This entry resets the Ian Fleming franchise and shows us how a legend was created. Although, Daniel Craig is not especially young, his James Bond is so green that when asked whether he wants his vodka Martini shaken or stirred, he doesn't see why it even makes a difference.
Before the opening credits, he's not a double 0 agent yet, because he hasn't gotten enough kills under his belt. He only has one, but that's about to change. When his next victim assures him that the second murder is easier, Bond readily agrees, before shooting him.
We next see him on the run after terrorists. But he blows up a gang of henchmen when he was supposed to bring and informant back alive. The government needed someone to lead the to the bigger fish and Bond has ruined that plan and not discreetly. They get unwanted publicity because he is said to have shot an unarmed prisoner. M is not pleased. She roundly scolcs him and concludes she gave him his "licence to kill" prematurely. This film sets up a tie between M and Bond. One wouldn't exactly say her feelings towards him are maternal, but she's a proud governess, at the very least.
Though she criticizes him for it, she counts on his rashness to achieve things MI6 needs done, though she can't formally approve them. She can predict Bond's unauthorized actions by just depending on, she tells him, "you being you." So, even when he breaks into her home and steals her security password to gain entry to classified information, both of them know she's not exactly surprised or reproachful. The relationship built here will, I assume, serve us all well as the foundation of Skyfall.
Though M takes James off the terrorist case, he persists and stops a plane from being blown up by using his charms to extract information from the bomber's wife. She ends up dead and when M notes that James has no remorse he says, of course not. The very fact that has to be mentioned tells us, if not M, that his response is a lie.
MI6 has discovered that someone aligned with the terrorists, villain Le Chiffre, shorted airlines on the stock market, just like terrorists did before September 11, 2001. He counted big on airline stock going down due to the terrorist crash that Bond averted. Since the disaster never occurred, Le Chiffre lost over $100 million and his backers are coming after him for repayment or revenge. Le Chiffre is participating in a high stakes poker gain to win back the money he owes. M says he can't win, because the money will be used to fund terrorism. If Bond, the best poker player in the agency, enters the game and wins instead, then Le Chiffre's life will be threatened and he will come to the MI6 for protection, giving them everything he knows in exchange for security.
For whatever reason, MI6 can't fund his poker pot, and the money is coming from an outside company. Vesper Lynd is the beautiful representative who approves the cash transfer. She promises Bond only $10 million now, but has the discretion to give him $5 million more, if, in her estimation, he can actually win the game. Vesper and Bond are both good at profiling and size each other up immediately. He thinks she overcompensates, hardens herself, to try to fit in in a man’s world, but she doesn’t understand that her shell actually alienates her male colleagues. He would guess she was an only child, but since she didn’t respond when he teased about her parents giving her the name Vesper, he concludes that she’s an orphan instead. She doesn’t confirm his assessment, but offers one of her own.
Since he quickly assumed she was an orphan, that’s probably what he is. He went to a good school, maybe Oxford, but based on the disdain with which he wears his clothes, he wasn’t born into money. So, he must have gotten into school on someone else’s dime. He is beholden to a benefactor. He wasn’t rich like his classmates and they never let him forget it. Bond declares that he has been skewered, just like the lamb he’s just eaten. When Vesper turns to leave, he smiles, having been impressed by her deductions.
Since she has to be around to watch the poker game, in order to determine if he is going to be lent the additional funds, Bond says that they should play a couple. He suggests that she use an entendre'd nom de plume like Stephanie Broadchest. She flatly refuses. They will share a hotel room and pretend to be in love. Soon after, Bond figures that if Le Chiffre’s contacts are really any good, he knows that Bond is getting the money from Vesper’s firm anyway, so they might as well play themselves, rather than aliases. If Le Chiffre knows that Bond is with MI6, but still wants to play him, he must really need the cash.
Rene Mathis is a local liaison working with MI6 and pulling the strings necessary to get Bond into the poker game in the first place.
As the charade begins, Bond brings Vesper an evening gown and tells her to walk into the casino and kiss him in it. All the other players will be so distracted by her presence that they won’t be able to concentrate on their hands (I really don’t think that high stakes poker players are that susceptible to beauty, while a game is in progress). Vesper has beat him to the punch and has already picked out a tuxedo for him to wear, perfectly tailored to fit (because she sized him up within seconds of meeting him) and chic, showing everyone that he belongs in that poker game, as opposed to the rags that he had picked out himself. So we see that Vesper’s early influence him shaped the style leader that Bond was later to become.
After the games begin, Bond loses big. Vesper complains that he will have spent the entire $10 million that she staked him by midnight at this rate. He disagrees. He learned something valuable. Le Chiffre has a tell. His left eye twitches when he is bluffing and he puts up a hand to cover it. Mathis and Vesper are intrigued by this observation.
During a break in cards, Le Chiffre retreats to his hotel room and is waylaid by violent thugs sent by his creditors. When they prepare to cut off his girlfriend’s arm, Le Chiffre doesn’t even protest. However, anxious to preserve his own life, Le Chiffre promises he will have their money by the next day. Bond is listening in on the confrontation and is caught by the thugs as they exit Le Chiffre’s room. He and Vesper fight them in a stairwell. She grabs one of the men’s gun but is paralyzed by fear. She can’t use it. Bond soaked in their blood, kills with his bare hands, snapping one of the thug’s neck and throwing the other over the stairwell. He tells Vesper to have Mathis clear away the bodies. He has to get back to the poker table. When she stalls, he speaks sharply, breaking through her shock and ordering her to hurry.
Back in his hotel room, we see that Bond is stunned himself. He takes time to collect, before changing his bloody shirt, but rather than jumping in for a quick shower, he just uses a basin to wash his face and chest. The basin is tinged with the blood, which he splashes onto his face. Rather than making him clean, it seems to baptize him in the lives he’s just taken, christened by the sin. When Vesper asks if what he’s just done doesn’t bother him, he brushes off the question, saying he wouldn’t be much of an agent if it did!
When the poker hand finishes for the night, he returns to the hotel room. The shower is running, but he sees a broken glass on the counter. Thinking Vesper may have been attacked, he treads carefully into the bathroom. She is fully clothed in her evening gown, sitting on the shower floor, letting the water flow over her, while she trembles. Still dressed himself, Bond gets into the shower. She stammers that she felt she had blood on her hands and it won’t come off. Bond says to let him help. He takes her fingers and puts them into his mouth, sucking them clean: tender and intimate, but ick! I don’t see how that makes her hands clean, but since he committed the murders, not her, I guess it is a symbolic way to remove the guilt from her hands and transfer it back to him. Is that better, he asks. She nods numbly. Is she cold, another silent yes. He pulls her close, as the water trickles over them.
The next day, she’s asleep. In her own room, as he comes out of his. The comfort he gave her last night was not sexual.
Back at the poker table, Bond is losing badly. Based on Le Chiffre’s hand movements, he thought he was bluffing, but Le Chiffre had the cards. Did Bond read the tell wrong or did Le Chiffre fool him into thinking there was one? Le Chiffre smirks. Bond needs another $5 million to stay in the game. Vesper refuses to give it to him. She says he has lost this much because he is reckless. It’s ego that makes him want to win, not the need to stop terrorism. He tells her to look in his eyes and know he can win. She does look, but must not see a victor, because her answer is still “no.” This seems like a huge lapse of trust on her part to me. But maybe Bond sees it as a sign of her independence and it gives him faith that her judgment can’t be swayed by emotion. Hard to say.
If MI6 is not going to get Le Chiffre as an informant, Bond refuses to let him live. He heads off with a knife he swipes from a restaurant table (are steak knives really that sharp and lethal?) to nab the man, but is stopped by a fellow poker player. Turns out it’s a CIA agent. He’ll stake Bond in the poker game if MI6 lets the United States bring Le Chiffre in. Bond agrees.
He wins the poker game and later celebrates with Vesper. I would have said, “I told you so,” and given her the cold shoulder, but he seems smitten. He notices the love knot she wears as a necklace. What does it mean? She says that she just thought it was something pretty. “No she didn’t.” He knows that someone gave it to her. She leaves the table when she gets a text from Mathis. It’s a second after she departs that a light bulb goes off in Bond’s head. Mathis! That must have been how Le Chiffre knew that Bond had recognized his tell and used it against Bond. Mathis must be a double agent. Bond runs off after Vesper, but she’s already been caught. Bond gives chase and when his car rolls, Le Chiffre grabs both of them. His men drag Vesper into a closed room and her screams cause Bond agony.
Meanwhile, Le Chiffre strips Bond naked, his testicles and penis hanging from the open bottom of a chair. Le Chiffre doesn’t know why people even bother with other forms of torture when this is all they need. He puts a heavy stone boulder on a rope and swings it hard into Bond’s genitals. He wants the password for the Casino Royale account where Bond’s poker winnings are stored. Bond screams in pain, but won’t give it to Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre keeps pounding Bond’s crotch and says that there won’t be much of his manhood left to heal, assuming he does heal. Bond responses by telling him he has jock itch. Le Chiffre hits him again and Bond laughs at having made Le Chiffre “scratch” Bond’s testicles, before dying. Le Chiffre says that he won’t die because even if he doesn’t get the money back and kills Bond and Vesper, the British government will still give him shelter from his would-be assassin, because they need his information so badly. He prepares to test this theory and kill Bond (while Vesper screams in the other room) when the thugs walk in and take Le Chiffre out, then leave.
Bond wakes up in a hospital. We don’t know how badly he is injured. But he tells Vesper that whatever he has left is hers and she declares he is the best person she’s ever known. I’m not sure why she’s so enamored of him. He didn’t give the bad guy’s his password, but he not only risked his own life in doing so, he consigned her to death too. But I suppose she thinks this is honorable, because it was done for the greater good. He didn’t let his $100 million in poker winnings fund terrorism, no matter what the personal costs.
At the hospital, Mathis wonders why Le Chiffre’s killers let Bond and Vesper go free. It was almost as if . . . before he can finish his sentence, Bond has MI6 agents take Mathis, the traitor away.
He and Vesper prepare to live happily ever after. He says that he will quit his job with MI6 and emails off a resignation to M. He says that Vesper was right. If he kept killing, he would lose his humanity. There wouldn’t be any soul left to salvage. So, he’ll let Vesper be their breadwinner. He notices that she has stopped wearing her love knot necklace. She says yes, she has learned that sometimes you can forget the past. They prepare to travel for a month and, based on their bed romping, it looks like Bond has healed completely from his torture wounds. Vesper, still employed, gets a phone call and has to take care of business but she’ll meet with Bond in 30 minutes.
She leaves and M calls. She’ll talk about Bond’s resignation later. Right now, she wants to know where the $100 million he won from Casino Royale is. Bond, not letting his suspicions show, tells M he’ll check it out. He thought that the money had already been transferred to the MI6. After all, he gave the agent his password. Vesper was there. She put in the code herself and was touched that it turned out to have been V-E-S-P-E-R. Bond calls the bank and finds the money had been deposited into an account for him, from which a withdrawal was just being made. Vesper has left her cell phone behind. Bond looks at it and learns that Vesper had a scheduled assignation in 30 minutes. Bond runs to the bank and sees Vesper departing with the cash. She hands it over to armed men. When Bond intercepts the exchange, one of the men grabs Vesper and threatens to kill her. Bond says he should be the one to do the honors.
He shoots at them and they run into a dilapidated building. When he shoots it up, it begins to flood and collapse. Vesper is trapped in a gated elevator. When Bond, having just voiced an intention to kill her, tries to free her instead, she takes the key out of the gate, choosing to stay locked in. She moves to the back of the elevator, so that Bond cannot rescue her. The cables break and the elevator falls into the ground, crashing into the water underneath. Bond swims down to Vesper, desperate to pry open the elevator cage. She won’t help. She tells him she’s sorry and kisses his hand. It harks back to the two of them on the shower floor together, submerged in water. Fingers to mouth. Her trying to wash herself clean of guilt. She’s doing it again now, letting herself be flung to the back of the elevator again, as far from him and from safety as possible. She gulps in the water, letting it drown her, while crying for him to leave. She loses consciousness. He finally gets in and pulls her to the surface. He tries CPR repeatedly, but she’s gone.
Later M explains on the phone. It turns out Vesper had a boyfriend. Le Chiffre’s creditors kidnapped and threatened to kill him unless Vesper gave him the money. But she must have only agreed to do it in exchange for Bond’s life, that’s why they didn’t murder him when they came to take out Le Chiffre. She must have known that they would kill her as soon as they got the money, but she was willing to take the risk. M says that since Vesper was the double crosser, Mathis must be clean. Bond says not necessarily, maybe they were both dirty (this seems like an unfounded and unnecessary conclusion. If Vesper is the one who told Le Chiffre about the tell, then what evidence is there that Mathis did anything wrong?) M says that she wants him back to work, but he can take time to get over Vesper. Who needs time, Bond says. He’s already over it. He’ll be back to work immediately.
The attitude he’s trying to don reminds me of Cary Grant in Notorious. As Devlin, Grant wanted to denounce Ingrid Bergman completely. If she was willing to compromise herself (her body) to apprehend the Nazis, that was the ultimate betrayal for him. He wanted nothing to do with Alicia and denied the love she espoused and he reciprocated, locking her out. Vesper accused Bond of locking her out as well, walling away his emotions, when he was recovering at the hospital, but he proved to her he had not. He again proved that his heart was still open when he fought to free her from the elevator, against her will. Now, that she’s dead, the impenetrable wall returns. It's rebuilding even as he speaks to M, but there’s just one more thing .. .
Bond still has Vesper’s cell phone. He knows that she left it behind on purpose. She knew he would look at it. M agrees, “she knew you would be you.” So, when the phone rings now, it’s a message from the grave, a text telling him that Vesper was transferring the money to a “Mr. White.”
We see Mr. White strolling his vast estate. The phone rings and White answers it. Somewhere a shot rings out and hits White in the leg. He falls, crippled and struggles to reach safety, bleeding across concrete over to his porch, where he tries to pull himself up with weak fingers. In agony, he shouts into the phone, “Who is this?!” Bond steps onto the porch and answers as he points a gun at White’s head: “Bond. James Bond.”
End credits. In Daniel Craig a new star is born. Excellent series reboot, especially for me, whose wits are quickly dulled by action sequences. The dramatic and human approach Martin Campbell and the new writers bring to their chapter in the Bond series is most welcome. The intrigue continues but it lies more in Bond's vulnerability than in Q's gadgets. That's fine by me.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Saturday, November 17, 2012
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2
The fifth and final installment of the Twilight Saga does not disappoint. In the end. You do have to slog through about 80 minutes of disjointed highlights from the book before you finally feel that you’re seeing a film in its own right.
Having read the four books in the series, it’s hard for me to imagine someone fully understanding the Cullen/Swan story (such as it is) based on nothing but what they see unfold on the screen, especially not the way Condon has directed this last one, where one moment fast forwards to another without a seque. It’s like skipping rocks, it’s a lot of fun, if you know where you’re going. If not, you’re liable to fall in between the rocks.
You not only have to have read the books, but have a pretty good memory of what happened in the last film to know what is happening and, since the first half of the movie is more a montage of nice moments between familiar people, rather than a plot, if you aren’t thoroughly entwined in their lives already, there’s nothing to draw you in.
The movie starts with Bella seeing the world through her vampire eyes for the first time. She takes in her surroundings and is almost immediately able to control her new speed and power. Little learning curve is required. Kristen Stewart’s makeup and hair are lovely throughout the movie, in contrast to the last one where Bella was a wraith being torn apart from the inside by her incompatible pregnancy. Now, she’s vibrant, lithe, strong.
She immediately goes out to hunt, leaping mountains, wrestling lions. Her thirst for blood quenched, she goes into the Cullen home to see her daughter for the first time. Renesmee, Edward and Bella’s prodigious child is portrayed very convincingly both as an infant and as an older child. With the help of subtle CGI and luminous eye detail, she is believable as a miraculous girl, only partly human, with preternatural intelligence and ability.
The family has built the newlyweds a charming cottage. Edward takes Bella through it, "This is the baby's room." Well, yeah. That's why it has a big, honking cradle in the middle of the floor!. "This is our room." Well, there are only 3 of you, so if the other one was for the baby, I'd assume this one was yours! I suppose he's just nervous.
Bella learns that Jacob, her wolf friend, has imprinted on Renesmee. It’s an animal thing which has caused him to take her as his soulmate for life. His need to protect her supercedes all else. This is less annoying than it was in the book, because it is given less time and we only have to spend a few minutes watching his possessiveness try to usurp everyone else’s relationship to the child. Mainly, Jacob lays low in this installment and spends half of his time in wolf form, giving Taylor Lautner less to do. Thank goodness.
Of course, we don’t escape completely, as in the book, Jacob invites Charlie over to the Cullen house to see his newly vampired daughter, without considering the type of danger he is putting the human in, by doing so. However, when Jacob tries to give Charlie hints that Bella is somehow paranormal by revealing his own werewolf secret to the man, we get a rather humorous scene that wasn’t in the book. Charlie looks on as Jacob strips naked, too puzzled by what is happening to even ask questions, probably afraid of the answer.
Later as Jacob, Renesmee and Bella frolic in a field, they see a strange woman watching them. It’s Irina. She’s still mad because Jacob killed her lover (to save Bella). Irina runs off without talking to the trio. With her psychic vision, Alice devines that Irina has gone off to tell the Volturi that the Cullens have an “Immortal Child.” The Voluri, self-appointed vampire rulers, have decreed that converting a child into a vampire is illegal, because the child will be frozen at the age of his human death. He will be forever immature, subject to tantrums and unable to control his emotions. Able to decimate an entire village in a matter of unruly hours and quickly alerting any humans to the fact that vampires exist, which is forbidden. Therefore, any Immortal Child must be killed and those who create one will be punished.
When the Volturi are told that the Cullens have such a child, they are delighted by the news. Jealous of the powers that Carlisle’s growing family and their gifts (Edward can read minds and Alice can see the future), Aro, the Volturi leader, has been looking for a reason to break up the clan anyway. Their possession of a verboten immortal gives him the perfect excuse. The Volturi immediately head to Forks, with murder on their mind.
Alice tells the Cullens of the looming danger and they travel the world to find other vampires to take their side against the Volturi. Though it tries, I don’t think the movie properly captures the fear and despair they feel knowing that they have been targeted to die and that a child so loved and created from love has been branded as the evil that will justify their death. It was a dread and pain that the book certainly made more palpable.
Initially, Carlisle is just gathering supporters to witness, to see that Renesmee is not an Immortal Child, ungovernable and trapped in an unchanging body. She grows rapidly. Further, she’s restrained and mature, no danger to humans or anyone else. Carlisle believes that the more people who can testify to these facts, the more proof he will have to deter the Volturis. But departing from the book, once Edward realizes that the Volturi want to kill and Renesmee is the excuse, not the reason the family is being threatened, he asks everyone to fight with them and for their own rights. He urges them to rebel against the Volturi’s ruthless rule.
Because they have all agreed to fight, it’s strange that we don’t see them in training. Of course, Bella learns that she is a “shield.” She has a natural defense against vampire powers. That’s why little Jane, Aro’s evil emissary, can’t cause Bella pain, why neither Aro or Edward can read her thoughts. She exercises the shield, strengthens its power, so that she can physically protect others besides herself. This provides another source of humor that’s not in the book, when Bella tries to shield Edward from volts of electricity. He’s a hesitant guinea pig here (in the book he was stoic and willing to do anything to help her hone her skills) and, once she starts to see results, Bella is anxious to keep experimenting, to his chagrin. In the book, Bella never wanted to hurt Edward for any reason. In the film, Bella’s love isn’t so precious. For instance, in the book when Bella first learns that, as a newborn vampire, she has enough strength to hug Edward hard enough it hurts, she pulls back immediately, though a bit proud that she could make him say “ouch.” In the movie, when Edward cries uncle, she grabs him again, making him yelp once more for good measure. Plus, she's usually cool and often snippy (i.e. countering his romantic gesture with, "I haven't forgotten how to undress myself"), somewhat quelling the sense of romance.
Once Bella realizes, through the clues Alice gives her (left in a The Merchant of Venice book), that she and Edward won't survive the Volturi and that Renesmee's only hope is escape with Jacob, we see her coping with the pain, but the movie doesn't follow up with Edward's reaction to that sudden news down the road, as the book did. When Jacob takes off with the child at the end, we miss the poignant goodbye that was so hard to read. However, we do see Bella gaze upon Edward and Renesmee holding each other, knowing that their days together are numbered. It shows her empathy for Edward's loss as well as her own. Something, that I find is all too rare in both the books and the films. Though selfless, Bella is alarmingly self-centered.
As for the Merchant of Venice, Roger Ebert mocked that reference by Meyer, but I think she chose it because, like Bassanio, Bella must first give and hazard all she hath, to end up with everything she desires in the end.
As they celebrate a somber Christmas, Bella gifts Charlie with a fishing trip, to have him safely out of the way when the Volturi come. Jacob gives little Renesmee a bracelet. Bella and Edward seems to think it charming, but I find it creepy, since Jacob made a charm bracelet for Mama Bella, when she was the love of his life. Bella presents a locket to Renesmee, a picture of she and Edward inside. The child does not know it, but it is a farewell token.
Although the Cullens and their friends plan to fight the Volturi, we don’t see them practicing their physical skills as they do in the book. We’re given a brief synopsis of everyone’s abilities, but don’t see a lot of them in action. One does get the sense that director Bill Condon is using this finale to introduce characters who aren’t important here, but will play the lead in his next movies.
When the Volturi arrive as foretold by Alice, the Cullen clan is ready. They tell Aro that Renesmee was born, not bitten. She was conceived and is part human. Though Aro believes them, he says that they since there is no one else like Renesmee, there is no telling what she will grow into. She may not be a threat to the vampires now, but in the future . . . he’s not interested in reason, but is determined to fight. Here, the movie diverges wildly from the book. I expected that the non-confrontational ending Stephenie Meyer wrote would not be climatic enough for film producers. I knew they would inject action and violence where peace had prevailed in the Twilight pages. So, I wasn’t surprised when war broke out, especially when I’d seen fighting in the movie trailers.
However, I was shocked at what sparked the melee. When Aro’s soldiers grab Alice, Carlisle runs forward to save her. He is quickly nabbed and beheaded. I say to myself as long as they don’t burn his body, he can still be resuscitated. He’s not dead, unless – then they set his body on fire and I see the Cullen leader has been permanently annihilated and I’m floored. Edward rushes out in rage to exact revenge. Bella follows after and insanity breaks out. I guess it’s good that we didn’t watch them train for this battle, because all of their practice would have gone for nought. Instead of using their powers of electricity, disorientation and psychic shields everyone just brawls, fist to fist. No coordination, it's all mortal combat.
Jasper is decapitated and, again I am stunned. I know this was supposed to be the final installment, but I can’t believe they’ve killed these characters off forever. They kept talking about a “twist” at the end of the movie, would they have the audacity to kill off Bella or Edward or to make their fates a cliffhanger to be resolved years in the future? I’m uncertain. Afraid of what might happen, eager to find out.
Alice grabs Jane and feeds her to a wolf who tears her to shreds. It’s a good thing that vampires are made of marble and don’t bleed or else this movie would be pretty gory.
Although, characters see their lovers die, we don’t really get to explore their reactions. They are moving so fast, it’s not as if they are even experiencing grief. I’m somewhat disappointed about this. Edward and Bella fight separately and don’t seem concerned about each other. Then, for a moment they are together and see Aro approaching. They lock hands, both wedding rings visible. They exchange a meaningful look, an unsaid goodbye. Then, they race ahead to duel to the death with Aro. Edward swings Bella towards Aro like a weapon. He throws her upward and she comes pouncing down onto their enemy. Showing physical strength that Aro is not capable of in the book, the movie Aro fights back. Edward and Aro are in a clench, evenly matched, either could die. Bella jumps on Aro’s shoulder, twists his head as Edward wrenches his body until they break the head villain in two and set fire to him. Then , as the flames engulf him . . .
We see it was all a vision of Alice’s. Her hand in his, she has transmitted the future to him, shown Aro what will happen if he persists in fighting the Cullens. He got the message loud and clear and turns back to his party: ‘Nothing to see here. Move along.’ With an abrupt and comical change of heart, he assures his Volturi gang that the Cullens hold no danger for them and they should leave.
Hey, I’m an old Dallas fan and I should have seen the “it was all a dream” twist coming from a mile away, but I didn’t. I guess it’s because I expected the movie to depart from the book’s non-violent finale anyway that I accepted the fact that it did exactly that so readily. We have all experienced M. Night Shayamalan fatigue and, at this point, surprise endings have long lost their luster. They often seem cheap, tacked on, a cop out. But this one worked, because it was perfectly in keeping with the rules Meyer set out from her first book through her last. There was no cheating. Alice has always had visions. We have never seen them before, but she’s told us about them from the start. What’s more, those visions aren’t static. Nothing is fated. We know that her futures can change as quickly as someone’s mind does. Therefore, the fact that the vision she showed Aro was an alternate one and not something that actually happened is not a plot shortfall. It’s a triumph. Aro had planned to fight them. Once he’s shown what the outcome would be, his plan changed, as did the vision.
The audience was glued to the action, but rejoice when all its damage is reversed. Carlisle and Jasper live. Happiness reigns. We don’t get the post script from the book where Alice explains why she seemingly abandoned her family. The apparent betrayal was a focal point of the novel, adding to the sense of gloom. It’s not as much of a factor in the movie.
However, Edward and Bella’s last goodbye to us is true to the original story. They aren’t at home (as in the book) but in the field where their love first bloomed. Bella wants to show Edward something. She gives Edward a mental vision of all the beautiful moments they’ve shared over the years. From the first time since he’s known her, he can read her thoughts. He’s overwhelmed and we’re touched by the montage of intimate footage from the last 4 movies. Edward asks her to play the vision again. She says it takes a lot of time. But they have all the time in the world. Forever.
As Edward and Bella kiss, we see the last page of Stephenie Meyer’s book on the screen. And we close the cover on the entire saga, movie and book. Together, at last.
The credits roll. We see photo credits, images of all of the actors who have been in the series, along with their names. The minor characters are pictured first, from those who only had one line to those who did not appear in this last movie at all. Their faces grace the screen and we remember them from the movies past: Renee, Victoria, Mike. It makes us think back all the way to the original Twilight, when everything was new and beginning. As all those faces keep flashing before them, we come to the main characters, the Cullen family and then, finally, Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Stephenie’s early pages, black and white words scrolling past, as her character’s first introduce themselves in print. Then finally, the title. We leave right where everything started. And yes, it does make you want to pick up the book and read it all again.
As a whole, I wouldn’t say Breaking Dawn 2 was a consistent piece of movie-making, but the last 30 minutes were moving ones, salvaging everything else and leaving me with memories of all that was good and enchanting.
Having read the four books in the series, it’s hard for me to imagine someone fully understanding the Cullen/Swan story (such as it is) based on nothing but what they see unfold on the screen, especially not the way Condon has directed this last one, where one moment fast forwards to another without a seque. It’s like skipping rocks, it’s a lot of fun, if you know where you’re going. If not, you’re liable to fall in between the rocks.
You not only have to have read the books, but have a pretty good memory of what happened in the last film to know what is happening and, since the first half of the movie is more a montage of nice moments between familiar people, rather than a plot, if you aren’t thoroughly entwined in their lives already, there’s nothing to draw you in.
The movie starts with Bella seeing the world through her vampire eyes for the first time. She takes in her surroundings and is almost immediately able to control her new speed and power. Little learning curve is required. Kristen Stewart’s makeup and hair are lovely throughout the movie, in contrast to the last one where Bella was a wraith being torn apart from the inside by her incompatible pregnancy. Now, she’s vibrant, lithe, strong.
She immediately goes out to hunt, leaping mountains, wrestling lions. Her thirst for blood quenched, she goes into the Cullen home to see her daughter for the first time. Renesmee, Edward and Bella’s prodigious child is portrayed very convincingly both as an infant and as an older child. With the help of subtle CGI and luminous eye detail, she is believable as a miraculous girl, only partly human, with preternatural intelligence and ability.
The family has built the newlyweds a charming cottage. Edward takes Bella through it, "This is the baby's room." Well, yeah. That's why it has a big, honking cradle in the middle of the floor!. "This is our room." Well, there are only 3 of you, so if the other one was for the baby, I'd assume this one was yours! I suppose he's just nervous.
Bella learns that Jacob, her wolf friend, has imprinted on Renesmee. It’s an animal thing which has caused him to take her as his soulmate for life. His need to protect her supercedes all else. This is less annoying than it was in the book, because it is given less time and we only have to spend a few minutes watching his possessiveness try to usurp everyone else’s relationship to the child. Mainly, Jacob lays low in this installment and spends half of his time in wolf form, giving Taylor Lautner less to do. Thank goodness.
Of course, we don’t escape completely, as in the book, Jacob invites Charlie over to the Cullen house to see his newly vampired daughter, without considering the type of danger he is putting the human in, by doing so. However, when Jacob tries to give Charlie hints that Bella is somehow paranormal by revealing his own werewolf secret to the man, we get a rather humorous scene that wasn’t in the book. Charlie looks on as Jacob strips naked, too puzzled by what is happening to even ask questions, probably afraid of the answer.
Later as Jacob, Renesmee and Bella frolic in a field, they see a strange woman watching them. It’s Irina. She’s still mad because Jacob killed her lover (to save Bella). Irina runs off without talking to the trio. With her psychic vision, Alice devines that Irina has gone off to tell the Volturi that the Cullens have an “Immortal Child.” The Voluri, self-appointed vampire rulers, have decreed that converting a child into a vampire is illegal, because the child will be frozen at the age of his human death. He will be forever immature, subject to tantrums and unable to control his emotions. Able to decimate an entire village in a matter of unruly hours and quickly alerting any humans to the fact that vampires exist, which is forbidden. Therefore, any Immortal Child must be killed and those who create one will be punished.
When the Volturi are told that the Cullens have such a child, they are delighted by the news. Jealous of the powers that Carlisle’s growing family and their gifts (Edward can read minds and Alice can see the future), Aro, the Volturi leader, has been looking for a reason to break up the clan anyway. Their possession of a verboten immortal gives him the perfect excuse. The Volturi immediately head to Forks, with murder on their mind.
Alice tells the Cullens of the looming danger and they travel the world to find other vampires to take their side against the Volturi. Though it tries, I don’t think the movie properly captures the fear and despair they feel knowing that they have been targeted to die and that a child so loved and created from love has been branded as the evil that will justify their death. It was a dread and pain that the book certainly made more palpable.
Initially, Carlisle is just gathering supporters to witness, to see that Renesmee is not an Immortal Child, ungovernable and trapped in an unchanging body. She grows rapidly. Further, she’s restrained and mature, no danger to humans or anyone else. Carlisle believes that the more people who can testify to these facts, the more proof he will have to deter the Volturis. But departing from the book, once Edward realizes that the Volturi want to kill and Renesmee is the excuse, not the reason the family is being threatened, he asks everyone to fight with them and for their own rights. He urges them to rebel against the Volturi’s ruthless rule.
Because they have all agreed to fight, it’s strange that we don’t see them in training. Of course, Bella learns that she is a “shield.” She has a natural defense against vampire powers. That’s why little Jane, Aro’s evil emissary, can’t cause Bella pain, why neither Aro or Edward can read her thoughts. She exercises the shield, strengthens its power, so that she can physically protect others besides herself. This provides another source of humor that’s not in the book, when Bella tries to shield Edward from volts of electricity. He’s a hesitant guinea pig here (in the book he was stoic and willing to do anything to help her hone her skills) and, once she starts to see results, Bella is anxious to keep experimenting, to his chagrin. In the book, Bella never wanted to hurt Edward for any reason. In the film, Bella’s love isn’t so precious. For instance, in the book when Bella first learns that, as a newborn vampire, she has enough strength to hug Edward hard enough it hurts, she pulls back immediately, though a bit proud that she could make him say “ouch.” In the movie, when Edward cries uncle, she grabs him again, making him yelp once more for good measure. Plus, she's usually cool and often snippy (i.e. countering his romantic gesture with, "I haven't forgotten how to undress myself"), somewhat quelling the sense of romance.
Once Bella realizes, through the clues Alice gives her (left in a The Merchant of Venice book), that she and Edward won't survive the Volturi and that Renesmee's only hope is escape with Jacob, we see her coping with the pain, but the movie doesn't follow up with Edward's reaction to that sudden news down the road, as the book did. When Jacob takes off with the child at the end, we miss the poignant goodbye that was so hard to read. However, we do see Bella gaze upon Edward and Renesmee holding each other, knowing that their days together are numbered. It shows her empathy for Edward's loss as well as her own. Something, that I find is all too rare in both the books and the films. Though selfless, Bella is alarmingly self-centered.
As for the Merchant of Venice, Roger Ebert mocked that reference by Meyer, but I think she chose it because, like Bassanio, Bella must first give and hazard all she hath, to end up with everything she desires in the end.
As they celebrate a somber Christmas, Bella gifts Charlie with a fishing trip, to have him safely out of the way when the Volturi come. Jacob gives little Renesmee a bracelet. Bella and Edward seems to think it charming, but I find it creepy, since Jacob made a charm bracelet for Mama Bella, when she was the love of his life. Bella presents a locket to Renesmee, a picture of she and Edward inside. The child does not know it, but it is a farewell token.
Although the Cullens and their friends plan to fight the Volturi, we don’t see them practicing their physical skills as they do in the book. We’re given a brief synopsis of everyone’s abilities, but don’t see a lot of them in action. One does get the sense that director Bill Condon is using this finale to introduce characters who aren’t important here, but will play the lead in his next movies.
When the Volturi arrive as foretold by Alice, the Cullen clan is ready. They tell Aro that Renesmee was born, not bitten. She was conceived and is part human. Though Aro believes them, he says that they since there is no one else like Renesmee, there is no telling what she will grow into. She may not be a threat to the vampires now, but in the future . . . he’s not interested in reason, but is determined to fight. Here, the movie diverges wildly from the book. I expected that the non-confrontational ending Stephenie Meyer wrote would not be climatic enough for film producers. I knew they would inject action and violence where peace had prevailed in the Twilight pages. So, I wasn’t surprised when war broke out, especially when I’d seen fighting in the movie trailers.
However, I was shocked at what sparked the melee. When Aro’s soldiers grab Alice, Carlisle runs forward to save her. He is quickly nabbed and beheaded. I say to myself as long as they don’t burn his body, he can still be resuscitated. He’s not dead, unless – then they set his body on fire and I see the Cullen leader has been permanently annihilated and I’m floored. Edward rushes out in rage to exact revenge. Bella follows after and insanity breaks out. I guess it’s good that we didn’t watch them train for this battle, because all of their practice would have gone for nought. Instead of using their powers of electricity, disorientation and psychic shields everyone just brawls, fist to fist. No coordination, it's all mortal combat.
Jasper is decapitated and, again I am stunned. I know this was supposed to be the final installment, but I can’t believe they’ve killed these characters off forever. They kept talking about a “twist” at the end of the movie, would they have the audacity to kill off Bella or Edward or to make their fates a cliffhanger to be resolved years in the future? I’m uncertain. Afraid of what might happen, eager to find out.
Alice grabs Jane and feeds her to a wolf who tears her to shreds. It’s a good thing that vampires are made of marble and don’t bleed or else this movie would be pretty gory.
Although, characters see their lovers die, we don’t really get to explore their reactions. They are moving so fast, it’s not as if they are even experiencing grief. I’m somewhat disappointed about this. Edward and Bella fight separately and don’t seem concerned about each other. Then, for a moment they are together and see Aro approaching. They lock hands, both wedding rings visible. They exchange a meaningful look, an unsaid goodbye. Then, they race ahead to duel to the death with Aro. Edward swings Bella towards Aro like a weapon. He throws her upward and she comes pouncing down onto their enemy. Showing physical strength that Aro is not capable of in the book, the movie Aro fights back. Edward and Aro are in a clench, evenly matched, either could die. Bella jumps on Aro’s shoulder, twists his head as Edward wrenches his body until they break the head villain in two and set fire to him. Then , as the flames engulf him . . .
We see it was all a vision of Alice’s. Her hand in his, she has transmitted the future to him, shown Aro what will happen if he persists in fighting the Cullens. He got the message loud and clear and turns back to his party: ‘Nothing to see here. Move along.’ With an abrupt and comical change of heart, he assures his Volturi gang that the Cullens hold no danger for them and they should leave.
Hey, I’m an old Dallas fan and I should have seen the “it was all a dream” twist coming from a mile away, but I didn’t. I guess it’s because I expected the movie to depart from the book’s non-violent finale anyway that I accepted the fact that it did exactly that so readily. We have all experienced M. Night Shayamalan fatigue and, at this point, surprise endings have long lost their luster. They often seem cheap, tacked on, a cop out. But this one worked, because it was perfectly in keeping with the rules Meyer set out from her first book through her last. There was no cheating. Alice has always had visions. We have never seen them before, but she’s told us about them from the start. What’s more, those visions aren’t static. Nothing is fated. We know that her futures can change as quickly as someone’s mind does. Therefore, the fact that the vision she showed Aro was an alternate one and not something that actually happened is not a plot shortfall. It’s a triumph. Aro had planned to fight them. Once he’s shown what the outcome would be, his plan changed, as did the vision.
The audience was glued to the action, but rejoice when all its damage is reversed. Carlisle and Jasper live. Happiness reigns. We don’t get the post script from the book where Alice explains why she seemingly abandoned her family. The apparent betrayal was a focal point of the novel, adding to the sense of gloom. It’s not as much of a factor in the movie.
However, Edward and Bella’s last goodbye to us is true to the original story. They aren’t at home (as in the book) but in the field where their love first bloomed. Bella wants to show Edward something. She gives Edward a mental vision of all the beautiful moments they’ve shared over the years. From the first time since he’s known her, he can read her thoughts. He’s overwhelmed and we’re touched by the montage of intimate footage from the last 4 movies. Edward asks her to play the vision again. She says it takes a lot of time. But they have all the time in the world. Forever.
As Edward and Bella kiss, we see the last page of Stephenie Meyer’s book on the screen. And we close the cover on the entire saga, movie and book. Together, at last.
The credits roll. We see photo credits, images of all of the actors who have been in the series, along with their names. The minor characters are pictured first, from those who only had one line to those who did not appear in this last movie at all. Their faces grace the screen and we remember them from the movies past: Renee, Victoria, Mike. It makes us think back all the way to the original Twilight, when everything was new and beginning. As all those faces keep flashing before them, we come to the main characters, the Cullen family and then, finally, Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Stephenie’s early pages, black and white words scrolling past, as her character’s first introduce themselves in print. Then finally, the title. We leave right where everything started. And yes, it does make you want to pick up the book and read it all again.
As a whole, I wouldn’t say Breaking Dawn 2 was a consistent piece of movie-making, but the last 30 minutes were moving ones, salvaging everything else and leaving me with memories of all that was good and enchanting.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Flight (2012)
People who go to the movie without first reading reviews might expect to see an updated Airport with Denzel Washington in Burt Lancaster's role, but Flight's story is more about the aftermath than the plane crash. It's nice to see a script that still searches for the big drama in a small world.
We're introduced to Whip Whittaker as he wakes from a hungover, one night stand. We quickly see he's a drunk, coke fiend, and flirt. We get to see him at his worst first: flip, cocky, confident. We follow him to his job as head pilot on a plane carrying 102 passengers. His co-pilot, Ken Evans, who has never met him before is taken aback by his brash manner and inappropriate jokes. Evans may not realize Whip is a drunk, but it's obvious he's highly erratic. But as the flight takes off and they enter a heavy storm, Evans flashes of brilliance through Whip's fog. When the situation demands, Whip is sharp, quick and sure in crisis. He navigates through the storm with a speed that is frightening and risky.
Like Evans, you marvel at his ability but also wonder if he exposed the plane and its passenger to unnecessary danger. Would it have been safer to plod slowly through the bad weather rather than zooming through it as Whip did. For that matter, should he have canceled the flight altogether, given the blinding rain?
That emergency over, Whip sneaks himself some liquor, lets Ken take over the controls and snoozes. Something on the plane breaks down and suddenly the plane is falling. Ken panics while Whip jerks to attention and, with astounding courage under pressure, barks out commands to both Ken and the head flight attendant as he fights to keep one step ahead of the fast falling aircraft. He does everything possible to slow the plane's descent, but is keenly aware it might be a losing battle ordering his flight attendant, Margaret, to say goodbye to her son, so her last words of love can be recorded on the plane's blackbox, just in case the unthinkable happens.
Meanwhile, in the passenger compartments, one hysterical attendant unstraps herself and is bounced about, while another, Whip's one night stand, Katerina, unbuckles herself to save a child's life.
After rolling the plane (turning it upside down) to slow it's drop, Whip crashes it into a field, taking out a church steeple and cross on his way down.
He wakes up in the hospital and first wants to know how many people died. How many crew? He learns that 6 people died in the crash, including two crew members, one being Katerina. A tear falls from his eye and it's tinged with blood. It's in the hospital that we see him as an addict yes, but not a person who only thinks of himself, not even as a person who thinks of himself first. He can't control his drinking, but he thinks on his feet, suppresses impatience and pain and follows protocol between shots.
The fact that Whip did the seemingly impossible and landed the plane has made him a media hero. He numbly watches the tv coverage. When everyone repeats that no one else could have landed the plane like he did, he knows it's the truth. When they all say that it was a miracle, an act of God, he looks at the plane wreckage and wonders what God would have done that.
That's a theme threaded throughout the film. What role does faith play? The answer is unclear. Was Margaret the only flight attendant to survive because she believed in God and hadn't been out carousing with Whip the night before as Katarina had? Whip plays upon her graditude towards him to get her to agree to lie to the FAA and deny knowledge of his drunkenness.
It turns out that co-pilot Ken and his wife are religious zealots who believed that God willed the plane to crash. Whip views them as insane, but is relieved because, thinking that the crash was fated, Ken has decided not to report Whip's drinking to anyone. Whip benefits from others' faith in God, without expressing any himself. It's not clear if the movie sees this as one of his flaws.
In the hospital Whip meets a cancer patient and Nadine, a heroin addict who almost died from an overdose, when they all sneak into the same stairwell to smoke. Having had too many brushes with mortality in the same day, Whip is determined to stop drinking. When his old friend and supplier hippy Harling stops by the hospital to replenish his stash, Whip refuses. Cigarettes are the only vice he wants to keep. He orders Harling to keep liquor and drugs away from him.
The press is camped out at his condo, so he goes to his old family farm to hide out. When he plugs in his cell, he's got dozens of waiting voice mails. I'm impressed because the phone is already fully charged. Even without a crash, an airplane flight always drains my cell battery.
Searching the farm barn and quarters, Whip dumps all the liquor he can find, resisting temptation. But when he hears the FAA is investigating the crash and the fact that he was drunk on the flight, he's angry and indignant. His condition had nothing to do with the tragedy. The plane was falling apart. It was in poor mechanical condition, it broke down in mid-air and he saved it when no one else could have. He feels he ought to be thanked, not investigated and resents the attorney provided for him by the pilot's union. His drinking problem -- it's not a problem. It's not what caused the crash. It's no one's business but his own. Lashing out, he abandons abstinence and soon finds himself driving under the influence to the home of the heroin addict he met at the hospital.
He rescues Nadine from her violent landlord, takes her back to his farm and the two of them embark on a relationship that's surprisingly pure, given its participants.
The pressure mounts for Whip. With 6 passengers dead, he's not only facing an FAA investigation, but criminal charges which could put him in jail for life. Nadine joins AA and gets sober. He supports her progress, but doesn't want to be preached to. He accuses her of finding excuses. She drinks because her mother died of cancer? Lots of people lose loved ones to cancer. They don't drink. He refuses to blame someone else. He chooses to drink. He has an ex-wife and son who don't talk to him, because, "I choose to drink." He denies being unable to control it. But when he ends the night in another drunken stupor, Nadine leaves.
Meanwhile, the FAA case against him appears to be going well. They did a toxicology test on him at the hospital which showed the liquor and cocaine in his blood, but the lawyer got it thrown out. They found two empty liquor bottles in the plane's trash though and Whip may still be asked about those at the hearing. Except for Katerina (who'd been out drinking with him the night before), all the other crew members tested clean for drugs and alcohol and there was no beverage service on the flight, so the passengers didn't drink. The lawyer knows the alcohol was Whip's. Whip bristles curses out the lawyer and his union rep. Only to show up at the rep's house later, with nowhere and no one else to turn to.
He's sober for 9 days, pending his FAA hearing. Things are nearly homefree on the eve of the proceeding and they take him to a hotel in the same building where he will be testifying the next morning. They place a security guard outside of Whip's hotel door and clean the refrigerator of all booze, so he won't be tempted. The night is interminable. Whip is restless. He hears bumping in the night and finds that the door to the connecting room is open. He goes inside, closes the open window that caused the door to bank and is leaving when he hears the hum of the refrigerator. MINI BAR. He opens the door of the fridge which is, unrealistically, stocked with nothing but liquor. Every variety you can think of. It's almost comical. Whip lingers over the contents, takes out a tiny bottle of Blue Goose. Vodka is his greatest weakness of all. He fingers it, but then sets it down on the fridge top and leaves. As the audience sighs with relief (and a whiff of skepticism), we hear a dramatic thump as Whip's hand snatches into the frame and snatches that bottle of vodka, with the speed of a frog's tongue catching a fly.
Of course, by the time the lawyer and union rep show up the next day, Whip is smashed, passed out on the floor.
They think all is lost. The FAA hearing is just 45 minutes away. There's no way to get him sobered up by then. But they call Harling and he has just the cure. Cocaine. It will bring Whip back up and reverse those hangover symptoms. Harling prepares Whip for a snort with the precision of a operating room surgeon requesting instruments. When he asks for a "cocoa puff," Whip's staid attorney suspiciously knows just what he means, suggesting that he must have "experimented" himself back in the day.
The coke up his nose, Whip is soon revived. With consciousness, his confidence also returns. He's alert and assured. Looks like he'll make a decent FAA witness after all. The union rep reminds him that when the investigator asks him questions, it's ok to say he doesn't know. "Don't tell me how to lie about my drinking," Whip orders, "I've been lying about it all my life."
The hearing is a breeze and the investigator is easy, on Whip's side. He's been lauded as a hero and the airplane's equipment has been found faulty and aged. In her mind, Whip is testifying as a witness, not a suspect.
She's at the end of her questioning and comes to the two empty bottles found in the plane's garbage bin. They don't have his toxicology report, but Whip has already denied drinking for the 72 hours preceding the crash. Katerina is the only crew member who tested positive for alcohol, plus she had a history of abuse. She had been in rehab just 16 months ago, in fact. So, is it Whip's opinion that Katarina was the crew member who drank those bottles of alcohol.
This is where my belief lost its suspension. It's the dramatic highlight of the film and Denzel Washington does a triumphant job with these scene, but this line of cross-examination is ridiculous. First of all, the fact that two empty bottles of liquor were found on the plane does not mean that one of the crew members drank the contents. Empty bottles are just empty. Consumption is suggested, but not proven. Secondly, while an expert can provide an expert opinion, a layperson can only testify as to facts within his personal knowledge. Whip may be an expert on flight, but he's not an expert on the likelihood of crew member imbibition. That question from the FAA examiner would have warranted immediate objection and Whip would never have been compelled to answer it in real life.
Of course, the question could have been rephrased. Whip could properly be asked if he saw Katarina drink the liquor or know how the bottles ended up in the trash. But no lawyer would have allowed him to be asked his thoughts or opinions about whether Katerina could possibly have downed the liquor in those empty bottles outside of his presence. Still, his crack attorney and protective union rep apparently asleep on the job, Whip is asked this absurd question not once but three times. He breaks under the pressure and says that Katarina was not drinking on that plane, she was saving a little boy's life. He was the one who drank. He drank on each of the three days before the flight and he drank on the day of the flight. He drank, because he's an alcoholic.
Washington's Whip doesn't break down or crack up. He sweats. He tells the truth. He reacts, without over-acting. It's a performance of subtle depth.
Post-script, Whip is sober and in jail. He'll be there for 5 years or more. He's telling his story to the other inmates, a message of warning and redemption. He's imprisoned, but says that it's the first time he's felt free in years. We next see him in his cell writing studiously. Pictures of Nadine and other friends adorn his walls. He has an unexpected visitor. It's his son. If this was supposed to be an emotional finale, it falls short and pales in comparison to the hearing scene we just witnessed. Whip's son has been a presence throughout the movie, but not a concrete character. More of a symbol of the life Whip fled through alcohol. I suppose now that Whip is sober, it's natural for him to return to those things that he abandoned, but due to an earlier confrontational scene between father and son, the kid isn't likable to me and I'd just as soon have had him remain all symbol, no screen time.
Whip, on the other hand, is pleased to see the boy from whom he's been estranged, Whip is proud when he is asked to help him with a school essay about the most fascinating person he's . . . never known. Taken aback, Whip is hurt to hear that his son considers him a stranger, but he collects himself and wants to start mending fences. He's ready for them to get to know one another. Who are you the kid asks? That's a good question.
I don't remember myself but another moviegoer told me that The Pelican Brief ended in similar fashion.
The film was good, moving without being melodramatic or (too) maudlin. Some elements (like the estranged husband and ex-wife) were cliche, but the hackneyed components played so small a part in the script that they could be forgiven.
Whip was an arrogant, drunk with an abundance of compassionate qualities. Thus, he was likable, but you weren't rooting for him to beat the rap he deserved either. Washington made Whip very human, whether hero or culprit.
The rest of the cast was just as good, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Don Cheadle. The only false note was played by Tamara Tunie (Margaret). At Katarina's funeral, Margaret was supposed to be tearful but wasn't. Whip wiped away non-existent drops from her face. It just seemed like we caught the actress pretending.
All in all though, Flight does take off.
We're introduced to Whip Whittaker as he wakes from a hungover, one night stand. We quickly see he's a drunk, coke fiend, and flirt. We get to see him at his worst first: flip, cocky, confident. We follow him to his job as head pilot on a plane carrying 102 passengers. His co-pilot, Ken Evans, who has never met him before is taken aback by his brash manner and inappropriate jokes. Evans may not realize Whip is a drunk, but it's obvious he's highly erratic. But as the flight takes off and they enter a heavy storm, Evans flashes of brilliance through Whip's fog. When the situation demands, Whip is sharp, quick and sure in crisis. He navigates through the storm with a speed that is frightening and risky.
Like Evans, you marvel at his ability but also wonder if he exposed the plane and its passenger to unnecessary danger. Would it have been safer to plod slowly through the bad weather rather than zooming through it as Whip did. For that matter, should he have canceled the flight altogether, given the blinding rain?
That emergency over, Whip sneaks himself some liquor, lets Ken take over the controls and snoozes. Something on the plane breaks down and suddenly the plane is falling. Ken panics while Whip jerks to attention and, with astounding courage under pressure, barks out commands to both Ken and the head flight attendant as he fights to keep one step ahead of the fast falling aircraft. He does everything possible to slow the plane's descent, but is keenly aware it might be a losing battle ordering his flight attendant, Margaret, to say goodbye to her son, so her last words of love can be recorded on the plane's blackbox, just in case the unthinkable happens.
Meanwhile, in the passenger compartments, one hysterical attendant unstraps herself and is bounced about, while another, Whip's one night stand, Katerina, unbuckles herself to save a child's life.
After rolling the plane (turning it upside down) to slow it's drop, Whip crashes it into a field, taking out a church steeple and cross on his way down.
He wakes up in the hospital and first wants to know how many people died. How many crew? He learns that 6 people died in the crash, including two crew members, one being Katerina. A tear falls from his eye and it's tinged with blood. It's in the hospital that we see him as an addict yes, but not a person who only thinks of himself, not even as a person who thinks of himself first. He can't control his drinking, but he thinks on his feet, suppresses impatience and pain and follows protocol between shots.
The fact that Whip did the seemingly impossible and landed the plane has made him a media hero. He numbly watches the tv coverage. When everyone repeats that no one else could have landed the plane like he did, he knows it's the truth. When they all say that it was a miracle, an act of God, he looks at the plane wreckage and wonders what God would have done that.
That's a theme threaded throughout the film. What role does faith play? The answer is unclear. Was Margaret the only flight attendant to survive because she believed in God and hadn't been out carousing with Whip the night before as Katarina had? Whip plays upon her graditude towards him to get her to agree to lie to the FAA and deny knowledge of his drunkenness.
It turns out that co-pilot Ken and his wife are religious zealots who believed that God willed the plane to crash. Whip views them as insane, but is relieved because, thinking that the crash was fated, Ken has decided not to report Whip's drinking to anyone. Whip benefits from others' faith in God, without expressing any himself. It's not clear if the movie sees this as one of his flaws.
In the hospital Whip meets a cancer patient and Nadine, a heroin addict who almost died from an overdose, when they all sneak into the same stairwell to smoke. Having had too many brushes with mortality in the same day, Whip is determined to stop drinking. When his old friend and supplier hippy Harling stops by the hospital to replenish his stash, Whip refuses. Cigarettes are the only vice he wants to keep. He orders Harling to keep liquor and drugs away from him.
The press is camped out at his condo, so he goes to his old family farm to hide out. When he plugs in his cell, he's got dozens of waiting voice mails. I'm impressed because the phone is already fully charged. Even without a crash, an airplane flight always drains my cell battery.
Searching the farm barn and quarters, Whip dumps all the liquor he can find, resisting temptation. But when he hears the FAA is investigating the crash and the fact that he was drunk on the flight, he's angry and indignant. His condition had nothing to do with the tragedy. The plane was falling apart. It was in poor mechanical condition, it broke down in mid-air and he saved it when no one else could have. He feels he ought to be thanked, not investigated and resents the attorney provided for him by the pilot's union. His drinking problem -- it's not a problem. It's not what caused the crash. It's no one's business but his own. Lashing out, he abandons abstinence and soon finds himself driving under the influence to the home of the heroin addict he met at the hospital.
He rescues Nadine from her violent landlord, takes her back to his farm and the two of them embark on a relationship that's surprisingly pure, given its participants.
The pressure mounts for Whip. With 6 passengers dead, he's not only facing an FAA investigation, but criminal charges which could put him in jail for life. Nadine joins AA and gets sober. He supports her progress, but doesn't want to be preached to. He accuses her of finding excuses. She drinks because her mother died of cancer? Lots of people lose loved ones to cancer. They don't drink. He refuses to blame someone else. He chooses to drink. He has an ex-wife and son who don't talk to him, because, "I choose to drink." He denies being unable to control it. But when he ends the night in another drunken stupor, Nadine leaves.
Meanwhile, the FAA case against him appears to be going well. They did a toxicology test on him at the hospital which showed the liquor and cocaine in his blood, but the lawyer got it thrown out. They found two empty liquor bottles in the plane's trash though and Whip may still be asked about those at the hearing. Except for Katerina (who'd been out drinking with him the night before), all the other crew members tested clean for drugs and alcohol and there was no beverage service on the flight, so the passengers didn't drink. The lawyer knows the alcohol was Whip's. Whip bristles curses out the lawyer and his union rep. Only to show up at the rep's house later, with nowhere and no one else to turn to.
He's sober for 9 days, pending his FAA hearing. Things are nearly homefree on the eve of the proceeding and they take him to a hotel in the same building where he will be testifying the next morning. They place a security guard outside of Whip's hotel door and clean the refrigerator of all booze, so he won't be tempted. The night is interminable. Whip is restless. He hears bumping in the night and finds that the door to the connecting room is open. He goes inside, closes the open window that caused the door to bank and is leaving when he hears the hum of the refrigerator. MINI BAR. He opens the door of the fridge which is, unrealistically, stocked with nothing but liquor. Every variety you can think of. It's almost comical. Whip lingers over the contents, takes out a tiny bottle of Blue Goose. Vodka is his greatest weakness of all. He fingers it, but then sets it down on the fridge top and leaves. As the audience sighs with relief (and a whiff of skepticism), we hear a dramatic thump as Whip's hand snatches into the frame and snatches that bottle of vodka, with the speed of a frog's tongue catching a fly.
Of course, by the time the lawyer and union rep show up the next day, Whip is smashed, passed out on the floor.
They think all is lost. The FAA hearing is just 45 minutes away. There's no way to get him sobered up by then. But they call Harling and he has just the cure. Cocaine. It will bring Whip back up and reverse those hangover symptoms. Harling prepares Whip for a snort with the precision of a operating room surgeon requesting instruments. When he asks for a "cocoa puff," Whip's staid attorney suspiciously knows just what he means, suggesting that he must have "experimented" himself back in the day.
The coke up his nose, Whip is soon revived. With consciousness, his confidence also returns. He's alert and assured. Looks like he'll make a decent FAA witness after all. The union rep reminds him that when the investigator asks him questions, it's ok to say he doesn't know. "Don't tell me how to lie about my drinking," Whip orders, "I've been lying about it all my life."
The hearing is a breeze and the investigator is easy, on Whip's side. He's been lauded as a hero and the airplane's equipment has been found faulty and aged. In her mind, Whip is testifying as a witness, not a suspect.
She's at the end of her questioning and comes to the two empty bottles found in the plane's garbage bin. They don't have his toxicology report, but Whip has already denied drinking for the 72 hours preceding the crash. Katerina is the only crew member who tested positive for alcohol, plus she had a history of abuse. She had been in rehab just 16 months ago, in fact. So, is it Whip's opinion that Katarina was the crew member who drank those bottles of alcohol.
This is where my belief lost its suspension. It's the dramatic highlight of the film and Denzel Washington does a triumphant job with these scene, but this line of cross-examination is ridiculous. First of all, the fact that two empty bottles of liquor were found on the plane does not mean that one of the crew members drank the contents. Empty bottles are just empty. Consumption is suggested, but not proven. Secondly, while an expert can provide an expert opinion, a layperson can only testify as to facts within his personal knowledge. Whip may be an expert on flight, but he's not an expert on the likelihood of crew member imbibition. That question from the FAA examiner would have warranted immediate objection and Whip would never have been compelled to answer it in real life.
Of course, the question could have been rephrased. Whip could properly be asked if he saw Katarina drink the liquor or know how the bottles ended up in the trash. But no lawyer would have allowed him to be asked his thoughts or opinions about whether Katerina could possibly have downed the liquor in those empty bottles outside of his presence. Still, his crack attorney and protective union rep apparently asleep on the job, Whip is asked this absurd question not once but three times. He breaks under the pressure and says that Katarina was not drinking on that plane, she was saving a little boy's life. He was the one who drank. He drank on each of the three days before the flight and he drank on the day of the flight. He drank, because he's an alcoholic.
Washington's Whip doesn't break down or crack up. He sweats. He tells the truth. He reacts, without over-acting. It's a performance of subtle depth.
Post-script, Whip is sober and in jail. He'll be there for 5 years or more. He's telling his story to the other inmates, a message of warning and redemption. He's imprisoned, but says that it's the first time he's felt free in years. We next see him in his cell writing studiously. Pictures of Nadine and other friends adorn his walls. He has an unexpected visitor. It's his son. If this was supposed to be an emotional finale, it falls short and pales in comparison to the hearing scene we just witnessed. Whip's son has been a presence throughout the movie, but not a concrete character. More of a symbol of the life Whip fled through alcohol. I suppose now that Whip is sober, it's natural for him to return to those things that he abandoned, but due to an earlier confrontational scene between father and son, the kid isn't likable to me and I'd just as soon have had him remain all symbol, no screen time.
Whip, on the other hand, is pleased to see the boy from whom he's been estranged, Whip is proud when he is asked to help him with a school essay about the most fascinating person he's . . . never known. Taken aback, Whip is hurt to hear that his son considers him a stranger, but he collects himself and wants to start mending fences. He's ready for them to get to know one another. Who are you the kid asks? That's a good question.
I don't remember myself but another moviegoer told me that The Pelican Brief ended in similar fashion.
The film was good, moving without being melodramatic or (too) maudlin. Some elements (like the estranged husband and ex-wife) were cliche, but the hackneyed components played so small a part in the script that they could be forgiven.
Whip was an arrogant, drunk with an abundance of compassionate qualities. Thus, he was likable, but you weren't rooting for him to beat the rap he deserved either. Washington made Whip very human, whether hero or culprit.
The rest of the cast was just as good, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Don Cheadle. The only false note was played by Tamara Tunie (Margaret). At Katarina's funeral, Margaret was supposed to be tearful but wasn't. Whip wiped away non-existent drops from her face. It just seemed like we caught the actress pretending.
All in all though, Flight does take off.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Iron Man 2 (2010)
This Iron Man seems to retract, to move the superhero off of the global stage and bring him back to a smaller one. Even though Tony Stark is now an international celebrity and acts more like a rockstar than business mogul, the story seems more local or, perhaps, more personal than Favreu's 2008 installment was.
Mickey Rourke's villain, Ivan Vanko, seems more intent on showing up and destroying Iron Man (to avenge his inventor father's legacy which, he feels, was stolen by Tony Stark's dad) than in controlling the world. Justin Hammer, Stark's business competitor, covets his faame and also wants to bring his rival down.
Ivan shows up at a racing event and uses electrified whips in an attempt to exterminate Stark. Ivan's captured but Hammer breaks him out of prison, hoping that Vanko can help him build his own iron man suit, dwarfing Stark's success. Ivan's brains and braun combine with Hammer's money to challenge Stark's omnipotence, but Stark has other concerns: he's dying.
The chest implants he uses to stay alive corrode quickly, poisoning his blood stream in the process. He can't live without them, but his blood toxicity is reaching lethal levels the longer he depends on them.
While the contrast between Iron Man's invincibility and Tony's human mortality might make the story more compelling, since Tony doesn't share his fragile fate with the person who is closest to him, assistant Pepper Potts, it's hard to take his impending death seriously. The writers seemed to have tamped down the global scope of action for this sequel, to focus on the individuals, but the relationships are handled so superficially that they hardly seem worth the effort.
Consumed with his health problems, Tony drinks and parties too hard, alienating Pepper, who takes over his company during his decline.
Ever jealous and suspicious of superheroes, the government demands that Tony hand over the iron man suits to Uncle Sam. Stark refuses and is supported by his Lieutenant friend, James Rhodes, but as Tony becomes increasingly reckless and irresponsible, Rhodes feels that his fear has been misplaced. He takes one of the iron man suits reluctantly feeling that it might be better off in government hands than in Tony's destructive ones, after all.
Meanwhile, Pepper hires an assistant for Tony, Natasha Romanoff, an undercover superhero herself. Romanoff is working for Nick Fury, scouting Tony Stark for a group assignment they're working on. Their main purpose in the film is to set up Paramount's next blockbuster, The Avengers. With all of this going on, Tony's dying seems somewhat inconsequential. If he could have shared his fear and vulnerability with Pepper, in exchanges where they did more than trade quips, the movie might have developed a pathos that could only have enhanced the action and special effects. That never happened and what you're left with is two hours of hollow charm and chaos.
Pepper's ignorance of his condition is somewhat suspect, since Natasha and Rhodes quickly surmise that he is terminally ill just by looking at the broken blood vessels spread across his neck and chest. It's unclear how he manages to conceal these from Pepper, who is with him a lot more than they are. She's either unobservant or unconcerned. We care most about the characters when they care for each other. Based on the first movie, the audience knows where Pepper's heart lies, but this script doesn't. She feels hurt and ostracized when, prior to handing the entire company over to her, he begins selling his art collection without first consulting her and begins courting even more danger than usual. However, since whatever is plaguing him obviously hasn't changed his feelings for her, when he finally tries to explain himself, you'd think she'd drop her defensive anger and hear him out.
When Stark comes to Pepper's(formerly his) office bearing strawberries as a peace offering, she shuts him out angrily. It's uncharacteristic. They never would have formed the bond that brought them to this point, if she'd always been that blind to his unspoken needs. She's kept out of the loop to further the plot, but the result is quite the opposite.
In an effort to recruit Stark for the Avengers mission, Fury gives him old tapes Tony's father made. Through the vintage video, Tony clichedly learns that his distant dad did love him after all, but the revelation hardly seems to make an impression on him. The footage does give him the clues he needs to design a new element that will keep him alive without destroying his body.
With death no longer looming over his head, Tony slowly begins to pull hismelf together. Rhodes regrets taking the suit, realizing that the military, guided by Justin Hammer, is actually in arch enemy Ivan Vanko's control. Finally united again, Rhodes and Tony spend the last 25 minutes of the movie defeating Vanko. The final fight is not spectacular and, despite the fact that it starts at a crowded event, it takes place largely in one building. Because whole populations, cities and nations are not involved, the effects almost seem low budget.
The film lacked heat and heart. Yes, there was humor and the cast was delightful enough to carry the movie on one liners alone, had the dialogue been sharp or quickfire enough. Alas, it was not.
The movie does ask if iron man's power is more dangerous in the narcissistic Tony's uncorrupt, but unstable hands than in the possession of a world power, but it never bothers to seriously explore the answer. Sure, Tony wrests back control in the end, but even then it seems that the lesser of two evils has prevailed, not justice. Of course, such a moral quandary might make an interesting plot, one which, while suggested, was never pursued in this film.
Mickey Rourke's villain, Ivan Vanko, seems more intent on showing up and destroying Iron Man (to avenge his inventor father's legacy which, he feels, was stolen by Tony Stark's dad) than in controlling the world. Justin Hammer, Stark's business competitor, covets his faame and also wants to bring his rival down.
Ivan shows up at a racing event and uses electrified whips in an attempt to exterminate Stark. Ivan's captured but Hammer breaks him out of prison, hoping that Vanko can help him build his own iron man suit, dwarfing Stark's success. Ivan's brains and braun combine with Hammer's money to challenge Stark's omnipotence, but Stark has other concerns: he's dying.
The chest implants he uses to stay alive corrode quickly, poisoning his blood stream in the process. He can't live without them, but his blood toxicity is reaching lethal levels the longer he depends on them.
While the contrast between Iron Man's invincibility and Tony's human mortality might make the story more compelling, since Tony doesn't share his fragile fate with the person who is closest to him, assistant Pepper Potts, it's hard to take his impending death seriously. The writers seemed to have tamped down the global scope of action for this sequel, to focus on the individuals, but the relationships are handled so superficially that they hardly seem worth the effort.
Consumed with his health problems, Tony drinks and parties too hard, alienating Pepper, who takes over his company during his decline.
Ever jealous and suspicious of superheroes, the government demands that Tony hand over the iron man suits to Uncle Sam. Stark refuses and is supported by his Lieutenant friend, James Rhodes, but as Tony becomes increasingly reckless and irresponsible, Rhodes feels that his fear has been misplaced. He takes one of the iron man suits reluctantly feeling that it might be better off in government hands than in Tony's destructive ones, after all.
Meanwhile, Pepper hires an assistant for Tony, Natasha Romanoff, an undercover superhero herself. Romanoff is working for Nick Fury, scouting Tony Stark for a group assignment they're working on. Their main purpose in the film is to set up Paramount's next blockbuster, The Avengers. With all of this going on, Tony's dying seems somewhat inconsequential. If he could have shared his fear and vulnerability with Pepper, in exchanges where they did more than trade quips, the movie might have developed a pathos that could only have enhanced the action and special effects. That never happened and what you're left with is two hours of hollow charm and chaos.
Pepper's ignorance of his condition is somewhat suspect, since Natasha and Rhodes quickly surmise that he is terminally ill just by looking at the broken blood vessels spread across his neck and chest. It's unclear how he manages to conceal these from Pepper, who is with him a lot more than they are. She's either unobservant or unconcerned. We care most about the characters when they care for each other. Based on the first movie, the audience knows where Pepper's heart lies, but this script doesn't. She feels hurt and ostracized when, prior to handing the entire company over to her, he begins selling his art collection without first consulting her and begins courting even more danger than usual. However, since whatever is plaguing him obviously hasn't changed his feelings for her, when he finally tries to explain himself, you'd think she'd drop her defensive anger and hear him out.
When Stark comes to Pepper's(formerly his) office bearing strawberries as a peace offering, she shuts him out angrily. It's uncharacteristic. They never would have formed the bond that brought them to this point, if she'd always been that blind to his unspoken needs. She's kept out of the loop to further the plot, but the result is quite the opposite.
In an effort to recruit Stark for the Avengers mission, Fury gives him old tapes Tony's father made. Through the vintage video, Tony clichedly learns that his distant dad did love him after all, but the revelation hardly seems to make an impression on him. The footage does give him the clues he needs to design a new element that will keep him alive without destroying his body.
With death no longer looming over his head, Tony slowly begins to pull hismelf together. Rhodes regrets taking the suit, realizing that the military, guided by Justin Hammer, is actually in arch enemy Ivan Vanko's control. Finally united again, Rhodes and Tony spend the last 25 minutes of the movie defeating Vanko. The final fight is not spectacular and, despite the fact that it starts at a crowded event, it takes place largely in one building. Because whole populations, cities and nations are not involved, the effects almost seem low budget.
The film lacked heat and heart. Yes, there was humor and the cast was delightful enough to carry the movie on one liners alone, had the dialogue been sharp or quickfire enough. Alas, it was not.
The movie does ask if iron man's power is more dangerous in the narcissistic Tony's uncorrupt, but unstable hands than in the possession of a world power, but it never bothers to seriously explore the answer. Sure, Tony wrests back control in the end, but even then it seems that the lesser of two evils has prevailed, not justice. Of course, such a moral quandary might make an interesting plot, one which, while suggested, was never pursued in this film.
Friday, October 12, 2012
The Joneses (2009)
I'm sure The Joneses writers were familiar with the Arcadia episode of The X-Files in which Mulder and Scully go undercover as a suburban couple in order to investigate mysterious disappearances in the neighborhood. Even the scene where Mulder snuggled onto Scully's bed and invited her to join him was replicated early in The Joneses. The difference is, by then we'd known Mulder and Scully for 6 years, we don't know Steve and Kate (The Joneses) at all except through the fake family roles they are playing when the film starts.
Steve, Kate and the younger Mick and Jen are high-powered sales people who pretend to be a family of four who move into an upper-class suburban neighborhood to get the area residents' covetous juices flowing, in envy of the expensive clothes, products and gadgets that the Joneses constantly parade. As a domestic quartet, The Joneses subtly promote the gear supplied by commercial clients to their neighbors, inspiring the envious to buy the same merchandise for themselves: cars, appliances, clothes, hair products, etc.
The fact that the Joneses aren't really family members is revealed slowly as we observe their professional and distant interactions when they're alone in contrast to the phony display of sunshiny affection they display when they're around others.
The problem is, we don't know the real people behind the facades when the movie starts and we haven't learned much more by the time it ends. We don't really care about the characters and the movie's humor is mild at best. Laughs alone don't make this a must see and there's not much else left to draw one in.
We learn that Kate (Demi Moore) is the most experienced sales person and she is in charge of the Jones' team. She has her hands full, because Steve is a novice and gets off to a shaky start. She put her career on the line by hiring him. Jen, is ruled by her libido, first climbing into "Dad" Steve's bed (after Kate rejects him) and then falling for a married man, a relationship that threatens to bring the entire sales ruse crumbling down, since Jen is supposed to be a teenager, selling goods to the youth set, rather than angering the middle-aged, would-be consumers around them, with her sexual contretemps.
Mick, the man who plays the Jones brother is a gay man forced to play a heterosexual teen. He's expected to acquire a hip girlfriend and enlist her help in selling products to their peers. He's too attracted to the girl's brother to concentrate on his job and when he throws a party for drunken teenagers, which results in an accident, The Joneses' sales scheme is, once again, nearly overturned.
We're supposed to be touched when the kids' close escapes help bring Kate and Steve together. Kate initially rebuffs Steve's romantic advances and rightly so. We didn't see these people train together. We don't see their work relationship evolve. All we know is that Steve is new on the job and immediately wants into Kate's bed. It doesn't make the beginnings of a great love affair. Kate is not immune to Steve's charms, but she wants to keep things strictly business between them. Alone at night, she re-watches his interview tape on which he reveals he is looking for the woman who will help him become a better man. She is touched by these words, but I think it's an odd thing for a job applicant to say on video and it doesn't humanize Steve for me or help me understand why Kate wants to reach out to him on a personal level.
When Mick's friend is involved in a drunk driving accident, after the party Mick threw at The Jones' house, career-driven Kate feels its her duty to report the incident to their boss (Lauren Hutton) and fears retribution. She sulks at the prospect and when Steve comes into her room to comfort her, they end up sleeping together. This minimal bonding is supposed to be enoough to convince the audience that the two have fallen in love. Without the two having shared much else, Steve is soon trying to convince Kate to give the sales life up and live in the "real" world for a change. Have a true family, instead of a fake one. Come home to meet his parents. She's reluctant and who can blame her. Steve is 45. This is the best job he's ever had and I'm not sure how they would support themselves if they give up the jobs they have.
The movie peaks when a neighbor goes into foreclosure trying "to keep up with the Joneses" and buy all the expensive toys that he sees them with. On the verge of losing his house and the material wife who depends on his money, the guy commits suicide. The neighbors gather in shock. A guilt-ridden Steve loudly confesses to everyone that he's not who they think he is. He's been playing a role, using them. They aren't his friends. They're his customers. During this speech which carries none of the emotional punch that the writers hoped it possessed, Kate is gathering up the rest of her sales team, abandoning the mission and leaving the mess Steve has created as fast as she can. They drive off, while he's still confessing.
Kate, Jen and Mick are soon set up in a new town as a new family, with a new "Dad" playing Steve's old role. Steve finds her and begs her to take off with him. She refuses, but as he is walking away, she catches up with him and they drive off together, into the sunset -- well dusk. The ending doesn't work because none of the relationships they tried to form leading up to it succeeded.
They should have spent 30 more minutes bonding the characters, instead of showing them in sales mode, if they wanted to pull off a finale we cared about. The characters moved through the script, rather than progressed as people. Cold Kate softened because she was supposed to, not because anything really happened that would realistically spark her change.
The fake family premise might have had promise, but it needed to be played for either sharper laughs or deeper feeling to pay off.
Steve, Kate and the younger Mick and Jen are high-powered sales people who pretend to be a family of four who move into an upper-class suburban neighborhood to get the area residents' covetous juices flowing, in envy of the expensive clothes, products and gadgets that the Joneses constantly parade. As a domestic quartet, The Joneses subtly promote the gear supplied by commercial clients to their neighbors, inspiring the envious to buy the same merchandise for themselves: cars, appliances, clothes, hair products, etc.
The fact that the Joneses aren't really family members is revealed slowly as we observe their professional and distant interactions when they're alone in contrast to the phony display of sunshiny affection they display when they're around others.
The problem is, we don't know the real people behind the facades when the movie starts and we haven't learned much more by the time it ends. We don't really care about the characters and the movie's humor is mild at best. Laughs alone don't make this a must see and there's not much else left to draw one in.
We learn that Kate (Demi Moore) is the most experienced sales person and she is in charge of the Jones' team. She has her hands full, because Steve is a novice and gets off to a shaky start. She put her career on the line by hiring him. Jen, is ruled by her libido, first climbing into "Dad" Steve's bed (after Kate rejects him) and then falling for a married man, a relationship that threatens to bring the entire sales ruse crumbling down, since Jen is supposed to be a teenager, selling goods to the youth set, rather than angering the middle-aged, would-be consumers around them, with her sexual contretemps.
Mick, the man who plays the Jones brother is a gay man forced to play a heterosexual teen. He's expected to acquire a hip girlfriend and enlist her help in selling products to their peers. He's too attracted to the girl's brother to concentrate on his job and when he throws a party for drunken teenagers, which results in an accident, The Joneses' sales scheme is, once again, nearly overturned.
We're supposed to be touched when the kids' close escapes help bring Kate and Steve together. Kate initially rebuffs Steve's romantic advances and rightly so. We didn't see these people train together. We don't see their work relationship evolve. All we know is that Steve is new on the job and immediately wants into Kate's bed. It doesn't make the beginnings of a great love affair. Kate is not immune to Steve's charms, but she wants to keep things strictly business between them. Alone at night, she re-watches his interview tape on which he reveals he is looking for the woman who will help him become a better man. She is touched by these words, but I think it's an odd thing for a job applicant to say on video and it doesn't humanize Steve for me or help me understand why Kate wants to reach out to him on a personal level.
When Mick's friend is involved in a drunk driving accident, after the party Mick threw at The Jones' house, career-driven Kate feels its her duty to report the incident to their boss (Lauren Hutton) and fears retribution. She sulks at the prospect and when Steve comes into her room to comfort her, they end up sleeping together. This minimal bonding is supposed to be enoough to convince the audience that the two have fallen in love. Without the two having shared much else, Steve is soon trying to convince Kate to give the sales life up and live in the "real" world for a change. Have a true family, instead of a fake one. Come home to meet his parents. She's reluctant and who can blame her. Steve is 45. This is the best job he's ever had and I'm not sure how they would support themselves if they give up the jobs they have.
The movie peaks when a neighbor goes into foreclosure trying "to keep up with the Joneses" and buy all the expensive toys that he sees them with. On the verge of losing his house and the material wife who depends on his money, the guy commits suicide. The neighbors gather in shock. A guilt-ridden Steve loudly confesses to everyone that he's not who they think he is. He's been playing a role, using them. They aren't his friends. They're his customers. During this speech which carries none of the emotional punch that the writers hoped it possessed, Kate is gathering up the rest of her sales team, abandoning the mission and leaving the mess Steve has created as fast as she can. They drive off, while he's still confessing.
Kate, Jen and Mick are soon set up in a new town as a new family, with a new "Dad" playing Steve's old role. Steve finds her and begs her to take off with him. She refuses, but as he is walking away, she catches up with him and they drive off together, into the sunset -- well dusk. The ending doesn't work because none of the relationships they tried to form leading up to it succeeded.
They should have spent 30 more minutes bonding the characters, instead of showing them in sales mode, if they wanted to pull off a finale we cared about. The characters moved through the script, rather than progressed as people. Cold Kate softened because she was supposed to, not because anything really happened that would realistically spark her change.
The fake family premise might have had promise, but it needed to be played for either sharper laughs or deeper feeling to pay off.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Looper (2012)
I love time travel stories and, since Inception, I've been enjoying Joseph Gordon-Levitt's emergence as a leading man, feeling as if I've "known" him since he was a boy on 3rd Rock from the Sun. Add Bruce Willis dying hard and the Looper cast easily makes you buy a movie ticket. While the film doesn't exactly disappoint, I guess the most I can say is that it was "pretty ok."
JG-L plays Joe, a man living in a future world (in 2044) who makes his living as a "looper" a person who kills people sent from an even more future world (2074). Time travel doesn't exist in Joe's present, but it will be invented in 30 years. It's illegalized, but criminals still use it to dispose of their victims. Decades from now, technology will make dead bodies impossible to dispose of, so bad guys tie their targets up, put a hood over their head, tape money (as payment to the looper assassin) to their backs and dispatch them 30 years into the past at an appointed time where loopers, like Joe, are waiting to kill them instantly, as soon as they are transported. Joe then dumps the body in his world and the victim, now corpse, is erased from the future, as if he never existed.
Looping pays well. The only draw back is that the bad guys in 2074 don't want to get caught, so they haunt old loopers down and send the loopers themselves back into the past, 2044, to be killed by . . . loopers. That's how you "close the loop." Joe realizes the irony of this arrangement and acknowledges that loopers don't think for the "long term." If you are a looper who lives 30 more years, then you know that you will be hunted down and murdered by your own kind or, worse, by yourself.
Joe's best friend Seth, another looper, gets a job assignment. He shows up at the appointed place to kill a man sent back from 2074 only to find out (by the song that the man is singing, a song Seth's mother sang to him, that the victim is Seth himself. Seth's job is to kill himself (albeit a 30 years older version). Seth can't do it. He lets himself run away and that is a no-no. Present day Seth must be killed for letting his victim from 2074 escape. From a plot perspective, one big problem with this set up is you have to wonder why the people from the future didn't make sure that the old loopers they send back to have murdered aren't scheduled to be murdered by themselves. If you didn't want the hit to go awry, you'd take pains to make sure the killer has no emotional ties to his victim, let alone ensure that the killer and victim were not one and the same person.
Joe has been saving up his money. He plans to retire early, leave the business and move to France. When Seth goes on the run and shows up at Joe's place begging his friend to hide him from the Looper boss, Abe, who needs him dead, Joe wishes that he had never been involved. He cares for his friend, but cares more about his self-preservation. He reluctantly hides Seth under a floor board at his apartment, then Abe's goons show up and take Joe in to be interrogated by the boss. Abe's manner is avuncular rather than threatening. He tells Joe he remembers recruiting him as a boy. Joe was a homeless kid who'd lost his mother. Abe found him, gave him a gun and taught him how to support himself by looping. Murdering. Because he's known him so long, Abe has a soft spot for Joe. He gives Joe a choice, either give up half the money he has saved for retirement OR give up Seth. Joe is torn. Abe finds that predictable. He says it's a question we all face: how much will we sacrifice to save what is ours? Joe decides to sacrifice Seth. To keep all of his money and to secure his own future, he tells Abe where Seth is.
Joe asks if Abe is going to murder Seth. One wonders if Joe's choice would have been different if the answer had been yes. If he'd known Seth's reckoning would be a violent one, would he have chosen to give up half his fortune instead? Abe casually answers that they won't kill Seth, because that would alter the future too much. Instead, Abe mutilates present day Seth, which debilitates Old Seth (from 2074 whom young Seth allowed to escape). As Old Seth is running away, he suddenly loses his hands, arms, feet, nose. All nubs, he can't keep running and Old Seth is, literally, stopped in his tracks and killed by Abe's men, while present day Seth lies whimpering, bloody and butchered on the mutilating surgeon's table.
To take the edge off of his guilt, Seth goes to his favorite prostitute. He doesn't want sex. He wants her to stroke his hair, the way his mother used to do before he lost her.
Square with Abe, Joe keeps working. He shows up for a job assignment and awaits, gun in hand, for his victim from 2074 to show up so he can kill him. The guy is late and doesn't appear at the appointed time. Joe starts to get suspicious. When the target finally materializes in the past, Joe's present, he is not wearing a hood. Instead unmasked, the victim is able to look Joe squarely in the eye. Peering into the man's eyes, Joe recognizes himself. He's not going to be like Seth. He plans to kill the future him, Old Joe. But Old Joe is tough. He moved to Shanghai (because in 2044 he was expected to move to France by everyone he knew. By doing the unexpected, he thinks that he can elude his inevitable death easier in China), became an even more accomplished murderer, blowing away present day human beings and not just strangers from an unknown future; and grew into 2074's grizzled Old Joe. Sharp, a bound Old Joe uses Young Joe's slight hesitation to get the jump on his younger self and escape.
As soon as Abe learns that another loop is on the run, he sends his goons after Joe. Abe needs to have both old Joe and young Joe eliminated. The twist is, Joe wants future Joe killed almost as much as Abe does.
So Old Joe is not only running from Abe, but from his own past. Old Joe has a plan. The man in 2074 who is having former loopers sent back in time to be killed is called The Rainmaker (the person who pays loopers salaries by giving them someone to kill). No one knows Rainmaker's true identity, but Old Joe feels that while he's back in time, if he can find The Rainmaker and dispose of him, then he can save his own life, because no one will be around to put a hit on him.
Joe meets up with Old Joe by cutting a waitress' name, Beatrix, into his own arm. When the resulting scar immediately shows up on Old Joe's body, Old Joe remembers where Beatrix worked and knows that's where the young Joe wants to meet up. He goes there and, in one of the few laughs in the movie, reminds young Joe that they know another waitress, Jen. Since her name was shorter, it would have been a lot less painful if Young Joe had carved that name into his skin, rather than Beatrix's.
Old Joe tells the Young one that they have a lot to live for. They will meet a beautiful woman who helps Old Joe clean up his life and finally find peace and happiness. When he is rounded up 30 years from now, to be sent back in the past to his death, his attackers kill his wife in the process. Old Joe pleads with Young Joe that he has to change the future in order to save his future wife, the woman who gives him so much. He tells Young Joe about the Rainmaker. If they find the Rainmaker, a merciless looper assassin in 2074, but still a kid in Young Joe's world, they can erase him before he ever grows up to kill loopers. If they vanquish the Rainmaker now, Old Joe and his wife can live and grow old together, unthreatened, in 2074.
Young Joe is apathetic. He has to live for himself. For the life he has NOW. Old Joe has already lived those 30 years and Young Joe hasn't enjoyed them yet. Young Joe feels that Old Joe should just die quietly, so that Young Joe doesn't lose everything he has. Maybe if Old Joe is killed now, Abe will forgive Young Joe for letting his target, his loop, run in the first place. If Young Joe could just make Old Joe disappear, his own life can be saved -- at least for 30 years.
Old Joe refuses to go easily into that good night. After a violent shoot 'em up in a restaurant that is suddenly empty (somehow Beatrix the waitress has completely disappeared), Old Joe runs off and Young Joe, pursued by Abe's goons, does too.
Since Young and Old Joe are one in the same, one might wonder why Old Joe doesn't know what Young Joe and everyone else in that world will do, minute by minute. He's from the future. It's all happened already and if Old Joe knows his history, then knowledge of everything that will happen should be laid out in his brain like a map. The writers circumvent this dilemma by having Old Joe explain that his memory is (conveniently) foggy. Alternate scenarios float by in his mind, versions of what could happen, and there are so many of them that they create a swirl of confusion. He only knows what Young Joe will do after it has been done. He can't remember what happened in the past independently, even though he's 30 years ahead of the present, but once it happens, then Old Joe will remember it. Clear as mud. This plot device not only creates a fog for Old Joe, but for the audience too. There are a couple of scenes in which events appear to occur but, apparently, didn't. For instance, Young Joe relives the hit on Old Joe and it goes off without a hitch. Old Joe shows up in the past with a hood on and Young Joe kills him sight unseen. It's not until after he's dead that Young Joe realizes he's just killed himself. It's not clear in what alternate universe this has happened.
In another scene Old Joe wakes up in bed with his wife and a baby seems to be crying in the background. The child they always wanted appears to have been born. Does this mean that Old Joe has succeeded in his mission to kill the Rainmaker and won't be hounded in 2074 after all? Who knows. While those 2 things are seen on screen, they don't actually occur in the movie's reality and we don't know why or how we are seeing them imagined as a parallel reality.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Young Joe follows a lead he received in a map from 2074 and goes to an isolated farm, inhabited by a single mother and her young son. Joe discovers that the boy, Cid, is one of three kids born on the same day at the same hospital. One of these 3 children is The Rainmaker, but Joe (neither old or young) doesn't know which one. So, Old Joe sets out to kill all 3 kids. He gets to the other two possible Rainmakers first. The children are barely more than toddlers. He kills the first. The second one belongs to someone he knows. The prostitute he cared about, the one he went to for comfort, whom he asked to run her fingers through his hair, like his mother did. He apologizes before killing her child.
At the farm, Young Joe somehow knows the progress Old Joe has made. Psychic connection? They have a bond sure, but the way Old Joe explained it, he knows what Young Joe will do after it's done, not the other way around. So, it's not clear how Young Joe knew when Old Joe had dispatched the first two potential rainmakers, but he does. Cid is a child prodigy, perfectly acted by Pierce Gagnon. Gagnon's true life age is fuzzy. IMDB lists him as 5-8 years old. But he's dimunitive and Cid seems to be about 4. He dissolves quickly from angry and defiant to a scared and needing little boy in a manner that is so natural and believable that an Oscar nomination for the child actor would not be at all amiss. With his preternatural intelligence and high voice, Cid could be mistaken as your typical creepy movie demon child, especially once we find that he has strong and deadly telekinectic powers that give him the mental strength to create a windy maelstrom, powerful enough to destroy everything around him when he gets angry.
This omnipotence feels like a plot cheat. Although, when narrating the story at the beginning, Young Joe mentions that 10% of the population mysteriously acquired kinectic powers, he says that they didn't live up to expectations. The only thing people could do with them was levitate coins. Then, the powers were never mentioned again, until Cid started psychically throwing things around. If this ability is going to be a chief story point, if it is what gives Cid the power to grow up and be a one-man army, The Rainmaker, then we should know the origins of the strange powers and be given a facile explanation of why Cid's are so much stronger than anyone else's.
Baby Cid can't control his powers yet, they flair up uncontrollably, but Young Joe realizes that when Cid grows older and learns how to guide them, the deadly Rainmaker will be realized. He wants to kill the child and save the world (at least the world of future loopers with a target on their heads), but when he looks at the innocent Cid before him, he realizes that whatever the child might do in the future does not justify violence against the frightened tot today.
Cid's mother Sara abandoned him. Went away for 2 years and let her sister raise him, while she partied on the streets. She tells Joe that she ran into a lot of aimless, lost men out there and it made her realize that if she raised Cid herself and didn't leave him motherless that he didn't have to grow up to be one of them. Needless to say, Joe sees himself in the boy. What would he have grown up to be, if he hadn't lost his own mother. Would he have grown into the man who killed for a living and sacrificed his best friend, Seth, for money? The same Seth who grew to middle-age still singing the song that his mother had sung before leaving him? Young Joe doesn't like who he is now. How will he feel about the man, the child killer, he'll be in 30 years? He helps Sara and Cid go on the run.
Old Joe comes after them. As Old Joe chases Cid, the Rainmaker, determined to kill him before he grows into a man that will threaten Old Joe's future, Young Joe knows (sees) how it will all play out. Sara will die at Old Joe's hands. Cid will escape, but having seen his mother murdered by a looper, he will grow up to be a vengeful looper killer. One motherless boy kills another. One motherless boy creates another. What's Young Joe's response to this alternate vision, this possible future? He changes it.
He turns the gun on himself. He kills Young Joe, so that Old Joe will never exist, which is truly closing the loop.
Why didn't he just kill Old Joe? That would have been enough to save the Rainmaker's life. But not enough to save all the lives Old Joe has taken in the preceding (um, succeeding? proceeding? intervening?) 30 years, from 2044-2074.
When they met in Beatrix's diner and Old Joe asked Young Joe to save his wife's life, to alter the future so that the woman who he will one day love so much can live, Young Joe answers by saying, "Show me her picture. Let me see what she looks like, so I will know to avoid her. That way, I'll never marry her and I WILL save her life." Old Joe won't go for it. He wants his wife to live, but not at the expense of losing her in another way. Rather than to give up his chance to be with her, he'd rather kill everyone who might be a threat to her over the next 30 years. He ends up doing just that, killing Abe, all the loopers, two potential Rainmakers. Everyone except Young Joe and Cid.
For Young Joe, it all came down to what Abe asked: how much are you willing to sacrifice to preserve what's yours? Young Joe had made murder a career for some time, but he wasn't plagued by guilt until he sacrificed Seth to keep the money he'd saved (not that I believe Abe would have let Seth go free, even if Young Joe had agreed to forfeit half of his money and relinquish his dreams of an early retirement in France). Finally, he looked at Old Joe, saw himself 30 years hence and realized that he'd extinguish a lot of other lives for his own selfish "happiness" every additional year that he lived. So, he made the choice to stop living.
I like the way the morality lesson unfolded through Seth's death and the string of motherless characters who all tie together. A string that Young Joe cuts. He decides to end the cycle. It's an interesting slant on guilt. Young Joe doesn't want Cid or Sara to die, but sentiment aside, he really kills himself to . . . save himself. He makes the choice to stop taking in order to keep, while he still can, because that's something he saw Old Joe would never do.
JG-L plays Joe, a man living in a future world (in 2044) who makes his living as a "looper" a person who kills people sent from an even more future world (2074). Time travel doesn't exist in Joe's present, but it will be invented in 30 years. It's illegalized, but criminals still use it to dispose of their victims. Decades from now, technology will make dead bodies impossible to dispose of, so bad guys tie their targets up, put a hood over their head, tape money (as payment to the looper assassin) to their backs and dispatch them 30 years into the past at an appointed time where loopers, like Joe, are waiting to kill them instantly, as soon as they are transported. Joe then dumps the body in his world and the victim, now corpse, is erased from the future, as if he never existed.
Looping pays well. The only draw back is that the bad guys in 2074 don't want to get caught, so they haunt old loopers down and send the loopers themselves back into the past, 2044, to be killed by . . . loopers. That's how you "close the loop." Joe realizes the irony of this arrangement and acknowledges that loopers don't think for the "long term." If you are a looper who lives 30 more years, then you know that you will be hunted down and murdered by your own kind or, worse, by yourself.
Joe's best friend Seth, another looper, gets a job assignment. He shows up at the appointed place to kill a man sent back from 2074 only to find out (by the song that the man is singing, a song Seth's mother sang to him, that the victim is Seth himself. Seth's job is to kill himself (albeit a 30 years older version). Seth can't do it. He lets himself run away and that is a no-no. Present day Seth must be killed for letting his victim from 2074 escape. From a plot perspective, one big problem with this set up is you have to wonder why the people from the future didn't make sure that the old loopers they send back to have murdered aren't scheduled to be murdered by themselves. If you didn't want the hit to go awry, you'd take pains to make sure the killer has no emotional ties to his victim, let alone ensure that the killer and victim were not one and the same person.
Joe has been saving up his money. He plans to retire early, leave the business and move to France. When Seth goes on the run and shows up at Joe's place begging his friend to hide him from the Looper boss, Abe, who needs him dead, Joe wishes that he had never been involved. He cares for his friend, but cares more about his self-preservation. He reluctantly hides Seth under a floor board at his apartment, then Abe's goons show up and take Joe in to be interrogated by the boss. Abe's manner is avuncular rather than threatening. He tells Joe he remembers recruiting him as a boy. Joe was a homeless kid who'd lost his mother. Abe found him, gave him a gun and taught him how to support himself by looping. Murdering. Because he's known him so long, Abe has a soft spot for Joe. He gives Joe a choice, either give up half the money he has saved for retirement OR give up Seth. Joe is torn. Abe finds that predictable. He says it's a question we all face: how much will we sacrifice to save what is ours? Joe decides to sacrifice Seth. To keep all of his money and to secure his own future, he tells Abe where Seth is.
Joe asks if Abe is going to murder Seth. One wonders if Joe's choice would have been different if the answer had been yes. If he'd known Seth's reckoning would be a violent one, would he have chosen to give up half his fortune instead? Abe casually answers that they won't kill Seth, because that would alter the future too much. Instead, Abe mutilates present day Seth, which debilitates Old Seth (from 2074 whom young Seth allowed to escape). As Old Seth is running away, he suddenly loses his hands, arms, feet, nose. All nubs, he can't keep running and Old Seth is, literally, stopped in his tracks and killed by Abe's men, while present day Seth lies whimpering, bloody and butchered on the mutilating surgeon's table.
To take the edge off of his guilt, Seth goes to his favorite prostitute. He doesn't want sex. He wants her to stroke his hair, the way his mother used to do before he lost her.
Square with Abe, Joe keeps working. He shows up for a job assignment and awaits, gun in hand, for his victim from 2074 to show up so he can kill him. The guy is late and doesn't appear at the appointed time. Joe starts to get suspicious. When the target finally materializes in the past, Joe's present, he is not wearing a hood. Instead unmasked, the victim is able to look Joe squarely in the eye. Peering into the man's eyes, Joe recognizes himself. He's not going to be like Seth. He plans to kill the future him, Old Joe. But Old Joe is tough. He moved to Shanghai (because in 2044 he was expected to move to France by everyone he knew. By doing the unexpected, he thinks that he can elude his inevitable death easier in China), became an even more accomplished murderer, blowing away present day human beings and not just strangers from an unknown future; and grew into 2074's grizzled Old Joe. Sharp, a bound Old Joe uses Young Joe's slight hesitation to get the jump on his younger self and escape.
As soon as Abe learns that another loop is on the run, he sends his goons after Joe. Abe needs to have both old Joe and young Joe eliminated. The twist is, Joe wants future Joe killed almost as much as Abe does.
So Old Joe is not only running from Abe, but from his own past. Old Joe has a plan. The man in 2074 who is having former loopers sent back in time to be killed is called The Rainmaker (the person who pays loopers salaries by giving them someone to kill). No one knows Rainmaker's true identity, but Old Joe feels that while he's back in time, if he can find The Rainmaker and dispose of him, then he can save his own life, because no one will be around to put a hit on him.
Joe meets up with Old Joe by cutting a waitress' name, Beatrix, into his own arm. When the resulting scar immediately shows up on Old Joe's body, Old Joe remembers where Beatrix worked and knows that's where the young Joe wants to meet up. He goes there and, in one of the few laughs in the movie, reminds young Joe that they know another waitress, Jen. Since her name was shorter, it would have been a lot less painful if Young Joe had carved that name into his skin, rather than Beatrix's.
Old Joe tells the Young one that they have a lot to live for. They will meet a beautiful woman who helps Old Joe clean up his life and finally find peace and happiness. When he is rounded up 30 years from now, to be sent back in the past to his death, his attackers kill his wife in the process. Old Joe pleads with Young Joe that he has to change the future in order to save his future wife, the woman who gives him so much. He tells Young Joe about the Rainmaker. If they find the Rainmaker, a merciless looper assassin in 2074, but still a kid in Young Joe's world, they can erase him before he ever grows up to kill loopers. If they vanquish the Rainmaker now, Old Joe and his wife can live and grow old together, unthreatened, in 2074.
Young Joe is apathetic. He has to live for himself. For the life he has NOW. Old Joe has already lived those 30 years and Young Joe hasn't enjoyed them yet. Young Joe feels that Old Joe should just die quietly, so that Young Joe doesn't lose everything he has. Maybe if Old Joe is killed now, Abe will forgive Young Joe for letting his target, his loop, run in the first place. If Young Joe could just make Old Joe disappear, his own life can be saved -- at least for 30 years.
Old Joe refuses to go easily into that good night. After a violent shoot 'em up in a restaurant that is suddenly empty (somehow Beatrix the waitress has completely disappeared), Old Joe runs off and Young Joe, pursued by Abe's goons, does too.
Since Young and Old Joe are one in the same, one might wonder why Old Joe doesn't know what Young Joe and everyone else in that world will do, minute by minute. He's from the future. It's all happened already and if Old Joe knows his history, then knowledge of everything that will happen should be laid out in his brain like a map. The writers circumvent this dilemma by having Old Joe explain that his memory is (conveniently) foggy. Alternate scenarios float by in his mind, versions of what could happen, and there are so many of them that they create a swirl of confusion. He only knows what Young Joe will do after it has been done. He can't remember what happened in the past independently, even though he's 30 years ahead of the present, but once it happens, then Old Joe will remember it. Clear as mud. This plot device not only creates a fog for Old Joe, but for the audience too. There are a couple of scenes in which events appear to occur but, apparently, didn't. For instance, Young Joe relives the hit on Old Joe and it goes off without a hitch. Old Joe shows up in the past with a hood on and Young Joe kills him sight unseen. It's not until after he's dead that Young Joe realizes he's just killed himself. It's not clear in what alternate universe this has happened.
In another scene Old Joe wakes up in bed with his wife and a baby seems to be crying in the background. The child they always wanted appears to have been born. Does this mean that Old Joe has succeeded in his mission to kill the Rainmaker and won't be hounded in 2074 after all? Who knows. While those 2 things are seen on screen, they don't actually occur in the movie's reality and we don't know why or how we are seeing them imagined as a parallel reality.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Young Joe follows a lead he received in a map from 2074 and goes to an isolated farm, inhabited by a single mother and her young son. Joe discovers that the boy, Cid, is one of three kids born on the same day at the same hospital. One of these 3 children is The Rainmaker, but Joe (neither old or young) doesn't know which one. So, Old Joe sets out to kill all 3 kids. He gets to the other two possible Rainmakers first. The children are barely more than toddlers. He kills the first. The second one belongs to someone he knows. The prostitute he cared about, the one he went to for comfort, whom he asked to run her fingers through his hair, like his mother did. He apologizes before killing her child.
At the farm, Young Joe somehow knows the progress Old Joe has made. Psychic connection? They have a bond sure, but the way Old Joe explained it, he knows what Young Joe will do after it's done, not the other way around. So, it's not clear how Young Joe knew when Old Joe had dispatched the first two potential rainmakers, but he does. Cid is a child prodigy, perfectly acted by Pierce Gagnon. Gagnon's true life age is fuzzy. IMDB lists him as 5-8 years old. But he's dimunitive and Cid seems to be about 4. He dissolves quickly from angry and defiant to a scared and needing little boy in a manner that is so natural and believable that an Oscar nomination for the child actor would not be at all amiss. With his preternatural intelligence and high voice, Cid could be mistaken as your typical creepy movie demon child, especially once we find that he has strong and deadly telekinectic powers that give him the mental strength to create a windy maelstrom, powerful enough to destroy everything around him when he gets angry.
This omnipotence feels like a plot cheat. Although, when narrating the story at the beginning, Young Joe mentions that 10% of the population mysteriously acquired kinectic powers, he says that they didn't live up to expectations. The only thing people could do with them was levitate coins. Then, the powers were never mentioned again, until Cid started psychically throwing things around. If this ability is going to be a chief story point, if it is what gives Cid the power to grow up and be a one-man army, The Rainmaker, then we should know the origins of the strange powers and be given a facile explanation of why Cid's are so much stronger than anyone else's.
Baby Cid can't control his powers yet, they flair up uncontrollably, but Young Joe realizes that when Cid grows older and learns how to guide them, the deadly Rainmaker will be realized. He wants to kill the child and save the world (at least the world of future loopers with a target on their heads), but when he looks at the innocent Cid before him, he realizes that whatever the child might do in the future does not justify violence against the frightened tot today.
Cid's mother Sara abandoned him. Went away for 2 years and let her sister raise him, while she partied on the streets. She tells Joe that she ran into a lot of aimless, lost men out there and it made her realize that if she raised Cid herself and didn't leave him motherless that he didn't have to grow up to be one of them. Needless to say, Joe sees himself in the boy. What would he have grown up to be, if he hadn't lost his own mother. Would he have grown into the man who killed for a living and sacrificed his best friend, Seth, for money? The same Seth who grew to middle-age still singing the song that his mother had sung before leaving him? Young Joe doesn't like who he is now. How will he feel about the man, the child killer, he'll be in 30 years? He helps Sara and Cid go on the run.
Old Joe comes after them. As Old Joe chases Cid, the Rainmaker, determined to kill him before he grows into a man that will threaten Old Joe's future, Young Joe knows (sees) how it will all play out. Sara will die at Old Joe's hands. Cid will escape, but having seen his mother murdered by a looper, he will grow up to be a vengeful looper killer. One motherless boy kills another. One motherless boy creates another. What's Young Joe's response to this alternate vision, this possible future? He changes it.
He turns the gun on himself. He kills Young Joe, so that Old Joe will never exist, which is truly closing the loop.
Why didn't he just kill Old Joe? That would have been enough to save the Rainmaker's life. But not enough to save all the lives Old Joe has taken in the preceding (um, succeeding? proceeding? intervening?) 30 years, from 2044-2074.
When they met in Beatrix's diner and Old Joe asked Young Joe to save his wife's life, to alter the future so that the woman who he will one day love so much can live, Young Joe answers by saying, "Show me her picture. Let me see what she looks like, so I will know to avoid her. That way, I'll never marry her and I WILL save her life." Old Joe won't go for it. He wants his wife to live, but not at the expense of losing her in another way. Rather than to give up his chance to be with her, he'd rather kill everyone who might be a threat to her over the next 30 years. He ends up doing just that, killing Abe, all the loopers, two potential Rainmakers. Everyone except Young Joe and Cid.
For Young Joe, it all came down to what Abe asked: how much are you willing to sacrifice to preserve what's yours? Young Joe had made murder a career for some time, but he wasn't plagued by guilt until he sacrificed Seth to keep the money he'd saved (not that I believe Abe would have let Seth go free, even if Young Joe had agreed to forfeit half of his money and relinquish his dreams of an early retirement in France). Finally, he looked at Old Joe, saw himself 30 years hence and realized that he'd extinguish a lot of other lives for his own selfish "happiness" every additional year that he lived. So, he made the choice to stop living.
I like the way the morality lesson unfolded through Seth's death and the string of motherless characters who all tie together. A string that Young Joe cuts. He decides to end the cycle. It's an interesting slant on guilt. Young Joe doesn't want Cid or Sara to die, but sentiment aside, he really kills himself to . . . save himself. He makes the choice to stop taking in order to keep, while he still can, because that's something he saw Old Joe would never do.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
As Wes Anderson's take on a coming of age movie, Moonrise seems more heartwarming than his other entries, but not in a mushy way. In an awkward, whimsical, misfit way that is impossibly real, in the end, despite the wackiness that defines it. Chock full of stars, a collection of caricatures combine to create something that feels human.
The movie centers around Suzy and Sam, 12 year old loners who are defined as "troubled," but are in no way odder or more disengaged than the adults around them. Sam is one of the boys at a scout camp run with a strange balance of discipline and carelessness by Scout Master Ward (Ed Norton). When he runs away from the camp, Ward learns that Sam is an orphan whose foster parents calmly wipe their hands of him upon hearing the news of his escape.
We learn that Sam has been in contact with Suzy for the last year. She is one of Walt and Laura Bishop's four children. The eldest and only daughter. The Bishops are a charming and dysfunctional bunch, none of whom talk to each other. Walt and Laura, both attorneys, refer to each other as "Counselor" and discuss their cases from their twin beds at night, in lieu of pillow talk. The young Bishop lads spend their time listening to classical music, while Suzy reads fantasy books and watches the world through binoculars, because they make objects seem close -- even when they aren't far away -- it gives her a sense of having a secret power. Walt drinks and Laura only seems to talk to her family when barking orders through a bull horn. Like the binoculars, Laura uses the bull horn to talk to people who are close to her as well. Maybe its her secret power.
From camp, Sam sends letters to Suzy planning a run away adventure, set to last 10 days. They meet at the appointed time and set off on foot with camping gear, books, a record player (stolen from Suzy's brother) and Suzy's kitten. Once united, they bond with childish intellectualism. They are a serious, practical, and dispassionate duo, but ardent in their quiet dedication and understanding. Though chided for her temper at school, when together neither Sam or Suzy indulge in melodrama, but the unconditional nature of their loyalty, bespeaks the kind of feeling that should be at the foundation for all romances. That's what makes you root for them and evokes compassionate reactions to even things that are silly: like the beatle earrings Sam makes for Suzy, which he then inserts by piercing her lobes with fish hooks or the way he warns her that he might wet the bed at night. He hates to bring it up, but he wanted to tell her beforehand, lest she becomes offended. "Of course, I wouldn't be offended," she says with quick supportiveness that even people who don't wet the bed can only hope to receive from their partner.
Unaware that his foster family has already cast him off, Sam tells Suzy he has hopes for his life with them. He thinks they are building something that isn't what she has with her parents and brothers, but might be very fulfilling nonetheless. The grass is always greener on the other side and Suzy reveals her quixotic fantasies of orphan life. She says she wishes she did not have parents, like him. He answers, "I love you, but you don't know what you're talking about." She responds, "I love you too."
Of course, nothing good can last forever. The camp notices that Sam is missing first. Ward organizes a search party with his troops, but they lack enthusiasm because Sam was the least liked among the boys. No one seems to know why this is. He was an orphan. That seemed reason enough to dislike him originally. Then, once some decided they hated him, others just thought they'd follow suit, as a matter course. More justification than that is seldom necessary. And so, Sam was neatly ostracized by his peers, by his foster parents, by the world. Finding him was more an assignment than an urgency for the scout troop and Scout Master Ward. They only hoped he'd turn up before they had to miss the Hullabaloo that evening.
Ward calls the police and the Captain Sharp(Bruce Willis) begins to canvass the area to look for Sam, stopping at the Bishop house. Outside of her husband's presence, Laura catches up to Sharp, we don't hear their conversation, but she shares his cigarette and holds his hand a little too long, before they part. Later that night when she bull horns Suzy to come to dinner, she finally discovers that her daughter is missing along with Sam. Before she and Walt can call the police, they open the door and find Captain Sharp already parked outside of their house. Walt is more surprised to see Sharp there than Laura is, which is all the reveal that their affair will get.
Sharp, Ward and the Scouts and the Bishop family all head off to find the wayward runaways.
After a rather violent escape from the scouts who find them (Suzy stabs one of them in the back with scissors when he grabs her) Suzy and Sam flee and find an island. It's identified on the map only as a marker point. They agree to name it something else, as soon as they think of something fitting. They cook fish, swim in their underwear, dance and solemnly kiss. Sam has to spit because he had sand in his mouth. She thinks she feels his penis and it seems hard. She assures him that she likes that, then permits Sam to touch her chest and informs him that she believes her breasts will grow eventually. They fall asleep in their tent together, embracing chastely. They awake to the sound of a helicopter and people swarming. Sam zips open the tent to see everyone approaching, the Bishops and their 3 boys, Ward, Captain Sharp. He realizes there is no escape. He zips the tent flap back up and he and Suzy huddle together in their underwear, awaiting the inevitable. Walt snatches the tent, their only cover, up and away. Laura grabs Suzy and drags her away. Captain Sharp takes Sam away.
The Bishops tell Suzy she will never see Sam again. As Laura bathes a sullen Suzy, the girl reveals that she knows what Laura does with the "sad, dumb" policeman. Laura objects that Captain Sharp is not dumb. But he is sad. The movie shows us that they all are: Sharp, Ward, Walt, Laura, in each other, Sam and Suzy have found what has eluded all the adults around them: an answer to loneliness.
Laura tells Sharp that she'll have to stop seeing him. At least for awhile. That evening she tells Walt she's sorry. He wonders what transgression she is apologizing for and she says whichever ones still hurt. He sees that his pain is mostly self-inflicted and she has nothing to be sorry for.
Sharp calls Child Welfare to tell them that Sam has been found. Tilda Swinton is Social Services, literally. She identifies that job as her first and last name. She mechanically tells Sharp that the boy is her responsibility now. She will take him, examine him. See if he needs electric shock therapy (!) and then place him in Juvenile Refuge, because given his history, it would be useless to try to place him in foster care again. Both Sharp and Ward are appalled by Swinton's cold words and, for the first time, neither is going through the motions. It's emotion now.
They had been wearing Scout and police hats, playing roles, supervising the search the way they lived their lives, without much concern or purpose, in a lazy community where nothing much happened and never mattered when it did. But Ms. Social Services presented a future for Sam that had consequences, bad ones. The thought left Sharp unsettled.
Sam spends the night in Captain Sharp's trailer. Sharp cooks for the boy, serves him a beer in his milk cup and philosophizes about love. When Sharp says that he himself was in love once, but the woman didn't return the feeling, we wonder if he is talking about Laura Bishop.
Meanwhile, the scouts have a change of heart too. They decide that they have mistreated Sam. Their metamorphosis does not seem as real as Sharp's. Hours earlier they had all comically taken up weapons in their search for Sam, just in case (or in the hope) that he'd have to be taken by force. They didn't talk to Social Services, don't know that Sam is slated to be sent to Juvenile Refuge and, from what we know of them, wouldn't care. So, it feels like an artificial plot twist when they spontaneously reverse course and decide to help Sam.
That night, they break Suzy out of the Bishop house and then rescue Sam from Sharp's trailer by dropping a rope through the chimney. They then kayak to a nearby island where a camp master, Ben, (Jason Schwartzman, cousin to Moonrise co-writer Roman Coppola and Wes Anderson alumni) who is a cousin of one of the boys, will help them get away. The motley crew march together, a mass of people on the same mission. In a jaunty beret, Suzy reminds one of Patty Hearst with her own Symbionese Liberation Army, only Suzy's wearing knee socks and her Sunday shoes.
For $76, Cousin Ben will help Suzy and Sam, but first he draws blood and "marries" them, as their comrades look on. Husband and wife are on their way to freedom in a small sailboat, when suddenly they have to turn around. Sam must go back because Suzy left her binoculars behind. She can't go on without them. They are her secret power.
A (clearly metaphoric) storm of apocryphal proportions then starts. Stranding Suzy, Sam and all the scouts. Tents fall, bridges collapse, lightning strikes Sam, a river parts and the kids take shelter in a chapel. Soon, the Bishops, Sharp and Ms. Social Services all show up at the church. The kids hide in the choir loft in costumes that disguise them and watch the authority figures fight over them. When Captain Sharp looks up and recognizes them (due to Suzy's binoculars and Sam's familiar coon hat), he keeps it to himself, deciding that he is not going to let the strident Social Services (a dictatorial Tilda Swinton) take Sam.
Realizing that their gig is up, Suzy and Sam run up the church tower and climb outside of it, the rain and lightning whipping around them, as they stand perilously on a ledge. As they prepare to jump on the count of 3 (just as they plunged into the lake on their island) realizing that the fall might kill them, Sam thanks Suzy for marrying him. The kiss they share is electric. Literally. Suzy thinks Sam still has a little lightning in him. Just as they are about to leap, Sharp stops them. On his walkie talkie (which seems to dangerous to use in that rain storm) he negotiates a hasty deal with Ms. Social Services, brokered by the attorneys Bishop. Sam will come and live with Sharp. He won't have to go to Juvenile Refuge. Does he accept this offer? Suzy nods that her husband should. The fugitives give themselves up.
One year later, we see Suzy sitting in her window case, absorbed in a book, with her three brothers listening to classical music on the portable record player, just as they were when the movie starts. The only thing that has changed is that her kitten has now become a cat. When Laura bullhorns the kids to come down to dinner, they scurry and we suddenly see that a fifth child has been sitting in the distance painting. It's Sam. He's dressed in a police uniform now, in place of his scout garb. As Suzy starts downstairs to dinner she and Sam exchange a long look. "I'll see you tomorrow," he whispers earnestly, before descending out of the second story window. It's unclear whether her parents know Sam is there with her, but his guardian certainly does, because Sharp and his police car are down on the street waiting to drive Sam away.
The Bishop playroom is now empty, but the camera pulls back to reveal a canvas that Sam was painting. He has drawn the island that he and Suzy discovered. It seems that they decided on a name for it: Moonrise Kingdom.
The movie centers around Suzy and Sam, 12 year old loners who are defined as "troubled," but are in no way odder or more disengaged than the adults around them. Sam is one of the boys at a scout camp run with a strange balance of discipline and carelessness by Scout Master Ward (Ed Norton). When he runs away from the camp, Ward learns that Sam is an orphan whose foster parents calmly wipe their hands of him upon hearing the news of his escape.
We learn that Sam has been in contact with Suzy for the last year. She is one of Walt and Laura Bishop's four children. The eldest and only daughter. The Bishops are a charming and dysfunctional bunch, none of whom talk to each other. Walt and Laura, both attorneys, refer to each other as "Counselor" and discuss their cases from their twin beds at night, in lieu of pillow talk. The young Bishop lads spend their time listening to classical music, while Suzy reads fantasy books and watches the world through binoculars, because they make objects seem close -- even when they aren't far away -- it gives her a sense of having a secret power. Walt drinks and Laura only seems to talk to her family when barking orders through a bull horn. Like the binoculars, Laura uses the bull horn to talk to people who are close to her as well. Maybe its her secret power.
From camp, Sam sends letters to Suzy planning a run away adventure, set to last 10 days. They meet at the appointed time and set off on foot with camping gear, books, a record player (stolen from Suzy's brother) and Suzy's kitten. Once united, they bond with childish intellectualism. They are a serious, practical, and dispassionate duo, but ardent in their quiet dedication and understanding. Though chided for her temper at school, when together neither Sam or Suzy indulge in melodrama, but the unconditional nature of their loyalty, bespeaks the kind of feeling that should be at the foundation for all romances. That's what makes you root for them and evokes compassionate reactions to even things that are silly: like the beatle earrings Sam makes for Suzy, which he then inserts by piercing her lobes with fish hooks or the way he warns her that he might wet the bed at night. He hates to bring it up, but he wanted to tell her beforehand, lest she becomes offended. "Of course, I wouldn't be offended," she says with quick supportiveness that even people who don't wet the bed can only hope to receive from their partner.
Unaware that his foster family has already cast him off, Sam tells Suzy he has hopes for his life with them. He thinks they are building something that isn't what she has with her parents and brothers, but might be very fulfilling nonetheless. The grass is always greener on the other side and Suzy reveals her quixotic fantasies of orphan life. She says she wishes she did not have parents, like him. He answers, "I love you, but you don't know what you're talking about." She responds, "I love you too."
Of course, nothing good can last forever. The camp notices that Sam is missing first. Ward organizes a search party with his troops, but they lack enthusiasm because Sam was the least liked among the boys. No one seems to know why this is. He was an orphan. That seemed reason enough to dislike him originally. Then, once some decided they hated him, others just thought they'd follow suit, as a matter course. More justification than that is seldom necessary. And so, Sam was neatly ostracized by his peers, by his foster parents, by the world. Finding him was more an assignment than an urgency for the scout troop and Scout Master Ward. They only hoped he'd turn up before they had to miss the Hullabaloo that evening.
Ward calls the police and the Captain Sharp(Bruce Willis) begins to canvass the area to look for Sam, stopping at the Bishop house. Outside of her husband's presence, Laura catches up to Sharp, we don't hear their conversation, but she shares his cigarette and holds his hand a little too long, before they part. Later that night when she bull horns Suzy to come to dinner, she finally discovers that her daughter is missing along with Sam. Before she and Walt can call the police, they open the door and find Captain Sharp already parked outside of their house. Walt is more surprised to see Sharp there than Laura is, which is all the reveal that their affair will get.
Sharp, Ward and the Scouts and the Bishop family all head off to find the wayward runaways.
After a rather violent escape from the scouts who find them (Suzy stabs one of them in the back with scissors when he grabs her) Suzy and Sam flee and find an island. It's identified on the map only as a marker point. They agree to name it something else, as soon as they think of something fitting. They cook fish, swim in their underwear, dance and solemnly kiss. Sam has to spit because he had sand in his mouth. She thinks she feels his penis and it seems hard. She assures him that she likes that, then permits Sam to touch her chest and informs him that she believes her breasts will grow eventually. They fall asleep in their tent together, embracing chastely. They awake to the sound of a helicopter and people swarming. Sam zips open the tent to see everyone approaching, the Bishops and their 3 boys, Ward, Captain Sharp. He realizes there is no escape. He zips the tent flap back up and he and Suzy huddle together in their underwear, awaiting the inevitable. Walt snatches the tent, their only cover, up and away. Laura grabs Suzy and drags her away. Captain Sharp takes Sam away.
The Bishops tell Suzy she will never see Sam again. As Laura bathes a sullen Suzy, the girl reveals that she knows what Laura does with the "sad, dumb" policeman. Laura objects that Captain Sharp is not dumb. But he is sad. The movie shows us that they all are: Sharp, Ward, Walt, Laura, in each other, Sam and Suzy have found what has eluded all the adults around them: an answer to loneliness.
Laura tells Sharp that she'll have to stop seeing him. At least for awhile. That evening she tells Walt she's sorry. He wonders what transgression she is apologizing for and she says whichever ones still hurt. He sees that his pain is mostly self-inflicted and she has nothing to be sorry for.
Sharp calls Child Welfare to tell them that Sam has been found. Tilda Swinton is Social Services, literally. She identifies that job as her first and last name. She mechanically tells Sharp that the boy is her responsibility now. She will take him, examine him. See if he needs electric shock therapy (!) and then place him in Juvenile Refuge, because given his history, it would be useless to try to place him in foster care again. Both Sharp and Ward are appalled by Swinton's cold words and, for the first time, neither is going through the motions. It's emotion now.
They had been wearing Scout and police hats, playing roles, supervising the search the way they lived their lives, without much concern or purpose, in a lazy community where nothing much happened and never mattered when it did. But Ms. Social Services presented a future for Sam that had consequences, bad ones. The thought left Sharp unsettled.
Sam spends the night in Captain Sharp's trailer. Sharp cooks for the boy, serves him a beer in his milk cup and philosophizes about love. When Sharp says that he himself was in love once, but the woman didn't return the feeling, we wonder if he is talking about Laura Bishop.
Meanwhile, the scouts have a change of heart too. They decide that they have mistreated Sam. Their metamorphosis does not seem as real as Sharp's. Hours earlier they had all comically taken up weapons in their search for Sam, just in case (or in the hope) that he'd have to be taken by force. They didn't talk to Social Services, don't know that Sam is slated to be sent to Juvenile Refuge and, from what we know of them, wouldn't care. So, it feels like an artificial plot twist when they spontaneously reverse course and decide to help Sam.
That night, they break Suzy out of the Bishop house and then rescue Sam from Sharp's trailer by dropping a rope through the chimney. They then kayak to a nearby island where a camp master, Ben, (Jason Schwartzman, cousin to Moonrise co-writer Roman Coppola and Wes Anderson alumni) who is a cousin of one of the boys, will help them get away. The motley crew march together, a mass of people on the same mission. In a jaunty beret, Suzy reminds one of Patty Hearst with her own Symbionese Liberation Army, only Suzy's wearing knee socks and her Sunday shoes.
For $76, Cousin Ben will help Suzy and Sam, but first he draws blood and "marries" them, as their comrades look on. Husband and wife are on their way to freedom in a small sailboat, when suddenly they have to turn around. Sam must go back because Suzy left her binoculars behind. She can't go on without them. They are her secret power.
A (clearly metaphoric) storm of apocryphal proportions then starts. Stranding Suzy, Sam and all the scouts. Tents fall, bridges collapse, lightning strikes Sam, a river parts and the kids take shelter in a chapel. Soon, the Bishops, Sharp and Ms. Social Services all show up at the church. The kids hide in the choir loft in costumes that disguise them and watch the authority figures fight over them. When Captain Sharp looks up and recognizes them (due to Suzy's binoculars and Sam's familiar coon hat), he keeps it to himself, deciding that he is not going to let the strident Social Services (a dictatorial Tilda Swinton) take Sam.
Realizing that their gig is up, Suzy and Sam run up the church tower and climb outside of it, the rain and lightning whipping around them, as they stand perilously on a ledge. As they prepare to jump on the count of 3 (just as they plunged into the lake on their island) realizing that the fall might kill them, Sam thanks Suzy for marrying him. The kiss they share is electric. Literally. Suzy thinks Sam still has a little lightning in him. Just as they are about to leap, Sharp stops them. On his walkie talkie (which seems to dangerous to use in that rain storm) he negotiates a hasty deal with Ms. Social Services, brokered by the attorneys Bishop. Sam will come and live with Sharp. He won't have to go to Juvenile Refuge. Does he accept this offer? Suzy nods that her husband should. The fugitives give themselves up.
One year later, we see Suzy sitting in her window case, absorbed in a book, with her three brothers listening to classical music on the portable record player, just as they were when the movie starts. The only thing that has changed is that her kitten has now become a cat. When Laura bullhorns the kids to come down to dinner, they scurry and we suddenly see that a fifth child has been sitting in the distance painting. It's Sam. He's dressed in a police uniform now, in place of his scout garb. As Suzy starts downstairs to dinner she and Sam exchange a long look. "I'll see you tomorrow," he whispers earnestly, before descending out of the second story window. It's unclear whether her parents know Sam is there with her, but his guardian certainly does, because Sharp and his police car are down on the street waiting to drive Sam away.
The Bishop playroom is now empty, but the camera pulls back to reveal a canvas that Sam was painting. He has drawn the island that he and Suzy discovered. It seems that they decided on a name for it: Moonrise Kingdom.
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