Movie Review: Blindness

Blindness (2009) 

Directed by Fernando Meierelles

Written by Don McKellar

Starring Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Alice Braga, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal

Release Date October 3rd, 2009 

Published October 10th, 2009 

Fernando Meierelles is an infinitely talented director whose features City of God and The Constant Gardener are breathtaking exercises in visual dynamism and urgent storytelling. It leaves one utterly baffled then to find Meirelles the director of Blindness; a dreary, sluggish horror story that features a plague nearly as curious as M. Night Shyamalan's evil oxygenating trees in The Happening.

Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo lead a diverse cast as a husband and wife. The husband is an opthamologist who is suddenly stricken blind. The previous day he had seen a patient who suffered the same affliction. Now the doctor is blind and so is his secretary and each of his patients. His wife however keeps her sight even as she joins her husband in a mass quarantine of people suddenly having been struck blind.

In the quarantine building, the blind are herded like cattle and kept like prisoners. The internal society starts off as expected, frightened but peaceful. Then chaos sets in. A despotic young man played by Diego Luna gets a hold of a weapon and takes the food hostage. He doles out rations in exchange for first jewelry and then sexual favors.

Meirelles observes these events with a bizarre distance, as if the chaos onscreen were an expression of his chaotic mindset. Even the director seems uncomfortable with the actions of his characters. This impression comes in the way Meirelles films the action through either too much darkness or too much light. If the director himself doesn't have the stomach for his action, how can he expect that of the audience?

This is the part of the review where I talk about the elements of the movie you might find most appealing beyond the premise and the technical creation that is the film. Unfortunately, Blindness is one of those rare movies where there really isn't anything appealing. Fernando Meirelles has crafted a thriller without thrills, a parable without underlying meaning. A sloppy, slow moving, dreary slog to a meaningless meandering ending.

What could I possibly recommend about that?

Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo are exceptionally talented people who no doubt were excited to work with a director of Meierelles' resume. That resume likely blinded them to the quality of Blindness, a mind numbing bore of a movie with less hope and exhilaration than even Eli Roth's lowest work. Rapes to murders to people defecating in the halls in service of a go nowhere plot, Blindness is a singularly horrific movie.

Movie Review Redbelt

Redbelt (2008) 

Directed by David Mamet

Written by David Mamet

Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alice Braga, Randy Couture, Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay

Release Date May 9th, 2008 

Published June 14th, 2008

David Mamet is one of the best screenwriters in the business. His hard boiled dialogue and twist filled suspense stories are often so layered it takes multiple viewings to discern. It is Mamet's reputation for quality work that makes his latest writer/director effort Redbelt so puzzling.

The story of a martial arts instructor drawn into a con that leads him into competing in a Mixed Martial Arts tournament has the requisite Mamet dialogues and twists but lacks suspense. Redbelt lacks suspense not because of a lacking script but rather it's shoddy, off putting craftsmanship.

Redbelt looks and feels as if it were slapped together on a deadline and shoved into theaters well before it was ready. Takes drag on too long. Dialogue sounds as if different scenes were cut together at random. Strong actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emily Mortimer seem at a loss to find motivation and guiding principles for their performances.

In Redbelt Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a struggling martial arts instructor whose unique style is co opted by an actor played by Tim Allen. The actor wants to learn from the instructor and use his style in a movie. What looks like a windfall however becomes a double cross when the actor's manager played by Joe Montegna steals the instructors teachings and sells them to a shady pay per view fight promoter (Ricky Jay).

To win back what he lost, the instructor must take part in a tournament and win it all.

As I said, Redbelt has the elements that Mamet does so well. The problem is in the slapdash production. The look of the film is amateurish at times with odd angles and fuzzy cinematography. The editing is downright confusing with actors often seeming as if their conversations were cobbled together from different scenes.

Stunningly poor production dooms what otherwise might have been classic Mamet in all his  manly, foul mouthed glory.

Movie Review I Am Legend

I Am Legend (2007) 

Directed by Francis Lawrence

Written by Mark Protosevich, Akiva Goldsman

Starring Will Smith, Alice Brag, Charlie Tahan, Dash Mihok

Release Date December 14th, 2007

Published December 13th, 2007

Will Smith is the biggest star in the world for a reason. People just love this guy. It's an inexplicable kind of chemistry. He has that indefinable quality that draws people to him and that quality makes a big difference in his latest effort I Am Legend. Playing the last man in New York City, Smith is robbed of the tools that have made him a star. Gone is the charm, the timely quips lost on his only companion, his dog. Of course, he may not need his usual charm and quirks. After all I Am Legend has Will in his comfort zone, saving the world.

Dr. Robert Neville is resistant to both the air borne and blood borne virus that has in just three years wiped out most of the world's population. Those who weren't killed and weren't immune like Robert have mutated into bloodthirsty night dwellers who roam the streets in search of what fresh meat remains. Only Robert remains in New York City and he is a little lonely.

Spending his days hunting deer on Broadway and growing crops by the shore, and his nights trying to cure the virus, Robert is slowly going insane from the human void around him. Like Tom Hanks in Castaway, a movie I'm sure Robert has watched a dozen or so times, Robert longs for human contact and even begins infusing human qualities in inanimate objects.

Of course things don't stay this way. The mutants that Robert had thought were brain dead, bloodthirsty monsters are evolving in their hunt for blood and a confrontation is brewing between the scientist and the evil dead. Eventually, another human does arrive and they will make a stand together.

I Am Legend was directed by Francis Lawrence, a director who knows post-apocalyptic doom from his underrated work on the Keanu Reeves flick Constantine. I Am Legend leaves that film in the dust by depicting a decrepit world in ruins. The New York City of I Am Legend is like a second star of the film constantly vying for your attention.

Seeing the streets overgrown with weeds, the buildings moldered and dust covered, the streets covered in dirt, is truly mind blowing. Lawrence and his effects team create a stunningly realistic landscape for Smith and his undead friends to inhabit.

Ah, but Lawrence did not leave the direction to just the effects. He does a terrific job creating opportunities for Will Smith to do his action thing. The tense confrontations between Will and the bloodthirsty monsters are directed with so much tension and energy that you will watch through your fingers, slumping in your seat as your heart beats quickly.

This is a terrific piece of direction. Early on, as Will and his dog are chasing deer, the dog chases a fawn into a dark worn down building. We intuit quickly that the monsters can only thrive in the dark and that this is a dangerous situation. Using little light and some forced perspective camera work, Lawrence creates a fast paced, tension filled sequence.

I Am Legend is terrifically exciting and smarter and more thoughtful than you might expect from such a genre flick. Will Smith brings a number of fine character touches to Robert that make him real to us, real enough that we fear for him and are thus engulfed in his plight. For fans of both horror and action, I Am Legend is arguably the movie of the year. For the rest, it's a satisfying bit of Saturday night entertainment.

Movie Review Predators

Predators (2010) 

Directed by Nimrod Antal 

Written by Alex Litvak 

Starring Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins, Laurence Fishburne

Release Date July 9th, 2010 

Published July 8th, 2010

The idea of Adrian Brody, the Oscar winner for “The Pianist,” as a mercenary action hero does not sound promising. Known for his gaunt, lithe, boney physique and offbeat taste in films, Brody doesn't leap immediately to mind as the man to take the reigns of a franchise that originated with the testosterone heavy likes of Carl 'Action Jackson' Weather, Jesse 'the Body' Ventura and the ultimate muscled action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This fact makes Brody's unusual success in “Predators” such a delight. With an ironic wink, a comic growl and an actor's commitment Brody nails the role of an unnamed mercenary dropped into an alien game preserve to play out a sci-fi version of Richard Connell's “Most Dangerous Game.”

Seven bloodthirsty killers find themselves falling from the sky with only moments to open an unusual looking parachute. The 8th man is a doctor (Topher Grace) and he is something of an anomaly against the 7 who are made up of a mercenary soldier (Brody), a South American freedom fighter (Alice Braga), a Mexican drug dealer (Danny Trejo) a Russian Special Forces soldier (Oleg Taktarov), an African mercenary (M. Ali), a death row inmate (Walton Groggins) and a member of the Yakuza (Louis Ozawa Changchien).

The mystery of the doctor character will be revealed eventually but first this ragtag band of characters must work through some highly inferential and often expositional dialogue while we in the audience engage in the “Predators” drinking game, which involves guessing the order in which the killers will be killed. Fun game if you bring alcohol to the theater.

Now, my irreverence might indicate that I didn't like “Predators” but au contraire, I actually loved Predators. This is some of the most fun you will have at a theater this year. Some of the joy may not be intentional on the part of director Nimrod Antal and writer-producer Robert Rodriguez but there is an undeniably intentional level of cheese, especially from star Adrien Brody.

Taking to heart the fact that no one sees him as an action hero, Brody bulks up a little and lays on a thick growl to sell the tough guy persona. That it kind of works is, I think, part of the joke. Brody is ingenious in Predators bringing an actor's flourish to one dopey action hero role. It is a brilliantly, wonderfully, odd performance and the main reason “Predators” is so much goofy fun.

There is more than a little cheese and winking irony in “Predators” plus a guy gets his spine ripped out (Awesomely). What more can you ask from a completely over the top action and effects spectacular? “Predators” may not be great cinema but it is a terrifically fun summer movie.

Movie Review Repo Men

Repo Men (2010) 

Directed by Miguel Sapochnik

Written by Eric Garcia, Garrett Lerner

Starring Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Liev Schreiber, Alice Braga, RZA, Yvette Nicole Brown

Release Date March 19th, 2010 

Published March 20th, 2010 

Warning: The movie Repo Men has been sitting on a studio shelf for nearly three years. The film starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker never developed a reputation as a troubled project but for some reason the studio never saw fit to put it on the screen until now. This is, generally, a bad sign. Films that sit on studio shelves for a while have an almost literal stench of failure attached to them.

Repo Men stars Jude Law as Remy, a man with a very unique and disturbing profession. It is Remy's job to retrieve property but not just any property, Remy retrieves internal organs. A company known as The Union has developed mechanical organs to replace failing human organs of all types, lungs, heart, kidney et cetera.

The catch is that  these mechanical organs are unbelievably expensive, so expensive that the company offers an exorbitant payment plan. If you default on your payments for more than three months the Union sends Remy and or his pal Jake (Forest Whitaker) to retrieve the organ by any means necessary. Bloody gutting and death are the usual result.

As you may have learned from the trailers and commercials, Remy has an accident and ends up with a mechanical heart courtesy of The Union. Becoming a transplant patient changes Remy and he can no longer be a repo man. Also helping change Remy's perspective is another former patient (Alice Braga) who Remy falls in love with and eventually goes on the run with in order to escape the repo of both of their important parts.

Repo Men has an interesting idea, one that could be played to capitalize on the current debate over health care reform in America. What better way to parody the heartless insurance and HMO conglomerates than with the mass, bloody retrieval of organs that patients fail to pay for. The satire practically writes itself. 

That, however, is for another movie, as noted above Repo Men was made nearly three years ago before the battle over health care reform became a daily lead story on the national news. What Repo Men is really about is hardcore bloody violence reminiscent of the recent blood and guts epics coming out of Japan and South Korea. Repo Men apes a number of Asian action and horror conceits, especially the bloody violence of Chan Wook Park's Oldboy.

A scene late in Repo Men seems entirely lifted from Oldboy. In it Jude Law takes on several bad guys in a narrow hallway with a knife, a saw, and some sweet Kung Fu. It's a terrific scene but also derivative and in the end pointless. I won't spoil the ending but trained film watchers will be disappointed at how Repo Men tips its hand early on and cheats to the finish in a most irritating way.

I don't know exactly why Repo Men was left on the shelf for three years. There is little that could have been done in that time to improve it. My guess has less to do with production trouble than with marketing challenges. The studio (Universal) was likely holding the film until Jude Law regained his status as a marketable leading man.

In 2007 Jude Law was coming off of a series of box office disappointments and indie movies that barely made it beyond the art house. He was also a rising tabloid star having had a troubled marriage and well publicized affair that kept him from making many movies from 2004 to 2007.  In 2009 Jude Law came back to the top of the marquee starring opposite Robert Downey Jr in Sherlock Holmes. With Law's name recognition once again on the rise, and his tabloid troubles seemingly behind him, Universal likely felt they finally had a marketing hook and Repo Men arrived.

None of this means much to the quality of Repo Men. It's merely one of those notable Hollywood stories; a peculiarity of the Hollywood system where stars are coveted for their ability to sell a movie with their name and persona but shunned at the mere mention of potential scandal or perceived lack of appeal..

Repo Men is the result of that bizarre Hollywood system where marketing means as much or more than the quality of the movie. No one seemed to care whether Repo Men was any good, it's not great but not terrible. The more pertinent concerns for executives were whether the movie could be sold. In 2007 it wasn't an easy sell. In 2010 it became an easier sell.

Putting aside the Hollywood junk, if you are a fan of hardcore, blood and guts violence or a fan of Jude Law you will find a lot to like about Repo Men. If you prefer movies with strong story, characters and motivations skip Repo Men which pushes aside an interesting cast and story in favor of more blood and more guts and more spectacular ways of displaying them on screen