13 - Lord of War review

Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) finds himself face to face with his worst enemy, tied to a chair. A Liberian dictator gleefully hands Yuri a gun and tells him to fire away, but Yuri is terrified. The dictator takes Yuri’s hands as if he were helping a child and helps him fire, blowing the other man’s brains out. Yuri may have sold millions of weapons to people all over the world, but he has never fired a single shot.

This was Lord of War’s best scene, a glaring standout in a film soaked with mediocre, gloomy cynicism. Writer/Director Andrew Niccol desperately wants to say something about the arms trade that gives people in third-world countries the means to butcher each other, but his obvious lack of answers infects the entire screenplay. By the end, Niccol’s desperation is palatable as the final ten minutes spirals into an entirely different message than the 110 that preceded it.

Growing up a Ukrainian immigrant in New York, Yuri works at his father’s restaurant. After witnessing a gang shooting, he realizes that he should sell something that everyone needs other than food. He works his way from selling Uzi’s to thugs to bringing shiploads of AK-47’s to dictators. Though a relentless Interpool agent (Ethan Hawke, playing self as a naïve doofus) hounds him at times, Yuri finds the arms trade to be eerily lucrative.

An atheist-existentialist, Yuri never so much as shrugs at the suggestion that his actions are wrong. He hurls heavy handed lines like "You know who's going to inherit the world? Arms dealers. Because everyone else is too busy killing each other," every thirty seconds or so, in case we forget that he possesses a cynical world-view. He traipses around the world, narrating in monotone about how much profitable arms sales are, people killing each other, not giving a shit, etc.

Nearly every line and character exists solely for the purpose of illustrating a message Niccol isn’t even certain of. Never does the film make a serious attempt at balancing the gloom and doom. Yuri’s trophy wife lives the high life off his blood money, then dubiously insists he quit. Yuri brings coke-head brother (Jared Leto) along for no reason other than that the screenplay needs a martyr. And in case we didn’t think Yuri was bad enough, the vicious Liberian murders his underlings on a whim. There have been Bond films with more layered characters, and I’ve seen a few with Roger Moore.

Lord of War gets a few shots into the 10-ring with some black humor and appropriately grim photography, but results in a total misfire. Someone should send Andrew Niccol a memo explaining that relentless cynicism unopposed results in mere whining; Lord of War whines so loud it could be heard over a volley of the machine guns Yuri uses to pay for his limo.

2 out of 5

12

Well, I was just rejected from the Northern Iowan for movie reviewing, because they already have someone to do it for them. Since this is only the second time I've applied for a position somewhere and the first I've been rejected, I feel sadder than I should.

From the archives, a review of 1981's Eye of the Needle. The review isn't as good as what I'm writing now, though it is still light years ahead of what 99.9% of college students could do.

Eye of the Needle is an unfortunately forgotten WW2 thriller that likekly couldn't be produced anymore. It was directed by Richard Marquand (Return of the Jedi) and stars Donald Sutherland as 'The Needle', a ruthless Nazi spy with intelligence so important that he is scheduled to meet with Hitler himself. First, however, he must escape England, not so easy with the authorities on his trail.

The Needle soon finds himself stranded on a small island occupied by a young couple, their son, and the drunken lighthouse keeper. The husband is distant and callous towards his wife after an accident that left him crippled, and approximately five minutes go by before his wife and the Needle are having fireside chats of the wordless variety.

Tension, excitement, and a touch of thoughtfulness are the film's strengths. Despite the length and the realization that history dictates that the Needle's mission can't possible succeed, Sutherland's chillingly sympathetic performance injects suspense into nearly every frame. The Needle is a remarkably interesting character; while he ruthlessly kills everyone from old women to soldiers to his own contact, he never seems evil. Murdering to avoid capture gives him neither pleasure nor remorse, because there is a war going on, and it is his job. One could write screenplays for a hundred years and never create such an interesting lead.

Eye of the Needle unfortunately finds its weakest points to be the ending stretch. While the film is mostly exciting and smart without being clever, the end treads ground that would have been familiar for thrillers before my parents were born. An excellent film, though not the Hitchcockian masterpiece it could have been.

3.5 out of 5

11 - Red Eye review

As much as people complain about Hollywood dumbing down its films, it has become harder and harder to find a straightforward movie at the multiplex. If a film isn’t laden with at least one (un)predictable 180 degree plot twist, it is simply far too long, with many presuming they are worth more than two hours of my precious time.

It should come as no plot twist that I found Wes Craven’s Red Eye deeply enjoyable, if only in the ways that an efficient thriller should be. In a year where I avoided the supposedly fantastic King Kong over fears of its length, Red Eye weighs in at under 80 minutes, if you don’t count the credits. Directors should take note; simplicity is effective.

Red Eye begins with hotel manager Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) heading to the airport. Waiting for the delayed plane, she meets Jack Rippner (Cillian Murphy), a uneasily charming fellow passenger who just happens to have the seat next to her. As soon as the plane takes off, he casually informs her that his associate will kill her father (Brian Cox) unless she uses her position to change the hotel room of a Homeland Security official. Thus, our hour of terror begins.

Unlike other thrillers of the cat-and-mouse variety, the two leads spend most of the time mere inches away from each other. McAdams plays Lisa as terrified but calm and quick-thinking, a role light years ahead of the stupid Mean Girls or the apocalyptically terrible Wedding Crashers. Murphy is infinitely creepier and more villainous as Rippner than as the Scarecrow in Batman Begins. Rippner isn’t omniscient or invulnerable to injury, instead relying on a sharp eye for detail and menace to get what he wants.

Red Eye never degenerates into the jerk-off twists or impossible effects that most contemporary thrillers do. The plot may be ridiculous, but not any more than it has to be. Film fanatics will recognize every cog of the story the second it they are presented, but will be pleasantly surprised at how well they fit together.

Ironically, if the film has any major problem, it may be that it is too efficient. The characters and story move along so briskly and with so few superfluous details that we don’t have time to care much for the characters. It is a film teacher’s dream, an A+ screenplay transformed into a B-. Red Eye plays all the right notes, but after the climatic battle, I should have been thinking something other than "Gee, Brian Cox sure has lost a lot of weight."
3.5 out of 5