Movie Review Pride and Glory

Pride and Glory (2008) 

Directed by Gavin O'Connor

Written by Gavin O'Connor 

Starring Edward Norton, Colin Farrell, Noah Emmerich, John Voight Jennifer Ehle

Release Date October 24th, 2008 

Published October 24th, 2008

The tortured history of Pride and Glory extends all the way back to 2001 when Mark Wahlberg and Hugh Jackman were attached to the script with director Joe Carnahan. The attacks of September 11th and the subsequent stories of NYPD heroism caused the project to be shelved. Revived and rejiggered by New Line Pictures and director Gavin O'Connor, Pride and Glory got the go ahead in 2006 with Edward Norton and Colin Ferrell in the leads.

And then things get murky. Whether Edward Norton went all Edward Norton on the movie or New Line had a disagreement with director O'Connor, Pride Glory completely found itself on the shelf. Two years later the film arrives and it may have been better off on the shelf.

Ray Tierney (Edward Norton) gave up on being a detective years ago. An incident involving his family, fellow cops and a cover up turned on Ray so badly that although he was never caught lying, he couldn't live with the guilt and hid out in a new assignment in missing persons. Now however, a case of four dead cops in his brother Francis' (Noah Emmerich) unit draws Ray back to being a detective.

The four dead cops it seems walked into an ambush as they staked out a seemingly low level drug dealer. The cops went for the bust and the dealer knew they were coming. Someone in the department tipped him off and four cops died. The case is a major headache for Francis as well as his Commander father Francis Sr. (Jon Voight) and thus why they turn to Ray for help.

Things grow much, much worse when a witness links the dealer to Jimmy Egan (Colin Ferrell) , a cop in Francis Jr's unit and Ray and company's brother-in -law. Jimmy married little sister Megan (Lake Bell) a few years back and now he is the main suspect in a corruption investigation that could bring not just the family but the reputation of the NYPD crashing down.

It's a familiar story: corrupt cops, NYPD, family of detectives, blah blah blah. What director Gavin O'Connor does is take these familiar elements and rearrange them into a slightly different form. He has good pieces to work with. Edward Norton  is a tremendous actor who can make the most of even the lamest material. Colin Ferrell has a more limited range than Norton but makes up for a lot with charisma.

These two actors make the most of what is given them but Pride and Glory remains a failure despite their best efforts. The script is just too familiar and Gavin O'Connor's attempts to reform those elements into a new story only serve to find further faults. Worse however, is the repeated moments of what is referred to rhetorically as Deus Ex Machina, the hand of god.

When a screenwriter is stuck he will often let slide a coincidence or two or three. These coincidences work to allow characters to be placed at just the perfect time. They allow characters to hold off on motivations or hunches or memories until just the moment they are needed as if the hand of god were delivering the character to the place they are needed or reminding them of just the right memory at just the moment it's needed.

These plot conveniences in Pride and Glory are groan-inducing to the point of modest chuckles for savvy audience members who recognize them.

What is a real shame about Pride and Glory is that it wastes an Oscar worthy effort by longtime character actor Noah Emmerich. As the conflicted captain of a corrupt unit. Emmerich walks a tightrope between drama and caricature and makes the right dramatic decision almost each time. On top of being the boss and dealing with all of this corruption, Francis has a wife at home, played by Jennifer Ehle, who is dying of cancer.

Many actors would be overwhelmed with so much sorrow to play but Emmerich handles it all exceptionally well. If the movie weren't such a dog overall Emmerich could have been a strong contender for best supporting actor. Thankfully, based on his work in Pride and Glory I have no doubt something like that is still in his future.

If your plot is too familiar you have to do more than just rearrange the elements slightly. Play with the tone, grim sadness and gritty gray skied backgrounds are so done. Play with the characters, make one a woman, give one an unusual quirk, work in some dark humor. Do something to keep the audience from sitting in the dark wondering where they've seen all of this before.

Also, if your script so often needs the hand of god to deliver characters to need locations or revelations, maybe you shouldn't make the movie at all.

Movie Review Possession

Possession (2002) 

Directed by Neil Labute 

Written by David Henry Hwang, Laura Jones, Neil Labute 

Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhardt, Jeremy Northam, Jennifer Ehle, Lena Headey 

Release date August 16th, 2002 

Published August 16th, 2002 

As something of a writer myself, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to make a film about writing. In Possession, writer/director Neil Labute (with help from Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart) nearly pulls it off. Unfortunately, there is a limit to how interesting watching people conduct research about great writers can be.

Eckhart is an American historian named Roland Mitchell, working and living in Britain. In the midst of researching a poet named Randolf Henry Ash, played in flashback by Jeremy Northam, he comes across a letter that has gone unseen for over a hundred years. Rather than turning it over to his superiors, Roland keeps it until he can verify its authenticity. This leads him to a fellow researcher named Maud Bailey (Paltrow), who is an expert in all things Ash. 

The letter is quite complicated, as it is not addressed to his wife (as most of Ash's work is), but rather, to a mystery woman. For historians, this is an earth-shattering discovery. Ash's fidelity and love for his wife is part of his legend. The mystery woman is a fellow writer named Christabel La Motte (Jennifer Ehle). Her history is notable for her open homosexuality and what was thought to be a fitful relationship with her maid. The deeper the research the more interesting the revelation. I won't spoil the film's many turns.

The story is interesting and well plotted but the romance between Eckhart and Paltrow never quite sparks. The two just don't have the chemistry it takes to make the film burn with the passion Labute is obviously looking for; the kind of passion that would inspire such great romantic writing. In the film's parallel story of Ash and Christabel, there is great passion. Northam and Ehle do burn up the screen and their writing is vivid and lovely.

Unfortunately that isn't enough for me to fully recommend Possession. This certainly isn't a bad film but the lack of chemistry between the two leads undoes most of the strong narrative. For fans of Paltrow, Possession may be a worthy rental.

Movie Review: Vox Lux

Vox Lux December 2018

Directed by Brady Corbet 

Written by Brady Corbet 

Starring Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Stacy Martin, Jennifer Ehle, Raffey Cassidy 

Release Date December 18th, 2018

Published December 17th, 2018

Vox Lux is rarely the movie you think it is going to be. The plot indicates something arty and pretentious about the nature of pop stardom but the reality is something far more thoughtful and indelible. Writer-director Brady Corbet frames his pop music diva, played by both Raffey Cassidy and then by Natalie Portman, as the living embodiment of modern American culture. 

I get that that is a big notion but I feel the film pulled off really well. The single named character Celeste is a pretty strong metaphor for our times. Her recent, relatively young history is dotted with a tragic school shooting followed by a rocket ship to fame. She’s drug addled, possibly alcoholic, unstable, a single mother, and perhaps the best endorsement imaginable for mood elevating drugs. If that doesn’t craft a picture of America in the 2000’s, I don’t know what does. 

Celeste is basically a walking reality show with all of the cameras on her all the time and her fame obscuring her sense of any reality. Then there is the violence. In a prologue set in 1999, not so subtly the same year as the Columbine shooting, Celeste was the victim of a school shooter. While most of her classmates were killed, Celeste survived, though with a bullet permanently lodged near her spine. 

Her first act after leaving the hospital is to play a song on national television next to her talented sister, Ellie (Stacy Martin), the living embodiment of survivor’s guilt whose permanently attached herself to her sister’s side. Ellie was supposed to have been at school that day but she was home sick. For the next 20 years Ellie will be constantly at her sister’s side, even as much of that time she becomes her sister’s victim. 

Celeste has quite a temper and an attitude that you are not expecting. Portman lays on a thick Long Island accent and it really works to give the character a unique dimension. As a teenager, the character barely spoke above a whisper and with a halting and singular tone. Portman mirrors the halting tone but the voice is louder, harsher and weathered from years of smoking and a brutal touring schedule. 

No joke, you could discern a life’s journey from the way Natalie Portman modulates her voice and accent in Vox Lux. It’s an uncanny performance and one most actors could not pull off on their best day. Portman is electric in this role and backed up by the music of Sia, she pulls off pop super diva in a big way. I bought into Celeste the moment Portman stepped into the role, in the second act and by the time we reached the film’s concert climax I lost track of the star and was watching pop goddess on stage. 

Is the music good? That depends on your taste but that is entirely beyond the point. The point here is the presentation in all of its gaudy excess. I’ve never understood what exactly pop stars in concert are going for with these bizarre, other-worldly, stage antics but Vox Lux makes a unique case for how they come to be. At a certain point, performing the same songs, the same way, for months and years becomes stale and slapping on a new coat of paint with bizarre costumes and choreography is the only way to beat the tedium. 

The film doesn’t make the statement quite as bluntly as I just did but the message is clear. Even with the updated on stage presentation the stiffness of the performance comes through as if Celeste were performing by rote, mimicking in a way our own performance, our daily routines that we’ve got down to a predictable science. There is a deathlessness to the performance that comes through in Portman’s eyes, this has become so second nature for her that she could do it in her sleep and yet they still cheer. 

That’s not to indicate that the film has any opinions of Celeste or the kinds of people who flock to her brand of brainless entertainment. The film makes a strong case for why anyone would want to turn their brain off and just be entertained by the shiny lights and propulsive beats. The faux empowerment lyrics and empty love songs are a panacea for the audience and the performer who’d also like to just forget the world for a while. 

Vox Lux is a giant bullseye of a metaphor for our modern culture. Unstable, violent, unpredictable, obsessed with fame and money, gaudy and eccentric. The movie is a rather ingenious microcosm of our current state of affairs. That Vox Lux is not some kind of bloated, monstrous, obsessed with itself, mess of a movie is quite a testament to the talent of star Natalie Portman and  writer-director Brady Corbet who’s made one heck of a great feature directorial debut.