"Run All Night": Here We Go Again

Now Available on DVD and Blu-ray

It’s not just me, right?  I can’t be the only one who feels like we’ve all been here before.  Liam Neeson isn’t just an actor anymore; he has become a genre in and of himself.  It seems that every role he plays nowadays is as a flawed yet likeable patriarch with superheroic gun skills who must either win back the affection of his family and/or prove that he had a superior point of view that his family should have listened to.  These are quintessential dad movies, targeted at the 40-60 year old male demographic to provide them with assurances that they were successful parents while getting to watch one of their contemporaries be more badass than any subsequent generation.  And Run All Night is no exception.

Neeson’s alias this time is Jimmy Conlon, a former hitman for the local Irish mob who hung up his hat and wallowed in his inability to connect with his estranged adult son, Mike, by becoming an alcoholic.  His only friend is Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris), the head of said mob, who repays years of service by supporting Jimmy through this tough time in his life.  Through an unnecessarily convoluted chain of events, Shawn’s son threatens to kill Mike, forcing Jimmy to kill Shawn’s son and put Jimmy and Mike on the top of Shawn’s hit list.  The two must spend the night running from crooked cops and hired hitmen in order to save themselves and protect Mike’s family.

The themes and motifs present in this film should not be unfamiliar to anyone who has seen a Liam Neeson movie since 2008, and much like the rest of that catalogue, the results are pretty standard.  There’s not much one can say about an adequately directed action film, as the formula has been down pat since at least the 80s and it’s rather difficult to screw up too badly.  Neeson and Harris do respectably well playing begrudging adversaries, two men who really don’t want to fight one another, but must betray years of friendship out of loyalty to their families.  There’s a genuine sadness to be felt between their characters that a lesser film would have played off as bitter rage.

However, the plotting of this film is unforgivably complex.  For as shallow and superfluous as many of the film’s characters are, there certainly are a lot of interweaving plot threads for what essentially amounts to a good-guy-versus-bad-guy narrative.  What should have been a ninety minute film is stretched to two hours by the sheer amount of unnecessary plotting, especially considering the driving moment of the plot doesn’t happen until after twenty minutes of establishing scenes.  By comparison, John Wick had an intricately established cast of characters, but each was unique and interesting enough to be memorable, and the plot was simple enough that exposition often wasn’t necessary.  Run All Night, on the other hand, feels like it needs a flow chart to keep track of all its dealings, but none of them actually matter in light of the central conflict.

Still, despite all its flaws, I can’t really fault Run All Night for what it is.  It’s a popcorn flick, plain and simple.  Something to watch once, forget about immediately after, and then watch again years later only to have it seem vaguely familiar to you.  It’s not a bad film, nor is it an especially good one, but it’s entertaining enough to watch through to the end, and that’s ultimately what films are here to do: entertain.

Do Liam Neeson films interest you at all?  Or do they all melt together into a malaise of guns and sternness?  Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

"Inside Out": Pixar's Surprisingly Adult Return To Form

Now In Theaters

Pixar is pretty well acknowledged as having a deep understanding of human emotion, with classics such as Toy Story, Wall-E, and Up tugging at our heartstrings while leaving us incredibly satisfied with extremely creative and immensely enjoyable films.  The last few years have either seen Pixar completely absent or blatantly subjecting themselves to the Mouse House’s commercializing demands for more sequels, and things just haven’t quite been the same… Until now.  Inside Out is a fantastic little film that will restore your faith in the beloved animation studio.  Unless you are a child, because this might not be the film for you, paradoxical as that sounds.

Riley is an eleven-year-old girl, born and raised in Minnesota, who moves with her family to San Francisco and must deal with the loss of everything she has ever known and adjust to a new life in a new city.  Coming from Pixar, this could be pretty compelling in and of itself, but this is just as much a story of what’s going on inside Riley’s mind, as we meet the five emotions who drive her: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger.  As Riley tries to cope with her move, the emotions vie for control over her mind in the emotional Headquarters.  Things only become worse, though, when an accident leaves Joy and Sadness far outside of Headquarters’ reach, and the two must traverse the recesses of Riley’s mind in order to restore themselves in Riley’s emotional spectrum.

Pixar has been great at providing insight into emotion and humanity in the past, but never before have they taken that task so literally.  And they make it work to great effect.  The parallel narratives of Joy and Sadness learning to understand one another, Fear, Disgust, and Anger struggling to keep Riley emotionally healthy, and Riley herself struggling on a metatextual level are all brilliantly interwoven to create a narrative that might otherwise have been mundane and infuse life into it by literally demonstrating how a world of emotion and cognitive processes function as represented by anthropomorphized abstracts.  We see the depths of the subconscious, the wonders of the imagination, the bureaucracy of memory management, and the curiosity of abstract thought, all realized as a creative world that exists within us all.  Riley’s story is one of emerging adolescence, of losing childhood bit by bit in ways that are scary and imperceptible, and Pixar once again hits the emotional resonance right on the head, finding a way to make us feel for Riley through making her emotions grow in complexity with her.

But isn’t this a kid’s movie?  Isn’t all this philosophizing and cognitive analysis a bit much for the film’s intended audience?  Well, I would argue that, yeah, this is not a great movie for kids.  Sure, there’s some obligatory slapstick and the whole experience is bright and colorful, but I don’t think that pre-adolescent children are going to have the self-awareness nor the emotional intelligence to grasp the complex concepts central to the narrative.  That isn’t to say this diminishes the film’s quality at all, but audiences should expect something targeted at those who can look back on childhood and understand what is happening in Riley’s mind, rather than a piece of diversionary entertainment for their young ones.

That said though, assuming you are an adult and have enjoyed Pixar’s work in the past, Inside Out is a must-see film, especially considering how lackluster the rest of the summer is looking to be.  It is an extremely intelligent piece that has returned Pixar to top form.

Think Pixar can keep this good momentum going with this fall’s The Good Dinosaur?  Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

"Chappie": Continuing Blomkamp's Disappointing Career

Now Available on DVD and Blu-ray

Director Neill Blomkamp is turning out to be a real disappointment.  As his career progresses, it’s becoming very apparent that he’s stuck in a creative rut, unable to recreate the success of his debut with District 9 because he’s doing little more than emulating his previous work.  At least with District 9 there was some allegorical subtext that remained consistent throughout the whole film, even when it devolved into pure action spectacle rather than retain its earlier tone and intelligence.  Blomkamp’s follow up, Elysium, was little more than a restructuring of District 9’s themes into a suspiciously similar sci fi setting, but didn’t retain the direct allegory that made District 9 substantive.  Now we have Chappie, where we return to Johannesburg to take a look at culture clash, but without any coherent themes to support its high concept premise.

Our story begins as Johannesburg implements a robotic police force in order to fight back against gang violence.  The inventor of these robots thinks he can create true artificial intelligence, and runs a secret operation separate from the weapons contractor who employs him.  When he is captured by three thugs (two of whom are notably played by Ninja and Yolandi of rap group Die Antwoord), he is forced to activate his AI in the body of a damaged police robot, the idea being that this robot can help them in an upcoming heist.  Thus Chappie is born, and his coming of age story begins.

There is actually a lot of potential to this premise, as Chappie is raised by Ninja and Yolandi separate from his creator, and the conflict that arises is intriguing.  Yolandi recognizes that Chappie is little more than a child, and seeks to nurture his creativity.  Meanwhile, Ninja wants to make a warrior of Chappie, attempting to stop Chappie’s emotional development in favor of teaching him to fight and tricking him into killing.  This functions as a reflection of how many young boys are raised, with masculine ideals forced upon them at the expense of their creativity and empathy.

Alas, the film abandons that thematic momentum by the time the third act rolls around, as Chappie becomes fixated on preserving his own consciousness while simultaneously fighting against a world that wants to destroy him by virtue of his very existence.  This should feel familiar if you’ve seen District 9, and it is a huge thematic shift to make so late in the film, completely derailing any investment one had in seeing how the conflict between Chappie’s burgeoning humanity and his parental influences pans out.  Instead, we’re treated to some truly benign action sequences against a bland corporate villain, followed up by a completely nonsensical epilogue that borders on cringeworthy.

Neill Blomkamp doesn’t seem to know what to do with his success, as his last two films have only tweaked elements of his freshman effort, only to have those tweaks completely backfire as they destroy the delicate balance of what made District 9 any good in the first place.  He is a man fascinated by big ideas, but doesn’t know how to implement them in compelling ways without resorting to action tropes or losing sight of his original objective.  Chappie is just a slip further down the slope of what is turning out to be an ideologically hollow career for Mr. Blomkamp.

Blomkamp’s next project is going to be an Alien sequel in the spirit of the franchise’s first two films.  Will working on source material that isn’t his own save Blomkamp’s career?  Or are we doomed to another lackluster Alien outing?  Leave your thoughts in the comments below.