75 - 16 Blocks review

Can people change? It’s a good question, and one that haunts more than a few of us. Are humans locked into their ways, good or bad, or can we change into better people for one reason or another?

16 Blocks is an action film that theorizes we can change, for better or worse. Bruce Willis plays Jack Mosely, a NYPD detective who drinks so much that we’re surprised he can stand. We first see him limping up the stairs to a crime scene, sweaty, slow, out of it, pathetic. Jack drinks so much that his attempts to hide the liquor in his desk are more of a formality than a practicality, as everyone knows he doesn’t have a sober minute.

At the end of his shift, Jack gets a new assignment. Escort Eddie Bunker (Mos Def), a witness scheduled to testify to a grand jury. From the get go, Eddie talks, talks, and talks in a tone we can barely understand, and we haven’t had as much scotch today as Jack has. Roughly one block into the trip, Jack stops the car to pay a visit to his favorite Chinese liquor store. Unfortunately for him, he must drop his scotch bottle and open fire on an assassin who nearly kills Eddie.

Jack brings Eddie to his favorite bar, as much for safety as for the liquor. He calls in Frank Nugent (David Morse) for support, only to discover that Frank and several other officers are the ones Eddie was going to testify against. Frank casually explains the need to execute Eddie, smug in the assumption that Jack couldn’t care less. When Jack shoots one of them in the knee with a shotgun, however, that assumption changes, and a brutal foot chase begins.

Richard Donner, the man behind all of the Lethal Weapon films, makes effective and even mildly inspired use of the material. The action could have been laden with explosives and flashy tricks, but Donner instead keeps the gun battles simple, yet effective. The combatants aren’t the dogged killing machines of Lethal Weapon, but flesh and blood men who aim, take cover, reload frequently, and would rather just get it all over with.

16 Blocks does succumb to a stereotype too many, including a frustratingly obvious use of deus ex machina, but in a way, the formula provides some of the charm. We basically know what we’re going to see as it unfolds, though Willis and Mos Def play well off of each other, never getting very friendly but developing a mutual respect that we can appreciate.

The broken down cop stereotype is known to all, but the film treats the character seriously, not as an excuse for wild action sequences. Exhausted and full of enough guilt to drive him to extreme alcoholism, Jack finds new hope through Eddie, a man so lively that just being around him must be like a breath of fresh air to someone who feels completely dead inside. Despite their seeming differences, both men share a sordid past that they would just as soon leave behind.

Jack and Eddie may not spend much time together, but what they do have they make damn good use of. The events of the day offer opportunities for change and betterment, and they both seize upon them. Can a broken down alcoholic cop rise to the occasion, and can a petty criminal straighten his life out when afforded the chance? I don’t know, but I’d sure like to think so.

3 out of 5

74 - Superman

Superman floating above the earth. Superman saving a falling airliner. Superman gently holding Lois Lane a giving an aerial tour of Metropolis. Superman taking a bullet in the eye and not blinking.

Yes, we’ve all seen the trailer. In fact, I just watched a newer version; all 157 minutes of it. To be less sarcastic, Superman Returns is full of scenes that tingle the imagination and play well in split-second flashes, but virtually nonexistent consistency between them. If I were to read that the trailer was written first and the screenplay written expressly around it, I wouldn’t be surprised. The film quickly rushes by every sequence, as if director Bryan Singer was afraid that he may not have time to pack in another ad friendly moment. Superman Returns might be the first film made that could be classified as a big advertisement for itself. Or the sequel.

Superman has to be one of the most difficult comic characters to write. With godlike near-invulnerability, he can solve situations that would baffle Batman or Spider-Man in mere seconds. Watching him fight the average villain would be like watching Michael Jordan shoot hoops with a senior citizen. Yet, take away his powers, and he loses what makes him special. See the dilemma?

Of course, great Superman stories have been done. Superman II was typically considered the greatest superhero film until Spider-Man 2 swung along, and comics such as Kingdom Come and Superman: Peace on Earth showed a godlike being struggling to do all he could to make the world right. But in Superman Returns, we never see a serious inner-conflict, or hardly even a physical one. The film just doles out one falling object after another for Superman to dive in front of.

The plot, if you must know: Superman (Brandon Routh) returns to earth after a five year absence in space, where he presumably used some great counting games to avoid madness. He returns to Metropolis as Clark Kent at the same time he rescues that falling airliner, which luckily arouses suspicion in no one, despite his six word alibi. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has been royally pissed at Superman since he took off, understandably so since he sired a child with her before he left (since Superman is an alien, does that make Lois guilty of bestiality?). She wrote a capsule-description friendly article titled ‘Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman’ which won a Pulitzer, no easy task considering her personality has all the flavor of a vegan diet. Superman and Lois have a few blasé discussions that have roughly the same dramatic tension as when I complain that my Netflix have arrived a day late.

Lex Luthor(Kevin Spacey) also throws himself into the super-mix, with an Evil Scheme so stupid that the microwave-acid trip-plot in Batman Begins seems quite reasonable. Luthor got out of prison after a five year sentence, which suggests to me that Saddam should request a trial in the U.S. Luthor acquires a few Kryptonian crystals from Superman’s icy vacation house and decides that he will use them to destroy half of the earth in order to create a new landmass. Sure, billions will be killed, but the survivors will pay him a lot of money for the land, even though jagged shards of black ice are usually unsuitable for trendy nightclubs or food production.
Superman doesn’t so much battle Luthor as he does meddle in his plans. Most of the film goes by before Superman gets around to Luthor, roughly the amount of time it would take the FBI to snare him. They share perhaps four minutes of screen time, during which Superman walks up to Luthor and allows himself to be stabbed with kyptonite.

Did this make sense during any of the numerous production phases of the film? Of all the ways Superman could be exposed to kryptonite, the writers decided that simply allowing his archenemy to hit him with it at point blank range would be the most effective. In Dark Night Returns, arguably the most respected comic ever written, Batman defeats Superman by shooting him with a cannon, a kryptonite arrow, and jolting him with the electricity supply of an entire city. If Superman Returns was canonical to the comics, then Batman only need begin mouthing off to Superman and keeping that kryptonie arrow in his pocket.

There exist precious few action sequences, which are visually spectacular but not very exciting. Superman doesn’t do anything that we haven’t seen during the comic film bonanza of the past few years. The filmmakers mistook the wholesomeness of the character for blandness, and subscribe to the Batman Begins school of lighting, which erroneously believes that dim is a synonym for gritty.

Throughout the film, I couldn’t help but recall Spider-Man 2 and United 93, two infinitely better cinematic experiences. Comparing Superman to Spider-Man, Superman can’t match up as an interesting character; while Superman takes me-time in space and tends to look at humanity with a glint that could be condescending, Spider-Man makes tremendous personal sacrifices in order to put his abilities to good use. United 93 tells the true story of the doomed 9/11 flight where ordinary plane passengers fought their hijackers, likely saving a lot of lives in the process. One film is fantastical, the other factual, but mention the word hero to me, and I’d think of either of those films long before I would Superman Returns. Does the world need Superman? My answer is a resounding ‘no’.

1.5 out of 5

73 - Oldboy review

Revenge. Truth. Karma. Obsession. Hypnosis. Isolation. Oldboy touches on so many themes that by the end we’ve experienced an overload similar to a professor who crams too many lessons into too few lectures. That director Chan-wook Park studied philosophy comes as less of a surprise than if he hadn’t.

The film begins as intriguingly as few other have. Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-Sik), a raging drunk and deadbeat dad, wakes up to find himself imprisoned in a small room. His unseen captors offer him no explanation, but they do provide him with a TV and some journals to take notes. Occasionally valium gas fills the room, and before long he will reawaken to a clean room and a haircut. The news informs Oh that his wife has been murdered, his daughter taken away, and the blame rests at his feet.

Fifteen soul-crushing years pass. Suddenly, Oh’s captors release him back into the world with money and a cell phone, but no explanation. His thirst for living contact runs so deep that after eagerly embracing a stranger, he gobbles down a live octopus, taking joy in the tentacles thrashing about his mouth. Mido (Gang Hye-Jung), the beautiful young chef who served him the squirmy delicacy, takes him in, becoming captivated not just by him, but his story. However, leisure time ranks far back on Oh’s to-do list; vengeance for life lost and answers for why are his driving force. Where he was once an unbearable loser, he now has strength and focus that are nearly unshakable. Nearly.

I won’t give more specifics. Oh’s quest very quickly leads him to the mastermind. Oh could easily rip this man apart, but then the reasons for his imprisonment would be lost, so he sets out to find the answers. Although hard to believe, the fifteen-year stint in a locked room was but the setup of a revenge plan so fiendish I’m hard pressed to remember a film that tops it. The spark that set the intense cycle of pain amongst all of the characters in motion states that one should watch small sins, for they can have damning consequences for all. Whether the spark works brilliantly or serves as a cheap excuse will likely be as remembered as the scenes where characters graphically yank out teeth.

Oldboy gained electric buzz amongst the film community, especially after a 2nd place finish at Cannes, and had cinephiles chattering about the glory of Korean cinema. In the process, the staggering flaws of Korean (and some would say all Asian types) of cinema are just as vivid as the assets. Great set pieces and a zeal for the medium are bundled with a nonsensical plot, extreme sadomasochism, and hugely long-winded expository rants. We can’t merely learn the truth, the antagonist must TELL us the truth in painstaking detail, almost as if channeling the screenwriter making his pitch to the producers. Does the Korean language have an equivalent word for ‘bretivy’?

I enjoyed Oldboy, and very nearly loved it. The twisted revenge plot, the one take fight scene where Oh encounters a huge group of thugs with a hammer, and the slick set pieces all work in its favor. But I left the film behind with a strangely unsatisfied feeling, like a meal that had a flash of brilliant flavor but left you hungry afterwards. For all the talking and philosophizing, once the plot was out of the way, little else remains. Considering the physical and emotional brutality of the material, that I felt nearly apathetic instead of thrilled or horrified says that perhaps the film wasn’t all that it seemed.

3 out of 5