Category: Edward Norton

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: James Mangold
CAST: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 79% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In 1961, Bob Dylan arrives in NYC for the first time.  Four years later, his groundbreaking performance in Newport changed the music world forever.


The 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams began as a small-scale, 30-minute project concentrating on two inner-city boys who dreamed of making it to the NBA.  It was supposed to cover only a few months in their lives, but as their stories progressed, the filmmakers just continued filming, and the sprawling documentary eventually covered five years and became an absorbing three-hour odyssey.

In a weird way, that’s how I felt about James Mangold’s Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.  The movie opens with no backstory, no flashbacks, just a disheveled young Bobby Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arriving in 1961 New York City with his guitar, determined to meet his idol, legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie, hospitalized at the time with Huntington’s disease and no longer able to sing or speak.  In Guthrie’s hospital room, Dylan also meets another folk legend, Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), in what must count as one of the greatest musical summit conferences of all time.

The way this scene is shot, it almost feels like, after it’s over, it could be the end of a marvelous short film about three legends bumping into each other.  But, like Hoop Dreams, this biopic remains focused on the unknown Bobby Dylan, with his nasal whine and preternatural gift for lyrics, for five years.  He eventually gets more and more exposure and cuts his first album.  Along the way, he meets two women who will be his emotional touchstones during the film: the celebrated Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), whom Dylan accuses of being and singing “too pretty,” and Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), who becomes his girlfriend despite his flirtations with Ms. Baez.

But throughout the film – and this is one of the reasons I enjoyed it more than I thought I would – we remain focused almost exclusively on Dylan, the man and his music.  We are treated to countless scenes of Dylan performing live, Dylan recording in a studio, Dylan scratching out a new song note for note and word for word.  If a soundtrack album were ever compiled of the full-length versions of all the songs we hear in A Complete Unknown, I have to believe it would be between two to three hours long, if not more.

Why did I react so favorably to this kind of treatment?  My two favorite musical biopics of all time are Ray [2004] and Amadeus [1984].  Amadeus certainly contains a LOT of music, much like A Complete Unknown, but we are given a lot of background information into Mozart’s life, his relationship with his father, his childhood years, and so on, whereas the Dylan film presents him as a blank slate without a single flashback to his younger years.  Ray is much more in the vein of your “traditional” musical biopics like Walk the Line [2005, also directed by Mangold] or Bohemian Rhapsody [2018], containing the standard story beats of struggles in their personal lives, a haunting past, liberal-to-moderate use of flashbacks, you get the idea.

I suppose part of my enjoyment of A Complete Unknown stems from the fact that, even though I’m not a Dylan fan, or Fan with a capital F, I appreciate the songs themselves, with their intricate lyrics and folksy rhythms, so I thoroughly enjoyed the myriad musical breaks.  I also liked the way the movie did not spoon-feed me chunks of information it felt I needed to know.  Instead of the movie telling me how I should feel about a scene or a moment with clunky dialogue or exposition, it simply presents a situation and kind of stands back from it, allowing me to form my own emotional reactions to the material.  That’s a tricky storytelling method; one false step and you’re left with a story with no heart, no meat in the middle.  But A Complete Unknown pulls it off extremely well.  I’m sure there’s a way to explain how they did it, but I’m not the one to try.  I just know that it works, and that’s enough for me.

Any discussion of this movie must necessarily include Timothée Chalamet’s magnetic performance as Bob Dylan.  It is destined for an Oscar nomination.  I am reliably informed that Chalamet did all the singing himself (as did Norton and Barbaro as Seeger and Baez, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash), and he went to great lengths to mimic Dylan’s trademark sound.  Combined with the pitch-perfect hair and makeup, it really feels like the real Dylan onscreen, especially when the movie jumps forward to the Newport Music Festivals of ‘64 and ‘65.  Of course, I wasn’t alive back then, but I have seen pictures and documentary footage of the man himself, and Chalamet is utterly convincing.  Even if you’re not a Dylan fan, this movie is worth watching just to see Chalamet’s performance…he’s that good.

My colleague, Marc Sanders, mentions in his review how the production design of the film went to great lengths to recreate early-1960s New York City, and I second that statement.  It’s as utterly convincing as Chalamet himself, especially when it comes to the various “underground” music clubs Dylan performs in, clubs where the folk music revolution was born.  I get the feeling that anyone who watches this movie, who was also alive at the time, will be easily transported back to that era when Kennedy’s Camelot was in full swing, as was the hippie movement, the folk movement, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, the Beatles.  There are aspects of this film that I may never fully appreciate since I was born in the early ‘70s, but I get the gist.

I feel compelled to rebut a specific argument from my girlfriend, who did not like the movie because it did not give us any real background information about who Bob Dylan really is.  (We only get a single tantalizing glimpse when someone leafs through one of his old scrapbooks that had been delivered to a “Mr. Zimmerman.”)  All the movie does, so her argument goes, is present us with a performer singing his music, culminating in a pivotal big concert, of which the same could be said of many other biopics that came before.  A Complete Unknown could just as well have been about Richie Havens, or Jerry Lee Lewis, or Janis Joplin, or anyone else.  There is no real personal conflict presented in the film.

To which I have to say…that’s not quite true.  I acknowledge the absence of background story and flashbacks, but for me, as I said, that’s a strength, not a weakness.  It follows the theme set up by the film’s title, after all.  Also, there is a real conflict in the story, as Dylan, after becoming the figurehead for the folk music movement in America, takes the unprecedented step of recording an album and performing live songs that are (gasp!) non-acoustic.  He complains that his fans want him to sing “Blowin’ in the Wind” for the rest of his life. This generates shockwaves throughout the folk community, and at one of his concerts where he performs an electric set, the crowd jeers, throws trash at him, and even calls him “Judas.”  That pretty much counts as “conflict,” in my opinion.

A Complete Unknown goes down as one of the best films of 2024 that I’ve seen.  For Dylan fans, it is an absolute must-see.  For fans of great acting, it’s also a must-see.  If you’re not a Dylan fan at all, well, it’s not likely to change your mind, but do yourself a favor and give it a chance.  Not many musical biopics, or films of ANY kind, are made this well and with as much loving care as A Complete Unknown.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN

By Marc S. Sanders

A drifter hitches a ride into New York City with a guitar on his back looking for Woody Guthrie.  He only comes to realize that his musical idol is in a New Jersey hospital ward with a debilitating illness. The drifter just came from Jersey.

The young stranger eventually catches up with the legendary folk singer, and a friend named Pete Seegar.  He plays a song he wrote for the ill and mute Mr. Guthrie and the men are dazzled by this young man.  This is Bob Dylan, and he writes music and lyrics as quickly as he breathes.  But where did this wunderkind stem from?  To everyone that encounters Bob Dylan, he’s simply A Complete Unknown.

Timothée Chalamet delivers a blazingly convincing performance as Bob Dylan, surely a front runner for the Best Actor Oscar.  The appearance is easy to get used to. The dialect and expressions of what I’d like to think is the summit of what most of us know about the musician never falters from an apathetic expression or that mumbling hoarseness we all know.  Everything from the clothes to the shaggy brown hair to the sunglasses and motorcycle he confidently rides perfect this embodiment. In James Mangold’s latest musician biography (prior credits include the Johnny Cash bio Walk The Line), with Timothée Chalamet in this role, I was truly watching a Bob Dylan of the early to mid-1960’s.

Any movie has a conflict for its story to work around.  There’s more than one conflict in A Complete Unknown, but Bob Dylan would not know that.  He’s content with doing what he does and has not one care for what anyone else wants him to be or wants him to share.  Bob lacks much concern for the tumultuous times of the mid twentieth century either.  JFK and Malcolm X are assassinated.  The Vietnam War persists.  The Cuban Missile Crisis terrifies everyone.  Yet, Bob only focuses on his songwriting.  He’ll make connections with Pete Seegar (Edward Norton) and develop a sometimes-romantic tryst but mostly singing partnership with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro).  He also gets involved with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), one of his first fans.  However, no matter what they might expect of the performer, he’s only going to follow the path that drives him.  Therefore, that will be their own respective problems to contend with, not his.  Bob is only going to follow that path that he chooses.

Sylvie wants to know more about her live-in boyfriend who only tells tales of when he moved with a travelling carnival.  Joan wants to know where he learned to play guitar or even how he developed a knack for poetic lyricism.  Later, she’ll want to play the original numbers that solidified their friendship on stage despite his stubbornness not to agree.  It becomes curious when photo albums are delivered, addressed to a Robert Zimmerman.  Pete and his other peers want Bob, a now marquee name, to hold on to the grassroots of folk singing.  Bob will not acquiesce though.  Like other masterful musicians such as Prince or John Lennon and Elton John, Bob Dylan is going to continue to reinvent himself. 

In a matter of months, the signer becomes a nationwide superstar and he can’t walk the streets without getting bombarded; something he never wanted.  He performs with a passion for the music he’s written and he persists in making the next new thing with his talents as he transitions from acoustic to electric guitar and incorporates keyboards and drums to accompany his performances.  His friend Pete sees a berth becoming wider from the folk music he parades at annual festivals in Newport, Rhode Island and what Dylan insists on only playing.  Record producers (primarily represented by actor Dan Fogler) beg the singer to perform his older familiar tracks, but Bob Dylan only wants to move on to what is new and fresh. 

A Complete Unknown is full of such energy because it delivers what was produced by the guy who composed all of these magnificent and magnetic tracks from Song To Woodie to Blowin’ In The Wind to Like A Rolling Stone and to The Time’s They Are A Changing and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.  You might not know or even understand all the verses by heart, but you quickly catch on to the choruses. To hear these newly composed songs pulled out of a dusty attic for an updated biography, performed by Timothée Chalamet in underground bars, at concert festivals or even in messy apartments is addicting.  You don’t want the actor to stop the song.  You don’t want the film to cut away from any of the numbers and you wish the concert would never end.  Like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan’s works stay with you.

I’ve become a huge admirer of James Mangold.  He’s a writer/director who does not criticize his subjects.  He empathizes with them and respects their boundaries.  We might find frustrations in people like Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash, but Mangold does not compromise the biography.  He finds reasons for you to like these men even while those who stand in their circles might not care for their attitudes. 

The director is also skillful at showing the history of the time.  Like the last Indiana Jones film he covered, the settings are so authentic.  New York City in A Complete Unknown is depicted down to the finest detail including the yellow street signs within the small boroughs of damp Brownstones and city streets that Bob Dylan navigates. The musty interiors of Woody Guthrie’s hospital room or Pete Seegar’s cabin home are shot with a hazy photography.  The Newport music festival, full of concert spectator extras feels like it was pulled from a documentary; what maybe a calm and relaxing Woodstock might have looked like.

Beyond Timothée Chalamet, the cast of this film is superb.  Elle Fanning need not say a word as James Mangold provides an assortment of close ups depicting her pain of wanting to love Bob Dylan but knowing she just can’t.  Her complexion turns into a weeping pink without one tear shed.  Monica Barbaro is on the cusp of becoming a marquee name in films.  The actress who was recently in action material with Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger hides so well under the folk appearance of Joan Baez and she carries an immense stage presence. Scoot McNairy is Woody Guthrie who never speaks and only stares straight ahead during visits from Bob and Pete. Yet, the silent performance offers the only character who truly understood the value of an enigmatic Bob Dylan. Edward Norton has given a new range as a liberal and calm Pete Seegar who uses folk music as an escape from the turmoil of the times and not as a harbor to protest or fight an authority with aggression and violence.  He might wish for his friend Bob Dylan to uphold the value of folk music, but he knows he can’t keep a bird caged in one place either.  Norton’s introductory scene in a courthouse with a banjo in hand is unforgettable.  The casting is simply perfect in A Complete Unknown.

Since I saw this film on Christmas Day, I have not stopped thinking about it, and I think I want to see it again in a theater with a speaker system that amplifies the power of Bob Dylan’s guitar and mumbly vocals.  Right now, nothing sounds better.

A Complete Unknown is one of the best films of the year.

THE SCORE

By Marc S. Sanders

Nothing like a good heist thriller.  Am I right? 

It is hard to believe that Marlon Brando’s final performance was with Robert DeNiro and yet the two were never part of the same cast before.  Finally, though, the Oscar winning actors, who were both recognized for portraying Vito Corleone, teamed up for a little film that contained some daring thrills while also welcoming some crackling good acting scenes together.  Edward Norton joined them, and it worked sensationally.  The Score, directed by Frank Oz, is a forgotten gem, or in this case as priceless as the gold and jeweled scepter the three set their sights upon stealing.

Filmed on location in Montreal, DeNiro portrays Nick, a professional thief who is very disciplined in his work and would never dare commit a heist in his own town where he publicly operates as a jazz nightclub owner.  As the opening scene suggests, he only practices outside of his city and usually outside of Canada.  Yet, a brash cocky kid named Jack (Norton) enters his private life with a proposition too good to pass up.  DeNiro’s handler/investor, Max (Brando), urges Nick to overcome his reluctance and team up with Jack for one last score that’ll rake in thirty million dollars. Once the job is done, six million is earmarked for Nick.  Finally, Nick can get out of this business and move on with his nightclub mortgage paid off.  He can also get more serious with his stewardess girlfriend Diane (Angela Bassett). 

The MacGuffin?  A scepter from the 1600s that was crafted for French royalty.  It is currently locked in a state of the art safe located within the basement of the Montreal Customs Building.  This fortress is equipped with cameras, security guards, sensors, you name it.  Jack is working on the inside, posing as a mentally challenged maintenance man.  He supplies all the intel to Nick with ways to get inside showing him who is doing what, where and how.  Nick then prepares the strategy around what information is collected.

The shakedown of The Score is nothing unfamiliar.  The enjoyment comes from the acting scenes between the actors, especially when it is DeNiro and Brando.  It is as thankful to see these two legends perform on screen as it was to see DeNiro team up with Al Pacino in Michael Mann’s Heat.  This older interpretation of Brando is so entertaining.  He has a lot of fun with Max’ sarcasm and when he curses it just comes so naturally.  Just a huge departure from what the actor did in classics like Streetcar and On The Waterfront.  DeNiro is great at chastising Brando’s character with the risks he’s taking at getting them in trouble.  Their dialogue works beautifully with their performances.

Same goes for DeNiro and Norton.  It’s not so much a mentor/student relationship.  Right from the start, there is friction. Nick is overly cautious while Jack is anything but.  Yet, the film primarily focuses on the thieves’ preparation for the big job and the characters speak as if there is a trust or honor among them, but the skepticism remains.  Often Jack is defiant of Nick’s specific instructions.  Norton is great going at odds with DeNiro.

Once the wheels are set in motion, the pattern of the script is to introduce one unexpected obstacle after another.  At one point the men realize they need a particular access code.  So, an exchange in a public park has to take place. Against Nick’s wishes, Jack plays a potentially dangerous game.  Later, it is learned that the scepter might be moving on from Montreal.  So, the job has to be completed much sooner than planned.  Max seems to be hiding some details as well that leave Nick uneasy.  By the time all these bridges are crossed you have a solid foundation for the first two acts of the film before the heist gets going.  It’s all good stuff.  The epilogue to the picture is very satisfying as well with a couple of unexpected twists thrown in.  When a bag gets unzipped, you’ll likely be nodding your head and applauding.

Edward Norton is a fantastic character actor (when he’s not being a straight lead in other films).  Just like in films such as The Incredible Hulk, Fight Club and especially his debut Oscar nominated performance, Primal Fear, he dons a dual personality for this role.  Norton easily contorts his physicality to portray “Brian” the guy who’s working on the inside of the Customs Building.  When the persona is shed though, Jack is a guy that most need to be careful to trust or go up against.  Edward Norton demonstrates such ease with the transitions from one personality to the other. 

Angela Bassett is terrific actor, but her character belongs in another movie.  The one shortcoming is that Bassett feels more like a prop for DeNiro’s motivation rather than a fully-fledged love interest.  Out of context, the scenes they share are really impressive, but within the framework of the picture, Bassett comes off as an inconvenient detour.  It’s not her fault.  The relationship between Nick and Diane just does not seem to belong here.  I never had any urge for their happily ever after wrap up.  I was only concerned with Nick, Jack and Max pulling off the score.

Another minor shortcoming is Howard Shore’s soundtrack for the film.  It plays with loud horns that scream official action.  Yet, when the scenes are absent of music or only accompanied by soft jazz performances from Mose Allison and Cassandra Wilson does The Score feel like it is in its quiet mood comfort zone.  Howard Shore’s louder pitch just feels a little too intrusive here because these guys operate in whispers and clandestine actions.  I especially get a kick out of how Nick and Jack use their special tools that quietly click and turn and thump with no other sound in the area.  Their hardware work like musical instruments. 

Overall, this is a delicious, sophisticated thriller with an outstanding cast and Frank Oz’ direction thankfully does not get too inventive because he knows he’s assembled an A plus collection of actors.  Oz also has the art design and scenic details within Montreal working to his advantage. The locales are peppered in with a welcome French culture along the cobblestone streets.  DeNiro and Brando seem very comfortable and absorbed in this city that’s rarely used as a backdrop in film. Lastly, the procedure of the actual theft at play is a lot of fun to watch as it all seems plausible but still impressively crafty.

It’s worth your risk to check out The Score on a Friday or Saturday night when you need to get away from the chaos of everyday life.  It’s a quiet, relaxed suspense yarn that’s so very pleasing.

NOTE: If you have not seen the film yet, I encourage you to stay away from the trailer which can be found online.  I believe too many of the twists and surprises contained within the movie are revealed simply to bait an audience.  The less you know about what happens, the more satisfying the picture is.

ASTEROID CITY (2023)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Wes Anderson
CAST: More Actors Than You Can Shake a Stick At
MY RATING: 5/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 76% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In the mid-1950s, a roadside motel in a fictional mid-Western flyspeck plays host to a junior stargazing event that unexpectedly escalates, changing everyone’s world view forever.  …sort of.


Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s latest film, feels like a collector’s edition box of Cracker Jack with no prize inside.  Or a cake that has prize-winning decorations, but it’s hollow inside.  It looks phenomenal; one of my fellow cinephiles, Anthony, predicts it will be nominated for cinematography and production design, and I agree with him.  But where the heart of the film should be is simply a crater like the one around which the fictional town of Asteroid City was built.  This is yet another star-studded cast for Wes Anderson, but Anderson has given them very little to do other than wear colorful costumes, look solemnly into the camera, and speak in very precise phrases.

This strategy has served him very well…no…EXTREMELY well in the past.  Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) spring immediately to mind.  But some crucial piece of machinery is missing from Asteroid City.  The characters are colorful and quirky, but at the end of the day, I simply didn’t care about what they did or said.  (Well…except when actress Midge Campbell [Scarlett Johansson] decides to rehearse her nude scene for her next-door neighbor…I did care about that.)

The film opens with a pillarboxed segment in black-and-white.  Our host (Bryan Cranston) explains that we’re about to watch a staged presentation of the newest play from author Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), who proceeds to lay out the “set” for us.  “Upstage right is the crater…upstage left are the motel cabins”, etc.  Then the screen expands to full letterbox and we are treated to eye-popping Kodachrome desert landscapes as we follow a 165-car freight train as it passes by Asteroid City.  Well, “City” should be in quotes…the population is officially listed at eighty-seven.

This is some wacky city.  It’s as if Wes Anderson watched every Coen Brothers film set in the Midwest, from Raising Arizona to No Country for Old Men, and filtered them through a Looney Tunes cartoon written by Charlie Kaufman.  Vending machines on the porch of the rental office sell everything from snacks and drinks to martinis and parcels of local real estate.  (Cost for the real estate parcels: forty quarters…they’re not big parcels.)  An abandoned highway overpass lurks on the outskirts.  Periodically, a police chase roars down the otherwise empty highway, guns firing and sirens blaring.  The residents say nothing about this phenomenon.  And every now and then, the town shakes from nuclear testing being done hundreds of miles away, but close enough that the mushroom clouds are visible.

Man, I love this kind of thing.  The stage is set for one of the all-time great satires, or maybe just a flat-out fairy tale.  We meet the cast of characters who have congregated here to honor young geniuses who have invented everything from rocket packs to particle guns to a projector strong enough to project an image on the moon.  A full rundown of all these characters would wind up being a novella, but if you’re acquainted with Anderson’s work, they will all be familiar to you in one way or another.  (Not least because many of them have worked on Anderson’s other films.)  They have also gathered to witness a rare astronomical event: a solar ellipse.  Not an eclipse.  An ellipse.  The mechanism required to view an ellipse without damaging your retinas looks like something out of Brazil.

Again, I normally love this kind of stuff, really, I do.  But…okay, look, first of all, the film intermittently takes a break from the movie itself to yank us out of the story and show us an event in the playwright’s life that led to the casting of Augie Steenbeck.  Or to show us a rehearsal where an acting coach (Willem Dafoe) encourages the actors – that we’ve already been watching perform in the movie/play – to improvise what it’s like to wake up by first falling asleep.  There’s even a moment where the host shows up where he really shouldn’t be.  And when one of the actors has a moment of existential crisis concerning the character he’s playing, he simply walks off the set, goes backstage and asks the director (Adrien Brody) why he’s doing what he’s doing.

…I mean…what IS this?  Conceptually, I get it, even if it’s a little heavy-handed.  (“What’s my motivation?”  “You’ll have to figure it out as you go along.”  “That’s too hard!”  “Well, that’s life.”)  But…why is it here?  Anderson worked with non-linear structure before in Grand Budapest Hotel, and it worked marvelously.  Here, it feels indulgent.  In fact, many of the scenes in the movie feel that way.  There’s a moment where an army general (Jeffrey Wright) announces he’s going to deliver a speech he’s prepared for the occasion of the “ellipse.”  But this is no ordinary speech.  It’s practically beat poetry, delivered with the kind of conviction that only Jeffrey Wright’s magnificent voice can provide, but…but…why is it here?  Even in this weird, cotton-candy, retro-fever-dream of a movie, this “speech” felt out of place and just plain goofy.  In fact, quite a lot of the scenes between characters felt less like story and more like the kind of dialogues you find in source books for actors.  (101 Scenes for Two and Three Actors…that kind of thing.)

I will provide full disclosure and say the movie did deliver some decent laughs and chuckles.  There is an event that occurs during the ellipse (I’ll have to tread carefully here) that may not be entirely unexpected, but it’s executed and timed so well that I laughed pretty much through the whole scene.  It’s the kind of thing I imagine Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin would have thoroughly enjoyed, if I may be so bold.  There is also the problem of the disposition of a Tupperware container holding a valuable, ah, keepsake.  Oh, and that roadrunner was awesome.

But by the time Asteroid City rolled credits, I didn’t feel like I had seen one of Wes Anderson’s best films.  (The Royal Tenenbaums remains his best film, in my opinion.)  This almost felt like a movie made on a whim, kinda like, “Hell, I don’t know if this’ll work, but if I get enough star power behind it, this may turn out to be something.”  Alas, it did not.

PRIMAL FEAR

By Marc S. Sanders

If you explore the career of Edward Norton, you may find a common theme of duality in many of his roles.  Certainly, The Incredible Hulk (man vs literal green monster).  There’s also the heist film The Score where he is an aspiring thief with a talent to take on a mentally handicapped persona.  American History X offered a wide transition from downright evil to wholesome redemption from the worst of sin.  Even the remake of The Italian Job shows one kind of jerky guy early on, and later there’s another kind of cad on display.  Yet, Norton’s role as a church choir boy named Aaron Stampler in his first film, Primal Fear, is maybe his most apparent, and it remains an astonishing performance.

I had read William Diehl’s novel long before the movie was even made.  My impression of the film is that it is well cast.  Early on in the story, Aaron is apprehended following the grisly murder of Chicago’s Archbishop.  His clothes are covered in the priest’s blood and he’s captured on the news trying to outrun the police.  This looks like an open and shut case, which is why hot shot attorney Martin Vail (Richard Gere) wants to take on defending Aaron, pro bono. 

Simply the name of Gere’s role, Martin Vail, could not be more appropriate.  He thrives on vanity and pride, ensuring that when he gives an interview it is none other than a cover story.  Gere is perfectly handsome and his energy is so right for the part.  He wears his suits with natural and self-assured swagger.  When Martin attends a benefit dinner in the first few minutes of the picture, everyone in the room knows who he is, whether they only at least admire the guy, or downright despise the ego he proudly carries.  Only Martin Vail will insist that young Aaron with a boy scout, puppy dog expression could be innocent.  Everyone else has deemed his client as “The Butcher Boy.”

The accused is a simple kid who was brought in off the streets by the Archbishop.  He’s a nobody.  It’s the victim who is prominent, and one of the first strategies that Vail engages in is putting the deceased Archbishop on trial because it could lend to just what he needs for exoneration – reasonable doubt.  That could mean other prominent figures in the city will get caught in the web. 

Like many mysteries and courtroom dramas before and after Primal Fear, red herrings abound.  The side stories dealing with botched real estate investments within minority neighborhoods feel like they sprung from a completely different cloth, like an episode of L.A. Law.  What keeps them above water though are the performances of the supporting cast with John Mahoney and Stuart Bauer, respectively portraying the state district attorney and a Hispanic well-established mobster that Vail represents.  Somehow, Diehl’s murder trial story circles back to these guys and what the Archbishop had to do with them.

A twisted sex scandal within the church also comes into play.  After all, where there’s murder there is motive.  The math is not that simple though.

To lend a little more conflict to the film is the prosecuting attorney Janet Venable.  She is played by Laura Linney, maybe doing a little over acting, who once had a tryst with Martin.  Honestly, it comes off as an unnecessary subplot, perhaps only there to give quick witted resentful dialogue for Janet to serve at Martin, while Gere puts on the teasing smirk to send back over the net.  The opposing counsel try to psych one another out, but we all know that Martin is the smarter attorney of the two. 

Primal Fear hinges on Edward Norton first and Richard Gere second.  Norton’s performance is written, and thereby performed, to come in under the radar for the first half of the film.  Aaron is a quiet, frightened, uncertain kid from the backwoods of Kentucky.  Gere and the supporting cast populate much of the first half of the movie.  Later, Aaron offers up a surprise delivery that turns the film on its heel, and the story takes on a whole new trajectory. 

Gere is superb with the conceit of the character.  Director Gregory Hoblit places Martin Vail front and center during transition shots where he gives statements to the press while entering the courthouse.  It’s a subtly effective way to uphold how proud and cocky the attorney is.  When the surprise from Norton comes around though, even a hot shot, intuitive lawyer like Martin can’t immediately figure out what to do next.  The surprise works even though it comes out of nowhere.

Primal Fear offers a lot of standard stuff from other typical courtroom thrillers.  Some players are introduced that could lend to why the crime occurred.  Some are there to distract you.  Some are there to circle back around in the third act.  There’s a ping pong volley of objections and witness testimony.  There’s the blood splattered crime scene investigation.  We’ve seen it all before.  Nevertheless, I don’t hold any of that against the film.  I still get a thrill out of standard car chases and shootouts the same way I stay alert through another courtroom mystery.  It’s fast paced and until the puzzle is completely assembled, I’m engaged especially if the cast is working on all cylinders. 

The end leaves you thinking though because just when you believe all the pieces have been put back into place there’s one hanging thread that is left unraveled and you may be asking yourself how that got past me.  That’s when you know you are watching an entertaining movie.  If you have to think about it long after it is over, then the movie got one over on you.  Primal Fear accomplishes that feat.

FIGHT CLUB

By Marc S. Sanders

David Fincher’s Fight Club is a deliberately ugly and dreary film. It has to be to evoke the insomnia its narrator (Edward Norton) suffers from, as well as his lonely depression that offers no answers for his purpose to exist or to be loved by another person.

To alleviate his need for something fulfilling, the narrator resorts to attending support groups for men suffering from illnesses and debilitating diseases like testicular cancer. There he meets a former body builder named Bob (the singer Meat Loaf) who has developed floppy breasts after going through hormone therapy. Bob follows the processes of the self help group and embraces on to Norton’s character as a means of support; stuffing his face into Bob’s breasts. The narrator eventually becomes accustomed to this maternal practice and the ritual of attending these meetings as a regular process. However, he feels he is getting upstaged by Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a punk looking girl with dark eyeliner and wild jet-black hair.

Even though Marla and the narrator negotiate who attends what meetings and on what night, Norton meets another punk like reckless character known as Tyler Durdin (memorably played by Brad Pitt) who manufactures and sells soap but also edits film reels, sneakily inserting penis images into family films. Tyler also works as a waiter at a high-end restaurant where he proudly adds a little of “himself” to all the courses that are served.

The narrator only works at a boring desk job where his boss uses any opportunity to look down upon him and chastise him on his performance or appearance, but never recognizing anything further within his nature. The boss could care less about him. Naturally, the narrator becomes in awe of Tyler’s behavior. Tyler is a rebel and offers much more beyond Bob’s comfort. Tyler serves a purpose for the narrator to pursue.

When Tyler challenges the narrator to hit him as hard as he can it eventually leads to a new kind of gathering for both of them, a support group known as Fight Club. Men from all over soon gather underground to partake of letting out their aggressions with bare knuckle fists and wrestling. Anyone attending gets a therapeutic vibe from bleeding and bruising themselves upon one another. The narrator certainly feels better.

Going a step further leads Tyler and the narrator to fight back against a system of order and capitalism. Their philosophy picks up traction and soon a form of revolution is taking place across the entire country. Somehow, the narrator is taken off guard by this new belief system.

There’s a lot to consider and question in Fight Club, though I’m not sure I care for the film as a whole to debate its message. Sometimes it feels like it’s not moving anywhere. Norton’s character learns things about his own consciousness and need to falsely subject himself as a cancer survivor or as an underground brawler because he has nothing else really going for him. I get that, but why should I care or like it?

Tyler Durdin resides in a broken down house on the other end of the city that is leaking from every pipe and it’s electricity could ignite another fire that maybe this decrepit dwelling survived once before. Tyler is happy with his home and happy to share it with the narrator as well as Marla whom he has endless sex with. Tyler doesn’t want the fancy trappings. It’s revolting to even possess such materialism and suck off the tit of a capitalist regime. With the narrator at his side, he encourages a fight against the power of commercialism and wealth. Find a way to destroy the structures of what the country has built itself into, perhaps.

That’s the message of Fight Club. I just can’t lay claim that I cared for the execution of the revolt. I’m supposed to laugh at Tyler’s antics at times like when he steals the gross liquid fat from liposuction patients to manufacture the soap he sells. Yes, we get a moment where the bags of fat leak and splatter all over the place. It was just never amusing for me. I found no symbolism in this passage. It’s just absolutely disgusting. When Tyler happily pisses in someone’s soup, I don’t think it’s funny either. I don’t like Tyler. I don’t envy him or want to be him. I don’t find anything to cheer for with him. I’ve got more admiration for John Bender in The Breakfast Club than I do for Tyler Durdin. I might respect what he stands for to a degree as we are a culture brainwashed by advertising and commercialism. I just don’t care for the actions taken by this so-called martyr on behalf of the self-described unfortunates like Norton’s narrator.

I also find it ironic and quite hypocritical that Fincher’s film is a call to stand up to materialism and commercialism and yet the cast is headlined by Brad Pitt, arguably one of the biggest box office stars of the last 30 years, complete with his name above the title and his image front and center ahead of Edward Norton’s on the film posters that promote the film. Pitt is also the guy you see first, last and all over the middle of any of the film’s trailers and advertisements.

Now tell me, is that not a contradiction in terms?

THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, THE BOURNE LEGACY, JASON BOURNE

By Marc S. Sanders

Sometimes the same old thing is all we want, right?  It’s like comfort food.  That’s what the Jason Bourne films offer.  The first time (The Bourne Identity) it is original.  The second time (The Bourne Supremacy) it is familiar.  The third time (The Bourne Ultimatum) it is what we expect.  When you get to the fourth and fifth time (The Bourne Legacy and Jason Bourne), well then perhaps you’ve overstayed your welcome.

The second and third films in the Matt Damon action series function as one long four-hour film.  They are absolutely gripping in high octane, fast cut editing, pulse pounding music from James Newton Howard, and taut direction from Paul Greengrass.  They work because at least two thirds of the material is shown through the eyes of the former assassin Jason Bourne who is trying to learn of his past and who he worked for and why.  Plus, though he may hide deep undercover on the other side of the world in places like populated India, he only resurfaces when he discovers someone is trying to kill him.

The other third of these two pictures function on the other side of the coin with clandestine departments within the CIA who only consider Bourne being alive as a threat to the integrity of their black operations.  He must be eliminated.  There are great acting scenes with Joan Allen first up against an intimidating Brian Cox, and later she’s going toe to toe with David Strathairn.  If you are not part of the chase for Bourne, then you are engrossed in the cause these three supporting players offer with government politics and debate.  With each passing film, it’s an old, grey haired white gentleman in a suit who is insistent on eliminating Bourne and anyone who he associates with.  This started with Chris Cooper in the first film followed by Brian Cox (my favorite) over to David Strathairn.  The baton is then passed to Albert Finney.  A new film moves over to Edward Norton and then Tommy Lee Jones.  Scott Glenn and Stacy Keach are in the recipe too, but they are not as prominent.  All these guys start to look alike and when you watch the films in succession, one after the other, like I recently did, you start to question when this actor and this actor entered the fold.  Best way to describe it is that it is a ladder climb.  There was one guy in charge, then another above him and so on.

The appreciation for the Bourne series comes mostly from its action and the absolute cleverness of its hero.  Jason Bourne functions with ease about staying one step ahead of those trying to kill him.  They think they have a lead on him, but in reality, he has the lead on them.  Do you know how satisfying it is when he calls these people to talk to them and they play dumb? Jason will simply say “If you were in your office right now, then we would be having this conversation face to face.”  Moments like this are what gets an audience to clap and cheer.  The old white guy has been duped.

The action works because, once again I lay claim to the lack of CGI.  So, the overabundance of car chases seems nerve wracking like they are supposed to.  That door on that car is actually getting bashed in.  That taxi cab is really getting t-boned and turning into a 360 tailspin.  Jason can grab a seatbelt, lie down on his side and when the car careens over the barrier onto the landing fifty below, upside down, I’ll believe he gets out with only just a slight limp and a dribble of blood on his brow.  Only Jason Bourne can drag a wrecked rear bumper on a stolen police car through a busy Times Square and bash an SUV into a concrete barrier.

Fight scenes are not just fight scenes in the Bourne films.  It’s not just fists and punches and karate kicks.  Creatively speaking, the films construct their fight scenes to have the hero arm himself with a ball point pen or a magazine that’s wrapped up ready to wallop an opponent in the nose.  I’ll never forget when my colleague Miguel and I saw Ultimatum in the theatres and witnessed Jason punching a book into the face of a dangerous bad guy.  How many times have you seen a guy get punched in the face?  How many times have a seen a guy punch a book into the face of another guy?  There’s a difference. 

Matt Damon has been quoted as saying he believes the Bourne films carried the least amount of dialogue for him to memorize.  Yeah.  That’s likely true.  These films are visual feasts.  They rely on watching Damon move.  They are paced by how he walks, drives a car or tinkers with props.  Even how he listens and observes move with a kinetic progress. 

The locales are spectacular, spanning the globe from India, to Russia, to London, to Morocco, to the Philippines, and on to New York City and Las Vegas.  Following the first film, Paul Greengrass directed three of the next four.  (Writer Tony Gilroy directed the fourth film, The Bourne Legacy with Jeremy Renner taking the lead while Damon’s character was only talked about.) Each film takes every advantage of the atmosphere, using the overpopulated extras as obstacles and means to hide and weave away from the antogonists while on foot, behind a steering wheel or saddled upon a motorcycle.  Greengrass practically invents the concept of putting the viewer so much within the environment, you can almost smell the diesel or the food trucks within the area.  Zoom in overhead shots offer quick glances of the playground and traffic we are engrossed in.  Approximately twenty-five minutes within the center of The Bourne Ultimatum go by with no dialogue as Jason Bourne pursues a bad guy through a labyrinth of apartment tenements and rooftops, while the bad guy pursues actor Julia Stiles.  Finally, when all three catch up to one another, with a leap through a window, do you let out the deep breath you never realized you were holding on to. 

The first three films in the series (Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum) work as a tight trilogy.  Each film ends with hanging threads to consider and lend to the next film.  By the time Ultimatum concludes, you feel as if all that needed to be told has been covered.  The next two (Legacy and Jason Bourne) function as cash grabs for the studio.  Legacy is entertaining and it boasts a good cast with Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz trying to outrun the government adversaries.  It hinges on operating as parallel material that occurs in the prior Damon installment.  While Jason Bourne is being pursued, this is happening over here.  It’s not unwatchable, but it is also truly unnecessary as it doesn’t advance the universe of the series at all.  A thrilling motorcycle chase closes out the film, but it’s a retread of what we’ve seen before.  It gets old quickly.  The film demonstrates that guys like Jason are trained to become dependent on drug enhancements for their highly trained arts of warfare and instinct.  Renner’s character is just another kind of Jason Bourne.  I was more impressed when I thought Jason was just a highly skilled fast learner to all that he’s capable of.  If you tell me blue and green pills lend to what he’s capable of, well then, he’s not much of a superhero in my eyes anymore.

With the final film, Jason Bourne, Greengrass returned to the director’s chair and Damon agreed to come back (paycheck had to be right, I’m sure), though he was significantly greyer and older than his prior films.  It was a weak return.  Just when we think Bourne has learned everything he needed to know and he could now live comfortably underground as a street brawler for bucks, he is informed that his deceased father knew and did some things for these secret agencies that put Jason on this path of special operations.  It doesn’t hold much weight and the payoff is nothing special.  Another car chase occurs in Vegas that appears nearly shot for shot similar to what we already saw in Damon’s prior installments. 

I wrote in an earlier review of The Bourne Identity, that Matt Damon works so well in the role because he’s such an unexpected surprise.  He’s not the muscle guy like Stallone or Schwarzenegger.  He comes off common.  In the first three films, he’s simply a kid.  When you place him in action or see how he gets the drop on a bad guy who is surveilling him, it is so satisfying.  The Bourne films work best with the locales they choose to shoot from.  Bourne will spy on his pursuers from a rooftop building across the street from where they are.  This is inventive filmmaking not just found in the pages of the script.  Paul Greengrass strategically shoots his players.  Director Doug Liman planted the seeds for this series’ potential (The Bourne Identity), very loosely based on the Robert Ludlum novels with creative adaptations from Tony Gilroy, primarily.   Greengrass enhanced the characters and their motivations by use of scenic locales, skillful shaky cameras to make it look like the audience is running at the same pace of Bourne and his adversaries, and quick cut, real time editing.  He applied this approach to his 9/11 film United 93.  The last two films are good even if they seemingly peter out the series, but overall, the four sequels hold up very well. 

If you’re asking, the best of the series is The Bourne Ultimatum, followed very closely by The Bourne Supremacy.  Either way, no matter which film you’re watching, you’re in for a good time when Jason Bourne shows up on the grid.

RED DRAGON

By Marc S. Sanders

So this may be director Brett Ratner’s best film, but that doesn’t make it a great film. Ratner directs Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lechter in this prequel film to The Silence of The Lambs.

Hopkins does his best with a script that lacks the wit of the original Lambs script. The puns are lacking this time as he plays mind games with Edward Norton’s FBI agent who is trying to apprehend “The Tooth Fairy,” a deranged killer of families played by a disturbing Ralph Fiennes.

Red Dragon boasts a who’s who of a great cast; Hopkins, Norton, Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, Emily Blunt, Mary Louise Parker and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Yet, every player is incredibly boring. It’s as if they memorized their lines and just recited them at the call of action. There are no nuances. No fear or fascination within their interactions, and thus what’s at stake seems awfully minimal. We get a LOT of Norton just talking to himself or a tape recorder. It’s all very flat.

Ratner’s art director should be commended for effectively duplicating Hannibal’s prison from Lambs. That’s where the eye-popping stops, however. Hannibal’s infamous muzzle mask also makes a return.

I remember loving this book by Thomas Harris. It was so imaginative and descriptive. Very fast reading. Ratner gets all the important scenes in his film as well as some additional fodder for Hopkins but it’s all color by numbers. Nothing is here to carry a swell of emotion. No close ups. No lighting technique.

The best that Ratner comes up with is to chain Hannibal to a steel cable like a wild animal. He lunges for Norton and the chain rattles. Meh. A cat jumping out of nowhere has given me worse nightmares. Ratner forgot to cast the cat, however.

THE ITALIAN JOB (2003)

By Marc S. Sanders

F Gary Gray’s 2003 remake of The Italian Job is crackling with cool and sleek film coverage. It is a blend of wit and fast paced action delivering a solid heist thriller. The cast is terrific as well.

Donald Sutherland plays John Bridger, a near retired master thief and safe cracker. He is ready for one last job with his protégé, Charlie, played by Mark Wahlberg. They assemble a team specializing in different skills like Left Ear, played by Mos Def, who overlooks explosives, Lyle or “Napster”, Seth Green, as a computer hacker, and “Handsome Rob,” Jason Statham, the getaway driver. With another member named Steve (yeah, he’s just called…ahem…Steve) played by Edward Norton, they successfully rip off a safe containing $35 million in gold bars from a home located off the straits of Venice, Italy. However, Steve betrays the team leaving them for dead.

Jump to a year later and the team ventures out to Los Angeles with Stella (Charlize Theron), another safe cracker and daughter to John. They have an opportunity to even the score with Steve while also collecting what’s left of the gold bars. Early on, an idea is conceived to use light weight, speedy MINI Coopers to get in and haul away the booty. However, soon they learn that it’s not so easy to just take it from Steve’s house. They will have to apprehend the gold while in transit.

There’s nothing overly special about The Italian Job. I don’t think Gray was looking to achieve an iconic classic. He just made a solid caper flick that’s pure fun. Sure, the thieves would likely get busted. No, the timing of everything from sabotaging the downtown traffic lights and exploding a precise hole in the street for an armored car to fall through would never occur so perfectly. Who cares? This film is a pitch perfect dance in car chase choreography where we get a kick out of watching sporty little red, white and blue MINIs careen through a subway system, down public staircases and through cylindrical tunnels. It’s all done to get your heart racing.

The players are fun but they aren’t putting in much dimension. I doubt they did much research on the specialized skills their respective characters possess. Maybe Theron researched how to crack a safe. She amps up some nail biting in those sequences as Gray edits between high speed motorcycles approaching while she’s quietly trying to concentrate on the lock’s combination.

There are some cute inside jokes. The best being that Lyle insists he is the inventor of Napster (a little dated by now), and the idea was stolen from him by Sean Parker. The real Sean Parker makes a quick cameo as that scene is told in flashback. Seth Green is quite funny in a nerdy kind of way.

I like the cast. Norton plays a good jerk for villain; a real “Frank Burns.” I appreciate the story behind his character. Early on before he betrays the team, each member shares what they are going to spend their money on. Later, it’s revealed that Steve just used what he ripped off to buy everything the other guys had in mind. He’s a killer and he’s a jerk, but he’s also a guy with no imagination or creativity. I like that angle for a bad guy. He’s only just so much of a genius.

The Italian Job is a fun film that is never too intense, and offers great surprises in the step-by-step process of how to pull off a cinematic heist. If anything, it’ll make you wanna buy a MINI Cooper. I came…THIS CLOSE one time!

THE INCREDIBLE HULK

By Marc S. Sanders

The Marvel Marathon continued with the most underappreciated installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), The Incredible Hulk.

Edward Norton is the best of the cinematic Bruce Banners. He plays the role smart and desperate, and that’s the purpose of Dr. Banner once he is left to be on the run following his unfortunate encounter with gamma radiation. Norton enhances a script credited to Zak Penn. As such, we are treated to the efforts of Banner to rid himself of the raging green monster within. He communicates with a mysterious “Mr. Blue” by means of encrypted email as he hides out in the stacked, labyrinth tenements of Brazil. This setting presents an early high octave foot chase over rooftops and through narrow alleyways as Banner is pursued by General Thadeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, bent on using the hulk effects as a means to develop an army of super soldiers. Banner knows nothing good can come of this and therefore has to run until he finds a cure. To make things more complicated, Banner must keep his true love, Betty (Liv Tyler), out of harm’s way. Betty is the General’s daughter.

Louis Leterrier directs under a lot of demanding expectations following the unforeseen success of Iron Man, and before that, the disappointing bore delivered by Ang Lee with Hulk. For the most part Leterrier gets it right. Three high stakes action scenes featuring both Norton as Banner and later as a very gritty, very angry and very strongly aggressive nine-foot green monster are well choreographed blends of CGI and principle photography. A well-cast adversary in the form of Tim Roth is great as he willingly gets experimented on to match the power of the Hulk. Roth plays Emil Blonsky as an eager soldier bent on getting superior to the might of the Hulk. Leterrier shoots Roth gradually changing physically, but more importantly in performance. The center of the film shows Roth sprinting across a college campus to confront the Hulk head on. He then demonstrates astounding agility with leaps over the Hulk’s head. It’s a great match up.

William Hurt plays General Ross. I’d never consider him for this part based on Hurt’s previous resume. Yet, if you put him in a camouflage uniform, slap a thick, silver mustache on him, and grizzle his voice, he works well in the part.

Like Jeff Bridges in Iron Man, the villains offered up by Tim Roth and William Hurt are another two of my favorites in the MCU. Again, they are not after world domination. One is motivated by the discovery of advanced power. The other is moved by misguided opportunity.

Not much can be said about Liv Tyler. She screams. She cries. She yells at a New York City cabbie and she gets to kiss Edward Norton.

What I like about this film is the approach from the beginning. The opening credits offer all you need to know, so that it can quickly jump into the action and the pursuit. Penn, Norton and Leterrier dodge the go to origin story to tell us instead where Bruce Banner and the rest have left off. It’s efficient storytelling.

Leterrier also cuts his action and attention to the Hulk quite well. Sure, we all want to see the Hulk but let’s see his ultimate power first. Leterrier recognizes this is part monster movie. So, when an early set piece takes place in a dark soda factory, we are quickly familiarized with the architecture, and we believe the monster to be hidden under cat walks and in dark corners ready to swipe away a thug leaving only a sneaker behind. Eventually you see his silhouette, followed by his eyes accompanied by a Lou Ferrigno growl, and now you are sitting up at full attention. Later, Leterrier sticks to a similar routine by showing an enlarged hand bursting from a gas cloud.

This iteration of the Hulk is the best. He’s dirty and built like a linebacker with shaggy green hair. His expression is one of “STOP BOTHERING ME AND LEAVE ME ALONE.” Compared to the later installments, this version is better. He’s not as clean, not as disciplined, and thus we are more nervous around this Hulk than other Hulks we see in later films.

It’s still disappointing that Norton did not continue on with the role. I believe his “lonely man” interpretation, inspired by the late Bill Bixby’s TV version. A sad man in an unfortunate circumstance. Comparing his portrayal to Mark Ruffalo, the latter seems trapped in unconvincing dramatics. The internal conflict never seems that challenging to Ruffalo like it does to Edward Norton.

Though my only wish was that some unraveled threads (The Leader, The Abomination. Right, Marvel fans?) were not left unresolved in later MCU films. As an actor with several dual personality roles on his docket (Primal Fear, Fight Club, The Score), Norton is the better Banner, and it’s because of him along with Tim Roth and William Hurt that The Incredible Hulk is really one of the better Marvel pictures.

A Favorite Stan Lee Cameo: What happened after he drank that soda????