Movie Review: Femme Fatale

Femme Fatale (2002) 

Directed by Brian De Palma

Written by Brian DePalma

Starring Rebecca Romijn, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyle, Gregg Henry

Release Date November 6th, 2002 

Published November 5th, 2002

Whether you like Brian De Palma or not you have to respect a director who so often presses the boundaries of good taste, decency and filmmaking. So many of De Palma's films are unqualified classics simply for his willingness to push the envelope of filmmaking style and trashy storytelling. Films like Dressed To Kill and Raising Cain are such wildly fantastical slasher pictures that the viewer doesn't know whether to laugh or recoil in horror. Even when De Palma's risk-taking style fails (Snake Eyes), the failure is at least memorable.

Who can't remember that awesome 5-minute tracking shot at the opening of Snake Eyes with De Palma's voyeuristic floating camera following Nicholas Cage through an Atlantic City casino? Pure style. In Femme Fatale the De Palma's trademark stylishness is in place but much like Snake Eyes, it's a memorable failure.

The femme fatale of the title is Laure Ash played by supermodel Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. Laure is a professional thief who, with the help of two nameless black guys, plots to steal a million dollars in diamonds. In typical De Palma style the diamond heist is a trashy, exciting plot as the diamonds in question are being worn by a model attending the Cannes Film Festival. In fact, the diamond and gold outfit is basically the only thing the model is wearing. 

This is no trouble for Laure who has already made contact with the model and is planning on seducing the diamonds right off the models body. In a scene only De Palma could write, Stamos seduces the woman and has sex with her in a bathroom stall, and then uses the model to help her double cross her collaborators and walk out with the diamonds herself. The less I tell you about the diamond plot the better.

From there Laure has to get out of the country before her partners find her which leads her into a mistaken identity plot where she is confused for a grieving widow and taken in by the girl’s parents. While in the care of her pseudo parents she happens across a plane ticket and passport belonging to her lookalike. Boarding the plane with her new identity, she meets an American businessman played by veteran character guy Peter Coyote.

Cut to seven years later, Laure has married Coyote whose character is returning to Paris as the new American Ambassador. As Laure attempts to fly under the radar to avoid her past, her low profile attracts the attention of the French tabloids. One of the papers hire a paparazzi photographer played by Antonio Banderas to capture a photo of the new Ambassador's wife. He of course gets the photo, which is not surprisingly seen by her former partners. This sets off a chain of events that have Laure posing as an abused wife to lure Antonio into a plot she has designed to bilk her husband out of ten million dollars. Whatever happened to the diamonds is anyone's guess.

It’s not surprising that Stamos is the film’s biggest problem. As an actress, Stamos makes for sensational eye candy but she is completely overmatched as an actress. That is likely the reason why though she is the lead she has far less dialogue than her co-stars. She is never once believable as the badass manipulator that the character is supposed to be and she never projects the intellect a character like this would need to make it as far as she does.

De Palma is in rare form with his trashy take on classic Hitchcock. There is De Palma's legendary use of tracking shots and his unique use of amazing French architecture. The colors that saturated the France of Amelie are dimmed by rain covered streets in Femme Fatale but are nearly as vivid. De Palma is in love with his camera, floating it everywhere and using extensive close-ups to raise the tension of the film. If Stamos' performance weren't so chuckle-inducing, Femme Fatale could have been a style-over-substance cult classic. As it is, Femme Fatale is a missed opportunity for the director who lives for every opportunity, successful or otherwise.

Movie Review Rollerball

Rollerball (2002) 

Directed by John McTiernan

Written by Larry Ferguson, John Pogue 

Starring Chris Klein, Rebecca Romijn, LL Cool J, Paul Heyman 

Release date February 8th, 2002 

Published February 7th, 2002 

Roger Ebert once said of the movie Mad Dog Time that the film did not improve upon the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same amount of time. I haven't seen Mad Dog Time but after seeing Rollerball I completely understand the sentiment. Rollerball is astonishingly boring on top of being mind numbingly awful. 

Rollerball stars poor misguided Chris Klein as the star player of the international sport of Rollerball. I've skipped ahead of the story, he doesn't begin the film by playing Rollerball, but you see the beginning of the film has nothing to do with anything. My theory is that the director owed the extras in the scene a favor and decided to leave it in the final product.

Oh right the story, anyway Chris joins his old college buddy LL Cool J in playing Rollerball. Leave out the age inconsistency in their having been college buddies because counting the inconsistencies in Rollerball might take as long as watching the film itself. Forget about the story description too, it's hard to call something so scattershot a story. From what I gathered, there is something about Jean Reno being a bad guy who hurts people and Chris and LL want to stop him along with Rebecca Romijn who does.... something. I'm not sure exactly what her function was, because all I remember is her awful, awful accent.

Adding to the idiocy, for some reason there is a ten-minute section of the film around the halfway mark that was filmed with a night-vision camera. We don't know why but there it is in all its pointlessness. As for the sport of Rollerball, I believe it's a series quick edits of mindless violence set to some stupid speed metal anthem.

What is most frightening is that this is the re-shot and "improved" version of Rollerball. The film was initially to be released in August 2001 but after a disastrous preview screening attended by our friends at Ain't It Cool News. The producers pulled the film and ordered it re-cut and re-shot. If this is the better version, the original must be something akin to a filmed bowel movement.

Honestly, when wrestling announcer Paul Heyman stars as the Rollerball announcer and brings the film it's only source of dignity there is something very wrong. If you were thinking of seeing Rollerball let me save you the ticket price. Make a fist and punch yourself about the stomach and head for two solid hours. That's easily the equivalent experience of watching Rollerball, if you also poked yourself in the eyes while doing it. 

Movie Review Godsend

Godsend (2004) 

Directed by Nick Hamm 

Written by Mark Bomback 

Starring Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn Stamos, Robert DeNiro, Cameron Bright 

Release Date April 30th, 2004

Published April 29th, 2004

The moral and ethical debate over cloning is fervent ground for drama. That drama was well explored in the little-seen 1997 sci-fi film Gattaca with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. That film was set in a universe, years in the future, where cloning was more than a reality, it was a way of life that had replaced nature with science. The latest examination of the thorny issue of cloning takes place in a modern context, a time when cloning is almost a reality. Godsend however, is not as much interested in the science or  morality of cloning as much as it is interested in atmospherics and melodrama.

Adam Duncan (Cameron Bright) has just celebrated his eighth birthday. His mother Jessie (Rebecca Romijn) and father Paul (Greg Kinnear) are happily married living in New York City but they are contemplating a move to the suburbs to find a safer place to raise their son. Their idyllic family life is shattered when a tragic car accident kills Adam as his mother watches helplessly.

At Adam's funeral, the couple meets Dr. Richard Wells (Robert De Niro) who has a strange offer for them. Wells is an expert geneticist and he claims to have perfected a way to clone a human being. Wells' offer is to use some of Adam’s cells, which are useful only for 72 hours after his death, to clone the child back to life. The child can then be genetically replicated and placed in his mother’s womb. Just like in-vitro fertilization, the child could be carried to term and re-born as Adam Duncan down to the last hair on his head.

There are some rules that the couple must agree to first.  One is that the couple must move to Massachusetts to be near Dr. Wells' Godsend research clinic. They must then sever all ties with friends and family. Finally, Dr. Wells must be the only doctor Adam ever sees. Aside from that, the doctor sets the couple up with a beautiful house and a teaching job for Paul. The couple can raise Adam as if he had never died, starting over from his birth. The only question is what will happen to Adam when he crosses the age at which he died.

That last part is where the film draws most of it's drama but it's also the most dubious of the contrivances of the film. There is never any kind of scientific or theoretical reason given for why anything in Adam would change when he turned eight years old, the age he was when he died the first time. It's not like the kid can have all of the experiences he had from his first life again. He's going to meet all new people, spend time with Dr. Wells, go to a different school, his parents are different people than they were before his original death. 

I realize that I am asking questions that the makers of Godsend would rather avoid but these are the questions that this plot raises and it is a fatal flaw for this movie that they can't answer those questions. That could be as easy as making Dr. Wells the real villain, a man trying to turn this boy into an Omen, Damien style villain but that doesn't happen. Robert DeNiro is far too checked out and obviously bored to try and be part of this plot anyway. 

First-time director Nick Hamm does a good job creating a creepy horror atmosphere. Even in the film’s dream sequences, Hamm never resorts to CGI trickery, preferring to create his atmosphere naturally. A challenge he more than meets with the help of cinematographer Kramer Morganthau. Nick Hamm's other achievement is making this cute kid Cameron Bright a viably dangerous presence right up until the end when the film’s second big contrivance kicks in and snuffs out what was good about the film. As the director told Sci Fi Wire, they shot five different endings. Unfortunately, they chose the wrong one.

Greg Kinnear is such a reliable dramatic presence that he is able to ground the film in some kind of reality. Kinnear makes both Rebecca Romijn and Cameron Bright better for having worked with him.

If only Robert De Niro had paid a little more attention to his understated co-star. Lapsing into Jeremy Irons like self-parody, De Niro over-emotes, eats the scemery and generally throws dirt on his legend that grows more tarnished by each subsequent late-career performance.

Godsend isn't as bad as I am making it seem. The director Nick Hamm is very talented and Greg Kinnear is giving it his all to sell this deeply flawed premise. Sadly, with DeNiro lapsing into parodyh out of seeming boredom, and the logical failures of the script and premise, there was no overcoming the flaws in Godsend. Creepy visuals and strong sense of atmosphere are great but when your audience is busy deconstructing your plot flaws instead of being impressed with the look and feel of your movie, it's just not working. 

As muich as I have issues with the movie, I will say that if want to see Godsend, see it for Greg Kinnear genuinely good performance and for the low-tech horror atmosphere created by talented director Nick  that works without any CGI trickery, something most films can't resist.

Movie Review: The Punisher

The Punisher (2004) 

Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh 

Written by Jonathan Hensleigh 

Starring Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Rebecca Romijn 

Release Date: April 16th, 2004 

Published April 15th, 2004 

Previous to Avi Arad’s days as CEO, Marvel Comics made a number of bad deals involving the film rights to its comics. The Fantastic Four was sold to Roger Corman's production company (yes that Roger Corman). Do we want to remember those awful Captain America and Spiderman TV movies? Ugh. And who can forget 1989's The Punisher with Dolph Lundgren? Well most people have forgotten that, thankfully. Now The Punisher has a new life on film and the best that can be said is that it's better than the Dolph Lundgren version.

Thomas Jane is the new Frank Castle, a special forces trained FBI Agent who has just wrapped up his final case with his own faked death. Unfortunately, in a case where he hoped no one would be killed, a mobster’s son was taken down. The mobster, Howard Saint (John Travolta) is of course none too pleased with this and sets out to find the man responsible. With little effort he finds Castle is not really dead and sets out to kill him, and at his wife Livia's (Laura Elena Herring) suggestion, kill Castle's entire family as well.

Saint sends his top thug Quentin Glass (Will Patton) and a large goon squad to Puerto Rico where the entire Castle clan, cousins, and uncles, and grandparents, and so on and so on, all just happen to be gathered. The gang kills the entire family then chases down Frank's fleeing wife and child and brutally run them down. Then it's Frank's turn as he arrives just in time to see his wife and child die and then get the living crap kicked out of himself by the bad guys. In typical bad guy fashion, rather than just shooting Frank in the head the baddies plot an elaborate torture that Frank manages to escape. Well if they did the smart thing there would be no movie.

Castle does survive and soon is back in Tampa ready to make Howard Saint pay for killing his family. Along the way Frank hooks up with three oddballs who share a rundown tenement apartment building with him. They are Joan (Rebecca Romijn) a waitress with a taste for the wrong kind of man, Bumpo (comedian John Pinette) an effeminate overweight chef and Spacker Dave an overly pierced slacker. They try to draw Frank into their circle but other than protecting them from evil, Frank has little interest in them.

Frank's sole focus is an overly elaborate revenge on Howard Saint. If it weren't overly elaborate, again there would be no movie, but this is quite unnecessarily melodramatic and prolonged. The revenge involves Saint, his wife and Quentin Glass, a simple misunderstanding, and a fake fire hydrant. Where does one even acquire a fake fire hydrant? I'm not sure but it seems quite handy, unless there were an actual fire. It's all very melodramatic until the final 10 minutes when it devolves into a massive crunching bore of gunfire and the unnecessary use of way too much C4 explosive.

Director Jonathan Hensleigh obviously learned a lot from scripting Armageddon and producing Con Air for Jerry Bruckheimer. He learned how to use massive explosions to grand excess. He learned that you can never under-use gunfire and that a movie doesn't have to make sense as long as you kill, maim or explode someone every other scene. Not that this approach doesn't have it's moments but as every Bruckheimer movie shows, the formula grows tired quickly and so it does become quickly tiresome in The Punisher.

To the credit of Thomas Jane, The Punisher's belligerence is seemingly not his fault. Jane's performance is perfectly calibrated to the films dark, humorless tone. Jane's Punisher is brooding, tough, and without a trace of wit. Which seems to be exactly what the movie was going for if you watch all that surrounds his performance. Jane sells the character all the way even as he is forced to become less and less human and more of a horror film cartoon. Rambo crossed with Jason Vorhees.

John Travolta is wearing his Swordfish toupee which means he is in sneering bad guy autopilot. Nothing new for Travolta who grows more and more bored with each subsequent role these days. Hopefully his return to playing Chilli Palmer in Be Cool will revive his love of acting. In The Punisher Travolta gives up about half way through and figuratively rolls his eyes through the final 45 minutes of the film.

As bad as this movie truly is I must admit that I enjoyed some of it's over the top violence. The films major, one on one, fight scene between Tom Jane and pro wrestler Kevin Nash, the seven footer simply called The Russian in the film, brings the film’s only light moments as Jane marvels at the size of his opponent and his own numerous failed attempts to hurt the big man. It's kinda fun but it's been done, Stallone made beating up the bigger man a staple of his act back in the mid-eighties.

The film’s final violent set piece looks like an attempt to burn whatever remained of the film’s budget. I swear, it's as if they were told they had to spend a certain amount and nothing less so they just blew up whatever remaining cash they had in an orgy of explosions and gunfire.

At two hours and ten minutes, The Punisher is punishing on the audience. Repetitiously violent in between it's overly imaginative and melodramatic plots, The Punisher would be a candidate for worst of the year if Thomas Jane weren't such a pro at selling this big. dumb, loud plot. It's better than the Dolph Lundgren version of The Punisher, but staring at a blank screen for ninety minutes would be more entertaining than that picture. I would hope that the producers were aiming for more than bettering that film. Sadly that turns out to be the film’s only accomplishment.