The Company You Keep (“My Thoughts On Old-Fashioned Movies”)

Synopsis: “A former Weather Underground activist goes on the run from a journalist who has discovered his identity.” (Rated R; 1 hour, 41 minutes)

Character development, exciting scenes, intriguing mystery, slow but satisfying pacing…this movie was basically a star-studded old-school drama, in the best of ways.

What makes a movie feel “old-fashioned” these days? Well, first and foremost having long conversations and actual character development doesn’t hurt. If you go back and watch some of the classics from the  60’s and 70’s, you will undoubtedly find some great films that modern day audiences find “too slow” or “boring”. Why? Because we’ve been trained to see so many fast-paced action movies, that even the award movie dramas like Argo are downright fast-paced compared to older flicks. For every slow-paced Amour there are ten faster-moving vehicles like Looper, End Of Watch and The Hunger Games, and I’m only naming movies that I thought were excellent by the way, no criticism on any of them. And it’s not as if I can say I preferred the old movies that I’m referencing from decades ago. For every fantastic slow-paced one like The French Connection and Jaws, there were movies like Bullitt and The Conversation which are classics but could put you to sleep if you’re not careful. In the 1980’s, an example of a Vietnam movie was the action-packed and fast-paced Oliver Stone film Platoon, in the 1970’s it was made sloooowly with Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. I’m not saying one must be better than the other, it’s just a reality that the pacing was different back then, and you have to usually be in the mood (and wide awake) to watch the older movies, since our brains have become so accustomed to the ADD generation that we live in. (Yes of course there are exceptions to my point, as there were plenty of fast-paced movies back then, and more than a few slower ones now. I am writing about the big-picture of how the medium has changed over the years.)

Thankfully, The Company You Keep has the pacing of an older film, but an endless barrage of cameos of that should keep most people in the ADD generation both entertained and riveted. It plays as a thriller with an unraveling mystery, and both Josh and I really enjoyed it from start to finish.

Keep in mind that this was the second movie in a double-feature at the Landmark that we were enjoying on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The first had been Trance, a fast-paced movie I reviewed recently that somewhat let us down; so we were happily surprised that this “standard” looking thriller was damn solid, and it finished our fun-day together off on a high note.

Who does it turn out wrote the movie? Lem Dobbs adapted the book by Neil Gordon, but what has Dobbs done in the past? One of my favorite underrated sci-fi movies, Dark City, came from his clever mind. Released in 1998, Dark City was a really smart little sci-fi flick that screwed with the world in a really neat way, and was overshadowed a year later by a little movie called The Matrix. I’m not trying to say that it was better than the epic awesomeness that was The Matrix, but it certainly deserved to be seen by far more people; and I recommend seeing it if you haven’t already. It even boasts Kiefer Sutherland in arguably his quirkiest role to date. Dobbs continued to make really good slower-paced dramas with the smart indie The Limey and the good heist drama The Score. In fact the only thing I dislike that I’ve seen by him is his previous film, Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, which suffered from being slow, with no interesting character development, which led to my simply being bored (in spite of its many decent reviews).

As for the cast, it got to be that there were so many recognizable actors that Josh and I were surprised when a new face was NOT familiar. In the lead role was Robert Redford, who still has the swagger and charisma of a younger man, albeit weathered and wiser. He continues to make a great leading man, and it ALMOST didn’t bother me that at 78 years old he played a man with a young daughter. Almost…that element admittedly still distracted me a bit, because every time I saw them together I felt like he was playing his grandfather, until the movie would remind me that she was his own kid. Along with Redford, the only other lead actor was Shia LaBeouf, trying to combine the Woodward & Bernstein personalities from All The President’s Men into one nerdy-Jewish but also slick-charismatic reporter. (Of course you should recall that Robert Redford himself famously played Bob Woodward in that 1970’s slow-paced, but exciting classic!)

So if Redford and LaBeouf played the only two leading roles, who played all of the numerous supporting roles? Do you have a minute?
Julie Christie played a mysterious older woman from Redford’s past. Sam Elliott was keeping her company in amusing fashion. Susan Sarandon was also from his past, and helped open the movie intriguingly. Nick Nolte and his uniquely gruff voice came on halfway through. Chris Cooper played Redford’s equally weathered brother. Terrence Howard was an FBI agent chasing Redford throughout. Anna Kendrick was the one silly role that may have been too vapid (considering she was FBI as well). Stanley Tucci was LaBeouf’s amusing boss. Richard Jenkins was also someone Redford had history with, but managed to be pretty darn good in such little time. Brendan Gleeson was really interesting as another piece to the puzzle, and even Steven Root made a memorable cameo appearance. There were another few actors I recognized, but that should give you an idea of just how many friends Redford must have in the business, or otherwise how much they loved the script.

He did another solid job as the director, and certainly has nothing to prove in that department considering his debut film Ordinary People won him an Oscar as Best Director. Probably his most popular movie was Quiz Show, the fascinating story about the scandal of Charles Van Doren as the rigged winner of the popular game show Twenty One. Most recently he made a little-seen movie about the trial of some of the people accused of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, in the solid film The Conspirator. So once again Redford proves here that he can direct good dramas with the best of them.

I got a kick out of the constant incorporation of old photographs of the actors from the 60’s and 70’s. Since these guys have all been around in the public eye since then, you were immediately aware that you were looking at actual pictures of them. I’m not sure why, but it added an element of familiar realism to the otherwise mostly-fictitious story. That plus the fact that people such as Susan Sarandon and Robert Redford are famously outspoken liberals, so having them play people who used to be Vietnam-protesting activists didn’t feel like a stretch; it added subconscious authenticity.

If you’re in the mood for a good little suspenseful drama, have a good time seeing this old-fashioned throwback. Older doesn’t have to mean better or worse, but it’s certainly refreshing when you see it, and works well.

The movie was better than Lions For Lambs, a hit-you-over-the-head liberal drama that Redford directed in 2007 as a direct response to his George W. Bush frustration. It’s not as if that movie was boring, but boy was it full of over-the-top self-righteous liberalism to bang home some obvious points. The Company You Keep was not however as great as Quiz Show, which still holds up as a fantastic movie with some superb performances by Ralph Fiennes and John Turturro.

Movie Rating: B+ (Nothing was particularly new or amazing about it, but it was a piece of well-crafted, solid film-making, from beginning to end)

Boaz Rating: A-

Parker

Synopsis: “A thief with a unique code of professional ethics is double-crossed by his crew and left for dead. Assuming a new disguise and forming an unlikely alliance with a woman on the inside, he looks to hijack the score of the crew’s latest heist.” (Rated R; 1 hour 58 minutes)

I know I can always count on Jason Statham to come out with a movie or two a year that won’t be particularly original, not even really be memorable, but be solid, gritty, non-CG action which is refreshingly old-school. If you grew up watching action movies in the 1980’s you saw tons and tons of crappy movies by Van Damme, Seagal, Norris, Stallone – basically the entire cast that’s reunited of The Expendables; 95% of them were also unmemorable crap that all melded together with cliched bad guys and plots that involved some girl getting killed who you don’t give a damn about, and now your hero has to fight all of the people who killed her. Or something like that. The plot was incidental, the motivation for the killing didn’t really matter, all that mattered was that there were some kick-ass fighting scenes, some good one-liners, and hopefully as a bonus some unnecessary nudity (an oxymoron if you ask most of us males). That’s pretty much what Jason Statham has come to offer in the last few years, movies that meld together but if you like one you’ll probably at least enjoy them all. (One exception was The Bank Job, a Statham movie that actually was damn clever and deserved the good reviews it received.)

The worst part about this forgettable but entertaining movie was Jennifer Lopez. All of her. What was the point of her role? You don’t even meet her character until what feels like halfway through the movie. When you do you wonder how the heck it’s connected to the main plot. Once it does connect it’s so ridiculous that you can’t help but roll your eyes through EVERY scene with her. And you know what? This used to happen in those 1980’s movies I mentioned before, but you know what purpose they served? So the hero could have sex with the girl and they could show the young male viewers some T&A. I think the writers of this movie missed that memo because her part was not only superfluous and annoying, but there’s never any sex or nudity with J. Lo, so what WAS the point of putting her in the movie where she basically plays a real estate agent who’s a total slut and lives with her mother played by…Patti LuPone??? Why is one of the most respected divas of Broadway playing this weird, tiny role in this bad side-plot of a B-action movie? Color me confused. And let me repeat, Lopez’s part makes no sense, and has the weirdest character (lack-of) development. She hits on Statham’s character so strongly and out of place that it made me wonder if she was meant to have a deeper back-story where she was abused as  child and is now acting out with misdirected sexual advances in the future, because it was either that, or she’s simply a whore, either way they never have it make any sense. And when he actually kisses her briefly (PLEASE don’t tell me you consider that a spoiler, that’s like saying he fights the main bad guy in the movie) you’re like, “WHY?!”

All of that being said, the action scenes as always were fun. Jason Statham is an accomplished martial artist so it’s fun watching him and no obvious stuntman kicking butt in pretty creative ways. I saw the movie with both Adi and Josh Baron, and Josh particularly marveled at the inventive (and violent) use of a gun clip at one point, and I enjoyed the gruesome way he stops someone from stabbing him in the face. If you just read that last line and screamed, “NOT FOR ME!” then no kidding, you should have known that from the start of this movie’s description. If on the other hand you grew up watching the same silly action movies that I did, that last line probably made you want to see the movie; and that’s the point, see it if you enjoy that same type of throwaway stuff as I do, disregard the lack of good plot, enjoy the action, and don’t worry – although J. Lo was a ridiculous waste of space, there was also still a bit of other nudity for the 1980’s child in all of us.

The movie was better than Statham’s The Expendables, which did have all of the elements of what I liked in the 80’s but didn’t even TRY to have a plot or character development, and proved to me that more isn’t always more, even in dumb blow-it-up crap. It was worse than his really good film The Bank Job, as well as the super fun one from last year,  Safe.

Quality Rating: C- (Would have been higher if not for the Jennifer Lopez element, would have been lower if not for the decent action scenes)

Boaz  Rating: B

Gangster Squad

Synopsis: “Los Angeles, 1949: A secret crew of police officers led by two determined sergeants work together in an effort to take down the ruthless mob king Mickey Cohen who runs the city.” (Rated R; 1 hour 53 minutes)

This movie has everything going for it:

–Based on a true story about a notorious Jewish gangster

-A kick-ass cast that includes Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Sean Penn and Emma Stone

-Great costumes and overall visual aesthetic to give a convincing setting of LA in the late 40’s

So what the heck made it such a pile of dreck?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll skip ahead and tell you that it’s not boring, and both Adi and I had fun watching it, but it was a pile of garbage due to the hokiest script in ages, and a director who seemed to not mind that the character development made no sense and were borderline laughable.

How do I write this without giving away spoilers as I’ve promised to never do???
Okay, for one thing let’s start with the dialogue. Every…single…line uttered in this movie sounds like it’s supposed to be this amazingly clever barb like we’re watching the newest great film noir. Just to throw out a random example, at one point Mickey Cohen (played by Sean Penn) says, “A cop that’s not for sale is like a dog that’s got rabies. There’s no fixing him, so he’s gotta die”. And that’s actually one of the better lines. Imagine an ENTIRE movie of dialogue like that, it’s meant to be clever but instead it starts to sound more like The Naked Gun, where one of my favorite Frank Drebin lines was, “Like a midget at a urinal, I was going to have to stay on my toes!” The difference is, that was brilliant and MEANT to be funny, this was a movie that didn’t realize it was making fun of itself throughout.

And not only was the dialogue over-the-top ridiculous, but the plot and character development was crazy. Early in the movie Josh Brolin’s character is tasked with getting together a top-secret crew to go after the mobster Mickey Cohen. Crucial to get the right people for the job, and super important! So what happens? His wife at home tells him that the people he’s choosing are dumb choices and literally one by one by one chooses each and every person for him by going through their files. Basically, he’s an idiot, and she’s apparently an amazing cop herself, except she’s not. Huh? No, it makes no sense. And then when they actually gather each individual member who’s perfectly chosen for one reason or another, someone else sees them, wasn’t part of the carefully chosen crew, and says he wants to join. Okay, you’re in too – that was easy after all! 🙂

I recently made similar points about Jack Reacher, which also made a strange attempt at some film noir dialogue, the difference is that didn’t do it with EVERY line, and it also was simply better overall, in every way.

I hope I’m getting my point across, if not let’s give you another example of how bad this was: Mickey Cohen is Jewish, in the first scene of the movie when Sean Penn opens his mouth you hear this Eastern European Jewish accent, or something like that. It’s interesting, I’m immediately thinking that it’ll be cool hearing a guy who sounds like he runs a butcher shop who’s a Jew and super evil in post WWII Los Angeles. Then, 20 seconds later, he has a thick American accent, Chicago I believe, and for most of the movie THAT’S how he speaks, though every now and then you hear his Jewish immigrant accent again. Make up your mind Sean Penn, I mean if you were talented enough to single-handedly figure out that we shouldn’t be in Iraq on your brilliant “fact-finding mission”, you should be able to decide on a single accent in a movie. Not even talking about someone’s accent which slips every now and then, I’m talking about full on switch from one to the other.

I said to Adi that I NEED to know who directed and wrote this garbage, because I had to imagine it was people who have only done previous garbage, or their first movie. I was only partly correct. The writer has only written for TV, and so his first big screen attempt gets a huge F, though I noticed on IMDb that he’s credited for the upcoming Lethal Weapon 5, maybe he’ll make me like Mel Gibson again if he writes him so badly that I actually laugh at him?

But the big shocker was the director, Ruben Fleischer not only has made previous movies, but ones I LOVE. He directed Zombieland, one of the funniest and most clever movies of 2009! He also made 30 Minutes or Less, a better than average little action-comedy. I actually think he’s shown some real talent, good range for comedy and action, so I don’t know how he read this script and decided it was worth making. Though I will say that it’s possible that he took the laughable script and still managed to direct some fun action and some intentionally funny moments, but for the most part the laughter was at the movie, not with it. I literally laughed at a scene that was supposed to be a sad moment, and I’m a sucker for those scenes even when predictable.

I think most people who see this will have a good time overall as we did, but I just can’t imagine many people thinking it’s actually anything more than a really guilty pleasure.

The movie was better than The Black Dahlia, another movie about cops from the same era that simply suffered the worst fate of movies, it was boring (this never was in spite of and because of its silliness). It was much, much, MUCH worse than The Untouchables, a great movie about cops fighting another gangster from that era. Duh.

Quality Rating: D+ (I was gonna give it a C just for its good costumes and imagery but Adi convinced me that even that was too generous given the rest)

Boaz Rating: B+ (Had I seen this with a crowd that was laughing along with me I’d actually give it an even higher rating for fun, but for some reason the audience seemed into it, going to prove that even I am not always the easiest audience to please)