill fear and keep people in line.
When Evey (Natalie Portman) is caught on the street after curfew she is rescued by a masked man who calls himself V (Hugo Weaving). V introduces himself to London on Guy Fawkes Day with the bombing of the Old Bailey and a TV broadcast inviting the citizens to gather on the same day next year in front of the Houses Of Parliament to overthrow the government.
V starts a series of assassinations of high-ranking party members, unsettling Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt) and his party apparatus, but neither the police nor the ‘fingermen’, the state’s secret police, can capture V - and the 5th of November is coming closer.

*** SPOILER WARNING ***
The movie is based on the graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore with a screenplay by the Wachowski Brothers (from MATRIX fame). Fortunately, V FOR VENDETTA is not as anemic as the latest two Matrix installments. With it’s themes of terrorism and a government stealing the civil rights away from people in the name of ‘national safety’, V FOR VENDETTA is painfully close to today’s reality and raises questions you wouldn’t expect from a mere action movie or film version of a comic book.
Are acts of violence and terrorism ever justifiable? And how close are we to the society as described in V FOR VENDETTA?
V FOR VENDETTA the film, with the screenplay by and produced by the Wachowski Brothers and Joel Silver, disguises itself as an action movie with big explosions, splashes of the red stuff in slo-mo fights, and outstanding memorable scenes (the bombings of Old Bailey and the Houses Of Parliament with spectacular use of Tchaikovsky’s Overture 1812, V’s lone, bloody and last fight against a squad of heavily armed policemen, and especially the gathering of countless masked citizens at the Parliament with the peaceful end of the government’s reign reminding very much of the fall of the iron curtain and the Berlin wall in 1989 when masses of DDR-citizens peacefully gathered and crossed the until-then tightly guarded borders), and it works perfectly well as an action movie, but it is so much more. It’s a vision of a future that could happen, and it’s a warning - it shows how it could happen, and that people shouldn’t give away their rights in exchange for a vaguely promised ’safety’.
There probably won’t be a special screening in the White House for President George W. Bush for this film!

‘A man can be defeated, but ideas can endure and retain their power forever.’
‘People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.’

Born in 1932 and growing up on a cotton farm in rural Arkansas, Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) will suffer for a big part of his life from a sense of guilt after the early death of his brother and the disapproval of his reserved father who mourns that god took the wrong son from him. After his time in the Air Force in Germany Johnny marries Vivian and tries to make a living as a salesman, but with pitiful success.

A successful audition at Sun Records leads to Johnny’s successful career as a rock star, but life on tour with Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis and others estranges him from his wife and children. Alcohol, sex and drugs can’t numb his feelings of guilt and insufficiency, and fellow singer June Carter (Reese Witherspoon) doesn’t give in to his advances, fueling his frustrations.

There is a long way to go for Johnny Cash to find inner peace and earn the love of June.

Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant as the big, sad and angry man in black, and so is Reese Witherspoon as his muse June Carter. Both did their own singing and did a great job - the concert scenes are the highlights of the film, and no matter if you know or don’t know about Johnny Cash, WALK THE LINE is a pleasure to watch - and to hear!