Request Review: "Eastern Promises"

Knowing David Cronenberg’s fascination with telling stories through the transformation of his subject’s bodies, it’s not hard to imagine that what originally drew the famed director to Eastern Promises is the notion of Russian convicts labelling themselves with tattoos to signify rank and advancement within the Russian mob.  And yet, whether because this is Cronenberg’s later career or because the script simply didn’t call for it, much of the brutality that made the director famous is absent from this installment in his filmography.  This isn’t by any means a bad thing, but it subverts expectations somewhat, and without Cronenberg’s signature flair, you have what amounts to a fairly good, yet unremarkable film.

Anna (Naomi Watts) works as a midwife at a London hospital, when one night a fourteen-year-old girl is brought in, gives birth to a premature child, and dies.  Her only belongings include a purse with a journal inside, written in Russian, and a card for a Russian establishment run by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl).  Anna asks both her Russian uncle and Semyon to translate the journal to see what it contains.  Meanwhile, it turns out the Semyon is the head of the local Russian mafia, and the journal contains secrets that he would rather remain buried.  Enter Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), a low-ranking chauffer to Semyon’s idiot son.  Semyon begins eyeing Nikolai for advancement within the mafia, and a parallel story develops as Anna tries to find a family for the newborn child and Nikolai battles his conscience to move up the ranks.

The plotting itself is very well written, with a plot twist in the final scenes of the film that genuinely caught me off-guard, though in retrospect I probably should have guessed it.  It is a solidly directed mafia film, full of intrigue and solid performances to tie everything together.  Viggo Mortensen in particular provides subtle nuances to Nikolai’s soft-spoken character that are much appreciated.

However, despite its good qualities, I can’t help but feel that its lack of any sort of individual identity holds it back.  Cronenberg’s penchant for blood only shines through in one major scene, and though that particular fight is satisfying to watch, it only emphasized how empty the rest of the film felt by comparison.  The film is primarily composed of one-on-one conversations that communicate vital plot information, while the actors only portray their characters through the exposition, rather than having room to breathe and develop naturally.  Some key scenes take place off camera, which was done intentionally to set up the ending twist, but the plotting can sometimes feel like a formality to get to that twist, which isn’t so ground-shaking as to justify the experience.

I don’t dislike Eastern Promises, but it’s hard to point out much about it that is especially likeable.  All the film’s components are assembled adequately (though the distinct lack of a background score did not particularly help some scenes) and that is precisely the problem; by merely being an adequate film, it feels safe and devoid of the kinds of risks that could have propelled it to greatness and memorability.  But as it stands, this is just another addition to the malaise of pretty good gangster films that I’ve seen before.

So, whatever happened to Viggo Mortensen?  He hasn’t been as prominent an actor lately.  Would you care to see him make a career comeback?  Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

"Get Hard": Racism and Rape Aren't Funny

Now Available on DVD and Blu-ray

I do not like Kevin Hart.  I find him to be obnoxious and irritating, only ever yelling and screaming in order to get a laugh.  I sometimes like Will Ferrell, but his cinematic track record is very mixed, often reliant on how far his avant garde improvisation makes its way onto the screen.  So I was not too enthusiastic to realize that in a slow film week at the beginning of July that I would be watching Get Hard, a buddy comedy where I already don’t like half of the starring duo, and the premise raised so many red flags that I didn’t see how this film could be any good.

Ferrell plays a stock market broker who gets sentenced to ten years in a maximum security prison, despite protestations of his innocence.  To help him survive on the inside, he enlists the help of his car washer (Hart) in order to train him in being tough.  Now, to the film’s credit, the obvious racial and socioeconomic clichés at work here are addressed head-on, as Ferrell only assumes that Hart has gone to prison based on the color of his skin, when in fact Hart is a lower middle class man who has never been to prison.  This thankfully means that Hart isn’t so much Ferrell’s actual savior but is only pretending to be for the compensation he’ll receive.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that the film actually finds funny situations to put its two leads in.  There are only two jokes repeated ad nauseam in the entire film: Ferrell doesn’t understand black culture, and prison rape is scary.  The first of these is handled with about as much tact as you could expect, with Ferrell making an ass of himself trying to be tough and dressing faux urban.  In other words, not usually very funny.  The second joke, though, is just never funny, treating the thought of grown men getting raped merely as a perpetual punchline, when it is in fact a serious real world problem that leaves physical and emotional scars.  Joking about rape perpetuates rape culture.  And this film isn’t helping.

But even setting the stale and offensive jokes aside, neither actor is given much room to comically breathe.  Like I said, Ferrell’s acting strength comes from his ability to improvise insanity, but his character is so tamely written that we rarely get to see his improvisational strengths shine through.  This may have been because Hart is not a great improviser himself, but that only highlights the fundamental weakness of pairing these two performers.  They have no chemistry, and the film suffers greatly for it.

It should be pretty obvious that I did not enjoy this movie.  I hate the tactlessness with which it handled its problematic subjects, I hate how the pairing of its two leads feels forced for maximum box office draw, and I hate sitting through a supposed comedy and never once laughing.  Don’t watch Get Hard.  It will leave you feeling disgusted with cinema and those who buy tickets to this slop.

Am I too hard on Kevin Hart?  Are there redeeming qualities to his performances?  Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

"While We're Young": Intergenerational Idolatry Is Damn Funny

Now Available on DVD and Blu-ray

A quick summation of While We’re Young would be to say that it is the indie arthouse equivalent of last summer’s comedy Neighbors.  An older couple having trouble coping with their age becomes acquainted with hip young people, and comedy ensues as the old try to be hip and relatable as they once thought they were.  However, while Neighbors was just a straight-up comedy without much in the way of subtext (which was totally fine for what it was trying to be), While We’re Young attempts to take things to a deeper level, commenting not only on the aged recapture of youth, but also youth’s look to the past for its sense of meaning.

Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play Josh and Cornelia, a struggling documentarian and his wife living in New York City, struggling to relate with their best friends who have just had a baby.  Enter Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfield), a couple of hipster twenty-five year olds who sit in on Josh’s continuing education film class to essentially stalk him as a form of idol worship because Jamie is a wannabe documentarian himself.  The two couples soon become friends, the older two marveling at how the younger generation seems to be all about cooperation, sharing, and making art, while the younger two consistently reinforce Josh and Cornelia’s egos.

The truly interesting thing about these interactions is that the admiration goes both ways, with the older couple unable to get over how much the hipsters are into vinyl and VHS tapes, and the younger couple seemingly unable to grasp their elders’ constant grip in the clutches of modern technology.  There is commentary on how the old wish they were young, but also in how the young only wish to emulate the old, and the dynamics are interesting to watch unfold, particularly as this begins to produce tension across the generational divide and ideas of authorship and creative freedom begin to collide.

However, this is also where the film begins to go a little off track.  It still retains the intergenerational theme throughout, but it begins to form a treatise on the modern state of documentary filmmaking. While that is interesting in its own right, it does seem to distract from the film’s main point, at least as it had so far been established.  Writer/director Noah Baumbach is generally known for taking his films to weird and dark places (just watch the adolescent masturbation scene from The Squid and the Whale to get a sense of what I’m talking about), but here it seems like he’s restrained himself from going as far down the rabbit hole as he otherwise could have.  That doesn’t make this a bad film, but it feels somewhat neutered in favor of more traditional happy endings and fully realized conclusions.

Still, While We’re Young is a fantastic film with some great performances, funny setpieces (including an ill-advised drug escapade), and some overall great commentary on intergenerational relations.  Check this one out if you’re in the mood for something a little strange.

Is it just me, or does Ben Stiller seem to primarily be on his A-game when he isn’t directing?  Leave your thoughts in the comments below.