Four Reviews and Oscar Guesses

I'd been meaning to post a review of "American Gangster" for some time now as it is one of the best I've seen in 2007. I never got around to it. Last week, I decided I'd do a two-fer and post a review for Gangster and the blockbuster that I saw last weekend - "I Am Legend". Some more procrastination followed until, having seen yet another wonderful movie ("Charlie Wilson's War") I thought it was high time for a threesome. Ahem. Then the wife pointed out that I hadn't yet reviewed "Michael Clayton" (which we saw long before Gangster) and had procrastinated out of active memory...

So here we are... a four in one review, in chronological order. As it turned out, it is a good thing I did it like this - I am betting these movies contain most if not all the people likely to be Academy Award nominees for Best Actor/ Supporting Actor/ Actress this year... so I have put in some guesses at the end of this post.

For those with short attention spans, here's the punch: all four movies surpassed or met my expectations, and rated a solid 1 (Clayton), 1 (Gangster), 2 (Legend), and 2 (Wilson) respectively... If you want a big reason to watch each of these movies, I'd say watch them for the pleasure of watching stellar actors at the top of their game. Clooney, Wilkinson, Washington, Crowe, Smith, Hanks, Hoffman, and Roberts, all make these flicks worthwhile. For detailed, mostly spoiler-free reviews, click on "read more"...

Michael Clayton

Michael Clayton is first and foremost, a character piece. Sure, they've used the technique of staggered timelines and the polished plot devices thereof, but the one thing that raises this movie head and shoulders above the crowd is the quality of acting coming from George Clooney (as Michael Clayton), Tom Wilkinson (as Arthur Edens) and the Witch from Narnia, Tilda Swinton (as Karen Crowder).

The plot of the movie is very layered and complex - and difficult to summarize. The story is that of the eponymous lawyer, a 'fixer' for a prestigious law firm who has not seen the inside of a court room in a very long time. He is a habitual gambler, and the brother of a cop, which along with the brandname of his firm gives him unique connections in the over and underworld. He is called in when there is a 'mess' to be cleaned up.

The mess in the story is the meltdown of a colleague, Arthur Edens, a manic depressive and a brilliant legal mind, who is lead defense attorney for a major chemical fertilizer company whose product has made several people ill or killed them. In the middle of a deposition, Edens suddenly starts raving and strips off his clothes, giving in to the horror he feels at defending such people. Karen Crowder, the chief legal advisor for the company is made uneasy by this, and she and Clayton go about trying to clean up the mess the meltdown makes in their own, immoral ways.

What follows surprises even the most jaded of movie-goers. Those expecting a bleak, cynical end, and those expecting an 'into-the-sunset' kind of end will both be surprised. The conclusion of the movie is as true to the characters that get built up, as it is feasible in the desert of the real.

There are some fantastic 'action/ thrill' sequences in the movie. There are also elements of noir and of classic legal tales in the tradition of John Grisham's "The Rainmaker". But the movie is hard to characterize or classify... each viewer will take away a different thing, at each viewing. And what makes it worthwhile is the beautiful characterization, and the way it has been realized on screen by the cast in their top-notch performances. Wilkinson is excellent as a man barely in control of himself but, hasn't yet lost any of his brilliance or morality. Swinton surpasses herself as the cold, calculating, yet constantly insecure lawyer whose whole career is on the line.

But this is, in the end, George Clooney's film. He impresses as a financially troubled man, who feels great guilt at being a bad father, and who (right to the end) has no moral imperative other than survival. The only time Clooney came anywhere close to performing this well was in Syriana... and it surpasses that performance because this is not an ensemble movie.

Clooney also gets the best line in the movie at the very end, when he admonishes Swinton's character for the way she dealt with things. I'll put it in invisotext so as to avoid spoiling those of you who'd rather not get hints about the ending (you'll have to select it to read it): "I'm not the guy you kill. I'm the guy you buy off! Are you so blind that you can't see that? I sold out Arthur for 80 grand. I'm your easiest problem and you try to kill me?".

And that really sums up Michael Clayton... he is not a man of black and white. He is a grey man, in a grey world, trying to survive, without apology.

At a 100 minutes, the movie is incredibly short and dense. This is a movie you watch once in the theatre, and then spend many hours watching later on DVD, appreciating the finer details at liesure. The direction, editing, and background music are up to the task of matching the expertise shown by the cast. An easy to rate movie - this scores a '1' and enters my all time hall of fame!

American Gangster

If you haven't seen this movie yet, you have missed a real treat. I don't think I need to do a plot summary given the amount of hype that has preceded it. Billed as a face-off between two titans of acting - Academy Award contendors Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe - the movie isn't really that. They share very little screen time and the movie is essentially a bio-pic and a character sketch combined.

The bio-pic parts concern Frank Lucas, a real world Harlem gangster who ruled the heroin business in parts of New York some time ago. The character piece concerns Richie Roberts, an honest cop who turned down an opportunity to 'keep' a million dollars and is now something of a pariah in a corrupt police department. The parallel storylines are meaty enough for the actors to shine in their own way, and the resulting product is immensely satisfying.

Frank Lucas is like a black Godfather on steroids. His quiet menace and bursts of ferocity under a veneer of civility are captured perfectly by Denzel Washington. You never feel comfortable enough to empathize with the man, because he is a monster... but you reluctantly find yourself cheering him on for his style, if nothing else.

There will inevitably be comparisons to Mario Puzo's work, so it has to be said: Lucas differs from Michael Corleone in many crucial ways. He is not a reluctant criminal. He does the dirty work himself. He has no Luca Brazi garroting people in the back of the car - he sets people on fire and shoots them in broad daylight himself. He has no compunctions about being in a business that ruins many lives; in fact boasts that what he does is good for 'his turf'. With his pomp and charisma, the gangster clearly steals the show from the more understated cop.

Which does not take away anything from Crowe's performance; it is as nuanced and competent as Washington's. But there is something within each of us that is fascinated with an unapologetic, alpha-male rogue... and that something cannot take a back seat. Crowe does a wonderful job of leaving the bombast to the gangster. He has his own brand of menace (as evinced in a scene where he scares away a few teenage troublemakers), but in a brilliant combination of the stylish 'My name is Gladiator' and the schizophrenic John Nash, he plays Richie Roberts as a very human counterpoint to the larger than life Lucas.

There is also enough hard hitting action and grittiness to satisfy fans of 'the hardcore'. Actually the biggest setpiece where Roberts finds Lucas' heroin lab reminded me of "The Untouchables". An honorable mention must go to Cuba Gooding Junior who plays a more flamboyant gangster in NYC. This movie is most certainly not for kids - gratuitous amounts of violence, blood, and nudity abound. So much so that I doubt if the watered down form that inevitably sees release in India will be worthwhile!

Also, don't expect any 'moral of the story' from this movie. It is as unapologetic and Darwinian about crime and punishment as RGV's "Satya". It rates a 1 in my book, and joins the hall of fame alongside movies like "The Godfather Part II".

I am Legend

First, to the purists I must say this: Yes... the plot of the novel has been decimated in the movie. For those who have read it, the climax (and therefore the significance of the title) are gone. Also, the vampires in the original plot are changed to mutants, and the end of the movie is a bit of a bow to the pressures of the box office.

That being said, I thought Will Smith's performance as Robert Neville was his best ever, bar none. He has abandoned his cocky, larger than life persona (thank god!) and has come through with a slightly off his rocker character that is strong, but very scared, and very brittle.

In fact, if I have any complaints with the film (besides the commercial ending) it would be that they have put in grandiose set-pieces for no explicable reason. This movie could've been made the way Night Shyamalan made "Signs" or Spielberg made "War of the Worlds" and it would've worked better. As it stands, you do get a dose of typical blockbuster action/ set-pieces etc. The much talked about $5 million bridge shot was a waste (I thought)... what makes this movie work is how 'intimately creepy' it is. The point isn't spectacle! The point is one man, going a little crazy because of loneliness, and his refusal to give up his 'ground zero' without a fight.

In fact, my favorite moment in the film reveals how frail and long-past rational Neville really is: (minor spoilers) A mutant exposes himself to the sun (this causes them great pain) just to get a better look at his brood's attacker, and to sneer at him. While to the viewer this indicates that the mutants have emotion, and perhaps even a form of society, Neville interprets this as them having lost the last traces of humanity and having become senseless animals.

The director has captured the look and feel of post-apocalyptic New York perfectly. It is simultaneously poignant, exciting, and scary.

The first half of the movie is amazing and Oscar worthy for editing/ direction/ art direction/ acting. In an impressive visual kick-off, the first scenes of the movie have Smith speeding in a bright red Ford Mustang, hunting deer in Times Square! A quiet paranoia oozes from each frame, and as we see Robert Neville go through two iterations of his daily routine, you feel very sad and very scared. I was on the edge of my seat long before anything scary actually happened.

Make no mistake - this too is not a movie for the fainthearted or for kids. It walks a thin line between 'thriller' and 'horror', and there were many times when I was genuinely petrified. The scene where Neville is forced to follow his dog into a dark building is executed with the perfect amount of foreboding and gore. Neville's near-capture by the mutants, and later a ferocious fight by the dock are note perfect as well. I also really liked the way the backstory was slowly revealed throughout the movie.

Watch it now, for Will Smith's performance and the movie's eerie ambience. The only reason this doesn't get a rating of '1' is the ending.

Charlie Wilson's War

The ingredients of this movie are a perfect storm, and meant I HAD to watch it on opening day. It has been adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin; the God of screenwriting as far as I am concerned. It stars Tom Hanks, and just as importantly, Philip Seymour Hoffman - both performers I enjoy watching tremendously. The previews promised an engaging storyline, a cameo by Om Puri, and a character part for Julia Roberts. To cap it off, it is directed by the veteran Mike Nichols, credited for everything from "The Graduate" to "Closer"! How could I not watch it?

This is the adaptation of George Crile's 2003 book "Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History". It tells the story of how a Texan Congressman (Charlie Wilson, played by Tom Hanks) covertly funded the Mujahideen resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. To do this, he enlisted the help of an unlikely lineup of allies, including Pakistan's 'President' Zia ul Haq, the government of Israel, and their mortal enemies Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. He did his part in breaking the back of the Evil Empire. Julia Roberts plays a born-again do-gooder socialite Joanne Herring who inspired and enabled Wilson to do it, and Hoffman plays a disillusioned (and delightfully coarse) CIA case officer, Gust Avrakotos, who was Wilson's man friday.

The first surprise of this movie to anyone who hasn't seen the West Wing is how funny it is, in spite of the grave subject matter. Sorkin is brilliant, and the staple techniques of compressing as much dialogue into as little time as humanly possible, and intricate blocking (in stage terms) are in evidence. They didn't do the 'walk and talk' much, though.

The second surprise is Hanks, who is not the shiny vanilla do-gooder that he has been in everything from "Big" to "Forrest Gump" to "The Green Mile" to "Cast Away". His character, while not grim like the one in "The Road to Perdition", is morally questionable, to put it mildly. He is a womanizing alcoholic and a drug user. He is proud of the fact that because he has to do nothing for his district, he sells his vote in congress to the highest bidder and so has many IOU's in his hand. At the start of the film, he has but one moral imperative (Kill Russians), and yet by the end, he has come to appreciate the complexity and nuance of the situation far better than the average American.

And that nuance is the third surprise of the movie for newcomers to Sorkin. The movie is not a jingoistic view on how American tried to save Afghanistan. It is instead a chronicle of how America started out with good intentions and then, as Wilson himself puts it at the end of the movie, "fucked up the end game".

I believe this is a movie that is a more pertinent commentary on the Iraq War and the War on Terror than movies like "Lions for Lambs" or "Rendition". Every American must see it, because it gives a very objective assessment of what really happened in Afghanistan. Also hidden in it are clues to what is or might go wrong in Afghanistan or Iraq now.

Hanks and Roberts are expectedly good in the movie... but the real surprise is Hoffman who plays the irreverent CIA officer with elan. In the way most roguish characters are wont to (see American Gangster above!), he steals the show from the equally roguish (but not as profane) Hanks - until Hanks drags it back into his court toward the end of the movie as his character becomes wiser and therefore more pained than you could've possibly thought.

The final surprise of the movie is in how crisp it is. At barely an hour and forty minutes of running time, it gets over before you know it, and has still managed to say everything it needs to, and most of it in a lighthearted, entertaining way. There is no lengthy moral discourse you have to suffer, nor any need to berate the moviemakers for being overly pro-American.

The best not so obvious and obvious moments of the movie that jumped out at me were:

• The introductory scene for Hoffman with the window breaking


• The funny bits with Zia, one when he tells Wilson that "no, not too many people make the mistake" (of asking for alcohol in his dry presidential palace), or when Herring starts an address in Zia's honor by telling the audience that he 'in fact, did not kill Bhutto'


• The scene in the Afghan refugee camp when the head of the sub-committee for Defense Appropriations joins a chant of "Alla-ho-Akbar" with the Mujahideen. This with ominous music in the background as the only harbinger of things to come...


• The scene early on, when Wilson asks Herring if her friend thinks making a movie about Afghanistan would really help things


• The scene at the end where Reagan is quoted as asking "Afghanistan - is that thing still on?"

All in all, a must see movie, that rates a 2 on my scale. It didn't score a 1 simply because it didn't have the kind of emotional impact on me as I have come to expect from a writer of Sorkin's calibre.

Oscar Predictions

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Denzel Washington
Russell Crowe
George Clooney
Tom Hanks
Will Smith (?)

Best Actor in Supporting Role

Philip Seymour Hoffman
Tom Wilkinson
(and 3 more)

Best Actress in Supporting Role

Tilda Swinton
Julia Roberts
(and three more)

And that brings me to the end of my 2007 movie reviewing spree :) I will watch one more movie before the year is out - National Treasure: Book of Secrets - but I hardly think that popcorn flick will be worth a review. Is this turning into a movie blog or what!

Look for my updated movie database and 'My year in movies - 2007" post coming soon.

Peace... Out!